I must admit that all the organisation for last Saturday’s BBQ was a bit stressful, and I did experience ‘event anxiety dread’ in the days before…

But I shouldn’t have worried, it was an absolutely brilliant night, a great mix of people!

Here’s me after a few glasses of wine on the night:

[you need to scroll down the page to get to the video I'm afraid!]

One highlight of the evening was the Wine Tasting organised by one of my Online mentoring clients Lynda Harvey of The Wine Place – it was a great ice breaker plus the wines she selected were fabulous. She put together this great little video of the evening:

[Yep that was indeed Jo Cameron - star of BBCTV's The Apprentice - in case you were wondering!]

We partied on until 3am – 11 hours! – here’s the 10 hardcore entrepreneurs who stayed through to the end dancing to Abba in my kitchen:

You can see the whole selection of guest interviews I did on the night at my YouTube Channel.

The next event is the Christmas Networking Party at the British Library Terrace on the evening of Tuesday 14 December 2010 from 6.30pm to 9.30pm – there will be wine and canapes, two great guest speakers (names will be revealed shortly) plus we’ll be showcasing lots of member businesses.

Tickets are free for Online Business Mentoring members and £35 for non-members.

You can sign up as a member at http://www.rachelelnaugh.com/onlinebusinessmentoring
or use the Paypal button below to buy a ticket:

But hurry as there are only 175 tickets and places are already going fast!

Regards

Rachel

Lots of talk in recent days, weeks and months about whether banks are giving support to small businesses.

I’ve even been part of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Small Business at the House of Commons and heard from the heads of the banks protesting how much support they are giving.

So I decided to put them to the test – and a few months ago applied for an EFG loan for one of the companies I am involved with.

This company has been going for three years, has growth and profitability – but operates on minimal working capital. It has attracted some significant opportunities through which it can grow signifcantly over the next 12 months – but needs additional short-term finance to fund these.

All the application forms and papers went to NatWest back in May – along with last accounts, a business plan and cashflow forecasts.

So far so good – but what then followed was evasive communication, apologies that the Business Manager was too busy to deal with the case, was away, then needed bits and pieces of additional information (all of which were immediately provided).

Finally, after chasing by phone, text and email to the point where this became almost daily, and leaving numerous messages – most of which went unanswered – some TEN WEEKS later I received a curt email which said:

Your application has been assessed and regrettably it has not been successful with ourselves, I have discussed the application with my Area Director who has suggested that Equity funding may be the alternative route to explore to give the business the cash injection which is required to fulfil your projections.
Thank you for your patience and may I wish you well for the future.

Equity funding for a short term working capital requirement, forecast to be repaid within 24 months?

Just my humble opinion, but if we are to restore the economy of this country we simply can’t leave the decisions about business support in the hands of over-worked jobsworths who haven’t got the first clue about how to run a business – and who take 10 weeks to respond to a simple request.

To add insult to injury, NatWest (of which the taxpayer owns 83%) has just spent £millions on an ad campaign trying to tell us they are a ‘Helpful Bank’.

Oh, and by the way just reported profits of £1.6 billion for the first half of this year.

Just my humble opinion, but the banking system in this country is a disgrace.

I’d love to hear from you if you’ve had an experience of applying for EFG support – whether positive or negative.

Am I in the unlucky minority which the system has spat out? Or is the story the same for businesses all over the UK?

As you can imagine I get lots of requests for help from entrepreneurs, many of whom are in dire financial straights and need urgent assistance to get their business back on track.

But the one thing these cash strapped ‘wantrepreneurs’ all seem to have in common is that  THEY DON’T WANT TO PAY FOR HELP.

Logical, you may say!  If they are cash strapped how can they afford it?

But let’s look a little closer at the relationship between not having any cash and always wanting to get things for free…

I’ve been mentoring for five years now (as well as speaking for Business Link events and at various government funded events) and it never ceases to amaze me how little people value advice or assistance which is dished out for free.  ‘Fully booked’ events frequently result in half full audiences and free advice is rarely followed.

I am sure you know that I am passionate about helping entrepreneurs at whatever level – so have developed a range of services where I help businesses, from a £10k consultancy at one end of the spectrum to a £1 trial mentoring at the other.

But I can tell you that the conversion rate from emails asking for my help for free to a payment of £1 to obtain the said help is negligible.

In other words, people want my assistance – but they don’t respect me enough to pay £1 for it!

But something deeper is happening here – and a recent experience at one of my workshops brought it home to me.

A friend of mine is a Transformational Coach and at a time in my life recently when I needed some help I booked a session with her and took along a bundle of crisp £50 notes in payment.

The same coach booked on one of my recent workshops, and brought along an envelope containing an almost identical amount of £50 notes.

So the transaction was actually money neutral – we’d both in reality given the service for free.

YET WE HAD RESPECTED ONE ANOTHER’S VALUE ENOUGH TO EXPRESS THE TRANSACTION IN MONEY

And by doing so had actually (energetically) said ‘I AM PAYING YOU THIS BECAUSE I AM WORTH IT’.

So, next time you try to leverage a freebie, with the same old excuse that you ‘can’t afford it’, consider that putting money energy behind your committment is one of the keys to unlocking your own flow of wealth.

If you don’t respect others’ value enough to pay, why should anyone respect yours?

Even if it is only £1.

Rachel

• A welcome foot ritual
• An ESPA Aromatherapy Facial
• An ESPA Body Polish
• An ESPA Aromatherapy Full Body Massage
• The Jane Iredale One-minute makeover
• A SoSound Acoustic Therapy session
• Refreshments

There’s just 25 of these special ‘Dragon’ packages on offer at just £95 and you can get yours by clicking on the PayPal button below.

What a fabulous treat for yourself – or for someone you love?  And what great value…

Enjoy!

Rachel

Those of you who saw my ‘Transformation’ post about my Landmark Forum experience a few weeks back might be interested to be know there is a special evening for entrepreneurs happening on Wednesday 21 July at 7pm at the Eight Club, 1 Change Alley, London EC3V 3ND

It’s free and you don’t need to RSVP

If you are in London that day it’s well worth going along!

Regards

Rachel

This weekend my life was transformed.

I want to tell you about it.

For months now a very close friend (who is also one of my coaches) has been trying to get me to do the Landmark Forum.  And I had been very effectively resisting.  Behind all the usual ‘I’m too busy’, ‘The time’s not right’, ‘My nanny’s ill’ excuses.

But (after booking and cancelling no less than three times before) this weekend I finally – and rather indignantly – DID IT!

When you enrol in the Forum you have to write on the form three things you want to get out of it. 

Mine were:

• To endure the entire three days (I’m notorious at getting bored/irritable and bailing out of courses/projects/commitments when things get uncomfortable - so it was a personal challenge for me to actually stick with something to the end - and notice my use of the word ‘endure’!)
• To clear the ‘blocks’ which seemed to be standing in the way of all my ‘cosmic orders’ from working
• To try to understand why I had such an addictive personality – i.e. everything to excess

And so I sat there on the first morning, one of 150 in the audience, thinking ‘There’s no way I will last this’ ‘These aren’t my kind of people’ ‘I’m not broken – so there’s nothing to fix!’ and ‘What the hell am I doing here???’

But I had set myself a challenge to stay with it – 9am to 10pm over three days – no matter what happened!  A HUGE commitment for busy old me…

As a trainer who runs my own workshops I’m also fascinated to see how others do it – and I was instantly impressed by our Forum leader David Ure.  His loud and over-bearing manner seemed to be irritating a lot of the audience, but it felt to me as though he was totally in command – and that there was much exciting stuff to come.

After the first three hours of being told about how our lives were playing out currently, the fact that we had never been properly listening up to now, the fact that we were never truly present to situations, we were then invited to leave if we wished to (with a 100% refund) – but if we stayed it would be with a commitment to fully participate (rather than just sit as an observer) in the process. 

No one left!

The whole weekend simply consisted of people getting up to the microphone and then David giving his observations.  In the beginning, people were invited to say what they wanted to get out of the Forum or what they wanted to know, and then as we progressed through the exercises we were set at every break and at the end of every day, we were invited to say what was unfolding for us.

In the exercises, we were invited to be authentic with people close to us, to write letters to people truly expressing how we felt, to make those phone calls that up to now we had been frightened of making.

And as each person came up to the microphone to share their experiences, certain stories were just incredibly emotional and moving.  And every time you were truly moved (to tears) by someone else, you started to realise it was touching something very deep inside about YOU.

My first big breakthrough came at 5am on the second morning when I suddenly woke up with a realisation about my childhood which was truly an ‘Oh-My-God-that-was-so-obvious-why-did-I-never-see-that-before’ moment.

My letter that first day was to my children – apologising for not being a good enough mother to them (I’d been too busy chasing money fame and fortune all my life), and then later I had emotional conversations with two of them which I’d never had before.

By the end of the second day I fully understood what had been driving the ’Soap Opera’ of my life.  When you get to that point of realisation, the ‘Soap Opera’ collapses.  It simply falls away.

I knew from my previous transformational work that it was important to ‘hold the space’ to see what else was going to happen – it’s so easy to think ‘I got it, now I’m fixed & sorted’ and switch off – so I stuck with it.  By the end of Day 3 I finally understood the ‘Meaning of Life’. 

Yes I really got it!!!

I’ve spent the past five years reading all the self-improvement and transformational books going – plus attending lots of courses and seminars and experiences around the subject, including meditation and all the rest of it, but I can truly say that I have not experienced anything as powerfully tranformational as the Landmark Forum.

It is not a teaching, or something to learn, so much as a process – a tranformational experience.

It’s not about getting to a better improved version of the old you, it is about getting a totally new perspective on life.  And it addresses parts of you which you had no idea whatsoever existed – let alone needed sorting!

As part of the course, at various points we were invited to ‘enrol’ others on the Landmark Forum.  The idea being, once you have ‘got it’, it’s easier to make life work when the others around you ‘get it’ too.  But every time that message came up, it was interesting to observe the huge resistance which started to fall on the room. 

As a marketer I think I understand practically every marketing technique and sales process there is going – and I too have sat through those inspirational/motivational events which are simply about trying to upsell me to the $10,000 programme.

But this was no such ‘upsell’.  It was simply asking us to consider who else we knew out there who might also benefit from going through the process – particularly all our loved ones. 

Isn’t it strange that we can easily go out and think nothing about spending £300 on a new handbag or TV, but when we are invited to spend the same money on completely tranforming our lives somehow it is a ‘sales con’? 

Isn’t it strange how we attach so much importance to ‘cost’ in life and so little to ‘value’?

On the Sunday evening, previous ‘graduates’ of the programme who had got their loved ones on to the Forum were invited along.  People on the course were invited to come to the microphone and give a message to that person. 

One woman was in tears, telling her husband how much she loved him, how she was sorry for being a self-righteous selfish cow up to now, and how she was now going to commit to making their marriage work.

Old cynical me would have written that off as vomit inducing schmaltz. 

New transformed me sees that as something truly magical.

It’s only a day since the intensive part of the Forum has ended, but already I have seen some incredible changes in my life. 

I am starting to ‘show up’ in a totally different way in every situation.  My relationship with my children, and how I am when I am with them has been completely transformed.  And my energy must certainly somehow have shifted – as suddenly complete strangers are opening up conversations and having little jokes with me!  I even sat having a conversation with the man opposite on the train from Birmingham to Manchester yesterday - and that would certainly NOT have happened in my old life!

The Forum ends with a ‘graduation’ evening tonight at the Holiday Inn at Regent’s Park in London.

I would like to invite you to come along, as my guest, so I can share my incredible experiences in more detail.  The evening starts at 7.30pm and ends at 10.45pm – and you’ll also get to hear all about the Forum for yourself.

Yes it is totally FREE, no I have NOT been brainwashed – and NO I don’t get an affiliate commission for every person I sign up!!!

It is simply an invitation to experience something which has already had the most incredible effect on my life.

There’s no need to register – all you have to do is show up at the Holiday Inn, say you are there for the Landmark Forum evening, and at check-in say you are my guest.  I’ll be there from 7pm so seek me out!

I really do hope that you can make it.

Have a wonderful day.

Rachel

Once again I will be speaking and exhibiting at the Business Start-Up Show at London’s ExCel exhibition centre this Thursday 20 May and Friday 21 May.

I’ll be there on stand 546 from 10am to 5pm Thursday and from 10am to 2pm Friday – and I’ll be speaking in Hall 1 at 2.45pm on Thursday!

It’s a fabulous event if you are thinking of starting or are in the early stages of business and I will have the following very special Show Offers available:

****ALL SPECIAL SHOW OFFERS ARE NOW CLOSED****

I look forward to seeing you there!

Rachel

From memory it’s been almost three years since I last came to Aberdeen.  

I used to be on the Board of one of the Enterprise Trusts and so made a monthly visit , and have many happy memories of the place.  That was in the days before everything went so badly wrong with the economy but Aberdeen is of course a little more insulated from the winds of downturn than most places because of its oil and gas industry.

So it was great to be back last night to speak to 250 students at the University of Aberdeen about ‘Finding Your Flow’ – a new talk I have created which is my entrepreneurial journey told in three Acts:  Act 1 – My ‘light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel’ existence, as an employee working for others, Act 2 – My Red Letter Days rollercoaster era and Act 3 – My new role in the Enterprise Sector which has emerged through going with the ‘Flow’ of new opportunity.

It is a talk about the power of intent and the art of allowing, and understanding that when life takes you from Point A to Point B via Point C (which is often a place you visit while kicking shouting and screaming NO!!!) there is often a very good reason for it!

I didn’t ask for a fee for speaking last night but I received my reward in so many other ways – a wonderful expenses paid trip staying in a lovely suite overlooking the North Sea, dinner last night with great company plus already so much positive feedback and thanks received via email and Twitter.  Not to mention a gorgeous glass window hanging which was a gift for the evening.

How often in life we measure our success in monetary rewards while overlooking true prosperity.

I reflect on how lucky I am to be invited to inspire and motivate others through my experiences – and with hindsight  understand why I had to go through some of the Nightmares I’ve endured – which now allow me to speak from a place of vulnerability and authenticity about surviving adversity in life.

So thank you to the University of Aberdeen for reminding me once again that I am living my soul purpose – to help others on their journey towards personal fulfillment and success.

Regards

Rachel

Those of you who have followed my Blog and messages on Twitter will know that I am fascinated by the ‘Law of Attraction’ and how the power of thought (both positive and negative) can dramatically impact our lives.

So I was delighted to be asked to contribute to a debate on all these themes at a fascinating and what I believe will be the most thought-provoking and possibly life-changing event – ‘The Message’ , which is happening next Friday 5 March.

The Message is being organised and hosted by Alan Forrest Smith, who is an extraordinarily charismatic talented speaker and also one of the world’s most successful copywriters (he spoke at my Marketing Magicians event in London last year). Alan is also profoundly spiritual and has a passion to help people achieve the life of their dreams.

At the event, Alan and other amazingly talented and absorbing speakers will be sparking a debate around questions such as:

- Does the Law of Attraction really work?
- How do I attract wealth?
- How do I find the perfect relationship?
- How can I achieve total balance and harmony in my life?
- Why isn’t all the great stuff showing up in my life yet?

It’s all happening at The Monastery in Manchester next Friday 5 March from 10am to 4pm and ALL the ticket price is going to The Monastery to continue the renovation of their amazing building. Full details are at http://www.alanforrestsmith.com/message/

If you are at a crossroads in your life, in need of clarity, or simply want to step off the rollercoaster for a few hours to be inspired and to reflect on life then you should really make the time and space in your diary to hear The Message.

It’s going to be a great day!

Regards

Rachel

Yes, I admit it.  I am hooked on Twitter.

It wasn’t always this way.  It started out as a marketing tool – and in the beginning I wasn’t really sure what to tweet. 

And then there was the stage when I realised that giving details of my exact whereabouts presented a real security issue for my family at home!

At one point I went down a real blind alley the time a Twitter expert suggested the way to ‘get numbers’ was to pick someone in my space and follow all their people in the hope of getting a follow back.  So I chose several hundred of fellow Dragon Peter Jones’ followers as a test – which gave me a kickstart of followers but also ended up giving me a huge amount of Tweet traffic, most of it boring & useless.

But now I’ve weeded those out (I unfollow anyone who sends three tweets in a row which leave me cold) – and I’ve got to an interesting and eclectic bunch of following/followers, Twitter feels like a big extended family – and I love it!

Here’s my little guide to the different  Twitter Types I’ve spotted:

- ‘The Celebrities’ – Those top names you think are going to be really interesting but rarely are.  @oprah @billgates @barackobama  They don’t often tweet, when they do it’s to promote something or its a message written by one of their assistants.  But you’ve kinda got to have them on your ‘following’, just in case.

- ‘The Gurus’ – These use twitter to give us their wisdom. @TonyRobbins @LouiseHay @MalcolmLevene  Great inspiration, but can get tiresome after a while, especially when they start to preach.

- ‘The Companies’ – Using Twitter to promote this that or the other.  @SmartaHQ @TopTenTips @women_unlimited .  Good to know what’s going on in your sector, but also cause a lot of Twitter clutter.

- ‘The Fun Guys’ – Who use Twitter as their regular conversation tool.  @MulliganJimmy @Obsrvationalist @tradingnothing  When you start following a connected group like this you get to be privy to all their one to one conversations!  Great fly-on-the-wall fun…

- ‘Your Friends and Fans’ – the people who know you and love you and who you connect with on a personal level @srimati @AnneHerbert @nobackrub By far your most valuable group, these people are there with the support, the advice, the ReTweets, the friendly words.  It’s a great way to make new friends and extend your network.

Here’s some top Twitter Tips given to me by Twitter Guru @MarkShaw:

• Be authentic!
• Drop Tweets about what you’re up to throughout the day, so people get a little window on your life – even things you think are boring
• Pictures of your lifestyle are good if used selectively
• Use Twitter to ask questions and for feedback help & ideas.  It’s a great way to get input – as well as ReTweets. People love to help.
• Be selective in what you ReTweet
• Try not to over-promote anything

But the thing I most love about Twitter is that it is so low time maintenance! 

Provided you have an iPhone app or can do it from your mobile you can fill any little boring few minutes of the day – in a taxi, waiting for a meeting, in the TV ad break.  And when you get to a good follower/following family it’s really fun to check in and see what people are up to.

So I admit it, I’m a Twitteraholic! 

The upside is I now have almost 2,000 people in my ‘tribe’… And growing.

Have a lovely day.