Last night I got to talking with Heather Furby about the difficulty in A) balancing personality and professionalism in her website’s text and B) balancing science and spirit while explaining her work to people.

Oh. Yeah. That is a toughie.

Potential clients either back away from words like “energy” and “spirit” claiming they just want their neck to quit hurting so much. Or they go all glassy-eyed when you mention “kinesiology” or “paresthesias” and say they just want to meditate with you.

Heather has an advantage in that she has a solid background in left-brain stuff, so she can talk to the stereotypical A type personalities. And, of course, she can communicate her art to those of us (me) who view basic math, spelling and navigation skills as “optional.”

Even with her left brain/right brain skills, Heather feels like there’s always this low-grade struggle to tailor her message to engage both engineers and poets.

As we commiserated the thought occurred, why not let clients decide how they want to explore and learn about your practice? We keep talking about balancing language for both the left brainers and the right brainers. Why keep struggling? Why not make the distinction really, really obvious in your marketing and speak to both, each on their own terms?

Some thoughts we came up with:

• Divide your website in two halves — even use a brain graphic — and let your visitors click on how they want to read about your work.
• Good, professional business cards are not that expensive. Create one for the potential client whose primary goal is to improve their golf game. Create another for people who want to use your work to re-charge their Energy.
• When you send out postcards, create two messages; one appealing to logic, one appealing to emotion. (Diana Moore wrote about addressing your clients real concerns recently. Check it out.)

Will this make a little more effort on your part? Sure. But think about how you can save time and teeth enamel by not wrestling with balancing your web and card text.

Oh, speaking of logic and emotion: I read somewhere that you use logic to convince people to invest time/money in something new. You appeal to their emotion to get them to do it again. Over the years I have found this to be true. Something to consider as you write your proposal letters this coming year.

Thoughts?

All my best,
Eileen