What’s In a Name? The Carrelle Company is Born on Labor Day

by | Sep 5, 2018 | Careers, Change, Leadership, Social Media

Sometimes strategic procrastination can be a good thing.

Except in my case, it wasn’t fully strategic. At all.

Wrapping up several years in the corporate world, launching my own business, getting my children settled into a new school year and doing right by my community commitments didn’t leave much time for one very important detail …

… naming my new company.

Sure, I looked at a few articles. Jotted down some ideas. But a name is critically important. And I didn’t have one yet.

Suddenly I found myself with one day to go before my self-imposed deadline to rebrand my social media accounts.

And that one day was Labor Day.

Holidays carry a lot of symbolism for me. My husband and I got engaged on New Year’s Eve. While our April wedding didn’t fall on Easter, many of our anniversaries have. Our daughter was born on a holiday and our son was born on the first day of a new season.

Our daughter was baptized on Valentine’s Day. By comparison, our son’s September baptism date seemed nondescript. Until 9/11 happened.

His baptism was the Sunday after the world changed forever. My out-of-town family members couldn’t come because … no planes were flying. I wondered if it would be a bad idea to proceed in light of the national tragedy. But I decided to move forward.

The church was packed, with people seeking solace and answers to something that has no answers. Through tears, a few people sought me out after the service to thank me for bringing my infant son to be baptized. They said it gave them hope for new beginnings.

Fast forward to 2015. I launched a blog on New Year’s Day. As a VP of corporate communications, I began it as an exploration of the future of the field.

Later that year, the company was acquired. I had the opportunity to move into marketing analytics. So I pivoted my blog as well into a learning experience in the new field.

But that wasn’t something I ultimately found myself wanting to spend hours of my weekend and evening time on. But what about how people learn new skills? That was interesting to me. So I explored learning in my blog for a while.

Then I attended a women’s leadership conference two Septembers ago at Fullscreen, a media company for creators and brands. The actor/producer/entrepreneur Reese Witherspoon was a surprise guest speaker.

A comment she made changed my life. When she was asked about her success in social media, she talked about being authentic. And she mentioned a big white space in the area, helping people shape their images and reputations through social media.

It was an a-ha moment for me. That’s what I wanted to do.

So two years ago, I began writing, researching and speaking about how professionals can build and boost their careers through social media. It’s a labor of love I did on the side in early mornings and evenings and weekends.

It’s a dream for me to start my own business in this area. And I am very fortunate to be able to do that this fall.

But a name. A name. I needed a name. Not to mention I needed a catchphrase that my upcoming book editor Cat Spydell recommended. (And creating a catchphrase is next up on my list.)

So I started doodling ideas. I analyzed tech company names. I looked at PR company names. Ad agencies. Podcasts. Hashtags. Even multi-hyphenate lives,  also known as a “slash generation” with portfolio careers.

For further inspiration, I put all the descriptive words about me in the farewell notes from colleagues into an Excel spreadsheet. Then I made them into a word cloud, thanks to wordclouds.com. Here it is:

Traits that describe me, thanks to my colleagues and wordclouds.com

But in the end, it turned out to be a variation on a placeholder my husband Kevin put into his business plan. He’s opening a South Bay, California steakhouse with a seasoned restaurant veteran in the coming months. He asked me to manage the PR and social media. And he noted Carelle Communications would lead the work.

It’s an amalgamation of my name, Caroline Elizabeth Leach.

Yet alas, there’s already a Carelle fine jeweler.

But what about Carrelle with two r’s?

It’s been used as a baby name on rare occasions. Of English and German origin, it has wide-ranging meanings – farmer, strong, courageous, melody and song.

Strong and courageous spoke to me immediately. Initially I was puzzled by farmer. But a farmer equates to cultivation and growth. Perfect. How about melody and song? That speaks to my joy in writing, researching, consulting and speaking.

What are the other reasons I like The Carrelle Company?

  1. It’s a takeoff of my name, which is my brand in a way … as our names are now our personal brands
  2. It’s alliterative with the repeated “C’s.” I changed “communications” to “company” to keep the possibilities open for the future
  3. The initial letters are evocative of “careers,” which I help to fuel through my work
  4. There’s a slight link with the C-words related to what I do – communication, community, collaboration, consulting, critical thinking, connection
  5. The “car” evokes an automobile with motion, acceleration, speed and freedom
  6. It sounds elegant and classic … and slightly French, my chosen language of study as a teen (which comes in slightly handy now as I struggle to learn Spanish)
  7. It’s strong and it’s feminine with the “elle”
  8. It’s unique … who else but me could use this name?!?

And then there may be the name-letter effect in my dedication to the field of communications. According to research by Dr. Brett Pelham, a psychologist, people “disproportionately choose careers whose labels resemble their names.”

So just as “people named Dennis or Denise are overrepresented among dentists,” this could partly explain why I, as a Caroline, am attracted to communications.

And perhaps why, in my Google search of people named Carrelle, the two I found work in communications on other continents.

So that’s the story of how The Carrelle Company came to be.

And now it’s on to the business of writing, researching, consulting and speaking. I’m helping people grow their careers and business owners grow their companies through digital branding in social media.

What’s Driving the Future of PR and Communications

by | Dec 26, 2016 | Change, Corporate Communications, Learning

What does the future hold for PR and communications? Check out the Relevance Report.

New from the USC Center for Public Relations this month, it’s full of innovative ideas on what’s ahead.

Global. Mobile. Video. Data. Emotion. These are just a few of the trend areas accelerating in the year ahead.

The biggest learning for me? It’s the parallel and seemingly paradoxical rise of data and emotion as drivers of influence. Data drives better decision making, while emotion is a prime influencer of people’s opinions and behaviors.

Find out more in my latest blog post on the USC Annenberg Alumni website.

It’s about what you’ll learn in this insightful report, with nuggets of wisdom from Annenberg’s Bob Feldman and Heather Rim as well as Pulitzer Prize-winning author Thomas Friedman.

The post is part of being a proud Annenberg Alumni Ambassador this school year. It’s a thrill to share the best of this distinguished school for communication and journalism.

The Relevance Report gives timely insight into trends that will impact society, business and communications. It features thought pieces from communications leaders who identify the issues, ideas and innovations that will be relevant to the communications industry in 2017.

What is Social Savvy?

by | Nov 26, 2016 | Change, Leadership, Social Media

“If a company or a person does something great but no one knows about it, does it really matter?”

That’s a question I asked in my very first blog post.

Yes, there are random acts of kindness intended to be done under the radar. Yet, hearing about them can be inspiring when others share the news, like my sister did on Facebook.

While getting coffee in her Connecticut town, she overhead another customer buying a gift card for the police officer outside who was directing traffic. That’s an instant day brightener. And maybe it will inspire others toward similar acts of kindness.

Data and information are collected about us every day, according to The Reputation Economy by Michael Fertik. The question is what we want that data to say about us as a person and as a professional.

Do we want it to open doors or close them? Do we want it to augment the hard work we do every day or detract from it? Do we want it to make our life better or make it harder?

More and more, everything we do has implications for our own personal reputations as well as the companies where we work or that we own. This is both in real life, or IRL, as well as how that becomes represented in social media.

This means we each have great power to do good in the world, to a larger extent than has ever been available to us. And it also means we have the potential make major missteps.

This means each of us needs social savvy.

What’s that?

SOCIAL SAVVY: the vital ability for people to personally brand and market themselves successfully in social media in our ever-evolving world.

This skill is important throughout our lives.

It applies to high school students who are preparing their college applications or moving into the working world.

It applies to college and grad school students who are getting ready to transition into the working world.

And it applies to people throughout their professional lives. For corporate professionals in particular, the stakes for social media are higher.

Social media can help or hurt careers. It can add to or detract from a corporate reputation and an employer brand. It can make acquiring top talent a breeze or a burden.

The risks are high, but so are the rewards. And in our ever-evolving world, no one can afford to sit on the sidelines. The pace of change is too fast for that.

Corporate professionals often ignore or short-change social media. Why? They don’t have the time, they don’t see the value and they don’t want to make a mistake.

Developing social savvy is how professionals can create and implement a social strategy to highlight and share their own thought processes and achievements, along with those of their organizations.

Social savvy is a powerful way for corporate professionals to build their personal brand, advance their career and embrace their future.

What are some examples of social savvy? What does it look like?

  • Using social media to build and amplify your personal brand, the unique value that you bring to the world
  • Positioning yourself in the most favorable light, for a number of career and life paths
  • Positioning your employer or company in the most favorable light
  • Advancing your career through a positive social strategy
  • Helping others advance their careers
  • Helping your company achieve its goals
  • Building your employer’s corporate reputation and employer brand
  • Knowing what to do and not to do in social media
  • Seeing the links between real life and social savvy
  • Knowing when and how to engage with critics

How are you demonstrating social savvy?