Former BBCTV Dragons Den ‘Dragon’
Rachel Elnaugh is the award winning entrepeneur whose first business was the market leading ‘experiences’ brand Red Letter Days, which she created at the age of 24 and grew from nothing, on a shoestring budget, into a £multi-million turnover household name, which at its height was making £1million profit a year. In 2000 Red Letter Days was acknowledged by Mintel to be the creator of the new UK experiences industry – by then worth £250 million per annum.
This won Rachel an Ernst & Young Entrepeneur of the Year Award in 2002 and she was shortlisted for the 2001 Veuve Clicquot Businesswoman of the Year Award along with Barbara Cassani, Jo Malone, Sly Bailey and Chey Garland.
As a result of being on the Awards circuit, in 2002 she was invited by the BBC to be part of a new business show they were formulating called ‘Dragons’ Den’.
The pilot for Dragons’ Den was filmed in 2003 and the first series was commissioned and filmed in Autumn 2004, airing for the first time in January 2005. Dragon’s Den was a huge success, shortlisted for a BAFTA and very quickly syndicated worldwide. The second series was filmed in May/June/July 2005 and aired in November/December 2005.
However, behind the scenes, Rachel had been struggling to bring Red Letter Days back on track after a disastrous over-expansion in 2002, and despite the business being back in profit and having £3.3 million cash at the bank it was forced into administration by Barclays Bank on 1 August 2005.
Thanks to her high profile appearance on Dragons’ Den, the crSH OF Red Letter Days attracted huge media exposure, the story appearing on all the key news channels and in every mainstream newspaper. (The Red Letter Days business was bought out of administration by Rachel’s fellow Dragons Peter Jones and Theo Paphitis and continues to trade).
However, to paraphrase Napoleon Hill, in every adversity lies the seeds of opportunity and Rachel was invited to speak at many enterprise events about her experiences. She was also commissioned to write a book about the fine line between success and failure in her book ‘Business Nightmares’ – not just her own story but the story of 20 other successful entrepeneurs who hit problems on their own journey.
The timing of the book launch in May 2008 could not have been more fortuitous as in September 2008 the global banking system crashed triggering the current recession and many other business meltdowns. ‘Business Nightmares’ has since become THE handbook for business survival for many struggling entrepeneurs.
Rachel was invited to speak at many enterprise events about her experiences and is now an accomplished professional speaker with experience of speaking at over three hundred events including Harvard University, TEDx, The Scottish Parliament, The Oxford Union Debating Society, The British Library, The National Library Singapore, the Opening of Global Entrepeneurship week in Holland (with Nick Clegg) and the Conservative Party Conference.
Rachel was quickly invited by many entrepeneurs to help them with their own business and she became a mentor to many, creating along the way a series of low cost training programmes and workshops designed to help entrepeneurs struggling to make their business work.
Her work in helping others lead to a fascination with empowerment and the power of the mind, including fourth dimensional energy principles including quantum physics, metaphysics and the Law of Attraction. In 2010 she travelled to Kuala Lumpur to train in feng shui with leading international feng shui author Grand Master Lillian Too.
Rachel combined her business and marketing knowledge, her experience of going through a financial wipeout together with her knowledge of metaphysics into her acclaimed 2012 low cost video mentoring programme Business Alchemy, which has already become her most successful mentoring product ever.
In 2011 Rachel co-created the pilot for a new transformational TV brand through which she met Stephen Russell aka Barefoot Doctor. As a result she became Barefoot Doctor’s business manager, publishing his book The Message which was launched at Sadlers Wells in February 2012. Their joint Glastonbury radio show Barefoot and the Dragon topped the ratings during the months it was aired.
Rachel also helped breathe life into The Big Om sound healing concept which took place in Brighton on 12.12.12, triggering a sister London event 12.12.12 One World co-produced by Rachel and Hay house ‘Money Magnet’ author Marie Claire Carlyle.
The event (which was also Rachel’s birthday) was a huge success, attracting an audience of over 1,500 people and live-streamed globally.
Rachel’s latest business venture is Source TV the new business operating platform for thought leaders, holistic professionals, alternative therapists and coaches which she co-created with Hollywood based TV/Video and Digital Marketing Expert Kevin Stein in 2013. Source TV is now Rachel’s main business focus.
Her latest book PROSPERITY was published on 23rd April 2016.
Read what Cindy-Michelle Waterfield, Managing Director of The ‘Speakers Company’ said about Rachel’s ‘Entrepeneurial Journey’ talk at the EVENT show.
read more
“Just to give you some feedback on Rachel…The organizers were over the moon with her performance. They had to turn people away from the auditorium as it was full to capacity and there was a good number outside trying to listen in too. I personally had to leave the auditorium so that someone else could get in, so joined with others outside who, like myself, were all glued to her words. This also allowed me an excellent opportunity to listen to the comments made by her audience as they came out. They were all positive and included phrases like: ‘she is so genuine and sincere…’ ‘absolutely inspiring…’ ‘amazing story…’ ‘you can see she is absolutely passionate and authentic…’. One of the organizers of the event commented on how they could feel Rachel’s emotion and how they could see her almost having tears in her eyes at one stage when she was retelling her journey. One of our team (who is usually cynical as he has heard so many speakers over the years) commentated on how gifted Rachel is at telling her story and that he felt she actually lit up on the podium and positively glowed! Rachel’s audience were a mixture of business owners linked to the events industry and event organizers for event companies and commercial companies. Rachel thought she had a bit of a tough audience and after investigating further it actually turned out that many in the audience dropped by our stand just to tell us how riveted they were to her story and was simply awestruck throughout her presenttion. I can honestly say after hearing her perform once again, I have no hesitation to recommend her for any event where you need an inspirational speaker from a business background. She was an absolute pleasure to work with and have no hesitation to do it again and look forward to doing so. As one bureau to another, Rachel is definitely one of those rare gems of the platform that won’t let you down.”
Rachel was trained in presentation skills by Nicholas Janni at Olivier Mythodrama, in performance and stage presence by Geoff Owen, in projection skills by voice coach Alice Tierney and has been coached by award winning inspirational speaker Rob Snow and the inimitable prolific speaker, ‘Beermat Entrepeneur’ Mike Southon.
She has undertaken events for a diverse variety of clients including the Institutte of Directors, Harvard University, the CBI, the Conservative Party Conference, Scottish Parliament, HSBC, John Lewis, Marketing Week, Cass Business School, Oxford Debating Society and the Mind Body Spirit Festival – as well as speaking at many schools and universities.
Rachel also made her debut as a stand-up comedienne at The Comedy Store on 22 November 2010 in a charity event for London Business Forum which raised £12,000.
As well as her acclaimed ‘Entrepeneurial Rollercoaster’ keynote, Rachel speaks on a variety of business related topics and always tailors her presentation to the client and the brief for the event. Past subjects have included:
- Business Alchemy
- Magnetic Marketing
- Business Nightmares
- ‘The Future is Feminine’
- Surviving Adversity
Over the past decade Rachel has increasingly become involved in the metaphysical sector and her new themes for 2016 include:
- From Dragons Den to Enlightenment
- Higher Conscious Business Creation
- Corporate Healing
- How Fear Destroys Organisations
- Success, Pressure and Booze
- The New Era of Business Evolution
Rachel is also an accomplished Awards Host including presenting the 2008 Strategic Risk Awards for 1000 people at the Porter Tun Rooms in London, the 2012 KEBA Awards in Kent to an audience of 450 and both judging and presenting the Free2Network Awards to an audience of 200 in November 2013.
As part of her involvement in any event Rachel always helps event organisers, where requested, to promote their event both via her database of fans and followers and her 10k+ Twitter following as well as via any Press or PR interviews required of her either on the day or in advance of the event.