Rachel is remembered as the one of the founding members of BBC TV’s Dragon’s Den.

She’s also remembered for creating, growing and then over-extending her Red Letter Days company that sold extra special and unusual experiences as gifts.

Rachel continues to help other entrepreneurs through her public speaking at events and through mentoring and consultancy.

Like so many entrepreneurs Rachel’s days are never the same twice.

Broadly speaking her days are best summarised as a

1. working at home type day
2. a celeb-entrepreneur day

Working At Home Day

On finally waking up in the morning Rachel’s brain is buzzing with ideas and she often goes to work in her Bakewell study still in her pyjamas.

There she sifts through the piles of emails that she gets about every topic under the sun and including hundreds on the free entrepreneurs profile test that she’s developed and put on her site at www.rachelelnaugh.com. The questions she uses are interesting and the result claims to tell you exactly what type of entrepreneur you are.

Rachel tries to answer a lot of the emails she gets personally, but the sheer volume can make the task highly time consuming. She doesn’t believe in giving an automated response and tries to point her fellow entrepreneurs in the right direction.

During the day Rachel mentors and provides consultancy to businesses across the UK. And having left the team culture of The Red Letter Days company she’s found it quite liberating to handle projects herself without having to get it all done through a team.

She has written a book called “Business Nightmares”, which I may review in due course. It’s a book on lessons learnt from entrepreneurs. Rachel has interviewed a variety of fascinating people to draw these lessons from, including, Jeffrey Archer (author), Emma Harrison (A4e founder) Simon Woodruffe (fellow ex-Dragon and Yo Sushi!) and many others.

The Celeb Entrepreneur Day

Whenever Rachel goes on a public outing she puts on the full costume, make-up and hair of the celeb entrepreneur. She feels the public expects if of her.

When she was at the height of Dragon’s Den fame she had so little time she used to arrive just before a speaking engagement and leave just after.

Now when she goes on a speaking engagement she arrives at the event the night before to attend the breakfast networking the following day.

For about an hour before her talk Rachel loses the ability to speak in coherent sentences because her brain is so fixed on being in front of an audience and what she intends saying. Then afterwards she likes to meet up with people and talk business as she finds what small businesses are doing and going through fascinating.

Unlike when she was with Red Letter Days and Dragon’s Den Rachel now has the time to listen to the other speakers at the conference and learn from them too. Then feeling revitalised from being outside the home office and talking with people face to face she can go home refreshed and ready to face that email inbox!

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Rachel talked about how her moment of fame in Dragon’s Den opened a number of doors to her, particularly on the speaking circuit and have enabled her to help other entrepreneurs through her talks, her web site and her new entrepreneur profile questionnaire.

During our chat Rachel made a number of observations that struck a chord with me. In no particular order they are:

About Red Letter Days

1. When a medium sized organisation starts sinking sharks start circling
2. When you’re in trouble you must examine the motive of anyone who says they want to help you
3. Don’t immediately say yes to a proposal, no matter how flattering to your company
4. Admit defeat when its clear it’s impossible to bring things round and put everyone out of their misery

About Dragon’s Den

1. The most recent series appear to be more humiliation than investment oriented
2. The BBC has a responsibility to educate and therefore Dragon’s Den should reflect that
3. Too many of the participants seem to want to appear as an advert for their company

Other lessons Rachel learnt along the way are in the full interview in Good Company which will appear in the New Year.