Being a mediator, becoming a business owner

The following is part of my 2006-2007 blog to book project that ultimately became Making Mediation Your Day Job.

If you’re like many mediators, you chose this work because you want to help individuals, groups, your community, or the world find more effective paths through conflict. Business ownership is the path to doing mediation rather than mediation the mechanism to become a business owner.

If this is true of you, then you may have become a business owner despite yourself. When people ask you what you do, you don’t say “I own a human services business,” You say, “I’m a mediator,” or “I help people sort out the disputes that have gotten stuck.”

You may even approach the tasks of “running a business” with some distaste, doing what you have to do in order to do the work you love.

I want to change the way you think about the business of mediation, take the “ugh” out of marketing, and inspire you to think of practice development in ways that build instead of sap your energy. And I want to help mediation and related ADR services become better known, better used, and better appreciated by the public. Together, we can do this.

Together, because I’m one of you. I’m a mediator who founded my private practice 10 years ago, with no prior business experience. I was a college vice president at the time, and though I had lots of experience managing people, managing large budgets, and administering a decentralized organization, not to mention lots of experience as an “insider” mediator, I had never thought of myself as an entrepreneur or business owner. I became a business owner because I wanted, more than anything, to make mediation my day job.

When I began learning about marketing and building business, I quickly became overwhelmed and demoralized. Business development advisors told me that I’d need to invest in advertising, schmooze a great deal, and learn how to be a good salesperson. Several advised me to master the art of cold calling. It was that latter piece of advice that prompted me to sit in my shiny new office one afternoon, blue as can be.

I knew that if I had to do become a “seller” in the traditional sense, I’d fail. I knew that if I had to call people up out of the blue and try to convince them I had something they really needed, I’d never do it. I realized very quickly that afternoon that if I had to do many of the things traditionally associated with business development, I simply wouldn’t do them and my business would flounder.

So I did something else. I began building business based on my strengths, on doing the things I love doing. And I studied and learned from the leading edge thinkers whose ideas and challenges guided my business-building strategies.

I think I’ve learned a thing or two along the way. I want other to see more mediators thrive in private practice, so I’m here to share what I know in hopes that you’ll take it and run with it in your own way. I want you to make this your own, run with the ideas that inspire you, set aside those that don’t.

And here’s the best part: You already know almost all of what you need to know, because you’re a mediator.