Speaker 1: Good morning, thanks so much for joining me for Marketing Monday. We're getting Monday started off right as mediators and arbitrators looking to build our successful practices. Today we are going to talk about how to start a successful mediation practice. So this is a topic that came in as a request for me to talk about from Elise. Elise, this program is for you. Starting a mediation or arbitration practice is very similar to starting any other service industry business. And so there are dozens, hundreds, thousands of books written on this topic of how to start a service-based business. It's a little bit different for some of us because we can work entirely virtual, so I'll talk about some of those things. But that's what's on the the topic list for today. Before we get started, happy Monday everybody. Good old coffee, cream, etc. Just before I logged on, I was reading about the history of the French press, one of my favorite tools in the kitchen. Fascinating story. Look it up on Wikipedia. It's pretty cool. Alright, let's talk quickly about what we need to do to build a successful mediation practice. So from the ground up. Obviously one of the first things that we need to think about doing is getting the right training. And getting the right training is one of those things that you need to think about in advance. Not all of us need a law degree. Not all of us need to get an LLM. Not all of us need a Master's in International Dispute Resolution. Lots of us can take a 40-hour course or multiple 40-hour courses and be just fine with that kind of education. So you want to think about, one, the return on investment for the amount that you're going to pay for the course, what your experience level is, and how you'll be augmenting that training over the course of your career. So training is number one. After you've got that down, you'll probably have a much better idea about the kind of practice that you want to have for yourself. So I know you've probably listened to coaches or consultants talk about visualizing your future. That's kind of what I'm talking about here. I want you to think about what kind of practice you'd like to have. Who are your clients? How much will you be charging? Are you going to be virtual, online, hybrid? Are you going to be local, regional, national, international? Those are all things that you need to think about. Think also about the personality, the brand that you want your practice to have in the marketplace. Are you going to be on the community mediation? Are you going to be doing this for free as a volunteer? Are you going to be providing services to middle-class individuals, to businesses, to law firms, to institutions? You know, who's your client going to be? And think about the personality that your practice needs to have to best resonate with the potential client that you'd like to reach and talk to and work with. All right, we're going to go through this list pretty quickly. You want to then, once you've made a couple of those decisions, do a little bit of competitor analysis. So once you think you've got the idea in mind for the kind of program that, or the kind of practice rather, that you'd like to have, then look up the competition or the people that you perceive will be your competition. It's important to get an idea in mind about what they offer, how they offer it, to whom, how much they charge, etc. So, by the way, if you have any questions or you want me to speak more slowly or add more content or answer something further, please put it in the chat. You know how much I love hearing from you. Drop in, say hello, and I'll answer all of your questions in the chat. All right, so do a little competitor analysis. Competitor analysis is one of those things that's really important. It will also help you decide how you can set your practice apart from the others. So be sure that you've got your competitor analysis down pat so that you know what you can do better, know what you don't want to replicate, etc. After you've got the competitor analysis done, then you'll want to start making some foundational choice strategy. Gosh, you'll want to start putting things actually together. Good morning, Marilyn. So one of the things that you'll want to think about is the name of your practice. And I tell this story, if you've heard me speak before, about what is important in a name. A name is one of those things that you need to think about kind of in reverse. So, for example, if the practice that you're designing is something that you want to just really enjoy over the next however many decades, and when you're finished with it, you're just going to shred all of your documents, turn off the light, say thanks for the memories, and move on. Or is your practice something that you're building in order to harvest a business at the end? Are you building an asset that you can sell to someone else? It's one of those things that you want to think about now. Not like you can't alter it, but it's easier to do from the get-go. So if you're thinking about harvesting your practice, think about naming your practice something that doesn't have to do necessarily with your personal name. So if you're building a practice that's going to hear real estate cases, you might think about a name like Room for Resolution, something like that. If you're building a practice that is specifically built around you, your personality, your history, your experience, then you should absolutely name your practice after yourself because you are the asset to the practice. Also, when you're thinking about a name, before you settle on anything, check to see what domain names are available. Check to see what is already trademarked or has a copyright on it. So again, do a little research before you go filing your paperwork because that's the next step. Once you've settled on a name and you know that the URL is available, you know that the name is available, now you need to go to your Secretary of State, your filing agency, and file the documents necessary to make your practice a legal entity. You can do a DBA, you can do an LLC, you can do it lots of different ways, but think about how you're going to file for your business. Next step, once you've got your business filed, then you need to start opening your domain name. So you need to log on and buy your domain name, build out your website. You need to think about having a bank account for your business, whether or not you're going to take credit cards, so you might need to open a merchant account. Maybe those are things that you can put on the back end. You need to think about bookkeeping. For most of us, online bookkeeping is fine. I really like Intuit, so I use QuickBooks online for Intuit. It's pretty easy to manage and I'm terrible at bookkeeping, but this is an easy way to do it. You need to think about setting up your office. What forms you're going to need, what is your SOP for bringing clients in, for doing the convening, for managing the cases, setting up your calendar. Is it going to be online? Are you going to manage your calendar? All of these things have to be considered in advance. If you don't have these forms, or you don't want to create these forms, or you don't want to do your own convening, then you need to outsource that process. Convening is a really, really important part of building your business. That customer service aspect to a mediation practice is one of the things that I think a lot of people overlook, and it's absolutely imperative that you get it right. And if you think that you're not the person to do that work, or you think that your clients would better appreciate if someone other than you did that work, then you need to contact Case Manager Services Inc. CaseManagerServicesInc.com. I don't own any part of that business, it's just the best that there is. So contact Case Manager Services Inc. and have somebody else answer the phone, do the convening, put all the forms in, you know, collect money, all of that kind of thing. Customer service, that's where it's going to start out being really fun for you. All right, so you've got all of that. One of the other things that you need to think about is, especially at least you ask about starting a virtual practice, think about that fact that you do have to have a physical address, a physical business address, if you're going to be doing marketing that requires any email. So you want to be compliant with the CAN SPAM Act, and that means that an actual physical verifiable address has to be provided. So it could be a P.O. box, you don't want to give out your home address if you're working from home, so have another mailing address so that you can put that on your website, so that you can put that on your forms, and then you can collect mail from a P.O. box, etc. Also think about how you want to get those phone calls that are going to be coming in. Do you want them to come to a separate phone? Do you need to buy another cell phone? Do you want to have a voice over IP number, like a Google telephone number that will roll in, it has voicemail, etc. So think about how you're going to answer mail, answer phone calls, and where you're going to be physically present. Again, especially if you're working from home virtually, you probably don't want to give out your home phone number, your home address, etc. So be sure that you get those. Next thing that we want to talk about is creating database. And a database, you can watch other videos or read other articles that I've put together for you, a database generally comes in three columns. It can get much, much larger, but to start out it's going to be in three columns. The first column is going to be a list of all of the people that you know. The second column is going to be a list of the people that you'd like to know. These are prospective clients. These are the people that you want to have as clients, right? The third list is going to be a list of associations and organizations to which your primary, secondary, tertiary, or gatekeeper contacts would belong. So if you don't know where they are, let's say that you want to sell your services directly to construction defect attorneys, then you'll want to go online and make a list of all of the associations, organizations, bar associations, to which all of those attorneys who have as a skill set construction defect, where do they go? What groups do they join? Where do they belong? Where do they interact? What periodicals do they read? What conferences do they attend? What brown bag luncheons? What trainings, etc.? So in that third column, you want to make a list of all of the places that your target market interact. Where do they learn, etc.? That's the third column. The third column is going to be important for later. Alright, so next you've got to then build out your websites. It's 2023. You have to have a website in the same way that you need to have business cards. You must, no excuses, have a business website. You can do it yourself on platforms like Squarespace or Wix, or you can find a professional designer to do it for you. Most of us only need to have what's called a micro site. This is going to be anywhere from three to five pages. It's just a essentially a digital brochure, right? That's what it's going to be. So, but you do have to have a professional website. You just do. Alright, so you've got your domain, you've got your website. As you're building out your website, one of the things that you want to be sure that you have is the professional email address that is affiliated to that domain name. So what you don't want to do is have a professional business website, but use your AOL account. That lowers the perception of your professionalism. Marilyn, thanks for the comment about Squarespace. I love it too. It's easy to use. I enjoy it. Alright, as you're building out your website, you'll also need to build out a couple of other foundational pieces. So I did mention business cards. You'll also need a bio resume CV, and you'll need some basic graphics. To build out those graphics, I use canva.com. So it's C-A-N-V-A, canva.com. Pay for the pro level of canva.com. It's about $15 US per month. It's just part of the cost of doing business. And in canva.com, you'll be able to create all of the banners, all of the graphics, all of the videos, all of your social media posts, all of everything that you need. Your business cards, your bio resume, CV, everything can be done on Canva. Canva also has a content planner so that you can sit down and put together all of your marketing for the next week, in a day, today, and then it's just done for the whole week. Canva, it's a great product. Again, I don't own any part of Canva. I get nothing if you go use their services. But it's what I use for all of my clients. So use Canva. All right. Now let's talk about social media. You do need to be on some level on social media. And the reason is because of social proofing. Anytime that someone is going to be looking for a mediator, an arbitrator, a trainer, a facilitator, etc., they are going to Google that. And your name needs to come up in the Google search results. Social proofing. We all do it. Find a plumber near me. Find the best coffee house near me. Find a dress shop near me. We all do it. And social proofing is important. Because if you don't exist there, again, the assumption made by the person searching for you is that you're not taking this seriously. You're not truly a professional. This isn't your, quote, unquote, day job, right? So you do need to be on social media. And for most of us, we're going to be on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is where we're going to live and breathe. And that's because for most of us, that's where our client base is. So especially for those of us who are trying to make connections from one business to another, so the attorneys who make those decisions most often, then you need to be on LinkedIn. If, however, your practice is going to be entirely designed around handling cases for unrepresented clients, so just the public, no lawyers involved, which is absolutely fine, then you need to be on sites that deal more specifically with dealing face-to-face, selling face-to-face, educating face-to-face with the public. And that's going to be, depending on the age group, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, those are the kinds of sites that you'll want to occupy. Again, look to see where your competition focuses a lot of their time and energy on social media, and that will help clue you into the platform. If the platform that you really like is Facebook, but it turns out that the vast majority of your potential clients are going to be over on LinkedIn, then you still need to be on LinkedIn. You need to learn to love LinkedIn because that's where your people are, right? So social media, it's going to be important. And it's going to be important for all of the next things that you do. As a business person, as an entrepreneur, you have to be out there talking about your business. You want to talk about your business in such a way that it's not advertising, but it is publicizing, right? It is promoting. And the way that we do that is by providing content to a prospective client that is of value to them, that is of benefit to them. And you can do that with education or entertainment. You can provide information in lots of different forms. So choose the form that you're most comfortable with. That could be writing, public speaking, training, networking is so essential, being on social media, for example, doing videos or podcasts. Those are all ways that you can build your practice, and you can layer them. You don't have to do all of them. You can do the one or the two that you really enjoy. You can do the ones that you are really strong at. But networking is the one that really has to be done. And I know that that's not always the message everybody likes to hear. You really can't replace that with anything else as efficiently or as effectively to build a practice. The reason is because people hire us when they know us. They like what they know about us, and they have a sense that they can trust us with their case or with their clients. And that really happens in a networking situation. And then social media bolsters that. Speaking publicly bolsters that. Writing bolsters that. Training bolsters that. All of those things build up. But creating those actual business relationships, that's really where it's at. And with all of those things, then you want to think about your communication strategy and how you're going to do those activities to build your practice. And I find it's best to open a calendar and say, right, this month I'm going to be going to this networking function. This month I'm going to get this article out to various editors of periodicals. I'm going to offer this speaking gig to several bar associations. I'm going to produce this many videos and publish them on these days, or I'm going to release my podcast. So sit down with your calendar and strategize and make a plan about the activities that you're going to follow through on. That's key to reach out, to educate, to entertain, to inform and to encourage that business relationship that we're all looking for. That was an awful lot for a marketing Monday. We went a bit long today, but Elise, you asked a really valid question. I'm going to put a list up on my website under resources so that you can find this in a list in a bulleted point format so you can follow through there. But again, you can Google, you can use YouTube. There are thousands of books on this particular topic and subject matter. And of course, if you have any questions, concerns, requests, need more information, reach out to me and I'll do the best I can to get you the right answers. So that is it for me on marketing Monday. Holy moly. Mm hmm. Oh, that's good coffee. All right. Enjoy your week. Go about it with intention and be gentle with fellow humans. That's it.