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Entrepreneurial Lessons from Red Letter Days
19/03/2009
Ex-Dragon and celebrity entrepreneur, Rachel Elnaugh held a room of around 150 local entrepreneurs, investors and professionals spell bound last night with her story of start up to boom to bust with experience day company Red Letter Days. Rachel’s openness and honesty in telling the highs and lows of running a high growth company struck a real chord with many of the audience.
The event was organised by Growth Investment, as part of the six-week East Midlands innovation Festival (iFestival), and held on the Jubilee Campus of the University of Nottingham. Organiser Toby Reid said, “We are delighted that Rachel agreed to talk at the event and that so many entrepreneurs could benefit from her experiences. Rachel now specialises in mentoring entrepreneurs and so she was perfect for our event.”
One of the attendees, Serena Humphrey of Peopleshare said “We came away completely hyper with inspiration and ideas for driving the business forward, it’s amazing what can happen when the right mix of people are put in a room together!”
Serena also added, “Rachel was brilliant, very motivating and an excellent speaker.”
Rachel admitted in her address that, with hindsight, there are things she would have done differently including “raising finance at an early stage of the business once they had ‘proof of concept’ rather than sticking to the policy of self-financing organic growth” and “ not recruiting individuals with backgrounds in large corporations to run an entrepreneurial business”.
Toby Reid of Growth Investment in his address reflected on role of SME’s in lifting us out of recession. “SME’s are much less likely to be over encumbered with existing bank debt or slowed, in meeting current challenges, by large corporate inertia. Properly financed SME’s with the ‘right’ management team are most likely to take advantage of the opportunities presented by the changing landscape and grow to become the employers of the future.”
Toby admitted that “It isn’t going to be easy for the SME’s either but plenty of support exists and the Growth Investment network members are there to help companies get the financial backing and the ‘right’ management team for growth”.
Rachel Elnaugh follows in a line of inspirational entrepreneurs to speak at the Growth Investment events including Secret Millionaire Ben Way, Firebox.com founder Michael Acton Smith and milliondollarhomepage.com internet entrepreneur Alex Tew.
Rachel, Alex and Michael will be judging the elevator pitches recorded at the event by over 30 entrepreneurs. The winners of the various categories will be announced shortly and will win 3 months one to one mentoring from Rachel as well as places at the iFestival Gala Dinner on 16th April
To view the photos from this event click here
Submitted by Sarah Crennell