How to Start a Workplace Mediation Business in 2026

In this episode, Simon Goode shares practical advice and personal reflections on starting and growing a mediation business, with an emphasis on the early stages and leveraging technology like content marketing and video. He discusses the pros and cons of self-employment in mediation, offering tips for building a client base, setting up a website, and structuring services for sustainability. The episode also emphasizes the importance of work-life integration, clinical supervision, and continuous professional development for long-term success.
--------

TIMESTAMPS: 

00:00 Challenges and benefits of mediation

06:43 Balancing family and business decisions

13:06 Discussing pros and cons of business

18:15 Using podcasts for mediation marketing

26:30 Dealing with daily distractions

29:38 Challenges of running a mediation business

36:41 Dressing for workplace mediation

39:22 Balancing Mediation Work and Income

49:56 Planning Annual Income Goals

51:13 Evaluating pricing strategies for mediators

01:00:57 Handling mediation inquiries

01:06:18 Monthly leadership seminars options

01:12:08 Long-term success and changing priorities

01:14:31 Discussing Mediation Strategies

01:19:10 Different approaches to mediation

Transcript

Copy

Speaker 0:18

Well, hello, welcome back to the Conflict Skills Podcast. I'm your host, professional mediator, Simon Goode. I set up this podcast to provide free resources and tools for dealing with conflict, so if that sounds like the kind of thing that's useful to you, please consider pressing subscribe. But having said all of that, today I'm focusing on a slightly different topic than usual. I feel a little bit like that Monty Python beginning where it would say now for something completely different, because to say that I'm talking about something unusual is probably the most usual thing about the Conflict Skills Podcast. It tends to be a mix of different case studies, overviews of resources, but today I'm literally talking about something different. It's more on the business side of being a mediator. I know that a lot of people listening to the podcast are mediators already, or some of them might be sort of concluding the end of their studies, and they probably come across my stuff based on some of the initial searching that they're doing. Now, I've worked in many different not-for-profit organizations, like funded organizations doing different kinds of mediation as a practitioner as well as manager of different programs. But I've also worked in RTOs and looked and developed networks with people who were finishing a like becoming an accredited mediator, for example, or the one that I used to teach in was a graduate diploma-level course on family dispute resolution specifically. Anyway, whether you're a family mediator or workplace mediator or something else, construction sector, um, a lot of people think, well, I've got this choice on my hands here. I could look for jobs, look for different positions within organizations. Many of them are very well supported. You get clinical supervision, you have often a colleague of people who are um lovely a lot of the time and also really help you in your early development. And there are a lot of situations as a mediator where you're in a dilemma or you're dealing with a real gray area in some respect, especially when you do, like I live in a regional kind of area, you'll meet people that you know in the work that you're doing. And so some of those challenges around conflict of interest and ethical dilemmas, it's incredibly helpful to have a sounding board to talk to to sort of help you to navigate some of those different situations, at least in my experience. The business side, though, it offers a completely, like working for yourself, it offers a completely different set of pros and cons. And I know that some of the people who finish a mediation course, their passion is around the people. It's helping people develop healthy relationships or deal with conflict. Whereas working in your own business means that you need to do marketing. And the worst thing of all, if you're somebody like myself, you have to do admin, you have to do your accounts, you have to do your taxes, you have to do your reconciliations, all of those kind of elements as well. And that's not my passion either. I hate all of that side of it, to be honest. I mean, obviously there's options for scaling, and then maybe you can hire a staff member to help you at some stage, but I'm focusing in the podcast today about those very early stages. If you do decide that I don't want to just apply for a job, well, what does running your own business look like? I've thought about doing this as a topic for the podcast now for actually years, and I know that as I say, some of the people listening would find it helpful. The challenge is, and the reason that I haven't launched anything until now or made a podcast episode about it, is that I always do it and I watch it back, I review it as I'm editing, and I always think I'm not doing it in-depth enough, like I'm doing not doing it justice, if you know what I mean. So I I guess that's the first little grain of salt that I would like you to take all of this, is that I've thought about this for a while, but I've really done my best just to provide a smattering of ideas that could be helpful. Please don't expect this to be some kind of a comprehensive business plan or something like that. It's not really what I'm doing. I and I don't want any coaching, I'm not selling you anything, I don't want any more clinical supervision clients that I've got. So I really am hopefully just offering this out in the um hopes that it would be useful to you. I think honestly, there is a get rich quick scheme when it comes to mediation, and it's probably setting up a business, teaching other people how to set up a business as a mediator. So that's not my intention here, just to I suppose clarify that in terms of a potential conflict of interest that I at least have been thinking about for a while. So, what did I do? Well, it was about 10 years ago or so that I made that decision to work for myself and set up my own business. And I thought at the time that what I really needed was to structure my business in a way that supports the kind of lifestyle that I want to have. So it was more like the business needs to adapt to life. That was the direction that I expected the influence to take. In my experience, though, it's been very much the opposite. Whatever's going on in my life has meant that whatever success that I have or don't have in the business is really not just about the business, it's about what's going on in my outside life. Like when I've had a really good relationship with my wife and things are really lovely between us, I can concentrate on my business and really get stuck in and make progress. But when we've got conflict going on, we're arguing about something, or when there's something else, like she's been traveling a lot for work, or I might have been traveling a lot, my business suffers inherently. There's not this delineation of work and life sort of which is implied when we think about concepts like work-life balance. And the same is true with parenting. Like I've been much more concerned about showing up as a good parent than I have about earning money over the past few years as my son has started to enter primary school. I've just very been very cognizant of the fact that I don't want to miss these opportunities to spend time with him when he was is young. So I suppose, in a sense, that is me thinking, well, I want this kind of lifestyle. But what that's meant is that as I've focused more on the relationship with my son, which I don't regret, it does mean that the business goes a little bit slower. So that's just one of the dilemmas that you're going to face is there's two pretty good ideas for how to spend your time here, how to spend your energy, how to spend your money. Like do you want to pay off your mortgage more quickly, or do you want to invest in the business and have it grow quickly? Do you prefer a higher level of flexibility within the business so that you can have a holiday or cut back work or something like that? Or do you prefer to have staff to have ongoing expenses like having an office, a storefront, like with a sign and everything? Well, that's going to mean that you don't have the option of just going over to the Philippines to live for six months or whatever. Like all of these ongoing costs are something that you would need to consider. So all of the planning around business needs to be, I think, factored into the rest of the life planning and vice versa. These things really might really are like this reciprocal pattern. Um I've I've noticed that when my business is struggling, it causes issues in my family, we have more conflict, more even I'm not as present and as good a listener as I might otherwise be. Um when my health is better, my business goes better, so diet, getting enough sleep, not drinking too much, all of those things are very important if I want my business to grow. And I I wouldn't have necessarily thought that those were things that would be the foundation, but getting all of these factors in your outside life organized for me has meant that finally there's been an actual opportunity for me to invest 100% in the business. Whereas when those other areas were struggling, I guess the reality was that that's the dilemma that I was in, and that's true, isn't it? Especially when you're in those times of having young kids. Do you work as hard as possible, spend long hours burning the candle at both ends because you're wanting financial security for your family? Or do you want to be present? Do you want to be there to be a direct support when the kids are going through these experiences? Like it's it's very hard making some of those decisions. So for me, I've found it much more helpful to focus on integration as opposed to balance. Like it's much more about all of the system working well together. That's when I've often noticed success. And obviously that's going to be as above, so below as well. When the when the family's going well, the business is going well, and when it's not, it's not. The one area that I think is probably a little bit unique to my thinking is I wanted to build an engine. I can remember writing this down way back in the early days of having a business. It's not glamorous. Like my early days, we were living in a two-bedroom apartment in Epping in Sydney, and I don't think we had home internet on at the time, even, which is crazy. So I would ride my bike down to the local library, the free public library, because it had free internet access. So I would set up on a little desk with my laptop. Sometimes I would go over to Gloria Jeans for a coffee and use their internet as well. Um, this is all it just sounds like cavemen cavemen era almost, even this is 10 years ago or something, but it's it's what I did, it's the way that it worked. Oh, it's so funny. And so I used to do journaling, like a little bit of like reflective writing in those early days, probably sitting in Epping Library. And I wrote this phrase of I want to build an engine, even back then. What I meant at the time was that I don't want to just help one person, I want to help as many people as possible. Like having a podcast instead of just doing mediations is an example of that. It's always been a principle that was important to me. But even from a like I want things for my life aspect, I found it difficult in the early days of being a mediator, because I was only selling my time, like I would have a client engage me and I might make a few grand. So if I have two of them in a week, it's a pretty good week. Three occasionally would be a very good week, but I'd be really exhausted by the end of it. But for all of those weeks where you would have three mediations, like sometimes you would make more than $10,000 in a week, and I'd be thinking, holy crap, this is incredible. But then the next week a mediation would cancel like three days before it was scheduled. So I wouldn't end up making anything kind of thing. So it's always these swings and roundabouts kinds of challenges because I'm only making money when I'm selling my time directly. So I did mediation. A lot of people who do mediations have another business as well that they focus on. Uh, so I mean, you're going to need to think about that, like a training workshop or a coaching program that goes on for a 10-week or something like that, or running a seminar for your local lawyers on this particular topic and you charge a fee for it. That's the kind of stuff that provides a little bit more stable income. It's not quite as spiky in terms of income as mediation is. So that was helpful in itself. It's sort of like as I can build something like a bit of a portfolio of things that I can do, then I'm not as beholden to just mediation, like all my eggs aren't in the one basket. But I still will be down and out if I get sick and all of a sudden can't work for a while. So for me, I've wanted something as well, like the podcast or a newsletter or an online course or something like that, because I wanted to make sure that regular income was still coming in, regardless of whether or not I was seeing clients directly. So for me, that engine aspect has two sort of ways of thinking about it. One was the leverage of the benefits of the people I wanted to support, but the other was leveraging the work that I'm doing so that it's not always tied to a particular client paying me. You'll see some of the notes that I've written here in I don't know if it's green or yellow. I'm colourblind, so I can't see the colour, but the not blue colour, whatever that one is. Um I did this earlier today. I did a recording, but unfortunately the one of the microphone settings wasn't correct, so I wasn't able to use it. So just kind of explaining why you'll see there's a a bit of annotation already done as we go through this. So my perspective in terms of running your own business is really that it comes with uh a set of pro pros and cons. Like there's positives and drawbacks to it, of course. In terms of should you do it, you almost might think about this as costs and benefits, but not necessarily. Like it's difficult to project into the future how you're going to feel about a particular thing, so I'm not sure about that. But just as a little bit of an insider's perspective of what it's been like to work for myself, I've loved the level of freedom that it gives. Like I just absolutely love being able to do my own thing. I loathe the idea of going to a meeting or getting approval. And when I haven't got approval for things that I wanted to do within organizations, I would very often have a bit of a temper tantrum in my way. Like I was just stubborn and I would sometimes get my way eventually, but oh, it was just like it was very painful. Whereas having freedom is incredible, it really does feel great. I love the autonomy as well. Like we've got the autonomy in terms of the business, but you've also got autonomy in terms of your clinical practice. If you think that it's better to do the pre-mediations for a workplace mediation and then come back the next day to do the mediation itself, then you can just do that. You can just tell clients that this is the way that I work. If you would prefer to do it all in one day, you want to have multiple short mediation sessions, some people would prefer to get them in the room quicker, like they do a more brief assessment for 30 minutes or something and then begin the mediation itself. If you want to include operations managers or HR managers, support people, legal support, like you've got all of these different options to experiment with. And I like that a lot. If your goal is to develop as a mediator, I think having that opportunity to experiment is great. Whereas within some organizations, they just say this is the way that we do it here. This is the in-take form that we use, this is the way that we structure this bit of the process, etc. Working for an organization is very rewarding, but having your own business really does take that level of reward up to a new level. If you've built something completely from the ground, like you've set up a website, you've gone out and done networking, you've printed a business card and handed it out, you have run some marketing that's worked to get traffic to your website. They've called you, you've talked to them on the phone, you've organized what you're going to do, they've agreed to it, you go and do it, they're happy with it, and they pay you. Oh, it's just, it has been such a lovely feeling all all along the way, and it still is for me a very rewarding thing to do. Like looking after yourself, being self-sufficient in a way. There is also a real opportunity for significant money. Whereas in an organization, your salary is usually set, and particularly within the next five years or the next 10 years, within an organization, there's only going to be so far that you can go. Like your salary might go up by 20% each year if you change jobs more or if you're in a less fortunate situation less, but it's never going to triple in a year. Whereas working for yourself in mediation, there's no limit. Like, depending on how much you're willing to work and how much risk you can tolerate, you can earn real significant money. So if you want to go down the route of having an admin support person having a team and you subcontract work out to other mediators, you could have like um consortium partnerships with other kinds of organizations like workers' compensation or like legal stuff, like the sky's the limit in many, many different respects. So there is that uncapped potential upside, but also obviously uncapped potential downside as well. If you don't get out and do something, then the work is not just going to come in and find you. With technology, I think that we get more and more opportunity for leverage. When I first started the business, we would uh like experiment with something like running a Google Ads thing. And so we would pay a certain amount of money per click, and then we would get people searching for this keyword would come to our website. It's still a really good opportunity if you're looking for ways of generating more clients, paying per click in something like Google. Just target the keywords workplace mediation or something very, very specific, just in your kind of geographical area, and then there's a very good chance that you'll generate some inquiries, but they're not always the best kind of inquiries that come through, if you know what I mean. Like they're usually people that have just had a complaint made or something, and now they're just looking for whoever's the quickest mediator that they can get, or even more unfortunately, the cheapest. Nowadays, though, you can do things like have a podcast like I do. It's like I'm moving towards having a quality that's kind of close to having a home studio. I know it's not always very good because I'm not very consistent with managing and preparing, but like the technology for home recording is insane, and you can then broadcast that out to thousands of people who will listen to you. So if you can target all kinds of keywords like workplace mediation, frequently asked questions about workplace mediation, how to prepare for a workplace mediation, what to do after a workplace mediation, then it's going to begin to generate that same kind of traffic that we used to have to pay for in the old days. So what you would think of as content marketing is just becoming more and more powerful. You can also do things like have AI listen to the conversation and do notes for you. You can have AI help you with different organizational aspects of the business. All of the softwares like the finance accounting software that you use is just getting better and better. So all of that leverage is good. With it always, though, comes an ongoing obligation to update your own skill sets, I suppose. And then I really like as a final pro there, being able to work from home. Not just work from home. It means that you can go and do the washing or pick your kid up from school if they're sick. Like, there's just so much more, I think, ability to live your life. I don't really like going into the office. So, I mean, that's just putting my cards out there. I'm not looking forward to if I ever do work in another job sitting in an office. I just I look back on the way that I was, I always had my back position to the open plan. And if you're somebody who's quite self-conscious, that's just such a terrible situation to be. Because you're constantly thinking, what are they looking at on my screen? Do I look like I'm working? Did they mistake what I was looking at for social media or something? Like, so I love the privacy that comes from working from home, but also that put your washing on the line kind of stuff as well. Travel, I mean, if you like travel, you can travel as a mediator. I've seen many clients in Brisbane and the Gold Coast, which is about four or five hours drive for me, as well as many in Sydney, which is well, usually fly down to Sydney. It's like a one-hour flight, or I can drive in about seven hours or something. Um, if you like traveling, you like spending time in hotels, then that sounds really cool. I have to admit, in the early days of my business, my son was very young, he was less than one. So when the opportunities to travel came up, it was very hard, but the hardest thing was pretending to be disappointed about spending a night in a hotel with room service and no noise to wake me up at 3 a.m. Like I was going to get a solid seven or eight hours sleep, kind of thing. Like it wasn't bad. I didn't mind those little one night aways to recuperate, to be frank. Um, the thing is nowadays, though, that I look at it as such a drag. I hate always packing and then repacking, and I don't like the drive itself. I find it a little bit stressful when you've got people that are aggressive drivers around you, or people are taking risks, or you're going through a section that you don't know and you might be lost or something. Like I haven't enjoyed all of those moments. Although in the old days that was like having a map in front of me and trying to read the paper map while you were driving. And nowadays we've got the GPS in the car and everything's. So maybe I'd be more inclined to travel even than I realize too. We've got a nicer car than we used to as well, I guess. But if you're into travel, you do have that option. If you do go down the track of working for yourself, if you work in an organization, almost like your work has to be organized so it doesn't get in the way of your travel. It's not gonna give it to you inherently. Let's go through those some of the cons, some of the drawbacks of having your own business and what that's like. The constant uncertainty is very challenging. Not knowing whether or not you'll have work coming in in a month or two's time, like it's a really tough spot to be, especially over an extended period. I think as well, though, like if you're like me, you've got a family, it's not the uncertainty in itself, it's the guilt that comes along with that. Almost like you're inflicting this situation on your partner, on your children, or so it's not like it's uncertainty that it's just our well-being overall. It's it begins to, I think, affect some of the other relationships that you've got, at least in my experience. Um, you're much more affected by market conditions when COVID and all that stuff happened. Like the mediation business just went to zero. There was nobody prioritizing mediation, it was like everybody scrambling to try and keep their heads above water while all of these immense legislative changes and stuff were all coming down. And then if I worked in an organization, actually, I don't know if this one's even a con that should be on this side. Like I was gonna say, I needed to go and get a vaccination to go up to Queensland. So I got the COVID vaccination, even though I didn't want to, because you had to. They made it illegal to travel unless you were vaccinated. So I had clients that were waiting for me in Brisbane that wanted me to go up and meet with them. And like, how long am I gonna leave this for? kind of thing. So I don't know, for me, just being blown around through all of that COVID stuff, I think that's also made me a little bit more cognizant of the fact that I need to build the engine, I need to generate that untied income to pull me through some of those more challenging market condition extended periods. There's a lot of work that's needed. Like there's no two ways around it. Setting up your own business, you're going to work more than just working for an organization, like more in terms of hours. There's a lot of stress. Some of that has direct effects on you, like you'll put on weight or not sleep well, or you won't be looking as healthy as you normally would. You won't be motivated to exercise, you'll have low energy because your nervous system is kind of fried from running at 11 constantly. And then that has a flow-on effect in terms of other people around you. You might not be as available to support them. You need to be the kind of person that can self-motivate yourself. Now I am, I've always known that I can because you know I'm the kind of person, especially if there's an idea that I'm passionate about, I just kind of do the work in naturally almost. But there's been many times where I've grappled with procrastinations or addictions, like when I've not been sure which website provider to go with. So I've just spent another week looking at options. It's like um paralysis by analysis. You do, you can really get stuck. So that you have to get used to just making decisions and for things not to be perfect. In the early days of the podcast, I would record it and then I would just have to upload it. Because if I would edit it, I never liked it and I would always delete it, and then it would be months between episodes, and the algorithm doesn't like that kind of thing, especially when it's quite sporadic. So I had to get used to just pressing publish even when things weren't perfect. It's like even going through these notes. I'd have preferred to have more of a comprehensive overview developed because I think that would be more what some people are looking for. But I need to almost grit my teeth and just press publish in the less than perfect state that it's in. So procrastination, I think there's connections there with anxiety, overthinking, neuroticism, rumination. So for me, I've learnt to become much more aware of all of those patterns that get in the way of the business moving forward. And then addictions. If there's beer in the fridge and it's cold and it's summer and it's 3 p.m., I want to just go and get a beer or two from the fridge and sit out the back, take my laptop down, sit near the pool and just relax. But if I do that every day, I'm gonna become an alcoholic because a lot of the time where I live is nice, and a lot of the time there's beer in the fridge, and a lot of the time it would be nicer to go and sit out the back and drink a beer while you're working. So you need to prepare for a bit of discipline, maybe more than you would have expected. And if it's not beer for you, if it's uh pornography, online shopping, social media, uh looking at review websites for that analysis kind of stuff that gives us the sense that we're making progress, but actually we're just learning about which is going to be the best. You know, should I have a stainless steel pen or a cast iron pen or something like that? Like just you need to get used to making these decisions a little bit quicker. What's the best hoster for the podcast? What's the best website provider? How do I get an email address? What's the best option to go down for that? Should I hire an accountant? Should I hire an admin person? Can I hire somebody from offshore to help me with admin? Like, there's endless things that you're going to have as opportunities to just like go down the rabbit hole with. And I've noticed that that is almost like an addiction that some people have in itself. Maybe it's looking at bargain websites. Like, that's a very bizarre addiction that I seem to have developed over the past couple of years. I can't stop looking at this website called Oz Bargain. It's like this collection of very autistic nerds that are absolutely concerned about saving as much money as possible. So people will post a bargain like this washing powder is normally $24 and here it's $22. And then underneath in the comments, people will always be saying, you should have bought it over here. It works out cheaper per kilogram or something else, or this is a better product to use. And I've found it very helpful. I've gotten some good life tips from it. But I actually think what's going on is it's this FOMO, it's the fear of missing out. I worry that there might be some really good discount going on on something that's more useful than a laundry powder, and I don't want to miss out on it. And so I've needed to use an app called self-control on the Mac, which blocks that particular URL, which is a strange thing to say, but it's been a very helpful step to make progress in my business. So make of that what you will. But if you do decide to go down the route of working for yourself, just that proclivity to addiction, and especially when the stress levels are high, then you might not be getting much sleep and you are burning the candle at both ends. I mean, maybe it's junk food. There's so many different things that call to us, don't they, when we're in that high cortisol, high stress kind of mindset. The last con there on the list, I think, is probably the most significant for a lot of people. For me, not as much, but I know a lot of people, they go into mediation because they've got a passion for people, they've got a passion for relationships. And what they want is to get good at what I call the clinical side of the mediation business, like working with clients directly. How to prepare them, how to structure the mediations, how to act as yourself, how to manage like them being naughty and saying something that they're not meant to, like calling each other names or swearing or something. What do you do when one person just storms out of the room and you need to report that somehow back to the manager that's organized you? All of those kind of situations are often what well, they sound a little bit terrible now that I'm describing like that, but it's benefiting the people. It's when the mediation goes well that we go into a mediation business because of. But when you have your own business, you need to generate work, which means that you'll need to do business development, like go and do networking, go and do cold calling, and that it's terrible. I don't want to sugarcoat it. I haven't liked that, I haven't enjoyed that aspect of it at all. Even setting up your website, running Google Ads, setting up a podcast if you decided to. For me, I'm a little bit interested in those aspects of marketing. I have an MBA, like I'm interested in business, but a lot of people aren't. So it just kind of comes with it. You're going to need to either pay someone to do those things for you, or you'll have to find an option to do it yourself. So the too long don't read. What would I do if I was starting right now in 2026? The first thing I would do would be get a website up. Uh, in terms of the name, I would use either just my own name or something like the location and then the word mediation. So Coffs Harbor mediation. That's what I would call the business. I can do training workshops in communication or anything like that if I want. I can do coaching services, I could do leadership programs, executive leadership things like whatever. But that name is going to tell Google or the AI algorithms or whatever comes next what you do. Whereas I want to call myself like conflict conflict uh what would I call it? Like unconflictual or some clever name that's it's like an old Greek god or it's a combination of a word like dispute, but you've misspelled it, or something goofy. The algorithms don't like that kind of stuff, and to be honest, I'm not sure that people like it as well. So I would either call myself Simon Good or Kofshaba mediation. If you've got the long-term route to do training, then I suppose you could call yourself Conflict Institute, like Hoftab, Coffshaba Conflict Institute. You could call yourself a center, Kofsahaba Conflict Center, you could call yourself Koftshaber Conflict Services, maybe Cofshaba Conflict Management and Consulting. That's fine as well. But I want to get the location and something that's in the keyword that people are searching for. I would just use Squarespace for the website. That's what I use these days, and I've really liked it. When we first had our websites, we've had a few different ones, we built them in, like I built them myself in WordPress, and that was cheap, but it was very clunky to use. And all of the plugins ended up costing, if you wanted a premium version of an Inquiries Form plugin, you had to pay for it. So that was five bucks a month or something. So before you know it, you had a few of these plugins that are five or ten bucks a month, and so the WordPress option ends up being more expensive than it originally appears. Some people have hired someone to build them a WordPress website for around two to three thousand dollars. They get a very basic version for about five thousand. You might get a little bit more schmick and nice looking. I don't think they necessarily improve if you get someone for 10,000. I wouldn't pay more than that myself. But what I would do is just do it myself. I really like Squarespace these days. It's good for the website itself. It's kind of drag and drop. I just find a few examples of websites that I like and then copy their design aesthetics, the way that they use fonts, the way that they use images, just incorporate a few different areas for others that you get inspiration from. I mean, that's the way that I would like to do it, and that's what I would still do these days. Um in Squarespace, where you can get your website itself, you can also buy the domain. That's the little dot dot dot part, like dot dot dot simongood.com. You probably don't um write the dot dot dot these days, but I think technically it's always there. I don't know, some web IT person can tell me what's going on there. Now I can remember sitting down in Epping Library using their free internet and Googling, how do I get a website? Like, what is a website? Do I write it in a Word document and then upload it? Like, what actually is it? So this address is called the domain. You can get that through Squarespace as well, then you've only got one login to remember. You can also get a G Suite subscription. So you can get Simon at SimonGood email address. So that'll give you Google Docs and Google, whatever, all of the different office apps that are that come along with that. So it's one login to remember, it's all under the same. You might save a few bucks going with someone somewhere else, but that's what I would do. Now, one of the first things that you should do for that website is get some good headshots done. If you've got somewhere like I do, then set up a few lights. Like you might not want fancy stuff in the background, just a plain grey background's fine. Have a really bright light behind you if you can that's shining to make that look kind of beautiful. And then one very big light in front of you, like a window. If you've just got a window with a soft white blind that you can pull down, that would be ideal. So good backlight and one good front light. If you don't have an office, I would go outside, just get in a nature kind of setting with a bit of garden behind you. Get as far away from the background as you can so that it goes a little bit blurry. Take it at like right before dusk, put the sun behind you a little bit. That's probably what I would do. Experiment with different directions of the sun facing. But my light is here, and so you can see the shadow that it kind of casts. So there's different effects that you can have depending on the way that you're facing, etc. So just do it yourself. If you know someone who's good at photography, ask them to do it for you. Um, if you want to pay someone, just pay like five or six hundred bucks or something, get a young person to do it. But really good headshots. And if you want to do workplace mediation, I would do formal clothes. Like I would be wearing a like a collared shirt and a suit jacket instead of just a hoodie or a t-shirt. For a podcast, you can go with whatever aesthetic you want. If you just want to wear hoodies or you want to have like the weird arty farty kind of stuff over here, then you can do that. I think though, if you're a strict workplace mediation, it's more formal than you might otherwise expect. I mention that because I know some people go into mediation and they've got these ideas about the kind of way they want to be, like they want to be very supportive with their clients to create a very low stress atmosphere that makes people feel comfortable, etc. But in terms of the photos itself, you need to look like you know what you're doing. Focus on a few simple keywords in the text, like if you're doing workplace mediation, just focus on that keyword, workplace mediation. And all of the text can just be summaries of their problems. Like you can say, conflict within organization can lead to these different issues. If conflict isn't dealt with well, this is what can happen. These are some of the reasons why managers might not have time or expertise needed to deal with a conflict that's going on within their team. Should you get an outside workplace mediator or do the workplace mediation internally, like all of that text is going to attract the algorithms of people that are looking for these kinds of questions. You don't need to say, I'm so amazing, I'm Simon, I'm such a legend, or I'm so supportive, I make people feel so great. It can just be about I do workplace mediation, these are some of the issues that mediation can be helpful for. This is how the process works. If you'd like to get in touch, this is the process to do that. On Squarespace, you can also do things like um scheduling so you can have a calendar synchronized to it so that clients can book their own appointments. So if you want to do coaching or something, that's a pretty good option to consider. And it can also send invoices as well. These days, obviously, uh AI can do a lot of the help with the text kind of stuff, but don't underestimate the importance of still seeming like a human, even in this day and age of 2026. And I think that might be a skill set that becomes increasingly valuable. How can you show that you're actually genuine and real and do you know what I mean? Like you're actually a person that they could talk to, as opposed to just a profile online. There's quite a few unique things about the business of mediation. One of the challenges is that the structure that you use for your business model directly impacts both your clinical work as well as the money and the business side of things. So you might prefer to spend a lot of time with people before a mediation process, but whether or not you have the option to do that depends on the budget that's available. So there's this constant, I think, tension between maximizing income and making sure that you're doing a thorough job or doing as good a job as you think that you should be doing. A lot of people who are mediators, especially people who do family mediation alone, they have other kinds of work that they do as well. If you're a more experienced mediator, you might work as a coach with one of the many training organizations that train new mediators. You could be some other kind of coach, like maybe you're a leadership coach or a management coach, something along those lines. I found coach, though, coaching or conflict coaching, it's very difficult to generate regular money for. There's not that many people who know that they want a conflict coach. So I don't know. I think some people start out and they think I'll do mediation and conflict coaching, and they discover that it's quite difficult to get a regular stream of people in that coaching option. If you have a structured service, like there's 10 sessions and this is how much it costs, or it runs for this many weeks, or it's specific to people who are moving into team leader roles for the first time, or it's really for HR staff to equip them with the people skills that they'll need to manage conflict in their roles, then I think the coaching would be more viable. But if you think that you're just going to be able to put on your website, help, I'll help you deal with conflict. I've found it difficult anyway to find people who want to pay me to do that. And even when I'm engaged to do that, I don't always love it. Like often it's a manager who's booking it for one of their staff. They want conflict coaching. And it's basically because another staff member has made a complaint against the person that you're going to see. So it's just not a super fulfilling spot to be talking to somebody who's forced to be there, who doesn't necessarily think that they have an issue at all. And I'm sitting there as the coach, knowing nothing about the context, the culture, the other person that they're dealing with, the boss, and what issues they might have. I don't know. For me, I've I've noticed that that coaching has been something that a lot of people start with and then end up either regretting it or finding that they need to do something else as well. For me, I've found it much more helpful to do training workshops. So I really like going in and running a workshop with a group of staff and we talk through some particular aspect of communication in a reasonably practical kind of way. I find that very rewarding and very fulfilling, and you can earn a lot of money by doing it, but it's very, very exhausting. So that's another example of that tension between money and my best self. If I've got a mediation the next day and I do a training workshop, I know that I'm not going to sleep as well. I'm going to be really revved up and a little bit more wired afterwards. And I'm often processing some of the stuff that happened during the workshop, especially when I'm in kind of like la di da kind of mode of trying to be very engaged and responsive to what's going on in the room. Like then afterwards, I almost need to go back and metabolize all of that and figure out exactly what happened. So if I've got a mediation that's on immediately next, I'm not as present when I'm sitting down and meeting with the clients. Or as if I'd just had an admin kind of day and done a workout and done a meditation or something in the afternoon, you know, I'd probably show up really ready to go the next day when I'm dealing with the clients themselves. So training for me is pretty good for money. It's pretty good because it's not cancelled at the last minute very often, whereas mediation is cancelled at the last minute at times, like a staff member's not there that day, they're off sick, or somebody quits before the mediation can be organized or something. Consulting, I think, is also quite a viable option, especially if you've got some kind of specialist knowledge. Like if you've come from a HR background, doing consulting with teams who are dealing with conflict within their organization, like HR teams, I think that would be a really good option. To consider. Whereas for me, I found it difficult to I think it's difficult to impress people just by saying I'm so good. Either you can show them that you're good by doing something for free, like developing a guide that's really useful for them. I think that develops your legitimacy to some extent. Or it might be through referrals, like other people recommending you. In fact, that's one of the things that I would strongly recommend if you do start your own business. Every single client that you see, ask them to refer you to other people in their network who might also be interested in your services. I reckon that has generated me at least $20,000 or $30,000 a year extra work just by doing that a bit more consistently in recent times. So the coaching, obviously, I think that's a little bit challenging to sell, at least in terms of a bespoke service, like an hourly session rate. I think it's easier if you've got a package of six sessions or it's these four topics that we go through or something else. And even in your mediation work, I usually try and book myself for a half day or a full day. These days, I often say this is the half day rate and this is what the full day rate would be. So it's this much money until if I'm there for three and a half hours. If it's more than three and a half hours, this is what the cost would be, or four or thereabouts, roughly that. So it kind of gives them the option of sending me home if that's going to be cheaper for them and there's not it's not worth continuing. And I kind of go back and check around that lunch hour what we would like to do for the rest of the day. Um, I don't mind these days doing the mediation as well in the afternoon after meeting the parties. I used to have the opposite view. I used to think that I wanted to do an assessment before I do the mediation, but I just had so many experiences of things changing in the meantime that then I'd show up the next day and they've been at each other on Facebook overnight or something else. And I'm like, okay, well, here we go. I basically need to do the whole assessment again. I also try to take an approach that encourages people to be a little bit flexible, to reflect on what's going on, to generate options with them. And I think there we've often got a bit of momentum going so that if we then went straight into the mediation after lunch, that those things would be very much front of mind. Whereas when people go home, they've got kids, they've got dramas with their partner, they've got their parents to deal with, like who knows what. But there's so many other things that get added on to the mental load there that whatever you'd been working on with them is obviously going to take a lot less prevalence to say the least. If you're gonna charge hourly, I would start with at least $250 an hour, but I would probably be inclined to go for $300. I don't think that difference makes a massive difference for a lot of people. And I would charge from from the beginning of the beginning of when I start work. So if I arrive at the organization, that's when I would start charging them from. I've noticed a few young or newer mediators, they might see party A, the first person from 9.30 until 11, so they'll charge an hour and a half there. And then they'll see the second person from one until 2.30, so they'll charge an hour and a half there. It's really difficult to make regular income if it's this chop and change kind of way of charging. And I don't think within organizations that they usually bat an eyelid, it's not their credit card that's coming out to pay your bill at the end of the day. So I mean it's up to you, but I would be starting at absolutely no less than that if I was in Australia, and that's probably gonna be prob I guess similar to other places around the world. You can go much higher though, like why not $400 an hour, or why not five hundred dollars an hour? Some of the time I get the feedback from clients that we didn't know that it was gonna be good because the price was so affordable, so low is what they're saying. So when I used to do training workshops, we would charge like $1,500 or something. And I was thinking, this is ridiculous, like one and a half grand for going and doing a day's work, like this is really cool. I'll do this forever. But I had a client say to me, because it was organized through a friend, that the fact that we charge such a low amount of money was a little bit suspicious. They were used to charging at least $5,000 for a training workshop. So charging too low, I guess you have to also just think about well, what's the connotation that this sends in terms of your expertise? It's a little bit why I suggest wearing a suit and tie or something like that in the photos rather than a hoodie. In terms of the money, a lot of people find it helpful to have a bit of cash saved up initially for three months. That was about what I thought originally. I was prepared to go for about three months. After that, if the business wasn't showing some positive signs, I was going to start applying for different jobs. That's sometimes what's called the runway. And you know, if we think about all of the annoying entrepreneurship kind of content that's around these days. So how much money you need saved up, that's going to depend on you and your tolerance for risk, I guess, as well as your willingness to inflict risk on your partner. You might plan for what is going to make sense in terms of how much money to earn. Like you might have a mortgage that you might need to pay or rent or something else. So you might have an idea in your head, like maybe it's $100,000 is the amount that you want to earn eventually. Doesn't have to be year one, but year two, that's what you would definitely like to do. I have found a helpful way of calculating this in terms of what I need to earn by dividing that number by 40. For whatever reason, I've often found that about 40 weeks in the year I'm able to earn a stable amount of money. And the other times it's much more difficult. Like probably there's going to be a week or two where I'm sick or I'm dealing with my son homesick or something like that. So I need to cancel something. Also, though, around the end of December, from about the middle of December until late January, I find it very difficult to get mediation clients. They're just not prioritizing mediation, I don't think, in those kind of periods of time. So I don't expect to earn a lot of money in January, even if I decide to work. To be honest, that's often where I take a little bit of time off each year. So that's perfectly fine with me. But you need to factor that into your projections in terms of what does a weekly goal look like? If it's $100,000, well, you probably need to think: is that before tax or after tax? It does that include superannuation? Does that include any other aspects to it there? But let's say it's $100K, you want to get to as a net result by the end of the year. If we divide that by $40, the amount that we get is $2,500. So if you're charging $250 an hour and you're charging from 9 30 when the first appointment starts until 11, that's not going to get you anywhere close to this unless you are just busting your butt and seeing clients 24-7 kind of thing. So you might need to either consider charging a little bit more money or figuring out something else, like doing a different kind of mediation that you can charge more for, subcontracting with someone to supplement the income that you're generating yourself, looking for part-time work in addition to your business, having a second business and sort of splitting your time between them. It's up to you. But if that's the goal and that's what you're aiming for, and the mediation business isn't earning that amount, then you're not going to get to that annual goal of the 100K. Like for me, it's been very helpful breaking these down into these more manageable bits because then as I'm thinking, well, how much should I bloody charge? Like, how do you know? You start out as a workplace mediator and you think, well, I don't know what the norm is. Like, I don't know what the industry average is kind of thing. You might Google it, but there's nothing to suggest that this is reliable, right? So I don't know. I think though you can often choose to give a bit of a discount and go down a little bit, whereas it's more difficult to go up. If someone's engaged you for 250 bucks an hour because it was one of your earlier clients, then they get you to come back. It's going to be hard for you to say, okay, my cost has doubled since then. I mean, maybe you'll have more luck than me, but I found that to be quite uncomfortable. At the beginning, I would suggest just keeping everything very simple. For your business name, just like I said, go with your name or location mediation as the name of the business. Just really basic invoices. You can just use Excel and do it in a spreadsheet or Microsoft Word or Google Docs or whatever. It just has to have who it's from, who it's to, the contact details for both, how much was it for, what was the service, does it include tax or not, and then the payment information, like your your bank account. It's fine at the beginning, either in well, I still think it's okay in my experience, but you'll you might have a different run here. I found that people don't mind just paying by direct transfer. I've set up Stripe and I've got different ways that people can pay by credit card these days, but the fees are so high. I often wonder if maybe it would have been better just to go with what we originally did, which is to say this is my bank account, and I would ask where possible for the payments to be made before you do the mediation. So basic invoices, including all of that info, and then all you're going to need is a bit a bank account for your business. I think that's a helpful step to have as well. Um, and then you're good to go. You can get business cards, you can get um, you can do paid marketing, you can get an admin support person. There's a million different options, but I would recommend keeping everything very simple. Getting your first clients is something that at the beginning it's incredibly challenging, and then the more time that goes on, it gets easier and easier. But I don't want to under understate that. Like it's really stressful when you don't have any clients early on. I asked different people in my network if they would consider making referrals, and they did, which I was very grateful for. Whoops. But you have to ask directly. So if you're the kind of person that doesn't like asking other people for help, that might grind your gears a little bit. There's lots of options for advertising. At the beginning, we used Google Ads. So when people would search for workplace mediation, we would be one of the top results that would come up before the organic search results. These days, it's more of a hodgepodge depending on how people are searching. Because they're using the AI different bots which have a different set of algorithms. Well, it's not necessarily the case that paying to be at the top of Google is going to get you the same return on investment. In fact, all of those advertising options like Google Ads or Bing Ads or whatever, they're just getting more and more expensive as time goes on. So you're probably going to spend, depending on where you live, somewhere between three and six dollars per click if you don't go down the Google Ads kind of route. I would just search in very limited keywords like workplace mediation and only within a limited geographic area. The other option that you've got though is content marketing, like a podcast, for example, setting up your own podcast, or a newsletter, or a resource database that you develop, or a Substack account, or a YouTube channel, or something like that, putting out things that are going to be useful for the kind of people that are looking for your services. So developing a guide for HR managers on how to select a workplace mediator. Like that would be a really good thing to put out there. And you might even pay to push it, like in um LinkedIn or something like that. You could publish your little guide and then you could pay like a couple of hundred bucks and get other people to look at it, have it appear on their feeds. And it's a way of establishing your credibility and authority, generating awareness of the service that you offer, etc. Whereas advertising is getting really, really, really, really expensive. Like every year the clicks get more expensive. The content marketing, I think, is still really affordable. And to me, that's still like a gold mine opportunity there. Um, if for my podcast, if I do just a usual kind of episode, I can pay a small amount of money, like a hundred bucks, two hundred bucks, have it promoted to a few thousand more people than might normally watch it or listen to it. And some of them will be HR managers that are looking for a workplace mediator, for example. So if the topic is how to run a workplace mediation, then I know that the potential clients that are looking for me is becoming aware of me. And not just that, I'm establishing my authority by giving them something that they actually find useful. So whereas advertising is like you get in front of them and you say, look at us, we're so good, we can do it. Content marketing helps the clients to find you. Having said all of that, what works today is not necessarily going to be what works tomorrow. So you'll have to be prepared for ongoing professional development, ongoing reflection, ongoing calibration. I've often suggested to people aim for leverage early on. Like if you can get a team of people that work under you as mediators, then it makes a lot of sense to spend money on advertising because it's not just the potential work of you going and spending a day that you're going to make money from. You could go and see your own client for a day, and then you've got three other mediators that go and see the client for a day, and you get some percentage of the income that they're bringing in as well. Many different options for that. But all of that's what I think of as leverage. Then I'm not just benefiting myself from the money spent on advertising, I'm leveraging the benefit that that's bringing in. The work in mediation specifically is really spiky. It's got feast and famine kind of cycles. Um at the moment, I think there's a good opportunity to diversify. So doing a social media thing like a YouTube channel, I think at the moment, is really good. It's a good option for a lot of people. Teaches you how to speak, but it means that you don't have all of the eggs in one basket when you're not able to find a mediation client for this week or this month. Um, I think differentiating yourself from your competitors is another option for avoiding that spike. Like these days, people who engage me for mediation, they know me. They've seen something that I've done, they've attended a seminar that I've spoken at, or they might have been come across me through the podcast. And so they're kind of looking to hire Simon. Whereas if you're just Coffs Harbor Mediation, well, there's nothing to make you different to Coffs Harbor Conflict Resolution Center or Coffs Harbor Conflict Institute or the private name of the person that says we do mediation as well. So, what is it about you that makes you different? For me, I think there's something about the way that I've learned to speak that people can find helpful. So talking, like doing a podcast, was an option that it's been very challenging, but it's working. But for you, you might be good at writing. So the resource development stuff, something that you're really good at. Or maybe you're very funny. So you can have a little comment that you put out, a comic that you put out weekly about conflict in an office environment, or dealing with conflict as a HR manager, being stuck as the meat in the sandwich between all of these other difficult personalities that you need to manage. Um, I think though, some other kind of service that you offer, like a um program that you run three times a year or something, or looking for part-time work, or subcontracting yourself, in reality, it's something that's going to mean that you're not as stressed when you don't have the workplace mediation clients coming in. So when you're dealing with inquiries, you've got someone to call you or to send you an email and they say we're looking for a workplace mediator. It's the next challenging thing for beginning mediators to figure out is how do I do that? I think in short, you really just need to listen. It's really just the same skill set that we use as mediators. I just ask questions like, tell me a bit about the conflict, what's been going on? Okay, have there been particular incidents that have caused you to have concern? Has it been a gradual build-up? What's what's the sort of dynamics look like? Uh, how is it impacting on those two people that are involved? How has it affected their productivity, their ability to work with others? Has there been an impact on the other members of the team? What's all that been like? How are you feeling about all of that at this stage? How have you chosen to intervene? What have you done? Um, what's different how you would have expected? What's led to you calling me? What are you worried about if the conflict is left unmanaged, if if you don't hire me to come in and do the mediation? Like I'm getting them to talk, and all I'm really doing is listening. But as I get them to articulate the problems and then I reflect it back to them, you notice like the shoulders drop a little bit, and they're kind of saying, like, they're not going to say how much do you cost, they're going to say, when can we get you? kind of thing is the next question. I prefer to just give a price or at least a range in terms of price over the phone. So if they say how much is your mediation, like is the first question, I might say, look, it's between six and three thousand dollars, depending on what's needed, how much time and what the appointment structure ends up looking like. So I give them kind of a range. It's between this and this. Then if I send them the quote that it's three thousand, I could be there Thursday or Friday next week. Just let me know if you'd like to organize, uh, book that in as well as organize some time to discuss it, maybe in preparation. So I'm kind of saying it's six to three thousand dollars, depending on what's going on. And then when I send them the quote for three, there's this anchoring effect. So the three thousand dollars like I've given them the best possible deal that I could. I would prefer that as well than having people sit there and waste your time and they're hoping you'll do it for free, or they've only got a couple of hundred bucks or something like that. If you want to send them a quote, I would just do it in a very simple kind of way initially, like just a one-pager. You can just Google like one page quote, one page service proposal for clients. This is what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna come and meet with the parties, I'll do the mediation, I'll give you a typed agreement. This is how much it's gonna cost, this is the schedule, these are any other unknown factors or other options that you've got, like further follow-up sessions or something else. And that's kind of that. Like, this is how much it's gonna cost, this is what I'm gonna do. A lot of those initial clients, especially for mediation, won't end up going anywhere. So you should prepare for that. I reckon almost up to half of them don't end up going anywhere. Even if they like you, you do a really good job of talking to them, they've got the budget. I don't know, one staff member might quit, or one of them refuses to do the mediation, or you know one of them because it's your brother-in-law or something. So some of them are just not going to go ahead. It's it's just it is what it is. You might like to consider, though, some kind of a simple service to offer these people that don't engage you for mediation. For example, I would say I do have a program that helps people who are dealing with workplace conflict. There's three structured coaching sessions. In the first week, we go through understanding conflict analysis and developing options. Week two is all about self-reflection, self-regulation, managing the impact of conflict on yourself. And then week three is about planning. We talk about practical steps to help shift the conversation forward and move things in a more positive direction. Something like that. So that's what it is, and it costs, I don't know, like 1,500 bucks or $2,000 or something like that. I think is probably a pretty good amount for that kind of thing, at least in terms of what I would charge. Or I could say, look, no worries. It doesn't sound like the mediation's going ahead at this stage. I don't know if it's something that you've considered, but a lot of organizations find it helpful to bring someone in to give the whole team some support in dealing with the conflict that's going on. So for me, I'd probably sell that. I would frame that as a workshop. You could frame it as a facilitated conversation or a therapeutic process. I mean, there's a million different ways that you can package all of these different elements. Um, you might have a service where you help them develop their policy or develop their process. A lot of people, if they've had a formal complaint for conflict, they might have money suddenly available. For that kind of thing. Like the CEO is pretty happy to approve those kind of things given the impact that this has had on our brand and reputation as a business. Or maybe there's some kind of an ongoing thing that you offer that doesn't just sell your time to one person. Like you could say, each month I've got a series of leadership seminars. We go through different topics. You can pay just per session, or there's a yearly account if you'd prefer that as well. Do you think that's something that either these people might find helpful? Or is there anyone else within the broader team that could benefit there? So that means you only have to log in like the first Friday of every month or something and do something, but people can pay to join it. So you're earning like potentially 15 times that money if you can get 15 participants after a year or two and you're getting a bit of momentum under your belt. If you've got time available earlier on because you don't have clients to see, this is where you can improve all of your processes. Develop resources for clients, set up all of the templates that you'll use for your intake forms. How are you going to structure your file management systems? What is the template that you're going to use for invoices? All of those kind of things. So don't see it necessarily as a massive problem that you've got time on your hands earlier on. You will need to do a lot of work, and it's like an investment here that will pay benefits longer term if things are very well organized. I'm not a case study in success about that. When I have time available, I still to this day go on YouTube and just procrastinate, but I'm gradually getting better. More long-term planning. I think the content marketing is really good. And it's not just good because it helps you bring in clients, it's good because it improves you. I've noticed that I'm a much better speaker because I sit here and record the podcast episodes every month. It's not something that I look forward to. Uh I think that I can do it, but on the day I don't want to. I just want to go and walk the dog. I just want to go and have another cup of coffee. And so there's all of these little barriers that can get in the way of me actually sitting down and pressing record. Even before this video, I was thinking, should I just wear a hoodie? I should probably go and get the shirt and suit that I was wearing for the last meeting that I had earlier today. But I'm thinking, oh, I just couldn't be bothered. I'd prefer to do something that's less than perfect if at least it means that it gets published. So I've sat down and done this recording week after week and month after month, even when I haven't wanted to. The benefit that that has brought me is that I'm a much more articulate speaker these days. That's great as a mediator because it means I can express myself more clearly. It also, I think, has helped to establish my legitimacy as a mediator because people see me giving a presentation at a conference or something else. So if you're writing a newsletter or developing resources, or maybe you have a podcast where you interview people going through workplace conflict, or you might have a conflict uh podcast where you interview workplace mediators and you have a different person come on each month or something similar, there's going to be like additional benefits to that. You'll become a better interviewer, you'll get better at the technology, you'll learn to overcome the imposter syndrome kind of stuff quicker. You'll learn to avoid the procrastination that comes from perfectionism. So they're all incredibly helpful skills to have, as well as bringing in clients. Just paying for advertising, just paying to be in a printed newsletter, just paying to be in a banner ad or something on LinkedIn. It might bring in money, but it's not going to improve you, if that makes sense. I've tried to focus, especially in the past few years, on more untied income. Like I don't want to be selling my time. And when I talk to other mediators about that same challenge, they all agree we all know that feast and famine experience, and we all want to still have more security generating money, even if we're not able to work as consistently as we are right now. Having said all of that, I think it's been my focus on the untied income that has meant that I've never stopped feeling like I'm on the cusp of success. Like my podcast is going really well. I love the direction, it's having some success in terms of the audience, but I still feel terrible about the lack of quality in it, or when I make a mistake or say something that later on I regret. So I feel like the next episode is going to be the one that I manage to get it all together. I tell my wife, next year my income is going to be more stable because of these different reasons. Even me thinking like it's it's coming, it's coming, it's coming, success is coming. Like I want to hold on to that positive mindset in a way I think it almost manifests it because it makes us work hard, stay committed to the goals through the challenging times. It also means, though, that you never reach that stage of feeling like it's done, it's enough. Even very, very successful mediators that I've talked to, they still don't necessarily see their success as massive accomplishments. It's like, yeah, but look at this other guy up the road. He's got a book, he's got he's an international speaker, he's whatever, driving this kind of a new Audi, something like that. So I've never felt like success was yet achieved, at least after the first 10 years. But a lot of people say we tend to overestimate how much we can achieve in one year, but we underestimate how much we can achieve in 10 years. And for me, if I think about the next 10 years, I do feel like I'm at the cusp. There's going to be more success coming. But it's it's a double-edged sword that you don't feel like it's enough. It is motivation for working, and that's good, I suppose. But you should just be prepared that if you imagine you're just going to be sitting back on the weekend, kicking back with cocktails next to the pool or something, yeah, there might be some crash on your website that needs to be dealt with that is unfortunately going to pop a little bit of that overly romanticized bubble fantasy that you're living in. You're going to have different priorities over that time, though. If we think about 10 years, like you're a very different person at 30 compared to 40. So that does mean that your priorities are going to shift and you should be prepared for that as well. Although we underestimate the amount of progress we can make in 10 years, we might also be underestimating the amount that we're going to change in that 10 years and assuming that it's going to matter as much as it does right now. If you, just as a final thing to mention, if you do go down the road of running your own business as a mediator, one of the things that you might consider is clinical support. That's sometimes called clinical supervision. I hate that word clinical. I loathe the pretend medicalization of mediation as well as everything else. I really dislike that approach to diagnostic criteria, etc. Like I don't like it at all. I don't think about mediation as a clinical thing, even slightly, to be honest. But we call it clinical supervision. So that's when you meet with someone who's often a more experienced mediator, and you'll talk about the cases that you've been dealing with recently. Now, there's a massive variety of practice in terms of how this clinical supervision is done. There's many organizations that try to define it and set up different standards, but to be honest, it's still just like the Wild West, depending on which organization you work in and what their clinical director decides is important. That's going to be what clinical supervision is. And the other people have obviously all got it wrong. I'm thinking, aha, like having worked in quite a few of these different organizations, I have to say I'm a little bit more skeptical about these definitions that people hold on to so strongly. They clutch to their chests like a wounded bird. You better not tell me that what I believe is wrong. But we do need support. So having somebody who's more experienced, who's outside of the situation to talk to is very helpful. It gives you the opportunity to get things off your chest, to process it, to metabolize and kind of integrate the experiences that you've been through at a personal level. It's helpful to talk through in terms of the case. What are the options? How did you deal with it? Was that the right way to go in that situation? Like maybe there was an argument in the mediation that you did yesterday. And so you might be talking it through with your supervisor and they would say, How did you respond? And you might say, Well, I stood up and I said that we're going to stop, or I did this and this. I asked them to go to separate rooms or something. And the supervisor might say, How did you do it? What were the words that you said? And all of a sudden we become aware of the way that we've influenced the dynamic and the conflict that was going on. Or we might realize that we've rushed in to make a decision. I thought that because they said this, that I needed to stop, and so I stopped. Whereas upon reflection, maybe I could have continued the mediation after they had a bit of a break or something. Should we do this? Should I offer them this? Should I agree to this request? All of those kind of challenging situations are very helpful to talk through in mediation in supervision just to get a second person's perspective on it. So, in terms of the impact of the work on you, in terms of the case itself, and then in terms of the broad themes of the practice that you're doing, supervision is also helpful. Maybe you are really making assumptions about this particular kind of client because they use a word like family violence, that you make assumptions that this is there for what it must mean, and your supervisor might say, actually, you know, there's this new research emerging that there's these other factors that are often connected to that. Or I wonder what's caused you to take that more diagnostic approach. That doesn't seem like the the way that you used to work, at least earlier on a few years ago, what's going on there? So you can become aware of drift, you can become aware of blind spots, you can become aware of bad habits that you might be in. So those more long-term benefits and observation of trends, I think, is very helpful too. I like this idea of sell the sawdust. One of the books that I really like, it's called Unwork by the guys that had the business Basecamp. I think it's 37 Signals. But they talk about if you're making furniture like wooden desks, sell the sawdust. Sell the offcuts of the timber work that you're doing. People can use it as fertilizers or use it as fill for feedlots for animals to poo in or something like that. So there might be some way of using the offcuts of the work that you're doing. The same is true in mediation. Early on, when you're figuring out what's an intake form, well, this could be a really good resource for people, like to consider what questions should we ask during intake? So you can go back to your training materials, use it as a little bit of a project to work on, and put together a comprehensive guide to assessing whether or not mediation is suitable. So you needed to develop the form in itself, but you can find a way to sort of benefit from the other things that you've learned through that process of putting your own form together. You could, if you do a podcast, for example, you could have an episode talking about mediation intake. You don't necessarily need to be the expert. You could interview three experienced mediators, ask them if they'd be willing to just chat with you for 15 minutes about how they do their intakes, what kind of questions that they ask. Has anything changed in their practice, considering how they do it these days versus the early days of their career? People like that. They don't mind talking to you about how good they are. Um, you could give them the opportunity as well of shouting out their business. And if you've invited on these experienced mediators, they're probably also going to pump it out on their social media as well. Put a post on LinkedIn or something promoting your new podcast for them. So it's this lovely reciprocal benefit that you needed to develop your own intake skills. You've found this opportunity to create a win-win where you can give the guests that come on your podcast the opportunity to promote their services, but you can also get your head around either the issue itself or help market yourself to your own potential clients. So, where are those opportunities to sell the sawdust? I suppose that's the last thing that I wanted to touch on. I don't know though. I'm struck by the fact that all of this is very much just my perspective, and there's probably a million different ways that people could be successful running a business as a workplace mediator. If you've got a different mediation focus, like maybe you're focused on family mediation or it's something specific, some particular legislative area, the workers' compensation thing, construction sector, I'd love to hear from you. Maybe there are different approaches that worked for you in building your business than I'm aware of. And I do really hope that I haven't sent anybody down the wrong track here on a bum steer. I'd love to hear from you though. If it's been helpful, please consider pressing like. Obviously, that's incredibly helpful for little podcasts like this with the algorithm. If you'd like more resources for dealing with conflict, please consider pressing subscribe. But otherwise, thank you very much for listening. Very much appreciate it. And I'll hopefully see you again in a future episode of the Conflict Skills Podcast, where we can probably expect me to be doing something completely different, just like usual. Bye for now.