00:00 - Sylvia (Host)
I think LinkedIn is just so underrated. From when professionals look at it, they just think it's a way to post and maybe connect with a few people. But that's part of what we do we educate and we help our clients understand how to leverage LinkedIn to get new business, to build brand awareness, to build those deeper relationships, relationships. I'm Sylvie Garibaldi, founder and CEO of a well-established marketing, training and done-for-you services company tailored specifically for the modern legal and financial professional worldwide. While it's taken some trial and error to figure out which methods get the best results for professionals who are looking to grow their practices Fast forward to today, my team and I have nailed down and perfected a process that has helped so many of our clients consistently achieve outstanding results and create a legacy for their practices. I created the Serve First, sell Later Marketing Podcast to give you simple, actionable, non-salesy and results-driven marketing to grow your legal or financial practice, like so many of our clients have. If you're a lawyer, mediator, financial or divorce professional who is looking to become highly visible and wants to create a practice that makes an impact, then you're in the right place. Let's dive in. Hello everyone, and welcome back to episode 29 of the Serve First, sell Later marketing podcast and in this episode I'm really honored to have two very special guests who will be sharing their experiences in growing their professional practices, and we are going to be going deep. So our guests are powerhouse experts in the mediation space Layla Balacane and Jennifer Tarando.
01:51
Layla is a distinguished mediator who specializes in divorce and family matters and is dedicated to promoting empathy and understanding and ensuring that every child can grow up in a safe, happy and loving environment. And ensuring that every child can grow up in a safe, happy and loving environment. She is a member of the Board of Directors and Chair of the Membership at the Southern California Mediation Association and she significantly influences the field of mediation and, of course, has won numerous prestigious awards in the mediation industry. And if that's not enough, layla also collaborates with leading experts as part of the Academy of Professional Family Mediators and also mentors other mediators and empowers families at Edmund D Edelman's Children's Court. Jennifer is a registered nurse, attorney and seasoned mediator. She has extensive mediation training, including through the Los Angeles County Bar Association, the Strauss Institute and the Southern California Mediation Association, as well as the early dispute resolution training through the American Arbitration Association, in mediating cases involving medical and health law issues, and Jennifer is a panel member of the Los Angeles Superior Court Mediation Referral Panel, the Mediation Center of Los Angeles and the American Health Law Dispute Resolution Center. She also volunteers for mediation services through the Los Angeles Superior Court and the Center for Conflict Resolution. In addition to all of this, she is the immediate past president of the Southern California Mediation Association and she really has demonstrated exceptional leadership and influence in this field.
03:40
Welcome, layla and Jennifer. So excited to have you both on the show today, and I'm really excited because I believe that you both bring a very unique perspective to business development and marketing and to the space of mediation and as thought leaders, I really wanted to bring you on the show to share your knowledge with our listeners so that they'll walk away from this episode with inspiration of what's possible for their practices. I thought where we could start off is maybe you can share a little bit about your background and how you first got started in your respective fields, because they're both, I think, quite unique.
04:18 - Jennifer (Guest)
Amazing, jennifer, I'll jump in. Thanks, sylvia, for having us Very excited to be a part of your podcast. I have a sort of varied career path. I started out as a registered nurse, pediatric nurse, and then I went on to law school. I always knew that I would work in healthcare and medical legal matters, and so I did that for many, many years on both sides, representing both providers as well as individual plaintiffs.
04:47
And then I was representing physicians in contract negotiations and I saw this little flyer for mediation training and I thought wouldn't that be interesting to improve my negotiation? I had always gone to mediation just as a party took the course and I was hooked. It's all the things that I've always really loved is, you know, is, instead of fighting, taking problems and negotiating them and getting solutions for everyone, it has a bit of, you know, psychology, which is always fascinating to me. And so then I sort of began taking a lot of mediation trainings and went on to take the well-known meeting, the litigated case at Pepperdine and, you know, multiple other trainings, got involved with Southern California Mediation Association and I mediate various types of cases, but my main focus is our cases with healthcare and medical legal issues.
05:39 - Sylvia (Host)
Fascinating, very interesting. I'm sure you have lots of interesting stories to share in that regard.
05:45 - Leyla (Guest)
Again, thank you so much for having us, sylvia, on your podcast. Actually, my answer goes beyond why I became a mediator. It delved into how my personal background has deeply influenced my reason for choosing to be a mediator. I was born during the Iran and Iraq war and I experienced literally bombs being dropped just a block away from our house, and I lived in a country that also didn't accept my parents' religious belief. So you can imagine, at a very young age I constantly had to live in uncertainty and fear, and my mom tried very hard to move six kids to US for a better life and, believe me, we all faced crazy challenges to finally come here. So culture is a huge part of my survival. From the beginning of time, I had to negotiate my survival. I had to negotiate my existence because of the harshness of climate and because of the circumstances, and then coming here as an immigrant was a tough journey. We moved through two countries, living in one for a year each before we finally could get a visa to come to the US. So from a very young age I experienced a lot of conflict, of course, family disagreements and having five siblings and then having to deal with the rejection of my parents' religious belief and you know, from early on I was always a curious child. I wanted to understand why there is conflict. How can we be more tolerant and accepting of each other? How can people from different backgrounds live together peacefully? So this is why I decided to study negotiation, conflict resolution and peace building, and the master's program completely changed my life. I learned about mediation. I instantly fell in love with it, but I felt like if I was going to be a mediator and wanting to take on the responsibility of understanding that I'm given the honor of being an intimate part of other human beings' lives and interjecting myself into that, I think it's important to have certain guidelines for myself. I felt like I have a duty, before I start to examine and assess others, to examine and assess myself, and there are two general pieces. One is how do I feel about conflict? If I don't like it and it scares me too much and I start setting all kinds of rules for my clients because I want to keep myself away from conflict out of my own comfort and it's at their expense, I felt like that's a problem. Now, I don't mean that we have to like conflict, but I do mean that I have to come to terms of how I feel about it, and this helps me know where I might be getting if I'm getting on my own way.
08:48
And, of course, another reason for my passion in mediation came because I was the fifth child among six siblings. At times I played the role of mediator with my family and I always enjoyed it. So you know mediation is more than a career choice. It was more natural accumulation of the life lived in this diverse setting, and then I had to learn about human interaction and cultural differences, and each of these experiences prepared me to be a better mediator.
09:20
But in terms of my educational background, it's also quite unique in terms of how I came to learn about family law. I was trained under retired judges, many, many experienced mediators, family law attorneys and over time I have collected over 1,200 pages of notes from all my trainers and also because I was always hungry to learn, so I sought to understand anything that has to do with the family law. I learned from trust attorneys, financial advisors, real estate brokers, and learning from each of them. It was really profound in terms of helping me to help my client.
10:10
And then for 10 years I mediated with different dispute resolution programs. There's so many of them out there and I mediated everything from a lawful detainer, civil harassment, small claim courts, dependency court, and when I first graduated I just decided to contact a mediator in Pasadena and I said I'm going to come interview you and he said you know what? I am interested to give some work away, are you interested? And we negotiated a fee structure. So it's really through all these numerous experiences where I have built my practice and why I'm here, that's fantastic.
10:53 - Sylvia (Host)
I love hearing people's journeys and stories and how they got there, so thank you for sharing your story and being so forthcoming about that. What things that we talk a lot about in the marketing space. When marketing a mediation service or any kind of legal or financial practice, we tend to look at who is your niche or what is your ideal market, and so both of you come to the marketplace with very distinct offerings, and I'd love to hear more about what is your niche and what makes it different, because we talk about that a lot when we work with our clients and you know, we're big believers in ensuring that you have a niche, and now a niche can be whether it's a specialty in terms of the service or whether it's an ideal target market. I think our listeners would love to hear more about what that niche is and how you best serve them. So maybe, jennifer, we could start with you about your unique niche.
11:51 - Jennifer (Guest)
Sure, sure. And I think it's such an interesting question because I would say my niche is always a work in progress. I could not agree more that the niche is so important. And I'll say one thing that I had to learn and I am learning is you hear the term now micro-need, and you have to tighten your niche as much as possible to really develop a good client base.
12:14
And I started out with a pretty broad niche in terms of saying I would always say mediate all things medical, legal. But then you kind of start to think about almost everything can be medical, legal in the law. I mean there's so much there's personal injury, there's medical malpractice, there's all the healthcare law, all the physician reimbursement, all the nursing homes. I mean it's endless. It's been very helpful to me to have the nursing background and so I focused on that, because you know at least 50% of mediators, I would say, are lawyers. So to try to sell yourself as a lawyer mediator you're, you know you're still one of many fishes in the pond. And so I realized kind of early on that my selling point was the nursing and I know it always helped me as a lawyer, as a mediator. People reach out to me because of that, they're looking on mediation. Part of the trust building process is having people understand you, and so you know I can give an example of having a medical malpractice mediation where the physician defendant immediately jumped in explaining things to me because he felt the trust that I knew what he was talking about, that I had been there in the hospitals that I have and I understand how the charting works, how the orders work, how the patient care worked, and so he felt he could just jump in and it was true, I did understand it and that was part of the trust building process. So it's kind of like a long, circular answer, but in terms of developing a niche, I believe it's not so much maybe what your passion is or what you want to develop.
13:41
For me I was like I started realizing it's the nursing thing.
13:43
People will reach out to me on LinkedIn and say, oh, you're a nurse, you know we'd like to use you as a mediator, or so I found out that draws people more than mediator, mediation training, more than my legal background, and so I would focus on that and I'm sort of naturally now, as I'm saying, like you, kind of understand that the niche is forever, you know, changing and growing and the more I learn about learn about things is that it's focusing on the nursing and then I've started picking up more and more nursing home cases and so my niche may be going in that direction.
14:16
I still have a very varied practice and, to be honest, I do a lot of. I do personal injury, I do medical malpractice. I've picked up a lot of landlord tenant cases just because COVID and people's falling. They're not part of my niche but I've learned how to do them. But I would say you find out what really your niche should be your selling point and for me, closing, my long answer is that it really, you know. For me it's nursing and I'm continuing to develop my niche around that.
14:43 - Sylvia (Host)
I absolutely love that. That makes so much sense that that when you find that connection that you know draws the audience and the audience and it aligns with your passion, because you studied as a nurse and you were in the trenches as a nurse and so using that as a powerful tool to start to attract an audience that you know has a need for that, like nursing homes, for example, which I think is absolutely brilliant, that there is a need for mediation in the nursing home industry, and I think that you've tapped into something that's quite interesting. And you're absolutely right, it does change, so the niche will grow, it will develop, it may change over time, and I also think that sometimes the market tells us what the niche should be based on, the demands and the needs, and so to be able to adapt to that is so important, and it sounds like you're doing that. So congratulations, intriguing for sure. Thank you, leila. I'd love to hear more about your niche I know yours is quite interesting as well and how you started in that area.
15:51 - Leyla (Guest)
I know yours is quite interesting as well and how you started in that area. Well, I want to say that I really do agree with Jennifer, because of the niche does grow and change and I mean, look at, with AI coming out, it just is going to keep moving us to a different direction and, like you mentioned also with the market.
16:06
But you know, I think, with my passion for just, my deep commitment for mediation was one I always wanted to ensure that every child has a chance to grow up in a safe and happy home, and it was very clear from the beginning I wanted to work with family. Given everything that I went through, from my childhood to my experiences in life, I wanted to make sure that, in terms of marketing, it's important to focus on only one area. I think that was really important to me and I truly enjoy just focusing on what can I bring to the family. That's different and, like I shared, I really truly go above and beyond. I can give an example.
16:54
I had a client come in for it was a house they purchased after their divorce and I wanted to make sure that they're making the best decision for themselves. In terms of when you have to sell a house, there's going to be capital gain taxes and then there's going to be if somebody is going to put the title under their own name. They could be reassessed for taxes. So I wanted to make sure how do we get them not to have to pay these taxes? How can we protect them? So I talked to a forensic accountant colleague. I spoke with a real estate attorney colleague. So I try to really go above and beyond to make sure that, even though if it's not my job to do in my role as a mediator, but I want to make sure that they are well informed about the decisions they're making. And that just shows how much I have passion for this job in making sure that I use all my resources so my clients are well informed about the decisions I make in my practice.
18:00 - Sylvia (Host)
So would you say, leila, that your niche is like family law and divorce? Yes, yes, clarifying that, yeah.
18:07 - Leyla (Guest)
My niche would be divorce and professional family mediation, so anything that really falls under the family law umbrella. That's something that I do handle especially divorce, mediation or family law.
18:32 - Sylvia (Host)
Always putting the child first is a niche in itself, right, so that lends itself to so many different places that you could take your practice and different organizations and associations that you need to align yourself with when you have this niche. So it dictates where you're going to market yourself.
18:47 - Leyla (Guest)
Yes, and because I'm an advisor at Elderman Children Courthouse, it was very important. You know we're dealing with some of the toughest cases here dependency court cases and I wanted to make sure that when I train the mediators, that they have a complete, comprehensive parenting checklist so parents can avoid future conflict in terms of having come back to mediation.
19:15 - Sylvia (Host)
So we cover everything Fantastic, yeah, so so important. I always say the work that mediators do, that the legal community does, is so important and really can make a huge difference and an impact on people's lives. So I congratulate you both for the important work that you do. It's not easy work, but it's absolutely necessary to help the community and help families at large and people that are struggling and need your support. So what would you say are your best practices, or some of the best ways that you have experienced in growing your practice, and whether that's from a branding perspective, whether it's bringing in new clients? You know this podcast is all about marketing your professional practice and I know our listeners are hungry for that information. As two very experienced professionals with different niches, I would just love for us to talk about what are some of the best ways you have found to build your practices.
20:17 - Jennifer (Guest)
Sure, I'll jump in, I think from one of the things I always tell new mediators. I always say, like there's so many wonderful professional organizations for mediators and those are amazing, but it's really important to be sometimes the only mediator in the room and to put yourself in places where you're the only mediator. And so I follow that. Because I mediate only litigated cases. Many of the parties in the mediation are represented by attorneys, so that means I am 100% hired by attorneys and for that, with my legal background, I've been fortunate to lean on attorneys that I've known for years, just making sure that they know that I am mediating cases. I was able to join the Mediation Center of Los Angeles, which is a panel that the court refers cases to. So that's been helpful just in terms of not necessarily marketing, but finding out what opportunities are available and get cases through that and then meet attorneys through that who will also pass on my name or use me again. And another thing that I've done and I truly saw this as a need, you know, for people who've gone to law school. But law school can be very sort of, you know, book-based, I'll say, lacking some real-world skills, although since I've graduated law school many years ago. I know the law schools have improved this, but I will tell you there was exactly zero training on alternative dispute resolution and, for that matter, really very limited training even on trial litigation skills in law school and you do a lot of you know on the job learning, and so I saw that as an opportunity, because I can remember as a young attorney being you know, somebody calling me up, a partner the night before and saying, hey, I need you to cover this mediation tomorrow, and me really going to the mediation not really even knowing what I was doing, and it took me years to learn how to be an advocate in mediation versus you know, and then learning how to become a mediator. And so I created a course called A View from Both Rooms a mediator's perspective on getting a case settled. And that's the View from Both. Both rooms is I had been the attorney in the plaintiff's firm and I'd been the attorney in the defendant's firm, and so I kind of know strategies that both sides are using.
22:37
And now I'm working as a mediator and I just began offering that course to law firms to really train their newer lawyers, and it's been really well received. I can say what I think I did right with that course is I'm giving them something they need, something they use. So, whether or not they're going to hire me as a mediator, they're learning something and they can give that to their younger lawyer. So it's been something I've been brought in as like a lunchtime talk. It's a one hour talk, it's approved for continuing legal education in California and so I can do it as a breakfast talk, a lunchtime talk, and it's just been really valuable.
23:15
I truly believe it's one of those things where you're planting seeds and hopefully it will grow into future business and yeah, so I just think you really just you need to be out there. I think being involved in professional organizations is helpful. It's a daily thing. I'm sure you would agree with this, sylvia, like helpful, it's a daily thing. I'm sure you would agree with this, sylvia, that you can't start working and forget about your marketing. It's something you need to do every single day.
23:38 - Sylvia (Host)
Yeah, I love that and I want to unpack that a little bit more. Jennifer, so you talk about going to attorneys for cases or they would be referring to you. So I want to understand how did you build relationships with them? I know some of them were already known to you maybe perhaps friends and whatnot but I think that's important to unpack a little bit. How did you actually get their attention and what kind of conversations did you have to build that know like and trust factor? And the second question I think I have is with the courses that you delivered to these law firms, for example. I love that as a way of serving first and selling later, and that's the name of the podcast right Serve first, sell later. Marketing, educating your market first before actually delivering a service to them.
24:30 - Jennifer (Guest)
The first question is how do I build the relationships with attorneys? I mean, I lean heavily on the relationships I had and so I think everybody can do that. Whether you know relationships are with attorneys or I know a lot of the family law mediators lean on, you know, build relationships with therapists. So I know there's there's all different avenues. I would say, honestly, the two things that I use to build relationships with attorneys are or actually I'll say there's three things is the course, and that's what I created the course for, and that's really a way to put something out there. I'm not asking for anything. I truly believe it's. I love teaching and I enjoy going out and meeting people, but I just like I give them the course. I don't ask for anything, I don't make a pitch, I don't do anything. I thank them for their time and it creates that relationship. I've had people reach out thank me for the course. You know, send me a message. They really enjoyed it.
25:26
The next place is really LinkedIn. I just I post things on LinkedIn. I wish I was a better poster, but I have three children. There's only so much time in the day between the cases I'm mediating and the things I'm doing, and I have a million ideas of the things I want to post, but you know that there's also reality. But you know what just posting and being out there and getting to know people you know people are interested I try to be helpful. I truly believe it's important. There was a case last week that had to do with these click graph arbitration agreements.
25:58
When you go online and you're trying to get an app to work and so you're just saying agree, agree, nobody reads it and there was an arbitration agreement in there and usually the court upholds these and finally they denied the arbitration agreement because they knew exactly what was folded into all this other language. So I try to put something helpful out there. I think I appreciate when people write me helpful stuff rather than saying, hey, it's Jennifer, call me, hire me to do a mediation. I try to put something helpful out there. And then the third is really the old fashioned networking way. I was part of a bar association attorney networking group. It was a little bit awkward way, more of an introvert, but I, from the 50 or so people that were in there, I've had, you know, I would say there's like two relationships that have kept up and one of them is an incredibly strong referral relationship for me. And so I guess if we're saying planting seeds, saying you know all different types of vegetables in the garden and how different things grow and some don't, I love that.
26:58 - Sylvia (Host)
Yeah, you shared some really great ways to help people if they want to build a relationship with a particular target market, like in your case it was attorneys. What are some of the great ways to do that? I'd love to hear from you, layla, what are some of your best practices?
27:18 - Leyla (Guest)
You know. I love that you shared, jennifer, about building relationship, because I fully believe that is the number one key factor in making you become a successful mediator. I'm on the board of directors for both Southern California Mediation Association and Academy of Family Professional Mediators. These two organizations are incredibly helpful if anyone is interested in the field of mediation and, of course, in this role. I feel like an amazing opportunity to connect and network and through these two organizations we created this other committee, meaning we went and sought after all the mediation organizations around the world and we connected with them and then we helped showcase their training on social media. I love being on social media, jennifer knows it and we just wanted to strengthen our global mediation community.
28:13
So I decided, given that SCMA Southern California Nationals Association and so many of the people when I first started came out of school helped me shape my career today, I wanted to give back.
28:28
So what I decided to do when they asked me to be running the family professional developing group for family mediators and we also meet once a month I wanted to bring top season trainers, these experts from around the world and you won't believe some of them are in South Africa or Australia and they're willing to get up at 2 am or even France and come to our training.
28:56
Also, another thing I wanted to give back to SCMA and also APF and this organization is that I did a lot of webinars, teaching at different universities. Like Jennifer said, just giving back is very important and building on that relationship. Also, after the pandemic, I hired an SEO specialist and that really also did help with me getting more clients. That was also very helpful. But I think it's a combination of everything Building your practice in terms of connecting with people, just contacting people and relating, and that's such a great way. That's how we met you at APSM and you were so generous and came and spoke to our committee. This is again. This is how we end up working together and networking with each other.
29:56 - Sylvia (Host)
I think LinkedIn is just so underrated from when professionals look at it, they just think it's a way to post and maybe connect with a few people. But that's part of what we do. We educate and we help our clients understand how to leverage LinkedIn to get new business, to build brand awareness, to build those deeper relationships. We're a global company, we are all over the world and so for us we connect. Linkedin is one of our key tools to link with other professionals who want to build relationships with us may need our services, and I think that LinkedIn you're absolutely right is a powerhouse and is so under our services. And I think that LinkedIn you're absolutely right is a powerhouse and is so under leveraged, and I think that that's another great area that professionals can use to grow their practices.
30:41
But you've touched on a really important thing. I know both of you are very big givers to the community of professional associations. I know you've sat on these boards. You continue to sit on some of these boards. I'd love to hear a little bit more about those relationships and how you develop those further.
31:00 - Jennifer (Guest)
Sure Again, jennifer, I'll jump in. I am the immediate past president of the Southern California Mediation Association and that was really a journey and I can't recommend it enough. I got involved in the organization because I was just in the mode that I just wanted to learn everything about mediation and I made a really concerted effort to immediately join a committee and to start to do things in the organization. That just continued through the relationships that I made and I never looked at it as building my business, honestly, because I didn't even have time during that year to have those thoughts. But it really does. I would be shocked with people that would come up to me at an event and know me and I'm very much an introvert and so it was always shocking to me and people that would reach out to me with cases and I truly believe just you know, being the face, I was a huge believer and I did not love doing this, but I was a huge believer.
32:06
When I was SCMA, president Layla knows that I filmed a video every single month for the president's message that went out and it was like so funny, like I'll see someone, like I love your videos. I'm like, oh no, not the videos, but I got a reputation. I filmed one in my backyard once, so it's kind of funny. But just doing those things it really helps build my business, but there's also a deep satisfaction for just being a part of it, which you know pays in other ways than paid cases. So I can't recommend being involved enough to your listeners.
32:38 - Leyla (Guest)
I just want to say, jennifer, you're being very modest. She did such a beautiful job, I'm sure.
32:45 - Jennifer (Guest)
Thank you. Thank you, a lot of coffee.
32:48 - Sylvia (Host)
But seriously, it makes you step out of your comfort zone. Oh, yes. And then the connections that you make are tremendous, right, Because you're put in this place of thought leadership, as someone, as the leader of this organization, your credibility jumps up instantly and you know you're building deeper relationships with people and you're stepping outside of your comfort zone. So it's all a win-win. But you're absolutely right, there is a lot of work and effort that goes into sitting on boards, but what you get in return can be tremendous as well.
33:20 - Leyla (Guest)
If I can jump in, sylvia, it really has been an incredibly rewarding journey. I mean, look, I got to meet Jennifer because of this organization. When I came back from Northern California, I finished my study and then they came back to LA and I remember that I started contacting mediators in Los Angeles and that's how I learned about Southern California Mediation Association. But it's not just about building networking and getting training. It's also about connecting with people, which was the most important part of it.
33:59
Colleagues, I feel like they're my close friends now. I think it's such a rewarding journey for me to be part of this organization because there were so many people who believed in me and spent hours and hours training me, and this is why I wanted to give back to the organization by running these family law professional groups for family mediators and your name just kind of gets out there. Then they start contacting you. After SCMA was APFM, they wanted me to join them as well, and then now they're asking me to join the committee because you gain credibility and they see your work and your commitment.
34:44 - Sylvia (Host)
Fantastic. I love that. I guess there are different associations and groups that you have connected with. I understand that there are. So there's Southern California Mediation Association and there's also I believe you mentioned ARC as well yes, Mediation Association.
35:00 - Leyla (Guest)
And there's also I believe you mentioned ARC as well. Yes, so with ARC, I'd like to say a little something about them, because I just finished my master's program and this organization. They were so supportive. I was able to have a physical location in their office and there were a lot of retired judges, seasoned attorneys, and I was able to rent the office location. They were all very supportive and helping me with when I had questions regarding my cases and we're very lucky now to collaborate with them and they're offering us a few of their speakers to be part of our upcoming training, which we feel very fortunate to have them with us.
35:45 - Jennifer (Guest)
And, jennifer, if you want to add more to that, Sure, layla and I were talking about meeting people and through the mediation community, and we met through SBMA I don't know if we fully disclosed that and it's like kindred spirits in terms of both our passion for mediation and for being entrepreneurs, and I think we immediately started just always when we would get together we would be able to talk and talk and talk about, you know, all of our passion for mediation and growing practices, and we started to see a need to develop a mediation training and, as part of the Southern California Mediation Association both being past president and being on the board we know that they were frequently getting calls for people seeking mediation training. A lot of mediation trainings did not come back after COVID, and so Layla and I decided that we wanted to develop a mediation training and I'm going to have Layla talk about that. But I'll throw something kind of important out there.
36:43
And where ARC really ties into this is, I think, at the end of 2022, the California court system.
36:49
Every year that the court system puts out a report on their cases and at the end of 2022, I believe, that they had reported an all-time high backlog of a million cases in the California court system due to the lack of trials during the COVID period, and that's going to take years to undo. So you can go to any courthouse and the judge is going to be telling you one thing settle the case. Because they do not have the space, the juries, the resources to try out these cases, and so the need for mediators is higher than ever. With all of this, and ARC is a private mediation panel, but I will say one thing from the conversation that Layla and I have had with them is that they are committed to the community of mediation and, talking with them, they specifically referenced wanting to contribute to the development of the next generation of mediators. So I'm going to let Leila tell you about the training we have developed and the support we are receiving and collaborating with ARC.
37:52 - Sylvia (Host)
I love that. So first of all, congratulations on pulling this course together. I can't wait to hear more of the details and have our audience hear about it as well. But I think you touched on something really important. We talked about discovering the need in the market, and that's exactly what both of you have done here, which I think is absolutely brilliant. You've identified that there was a need in the market based on the backlog of cases from COVID, and now you've developed this training program that can help fill that gap in the marketplace. So absolutely, I'd love to hear more about the details of the program and I think we understand why you did it. It makes total sense.
38:32 - Leyla (Guest)
Definitely want to thank also Alternative Resolution Center on this podcast, what the ARC stands for. Alternative Resolution Center on this podcast, what the ARC stands for and also in the Resolution Center. So both Jennifer and I are very excited that we're studying our comprehensive 40-hour mediation training. It's a hybrid program and it's designed for those who work during the day and are seeking opportunities to grow and learn in after hours. We're going to start August 13 and we'll be meeting every Tuesday and Thursday for three weeks. We also included a special Saturday session. It's going to be August 17, from 9 am until 3 pm and it's all Pacific time. We will have a couple of in-person meetings on September 3rd and 5th. It's going to be in downtown Los Angeles and our comprehensive program covers everything from handling civil to divorce cases. We also have eight prominent guest speakers, of course, including one of them is you, celia, and we have you as one of the marketing experts, but we have another marketing expert joining us, and each of them already share their unique insight and proven strategies. We meet DERPA compliance, which is a requirement set forth by the Dispute Revolution Act, and we also want to share that. Our training is going to go beyond the traditional lectures. We want to enhance learning and engagement. Plus, we offer ongoing support after the training and we want to also invite the trainers around the world, as we get through this in the future, to have them join our training, which, again, that's how we're going to continue changing it by having different speakers join us.
40:27
Most people approach mediation, especially as it becomes more professionalized, that I'm the mediator and the professional. However, there is a vital aspect often overlooked when they enter a room as a mediator or as a therapist or as a lawyer does just as any human does when they enter a training room, we are entering someone else's space, and so what happens? We become part of the system, and that obligates us. So, in fact, if we're going to become part of the system, very first thing that we need to start doing is examining ourselves right. This is what we're teaching our participants what are my old biases?
41:12
Where did they come from? What are my fears about this? How would I handle it? How will I assess this? Because, to be helped, I have to be able to assess how I deal with conflict, and that is going to be the key in helping our participants in mediation, so they can help the parties in mediation, especially with very difficult issues when the parties are scared, and these are the type of questions that we want to bring to our audience at our training by asking them reflective questions.
41:48 - Sylvia (Host)
Yeah, I love that and I love the experience that both of you are bringing to the table to this mediation training. So it's called Mediation 40-Hour Training Mastery. What is the link if people want to learn more? The website is 40hourmediationtrainingcom. Fabulous, and we'll put that in the show notes too. So in terms of start date, it starts.
42:12 - Leyla (Guest)
August 13th and it meets every Tuesday and Thursday for three weeks 6 to 9 pm.
42:21 - Sylvia (Host)
Fantastic. Well, I'm super excited to be part of it. So thank you for inviting me to that, and I know, with the experience that both of you bring, I'm sure it's going to be an amazing success. So congratulations for that exciting business development initiative that you've pulled together. So, as we wrap up this session, is there anything else you'd like to?
42:41 - Jennifer (Guest)
add. I mean, I'll add that we've talked about so many things and I always think people can be stressed hearing how many different things there are, and I just think that consistency helps to choose one thing and to focus on it, and that you can do this helps to choose one thing and to focus on it, and that you can do this.
43:02 - Leyla (Guest)
We just want to say thank you for again inviting us and we look forward to seeing you at our training, sylvia.
43:08 - Sylvia (Host)
Yes, I'm looking forward to it Well. Thank you so much for imparting your wisdom and your knowledge. I am very confident our listeners are going to learn so much from this episode, and I encourage anyone who's out there and is interested in becoming a mediator or sharpening your skills to check out the program that Jennifer and Layla have pulled together. So I think that's a wrap for today. Thank you so much again and have yourself an amazing day.