Stop Waiting, Start Building

If you believe that mediation should be part of the business of the courts, or something you primarily give away as a gift from your heart, you can stop reading here. This book will do little for you.

If you don’t believe those things, then you must do this instead:

Stop waiting for referrals from lawyers. Attorneys, in general, like to refer to other attorneys. Even if you’re an attorney, it’s going to take a very long time to build a full-time practice that way.

Stop putting most of your effort into applications to court rosters. You will not earn enough to make mediation your day job.

Stop banking on a living wage from state agency referrals and rosters. Even in states with healthy mediation programs associated with government agencies, there will not be enough work to pay you and all the other mediators clamoring for a piece of the pie.

Stop giving most of the time you have available to develop your practice to your community mediation center in the name of getting experience. Give them some of your time, and keep some of it for serious development of your practice.

Stop waiting for your national, regional and state associations to educate the public and create work for you. Most of our associations don’t have enough person-power or the fiscal resources to make this a reality anytime soon.

If you’re doing much of the above, you’re doing what I call “field of dreams marketing”—building it and hoping they will come.

Stop, in essence, waiting for someone else. Start creating your own reality, in just the way you expect your mediation clients to take responsibility for their own lives, behaviors, and decisions. You can make the commitment to start right now and, believe it or not, you can have real enjoyment doing it!

Copyright © 2006 by Tammy Lenski. All rights reserved.

[tags]court mediation programs, community mediation, marketing mediation, adr business[/tags]