Dante Weston is a Senior Founding Partner at Donaldson & Weston. He began his professional career as a litigator and civil trial attorney in 2006, after obtaining an undergraduate degree in Psychology with a focus in Business Engineering from Brown University and then ultimately a Juris Doctorate from Stetson University College of Law. At that time, he joined one of the leading law firms, where he not only practiced law but participated in business development, human resources, and data analytics for six years.
Dante opened up his own law firm in April 2012 and what started as a small firm with one part-time employee grew to a 25-person internal team while experiencing 10x growth over nine years and 5x growth from 2019 to 2021 after fine-tuning the company’s digital growth strategies.
Donaldson & Weston has offices across South Florida, located in Stuart, Palm Beach, and Lake Mary. They have served over 10,000 clients and recovered over $100 million.
Please tell us a little bit about your company.
Donaldson & Weston is a personal injury law firm in South Florida that represents clients involving car accidents, bicycle accidents, premises liability, product liability, slip and fall, dog bites, nursing home negligence, medical malpractice, wrongful death, and other legal matters.
Tell us a little bit about your background and how you started your company.
I grew up here in Florida and graduated high school here in Palm Beach County, Florida. I graduated from Brown, an Ivy League school, with a degree in psychology and a focus in theatre. I went to law school at Stetson University College of Law where I was one of the top people on the trial team there.
When I finished there, I worked for another law firm doing civil trial work, representing folks that were injured or anything to do with the legal and medical field.
When I was a teenager, I suffered a catastrophic lower leg injury, had three surgeries, and was supposed to walk with braces or crutches for the rest of my life. I ended up finding a way to deal with a year of physical therapy, treatments, surgeries, braces, and prosthetics and feeling 100% to continue to play sports and everything. That’s why I always had an interest in helping those that were injured or suffering in some way, medically.
What would you say are the top 3 skills needed to be a successful entrepreneur, and why?
Having a diversification of marketing strategies, while having multiple channels of business coming in is important. I would also say having a dialed-in intake process and delegating not just the work, but also the outcome or metric to particular people on their teams. If your income takes such a hit, you may have to let staff go and nobody wants to do that. A lot of times, lawyers practicing law will say, “If my phone just rang more, everything would be fine.” I always ask the question, “How are you set up to do your intake of these clients? Is that scalable commensurate with the amount that you want your phone to ring?”
What are your plans for the future, how do you plan to grow this company?
Currently, we’re expanding to the Orlando area and just rented an office in the Lake Mary area. We’re going to try and duplicate what we’ve done in our two offices in Martin and Palm Beach County in Central Florida. With this first project, I’m more heavily involved with the team. If things go well, we look forward to opening more offices in the state of Florida and possibly beyond. The team will be able to do that on their own and we’re excited to see them grow.
How do you separate yourself from your competitors?
Law firms typically focus almost exclusively on the individual case and I believe this leads to an optimistically good result for the client. What we found is that by building procedures, protocols, and systems, we’re able to not just perform at a high level from the best lawyer in the firm, all the way down to the person that’s just starting in our company. We have extensive onboarding and training for all of our teammates and we hold them to very high standards. Our clients know that whether they’re talking to the best lawyer in the firm or an entry-level staff member, their interests are being prioritized and we’re living up to our core value of treating every client the way we want to be treated.
What were the top three mistakes you made starting your business, and what did you learn from them?
- Number one is relying on myself too much, not empowering people, or delegating and elevating. I’ve learned through a couple of decades of experience that five brains are always smarter than one.
- The other thing I’ve learned and made mistakes on going by feelings to know the status of our company or how well it is doing. We didn’t know until we started tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) and we do that in both companies weekly.
- The third thing I’ve learned is limiting the amount of information that we’re looking at to only a few numbers that are going to say how the company’s doing this week, this month, and this quarter, along with where we will be next year.
Tell us a little bit about your marketing process, what has been the most successful form of marketing for you?
Having multiple channels that add more diversity, stability, and lead to growth. Approaching one channel at a time and trying to find a proven process is also key. Sometimes people try to do too much, too many, and too fast. Rather than trying 10 different channels all at once, it’s best to work on one or two at a time, try to come up with a proven process for each, and move on to expand others.
What is the one thing you wish you knew before starting your business?
Empowering and working with others go a long way. Meaning, not making your staff just feel good about being in charge, but giving them power, setting up accountability, and giving them the ability to grow. As well, surrounding yourself with people that are smarter than you on their particular topic is important. I am a big proponent of being objective about my strengths and weaknesses and making sure I leverage those to build a team that helps limit weaknesses. I believe that helps your teammates rise to the occasion and helps to bolster and strengthen areas where you need a little help.
Can you recommend one book, one podcast, and one online course for entrepreneurs and authors?
- I would recommend Rocket Fuel: The One Essential Combination That Will Get You More of What You Want from Your Business by Gino Wickman and Mark C. Winters.
- I’d also recommend podcasts involving the psychology of marketing. I think it’s important to have a background in psychology when dealing with coworkers, clients, or customers.
- An online course I’d recommend is an EOS Entrepreneurial Operating System Integrator and onboarding the US system into their business.
If you only had 1000 dollars to start a new business, knowing everything you know now, how would you spend it?
I would try to find items that can be purchased and people don’t want anymore. Typically, these would be items that people own and are not using or have moved on from. I’d try to fix them up, sell them for profit, and eventually be able to expand a business. It would be a difficult place to start, but I’d also try to come up with my website for E-commerce and learn how to build websites myself.
What is your favorite quote?
“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”
– Winston Churchill
What’s your best piece of advice for aspiring and new entrepreneurs?
Having the competence to surround yourself with strong people and empowering them from the beginning. Also, focusing on the numbers from the beginning versus feeling. This includes key performance indicators and having a regular meeting cadence to discuss issues. I would also say solving problems, instead of putting band-aids on them. The problem can arise again with another client or another staff member. Every time there is an issue, always ask what can be done to make sure the problem never comes up again.
How can we get in touch with you?
We’re on all social media channels and have our website, dwinjurylaw.com. We also post regularly on Facebook and Google News with educational information to help guide people through the path of taking a bad situation and trying to make it better.
