Dante Weston

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.

Where did the idea for your career come from?

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 does your typical day look like and how do you make it productive?

The number one way to make the day productive is by time blocking, having everything scheduled out, and pushing yourself to fill in open times with areas of growth. Sometimes I do ask requests for contemporaneous information if something’s happening, but that’s just typically because we want to know at the moment. For the most part, I have my entire weeks scheduled out for the next year or even longer and I draw a hard boundary with sticking to that unless the request for a meeting is an absolute emergency. This allows our team to know what the meetings are about and when they’re coming. It also allows them to have a regular itinerary to look at the same numbers every week or month, depending on the meeting cadence. Lastly, it allows for more time to set additional meetings, where we can focus on growth strategies, vetting new vendors, or trying to build new relationships with other companies.

How do you bring ideas to life?

Anytime we have an idea, we approach it in the Socratic method which is a fancy way of saying to think like a lawyer. Lawyers think not only of what would make the idea a win but also of what could go wrong with the idea. I call it beating up your ideas or challenging your ideas. Where it’s easy to fall in love with an idea in your mind, it’s harder to say, “What could go wrong with this or how will it fail?”

Also, research, research, research. Ask yourself, “Is this solving a problem that you have? Is it feasible? Is it even possible to do? Does it work into resource allocation? Every company has finite resources, does it fit within the budget or availability of the team to handle? Is the period that it would require to be done even possible?” We ask ourselves those questions and challenge our ideas to make sure they’re a good strategy. The idea will typically pass as a good one with few problems that can be managed and ends with a path for success as opposed to surprises where the idea wasn’t challenged strongly enough.

What’s one trend that excites you?

Through my 15 years of experience, practicing exclusively in personal injury law, individual rights have been getting reduced. The trend is not usually on the individual, consumer, or citizen side. Rather, trends tend to go more in the favor of insurance companies and large businesses. It does excite me that we’ve been able to continue to get amazing results for our clients, despite those trends. If anything, the results that we’re getting in 2022 are even better than the results we were getting in 2012.

What is one habit of yours that makes you more productive as an entrepreneur?

Time blocking, limiting the scope of work, and setting hard boundaries. If something comes up, you need to ask yourself, “Is this something that can be handled three days from now, or is this something that needs to be handled right this minute?” The reason for success is due to work ethic, but sometimes people confuse working hard with working smart. Working hard means taking everything on at the moment. Working smart is realizing you not only need to get yourself and your business through this week, this month this year, but you’re in it for the long haul. Having those boundaries and asking yourself those questions of whether or not it needs to be handled right that minute is important.

What advice would you give your younger self?

Hiring an HR manager, looking at weekly KPIs, delegating and elevating, empowering your team, and time blocking.

Tell us something that’s true that almost nobody agrees with you on.

The assumption of someone good at something, always being good at managing others doing that task. I feel that management is a completely different skill than whatever the task is. Therefore, managing people doing that task is a different skill than doing the task yourself. Time and time again, I’ve seen people who are good at doing but can’t necessarily manage and require a heavy learning curve to step in as successful managers. It’s hard to swallow because you see success in the task from the person. Unfortunately, management is a different skill set.

As an entrepreneur, what is the one thing you do over and over and recommend everyone else do?

Staying positive and constantly trying to build bridges as opposed to tearing them down. What I found is that there will almost always be success if we try. I believe when people see a chasm, feel like it’s there’s nothing to do, and give up, that’s where they go wrong. As hard as it is sometimes, I always try to stay positive because any problem we’re dealing with is an opportunity for improvement and progress.

What is one strategy that has helped you grow your business?

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 one failure you had as an entrepreneur, and how did you overcome it?

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.

What is one business idea that you’re willing to give away to our readers?

A lot of times people will look at running or growing a business and conflate that with what the business does. I’ve always said that I wanted to start a business that installed and maintained septic tanks because it was something that no one else wanted to do. That would mean the opportunity to develop a business in a line of work with less competition and more room for growth. I’ve always had the mentality that I want to go into business where people aren’t. That doesn’t mean I’m going to invent something but if there’s something that fewer people want to do (in your town, community, or state), it’s a great opportunity.

What is the best $100 you recently spent? What and why?

I bought a fancy notepad and pen to carry around everywhere and take notes.

What is one piece of software or a web service that helps you be productive?

Software-wise, anything that is going to improve the quality score of the company’s website online. This could be easier ways to post blogs and efficient ways to get reviews, whether on Amazon or Google from the customers. Also, providing free products to influencers who will post about the company. Having that digital presence online and letting your client see you as many times as possible is not only important now, but will continue to grow in the future. Any software that assists in that is worth its weight in gold.

What is the one book that you recommend our community should read and why?

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

What is your favorite quote?

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” – Winston Churchill

Key Learnings:

• The number one way to make the day productive is by time blocking, having everything scheduled out, and pushing yourself to fill in open times with areas of growth.
• Anytime we have an idea, we approach it in the Socratic method which is a fancy way of saying to think like a lawyer.
• The reason for success is due to work ethic, but sometimes people confuse working hard with working smart.
• Always try to stay positive because any problem we’re dealing with is an opportunity for improvement and progress.