Former BBC TV Dragons’ Den ‘Dragon’, Rachel Elnaugh is the British entrepreneur who created the £multi-million market leading ‘Red Letter Days’ experience brand. She is now a business speaker, published author and award winning business mentor and is CEO of the digital publishing and marketing platform for evolutionaries Source TV
Entrepreneurial Role Models:
When business started difficulties overcame:
“in 1989 when I was 24, I just spent seven years in accountancy culminating in a job at Arthur Andersen which was then the largest accountancy firm in the world, and money was flowing very easily, I was on a big salary. And so when I went into business I thought wow this is going to be just so easy, I am just going to turn on a tap and actually it was very very challenging. That first 12 to 18 months nobody will even take my calls, it was really difficult to even get suppliers on board let alone make any sales and I really got how challenging that was”…[Listen for More]
Favourite Books:
How to get rich: the distilled wisdom of one of Britain’s wealthiest self-made entrepreneurs Book by Felix DennisFavourite Quote:
” Anyone can count the seeds in an apple but no one can count the apples in the seed” Rumi
Recommended Online Resources:
Facebook, Inc. is an American online social media and social networking service company based in Menlo Park, California. Its website was launched on February 4, 2004, by Mark Zuckerberg, along with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes.
Best Advice to Other Entrepreneurs:
“let go and go with the flow… It’s very easy to get attached to the way you think things should happen and to get stuck and in resistance. So I think when you just let go and have fun with it and just go with the flow and just enjoy it and allow that current to take you it can take you to places that you couldn’t even have envisaged if you had sat down and thought about. So there is a lot to be said for the absolute art of allowing and trusting and surrendering just having faith in the process”…[Listen for More]
More About Rachel Elnaugh:
- Source TV
- Rachel Elnaugh
Neil’s Quote at the Beginning:
“For all of its faults, it gives most hardworking people a chance to improve themselves economically, even as the deck is stacked in favor of the privileged few. Here are the choices most of us face in such a system: Get bitter or get busy.” Bill O’ Reilly
Other Quotes From the Chat with Rachel Elnaugh:
- “it’s very tempting when you go into business is to just think that perseverance and determination just means pushing, pushing and pushing harder if it’s not working. But actually, I really think that business success is about trialling, testing, adapting, adjusting continuously until you get the formula right. And that can take a long time. And so many people get very, very attached to the way they thought it should work and that’s usually their reason for failure, just not flexible enough. You have to be really flexible. And many businesses completely reinvent themselves before the actually find a way through to profit”
- “get going and build in the flexibility, don’t fence yourself in with so much capital investment and tying yourself into how you think the business should be. Just start as lightly as you possibly can. Trial and test and adjust and adapt. And really listen to the reaction of the response of customers and build enough flexibility so that you can really flow and find the magic formula. Because once you hit that magic formula and combination, and that can take some time to get to, once you hit that the floodgates open. A business can take off very, very fast but most businesses don’t actually get to that magical alchemical point where they really can start to take off because they have got it right”
- “my big realisation from all of the work that I have done as a mentor is actually business in truth, in essence is actually a healing journey. That sounds like a really weird thing to say but when you really get that every challenge that you are sent is an opportunity for self-awareness and healing then you can stop fighting the externals and really start to be in gratitude for everything that comes up”
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