Your client is a businessman who owns a restaurant. His partner and head chef is claiming that he is not receiving his fair share of the profits - he and your client have a difference of opinion about the ownership of revenues from a catering business run out of the restaurant premises by your client and a different chef. Your client is quite anxous to retain the restaurant, which will be vulnerable to failure if he loses the chef, so you have suggested taking the dispute to a mediator, and your client is all for it. However, the chef's attorney is balking because the chef "doesn't want to throw money down a dark hole" - in other words, he doesn't like the idea that mediation won't promise a resolution.
Explain to your client each of the various stages of mediation.