8 Years in the making

I think if you’re reading this you’re a creative type, entrepreneur and/or multi-passionate in your career. So you’ll get what I’m about to write. Naming a business is like naming your child or dog. The difference, with a business is you can change the name (not recommended - I’ve done it three times). Although I don’t like the phrase ‘burn it all down to the ground and start again’ in reference to your business, I have to admit, I’ve done it, and not always in the right way.

I’m talking personal brand business as that’s what I am.

Not the right way: when someone else advises you of the name, when you’ve not felt that full body visceral ‘yes’ (HD at its best). When you ask folk their opinion of said name and don’t get the reaction you’d hoped for, just putting doubt in a place that needs none. When you don’t really want to say it that much - it’s a sure sign it’s not for you.

There’s a really good reason why people use their own name - I equally get that and I’ve tried it, it didn’t work for me. I realised I’m a brand obsessive, design snob and love aesthetic as much as what I do. I love my name, but not as my business. That was strike two. Strike one was when I first started and landed on the name ‘Coaching Girl’. I loved it for about a year, then it sounded like I was just coaching girls, it was getting confusing. After I qualified as a health coach to compliment my business coaching, I found myself feeling shallow in a world of high performance (which is my background). That was that name ditched.

I then decided to outsource and get help. That resulted in the name ‘Pink Pineapple”. Lovely for a health and lifestyle brand, not great for high performance lifestyle/business brand that believes in body-first. I went with it, got pink pineapple wallpaper as my backdrop and cringed my way through. It last about 2 years (not a bad run by my standards). but it left me wondering who I was and what the hell In was doing.

The right way:

Percolate. Research. Dig into stories and memories that you give a shit about, that have shaped you and made you who you are today. Don’t speak to anyone about it, until you’ve committed to it yourself, on the understanding that whatever anyone else says, won’t matter.

Eight years in the making, I have Eléa (Eléa Consulting). It means lioness in latin.

I am a leo, but it’s not from that.

Danté was a poet who lived in Florence. He famously wrote Divine Comedy - think Inferno, a little like the film (not towering, but Robert Langdon). He encountered three beasts on his path to salvation; a leopard, a she-wolf and a lion. Each tried to take him off his path and each represented something within him; greed, lust and pride. It was the lion that stood in his way but didn’t attack him, instead, it was the mirror he’d needed to see his own courage and strength.

Florence has always been something to me, my mum travelled there a lot (turns out her first husband lived there) she’d bring me back hand painted bangles, when I go I can find the shop that still sells them. I almost named Daisy Florence, I honeymooned there and every time I go, I feel a sense of awe. I found my own lion there in the darkness. That lion turned into Eléa.