Building Your Business from the Ground Up

AuthorVictoria Pynchon/Joe Kraynak (With)
ProfessionMediator, author, speaker, negotiation trainer, consultant, and attorney with 25 years of experience in commercial litigation practice/Professional writer who has contributed to numerous For Dummies books
Pages257-272
Chapter 15
Building Your Business
from the Ground Up
In This Chapter
Taking on mediation full time
Putting together your business plan and budget
Organizing your business essentials
Figuring out how much to charge your clients
Getting on a mediation panel
A
s a mediator, you’re a business — You, Inc. And you need to run your
mediation career as a business, complete with a business plan, budget,
forms, agreements, and even insurance. You need to know how much to
charge your future clients, whether to charge by the hour or the day, and
when to ask for your money. You may also want to explore the option of join-
ing a mediation panel, which can take many of the management tasks off your
plate so you can focus on your true passion — mediation.
This chapter explains how to go from point A to point B, from wherever you
happen to be right now in your career to making a successful living as a full-
time mediator.
Knowing When You’re Ready to
Embrace Mediation Full Time
Every mediator reaches a point when she feels ready to make the move from
part- to full-time mediation. Doing so may mean shutting down a successful
practice in another field or quitting a steady job. In any event, the leap from
security into the unknown is usually scary. You may wonder, “Am I really pre-
pared for this?”
258 Part IV: Launching Your Own Mediation Practice
Look for the following signs to guide you in your decision to leave the comfort
and security of your current position and jump with both feet into mediation:
You have no available time within the next three months to take on a
new mediation case because your current caseload and marketing activi-
ties consume almost all your time.
Your income from your mediation practice is at least half the compensation
from your day job and has been trending upward for more than a year.
The cost of running your practice is at least ten times less than your
mediation income.
You receive at least one request a week for your mediation services.
You receive at least one referral a week from someone in your network.
When you notice these signs, or at least most of them, you’re probably at a
pretty good point to make the transition to full-time mediation.
When you’re just getting started, particularly if you’ve never run a busi-
ness, you’re likely to experience some setbacks and disappointments. To get
through these tough times, lean on your mediation community, as I explain in
Chapter 17. You may be able to ride out the low points alone, but fellow com-
munity members can ease the strain and may offer valuable advice to help
you clear the hurdles sooner. Most full-time mediators have to leave behind
another career at some point, and these colleagues can provide the assur-
ances you need when quitting your day job seems daunting.
Drafting a Business Plan and a Budget
Prior to ditching your day job to become a full-time mediator, you need two
things to get started — a plan and a budget. This section helps you draft a
solid mediation business plan and a realistic budget.
Planning your business
Entrepreneurs typically craft a business plan to persuade banks to lend
them money. As a mediator, you too are an entrepreneur, but you probably
don’t need a lender or a venture capitalist to bankroll your business start-
up, because overhead is so low. All you need is enough money to cover your
living expenses and some incidental costs. When starting out as a mediator,
a business plan enables you to reality-test your dream and envision how that
dream is likely to play out in the real world.

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