This post is a part of a series chronicling my process of starting my third wellness practice from scratch in a new city. If you missed the other posts, feel free to check them out:

Starting from scratch, again

How to become a (local) rockstar

Office space and Dr. Evil

Good design. Get some.

Yahoo! New Haven Rolfing is born in cyberspace! The website for my new practice is up and ready to go and the most amazing thing happened while I was creating it: I enjoyed the process.

The last time I had to write copy for a website or brochure for my Rolfing practice was many moons ago (about 6 years ago, to be exact) and I labored through writing it. At the time I was still in that nervous, newbie mindset- even though I’d been at it for 3 years already- which was dominated by the thought, “I’m new at this. So people are going to think I suck at it. So I’d better prop up my web copy with a bunch of big, fancy words to they know I studied really  hard in school, and will think I suck less.”

This mindset resulted in a boring website with a bunch of academic words sprinkled around. In other words, a snooze fest. Worst of all, a snooze fest that doesn’t give new clients any accessible information about what I do, or any indication of who I am as a human being.

As I see it, almost all wellness practitioners of every variety stumble into these same two pitfalls. So let’s address them each separately through the lens of my own ridiculous blunders:

You do what, exactly?

Rolfing is one of those modalities with a bad name. Literally. I’ve had people think it was called “Ralphing” and ask me if that means I actually make people throw up. (Good times. And no, if you were wondering). This unfortunate name makes Rolfing more challenging to explain than, say, massage therapy, but regardless of what you practice, you have to work at articulating what you do without dredging up all the gobbledy-gook words you learned in school. Your new and potential clients didn’t go to school with you. They have no idea what you’re talking about if you use the big words as a crutch.

For example, I can say, “Rolfing works within the fascial network to achieve palintonicity so that gravity can act as the therapist.” (ok, I’m not sure my old website was quite that bad, but that is exactly what I learned in school) or I can say, “As a Rolfer, my sincere goal in working with clients is for their alignment and posture to improve, for pain to significantly decrease or disappear, and for movement to become more supported, balanced, and fluid.” Which makes more sense? Which one makes you want to head but a curb? Which one makes you want to check out this thing with the wacky name?

Who are you, exactly?

The other bummer about writing like a robot is that people think of you as, well, a robot. That is to say, that you become in their minds “generic acupuncturist” or “generic yoga teacher”.  The biggest problem with this, besides the fact that you’re not “generic wellness practitioner”, is that what potential clients are most interested in finding out before they contact you is who you are. Not in any kind of deep, soul-searching way, but they want to get a sense of your personality. Your personality is the main thing they’re going to go on when they decide to work with you. Think of all the people you’ve worked with who have been your practitioners. The people who you’ve developed long term therapeutic relationships with are the people who get you, and who you get.

This leads us to the crucial issue of finding your voice. This is something that I feel like I’m just settling into. I was looking over older blog posts yesterday and I realized that this feeling of flow when I’m writing is pretty new. And it’s a good feeling. Really, really freaking good.

I recommend you take some time to get in touch with your voice- whether it’s your written voice, your spoken voice, or your way of being with clients (which, ideally, is quite a lot like your way of being when you’re with everyone else). You don’t have to be sharp or hip; you don’t have to be a genius or a joker- you just have to be you. When you’re you, you attract the kinds of clients you’re going to capital L Love working with- because they’re your people. The added bonus of this is a built in burn-out defense since your work days won’t be spent with people who make you feel like you’re swimming upstream.

One of the best ways I know of to get in touch with your voice is to write or tell the story of how you found the modality you practice. (If you’re a writer, put pen to paper or finger to keyboard. If you hate to write, record yourself speaking, or have someone interview you and record it.) Everyone has the story about their first acupuncture session, or first Pilates class, or whatever. It’s that moth to a flame story. Something about what you practice totally lit you up inside when you first found it. Talking about that is the most natural way I know of to begin to notice your natural voice. That and practice. Finding your voice is a skill that takes time and experimentation- at least it has for me.

*Once you’ve done this exercise, include this story on your website! One of the things that I did get right on my last website was talking about what I call my Rolfing Hallelujah experience. I’d say that at least 80% of my clients came to me and told me they chose to work with me over other Rolfers because I had talked about my personal experience with Rolfing on my website (the current version is here). People want to know who you are and why you do what you do- so hop to it and let the world get to know your lovely self!

Tags: practice building, website copy, writing copy

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 15th, 2009 at 2:31 pm and is filed under Practice Building Online, Starting From Scratch. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.