The Business Side Of Law With Davina Frederick

 

Being a lawyer is one thing; creating and elevating your law firm is another. To have a successful and growing firm in the legal world, you must first understand the business side of law. In this episode, Davina Frederick, the Founder and CEO of Wealthy Woman Lawyer, shares her story. She tells how she grew and market her law firm and how you, too, can scale your law firm to 7 figures with confidence. Davina discusses the business side of law and reveals her strategies for marketing your firm. She also touches on the dos and don’ts of leadership, client acquisition, entrepreneurship in the legal world, and more. Tune in now and learn how to create a profitable business model, maximize revenue, and get your law firm to the next level with confidence.

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The Business Side Of Law With Davina Frederick

Scale Your Law Firm To 7 Figures With Confidence

 I have a powerhouse with me. It’s Davina Frederick. Let me tell you about Davina. She is the Founder and CEO of Wealthy Woman Lawyer and host of the Wealthy Woman Lawyer Podcast, which is awesome. She’s a Florida-licensed attorney, business growth strategist, and coach. The Wealthy Woman Lawyer helps women law firm owners scale their law firm businesses to and through $1 million, so they can fully fund and still have time to enjoy the lifestyle of their dreams. That’s what I’m all about. She is also a two-time author of books on law firm management and marketing.

With over 30 years of experience in marketing professional services businesses, Davina has a wealth of knowledge on client acquisition, scaling law firms, and creating a wealth-generating law firm business with ease. Her clients have seen incredible results, including a 286% increase in revenue and gross revenue of almost $1 million compared to the year prior. Didn’t I say powerhouse? Thank you, Davina, for raising your hand to come on this show. I’m so thankful.

Thank you, Alicia, for the invitation. I’m excited to be here and have a conversation with you.

I’m excited, first of all, to find out more about how you transitioned your experiences to doing this because you didn’t start in law. You didn’t start in the legal field. Tell us about that because I’m sure it was not without its challenges.

I have a degree in Journalism. I thought I was going to be a foreign correspondent traveling the world and reporting from war zones, which is hilarious if you know me because I get motion sick if I walk too fast. II travel, but I’m not a good traveler. You don’t want to travel with me. That didn’t work out. I wound up getting married to my first husband and staying here in Orlando. I needed to get a job. I wanted to work at newspapers and the only newspaper in town was the Orlando Sentinel. I didn’t think they would hire me right out of journalism school when it was so competitive at the time.

I got a job as a technical writer for a professional engineering services company. It was a marketing position and it evolved more into a marketing position. I went down a marketing path and I wound up working for the largest law firm in Central Florida after that. For an agency that served clients all over the world, I was their lead copywriter and editor. I worked on a lot of projects. My career was in professional services marketing for the first fifteen years.

Long since I divorced my first husband, I married my second husband. I had an opportunity to go to law school. I’ve been working since I was sixteen years old. I had never had an opportunity to do something. I put myself through college before and he offered me an opportunity. He said, “Why don’t you go to law school?” It was something that I had wanted to do. I did that with the intention of starting my own business right out of law school because he was an entrepreneur. I loved his lifestyle and I wanted to do the same thing. I was very inspired by him.

That’s a powerful statement you said that he was an entrepreneur and you were inspired by that because most people when they come out of law school, they’re looking for a job as a lawyer. They’re not looking to start their law firm. There’s a whole different mindset around starting your own business than trying to work for the best law firm. Can you speak to mindset for a second?

It’s so interesting because I work now with women law firm owners, and I always ask them the question, “What made you decide to start your law firm?” There are a lot of different experiences. Some people say, “I didn’t feel I had a choice because there weren’t jobs available.” For me, it was the goal all along. Once you get bit by the entrepreneurial bug, you can’t go back again because the challenge is so amazing to experience. You’ll learn so much about yourself as an entrepreneur.

For him, what I was attracted to in terms of his lifestyle was his flexibility to come and go. Set his schedule. He was always on the go. He was doing things at odd hours. I loved that control of that time freedom and flexibility. I wanted that for myself, which is interesting. When I started my law firm, I did not get that because my law firm was a traditional law firm.

I started working in an office. I eventually brought in a partner and we hired people. We had a receptionist. We had a bunch of team members. We got into a larger office than my original office where I started. I had this work ethic that I had grown up with and that my parents had taught me. I always felt like I needed to be there first and I needed to be the last to leave to set an example for my employees. I was the firm administrator. I was the managing partner because it was originally my firm and I brought in my partner. I was also a little bit older than she was. I continued doing all running of the law firm. I was an unofficial therapist to my team if you want to talk about leadership mistakes and to my clients.

As a leader, you need to be the first to arrive and the last to leave. Click To Tweet

You’re jumping the gun. You’ve gone a whole different path.

I decided to play that scene. We’ll go back to that later. I very quickly burned out on that because it wasn’t what I was going for. At the time, there wasn’t such a thing as virtual firms as we see now. I left that law firm. In 2011, I started a virtual law firm before virtual was a big thing. Our virtual back then was not all these tools we have now. It was like an email, a telephone, and I had a home office.

Some people look down at a home office. They’re like, “A home office? You don’t have a real office?”

I had clients who are attorney colleagues. I had one attorney colleague who wanted me to rent office space in his office, which was very expensive. He said to me, “Your clients aren’t going to like that.” I’m like, “The reason you don’t think my clients are going to like it is you want me to rent space and offset your high rent costs.” That was my journey.

I have one other thing I wanted to ask about because you created a job for yourself. Modeling after what you saw and how you needed to work to be successful, you model that, instead of the lifestyle. That’s part of the mindset. People don’t understand that what we’ve learned as children, watching our parents or watching other people work is what we’re going to model, even though you saw your partner doing something completely different.

I created the traditional model of work where we have a business, we get there early, we leave late, and all of that.

We do all the stuff. We do all the things.

In addition to practicing law and being a lawyer, I was doing all of this. I had a litigation practice. It very quickly burned me out. I had also turned 40 when I started my firm. That was about the age I was. I always think if I had started this when I was in my early 30s or 20s, it probably would’ve been a different experience for me, but I was tired. Law school wore me out.

I don’t see how people did it, but I was always the person who read the whole chapter and the case notes. There were no shortcuts for me because I didn’t want to get caught unprepared. My perfectionism was coming through in all of that. Some things happened. They say, “If God whispers and if you don’t listen, He throws bricks.”

I’m not a very religious person, but the experience for me was that there were signs that this wasn’t going to work for me, but I needed big things to happen, and so big things did happen. I had some things in my personal life that happened, and it caused me to say, “I need to step back from this and rethink it.” That is what I did.

Fortunately, we owned a gym at the time. I went to work in the gym, helping run the gym. I also started taking better care of myself because that was one of the things. I gained a lot of weight. At night, I wanted to go home, drink a glass of wine, and stress eat. Stepping away and saying, “I need to reclaim my fitness and my health.” I did that, and then that’s when I said, “I’m going to start slower. I’m going to do this part-time virtual law firm and see where that takes me.”

Did you dissolve the partnership or did you sell that to your partner?

I sold it out to her. She had the business. She had to change the name, but she kept everything else and I walked away from it. We’re still good friends to this day and care about each other a lot, but part of it was, she was a lot younger than I was and she had a different vision of where she wanted to go with the business. I had started creating a practice area that was bread-and-butter money whereas it was easy money for us to make. However, I wanted that money coming in to pay bills while I learned how to do a different practice area that was more complicated.

She loved that work and wanted to do that, so she went on. She tells me, “I think I was your first mentee,” because she went on to create a multi-million-dollar law firm out of that beginning, us together. We were doing well. We were making a lot of money, but she took it to a very unique model. I’m very proud of her.

You took some time, reevaluated, and started this virtual law practice. Is that the time when you took the business skills and the marketing skills that you had, and then started saying, “I have all this other stuff back here that I could use?” I find that that’s one of the mistakes that some people make when they transition to owning their own business from a career in something else. They forget all the experiences and stuff that they had before.

You hit the nail on the head because that’s exactly what I did. I did it consciously and intentionally because even with a virtual firm, it wasn’t it. There was something still that I wanted. I sat down and started looking at my whole career and all the threads that ran through it that I liked and enjoyed. At the time, Wealthy Woman Lawyer was named something different, but I started out taking on projects to help people with other professional service businesses with marketing.

I was in the doing, so I had a lot of experience as a writer, web designer, etc. I started out helping people. They would come to me and say, “I want to do something on Facebook.” I started asking them, “Why are you doing this? What is your reason?” I found out very quickly that most of these business owners coming to me had no strategy. They were doing this because other people were doing it. I knew I had a lot of strategic thinking skills because I’m an attorney. I knew I had marketing strategy skills from my previous career, so I brought it all together. I also had been a business law attorney. Working as a lawyer, I had done quite a bit of business law.

That’s what I was going to ask you. What was your name?

I was one of those people. I started out doing door law, which is anything that comes through the door, I did. I had a wide variety of experiences as a result of that. I don’t recommend necessarily people do it, but I’m a Gemini, and I like a lot of variety. I like to learn new things. I’m a lifelong learner. I did divorce law and family law. I had a one-off adoption case here and there, but mostly very consumer-based. Estate planning, divorce family law, landlord-tenant, my bread-and-butter money was real estate, but it was in the foreclosure area, and then business law for small businesses.

Over time, I eventually went down to a lot in this estate planning area and business law. Family law went away from me. I started thinking about it and I got invited to a coaching conference. Have you ever been to one of these big coaching conferences where there’s a lot of loud music, flashy lights, telling tearful testimonials, and stuff like that?

I was intrigued by all of that. I took up one of the free coaching sessions, which is a sales conversation. I bought into this coaching program. It was a program where there were conferences you went to and stuff, and I only went to one. That particular coach did not work for me because I didn’t yet know what I wanted, but I’m forever grateful to her because it did lead me into the coaching world.

It was a cookie.

It opened my eyes to that opportunity and I had a lot of women business owners. I worked with some men too, but initially, it was professional service businesses who came to me and said, “How do you do it?” That is how I started teaching how to do it because I had done it and they saw that. The majority of my clients were women law firm owners because they were doing what I did at the beginning. They said, “I want to find an attorney coach. I don’t want any coach out there who works. I want somebody who’s a lawyer-lawyer.”

Someone that understands what they’re going through.

Eventually, I rebranded to Wealthy Woman Lawyer to make that stronger message and to identify clearly, “These are who I work with. These are my people.”

 

Since I opened the door to niching, I want you to share the value of a law firm niching, because I see this a lot. People are, “I can do this and this.” We see that in business as well. Specifically, around law firms, what is the value of staking your claim and saying, “I do this?”

I have two different points of view on it. One is that the law is too vast and detailed for you to know everything about every area of practice and you can get into trouble. This is why some of my initial cases I did not pursue others after it. I recognize that I would have to go all in or not. To be the best attorney you can be, you have to narrow your scope and say, “I’m going to go deep into something, instead of surface into many things.”

It’s like anything. If you want to become a scuba diver, a little bit of snorkeling every other weekend isn’t going to get you there. You have to get in and learn how to be a scuba diver. From that perspective, it’s important to develop a niche. You will stand out more in the market because you’ll be the go-to person to specialize in this thing. You’ll be the expert in this thing.

 

I have my cousin who’s one of the instrumental people in inspiring me to go to law school. He has been a lawyer now for 40-something years. He says, “I don’t do car wrecks. I don’t do divorces. I do criminal defense, and in particular, DWI.” That is what they call it where he lives. It’s DUI in Florida. He is well-known for this. Anybody who has a criminal that’d been charged with a criminal offense wants the guy. This is his specialty. He doesn’t get distracted by these other things. That’s very powerful branding.

The other thing that I want to say though is there is a caveat to that. I often work with my clients and I find that they need a little diversification in their practice areas because maybe they’re in an area that is a loss leader. Estate planning is an example of that. You might not get as much for estate planning, but if you tack on probate to that, then your estate planning and probate. Now, you’ve built a longer-term model. Your estate planning tends to be fast cash-in. Probate tends to be that deep and long case, but then there’s a bigger injury.

We see that a lot with personal injury. People say, “I want to be a personal injury lawyer.” They’re trying to compete with people with big pockets. As a personal injury lawyer, you need to have capital. Many people start a personal injury firm and they don’t have capital. Personal injury clients don’t pay unless you win, so the attorney’s fronting the cost. If you don’t have the capital to pay for the cost, you need cash flow.

You may need to add a practice area that is a cashflowing area while you’re waiting on these big contingency cases to settle. There are exceptions to the niching down rule, but I’m a big proponent of, “Do it your way. Whatever it is, float your boat. Don’t listen to the naysayers, try it and you’ll know if it works or not.” You can always change your mind.

As an owner of a business, you explained so many great things. I hope people were taking notes on your journey and how they’re looking at their journey. What made you start your podcast? You’re doing the coaching and you’re like, “I want to start a podcast.” That is how I did it.

In my particular case, I had a coach at the time that I started the podcast. He had a podcast. He said, “This is a great way for you to expand your network and meet people. It’s not so much about your audience. It is the people that you meet and invite on your show.” For me, it is always about the audience because I come from a journalism background.

I love to interview, share knowledge, and hear other people’s stories. My audience does too. They love the storytelling aspect. This part is like what you and I are discussing. They want to know how people got to where they are. That’s so interesting. Also, the opportunity to learn from other people’s experiences. It was for me selfishly because I enjoy the experience of interviewing people. It was a way for me to expand my network. Also, I wanted to provide free content for my clients that would be helpful for them if they weren’t ready to invest in coaching. This is another layer of support I provide.

On top of that then, the idea around podcasting is, you’re a thought leader and people hear you. It enhances your credibility. We came at it as a way to market and promote the business. It’s an offshoot of it, but I love the interview part. That’s why, according to Feedspot, we’re the number one podcast for women in law right now in the United States.

That’s the power of niching because you niche women in law.

I’m in my fourth year of this. It took a long time to build the audience. We’re still building. There’s still a long way to go. We’re no Joe Rogan, let’s put it that way. Nor do I want to be. For me, it has enhanced my life beyond its purpose of marketing my business. It’s enhanced my life because I’ve gotten to meet some interesting and fun people. I learn a lot from them. It also deepens my resources for my clients because then I can say, “Here’s who you need to call for this, that, or the other.”

It does because even with people who do some of the same things I do in the people space that I interview, I don’t see it as competition at all. As you said, your first coach wasn’t someone that you resonated with. There are some people that might not resonate with me in the way that I do team development or leadership development. I want to give more opportunities for them to hear from other people that they can connect with and say, “I want to work with that person because what she said is the issue we’re dealing with right now.”

It’s a great resource for us as podcast hosts as well because you may meet somebody and go, “I need somebody like you to help me with this thing.” People are lying to themselves if they think that they are good at everything in their business or great at everything in their business. If you’re sitting here saying to yourself, “Nobody can do it better than me,” and you’re not delegating enough, you’re lying to yourself because there are a lot of things that I’m not good at in my business. I want help. I want a team. I want other people around me to help.

People are lying to themselves if they think that they are good or great at everything in their business. Click To Tweet

We’re segueing perfectly into my next question, which is about scaling. One of the strategies to growing a million-dollar law firm is the ability to scale, but not scale in the way that you originally thought. You got to hire all these people, bring a partner on, and do more work. There’s a different way of scaling. Can you share with the audience what scale means to you and how a law firm can scale and give you more freedom to release the control that you feel like you need to have all the time?

I believe the key to scaling is building a team. One of the things I ask people from the beginning is, “Do you want a laptop lifestyle? Do you want a large business with your name on the door, you’re the partner, and you’ve got 20 lawyers working for you? What do you want?” That makes a big difference in the approach to scaling.

In online business, we may scale without employees, but we may have a lot of vendors, teams, and automation. We are seeing law firms where young women lawyers are using a lot of automation to help them scale their businesses. The key though is you still need a team and people, whether you’re outsourcing or whether you have a law firm that you’re trying to grow like a traditional model.

There are a lot of my clients who are very much traditional models. They say, “I want an office. I want everybody here. I want to be here.” They love being lawyers. They want to get bigger and have more lawyers work for them. Some of my clients go down that path. Others of my clients say, “I don’t want to have an office.” I have one client who does not have an office, but she has six lawyers who work for her and they’re all locally remote. Her paralegal team and her legal assistant are locally remote, so no office.

The first year we worked together, she was around $800,000 in gross annual revenue. That was the end of the first year when she hired me. At the end of our year working together, she was at $1.8. She added $1 million to her bottom line. In 2022, she was $2.2. Without a physical office space. I have another client who has a physical office space and has made over $1 million year after year working together. She loves having her office in a cute little downtown place. It’s all about helping people realize their own vision. It does take people, systems, and a change in your mindset. What got you here is not going to be a thing to get you to the next level.

It’s like what Marshall Goldsmith says, “What got you here won’t take you there.” Do you still practice law?

I am still a licensed attorney. My license is active. In fact, I am right now experiencing the pain of having to get my 33 hours of CLDs done before the end of May 2023. I don’t promote law practice. You’ve got the occasional friend or relative who wants something done. Right now, I look at it as being on hold. In 2015, I was heavily into this business and growing it. With diversification, I felt fooled in both directions and I felt like I either had to go all in or not. I said, I’m going to stop practicing law, asking for clients, and building a whole business out of it. I’m still a licensed attorney. I still have occasional projects that I do, but I’m all in on this Wealthy Woman Lawyer business.

Your story is so impactful in the journey that it took you to get here as a coach. This is Leading with Audacious Confidence. As a leader, you mentioned earlier that you were trying to micromanage everybody because that’s the way you thought leadership was. Was there a time that you felt like, “What am I doing? I need to pack this all in. This is a disaster,” before you stopped and changed your tactic?

I had a lot of anxiety about the day-to-day practice of law. I had anxiety attacks in law school. There’s this threat that persists for lawyers that if you make a mistake, it could cost you your bar license and therefore your livelihood. That always hung over me. I’ve been that conscientious. On report cards when I was little, “Davina is very conscientious.” I’m that person anyway, so I have to do everything perfectly.

Dot your I’s, cross your T’s.

It’s a career where there’s always that threat that if you make a mistake, you could cost your client’s livelihood or life, depending on what you practice. Also, you could lose your livelihood. You could get sued for malpractice. It’s drilled into us in law school and it ratcheted up my anxiety. When I was out practicing, there was always that fear of feeling like I couldn’t make a mistake.

Being a lawyer is a career where there's always the threat that if you make a mistake, depending on what you practice, you could cost your client's life or livelihood. Click To Tweet

Sad to say, there are lawyers in our profession who prey on that. When they see new lawyers who are building a business, they prey on it and poke at the fear. I remember I had a lawyer who was a piece of crap. I filed a petition and a divorce for somebody, and he sent a motion for sanctions for something. It was bogus, but it was to mess with my young mind.

For me, there was a lot of that. Part of my stepping away came as a result of that. There were a lot of things going on and it was causing such anxiety that I said, “I have to stop. I have to do what’s best for me.” That was hard because I wasn’t brought up that way. I was brought up head down, work hard, and keep pushing. I’m a Gen X-er, “We’re in it to win it.”

That was something that a lot of people looked at and judged. I had to accept that was going to be the case. It evolved for me throughout the whole thing. I love doing what I do now because I’m a natural encourager, as a Gemini. I’m able to work with people and be in a role where sometimes I have to say tough things and have tough conversations, but it’s not my everyday existence to be in conflict.

Is that something that you’ve noticed in your clients as well? When you see that, you can help them walk through that, too, because you’ve experienced that anxiety.

A lot of them who come to me come from a place of fear of making a mistake. They’re not growing their business because they’re afraid of making a mistake. Most of my clients don’t have the anxiety around being a lawyer that I had. The anxiety comes around growing their business. I have a lot more confidence in how to grow a business successfully than I did when I was starting as a lawyer.

I built confidence as a lawyer over time, but that was the seed. It was always that 10,000 hours of mastery, I think that was it. For my clients, the fear comes around in hiring people, leading people, and managing people. “How do I do this? How do I pay them? Is the money going to come?” All the elements of scaling a business are where their fear is coming at. This is what we do. We help them overcome those fears step by step. Instead of catastrophizing and taking it all the way out, we help bring that down a little bit so that they can function.

I have a question about the difference between having a law firm and having a business. Frame that so people understand that when owning a law firm, you also have to have a business mindset around it. It’s not just you’re on your own and you’re practicing law, you have to know there are other things that need to be addressed as a business owner. Can you speak about that a little bit? The differences and why it’s important.

In law school, we’re taught to think like a lawyer. We all talk about it. That’s what your law school training is for. It’s to teach you how to be able to make an argument for whatever side you’re on. You are working on those critical thinking skills. When we graduate from law school, if we go get a job and work as a lawyer, we get to think like a lawyer. That’s all we have to do. If you decide to then start a business, that requires a different type of thinking. You have to think like a lawyer when you’re dealing with your legal matters, but you need to also think like a CEO.

Law school trains you to be able to make arguments for whatever side you're on. You are working on those critical thinking skills. Click To Tweet

That’s what we talk about. We work on that transition, a lawyer from a law firm solo to CEO of a business. The way I describe it is, a lot of people say, “My business is my baby. It’s my one. It’s me. We’re connected. We’re interconnected. I am my business.” What I do is, help them separate. I say, “You’re here. This is you. This is your business. Even if your business has your name, it’s your business. You are the steward of that business, but the business has its own needs and interests, just like a baby has its own need or interest.”

In the legal field, if we’re getting divorced, we look at the best interest of the child. We have the best interest of the business standard that we have to operate at. We are the ones who are required to give that business what it needs if we want it to thrive. If clients make contracts and obligations with us, it is our job to make sure that the business continues to thrive because those contracts depend on it. The employees who are working for us depend on that business to thrive. Families depend on that business to thrive. It’s our responsibility to give that business what it needs, and that may be different from our personal needs, so it’s separating ourselves.

Most people who start as lawyers say, “I’m a lawyer. I’m going to open a practice.” We’re thinking we’re going to be a lawyer, which we have to be the lawyer, to begin with. You don’t always have to stay the lawyer. The lawyer is separate from the CEO. You have to divide that out in your mind, that the business is not me.

It holds true for every professional services operation, whether you’re a doctor or an accountant. If you’re starting your own business, this advice holds true for anything. If I was a professional makeup artist and hairstylist on-site, so virtual that I went on-site, I didn’t have a brick and mortar. It was the same thing. I was building it as a business and I saw all these other artists out there doing these one-offs. I had contracts, scheduling, and all the stuff.

I call it freelancing. They were freelance makers. People work as freelance lawyers. You can work as a freelance lawyer if that’s what you want to do in order to build the business.

Nothing’s wrong with that.

It also helps in terms of marketing. Even though I’m a Gemini, I’m an introvert. I have to put myself out there. I’m the face of this business right now. I have to put myself out and be visible. I don’t want to. As far as my personality, I’d rather be sitting behind the scenes, but I know what the business needs for me to be able to impact the lives of thousands of women business owners. That is my mission. I have to do that because that’s what the business needs to do, which is to create impact and profitability. That also helps if you could separate out, “It’s not me. It’s what the business needs.”

We’re going to harken back to the beginning of this when we started talking to the rapid fire. What is your biggest leadership mistake that you believe you either made yourself or were a victim of?

That wasn’t a mistake I was going to talk about. I am going to go back to that since I planted the seed of that. I made the mistake of trying to be a fixer, of feeling like I needed to help people deal with their personal problems. Not drawing enough boundaries between my role as a leader of the business and being a therapist for people. My employees would come to me and they would have a problem. Instead of saying, “You need to fix this problem. Here’s how this affects the business. We can focus on this piece.”

I did that when I started coaching, too. I didn’t draw the boundaries around what I was responsible for and what the clients were responsible for in an emotional way and in a relationship way. Going all virtual was wonderful for me because it helped me draw those boundaries. Technology helps draw those boundaries. I could be very clear on, “Here’s what we’re here to talk about, and I’m not a therapist. I’m not qualified to help you deal with other things.” That’s a leadership mistake, feeling like you need to take on other people’s problems.

 

I’ve been there.

We learn and we do better. As Maya Angelou would say, “Know better, do better.”

There’s a difference between being empathetic and being a fixer, needing to be the rescuer. What is the best leadership advice that you’ve ever gotten that you still implement?

I have two different pieces of advice. One is from the mentor I mentioned earlier who says, “The less I do, the more I make.” I love that. I learned that from him a few years ago. That gets me out of the doing because I’m a doer. Most of my clients are doers. I need to get out of the doing and I need to get into the leading, the teaching, and the inspiring.

You need to get out of the doing and get into the leading, teaching, and inspiring. Click To Tweet

The other one goes to the conversation we’ve just had. My best friend said to me years ago, “Sometimes the best gift you can give someone is the opportunity to solve their problems.” I thought that was such powerful, and I still use it. It’s so tempting for people we love or care about or clients to jump in and say, “Let me do this.” What we need to be doing is saying, “What do you think?”

My kids get upset with me when I do that, “Just tell me what you think, mom.”

My mother was that kind of mother, “Go look it up.” How can I look it up in the dictionary if I can’t spell it?

This is a new question. What’s the most Jedi or audacious leadership move you’ve ever made that was so out of the box, but it worked?

Starting a virtual law firm in 2011 before virtual was a thing. That was an audacious thing to say, “I’m going to do this without an office as a lawyer. They can’t come to my office and meet me. There is no office.” That was something that was audacious at the time and worked. Now, I’m so happy to see so many women law firm owners.

The pandemic has opened it up so much.

It changed it all.

It changed life.

The technology that we have is amazing and what you could do with the technology.

It sped technology because it was a necessity. It’s brilliant. I remember I was doing Zooms too with people, and then people would always say, “Zoom? What’s that? I don’t trust that.” We were Skyping before then and people didn’t like Skype. When we hit the pandemic, all of a sudden, everybody wants to know Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet.

My husband was a computer technology consultant for many years for big law firms. They had whole conference rooms with meeting equipment. Meeting people in a virtual way was a whole different ball of wax back then.

You have to bring on so much technology.

It was so much more difficult. You have all the equipment. Everybody was, “What are we doing here?” Now, everybody thinks nothing. They’re just flipping on Zoom and having a conversation. That makes me happy. I love that.

If you were a castaway on a deserted island and we could airdrop or wash ashore three things to you, one cannot be a cell phone, what would those three things be?

Those three things would be my husband in a boat with a satellite phone.

You’ve circumvented the cell phone business.

I didn’t say that. If we don’t say a satellite phone, then at least, some food. How about that? If my husband shows up with food, that always makes me happy. If he shows up on a boat with some wine and some charcuterie, he can’t make me happier than to give me a steak or some coffee.

Who is someone that inspires you every day?

I would say my husband but I’ve mentioned him several times already.

It’s fine because he has inspired you to start a business.

He does inspire me every day because of his way of living and moving through the world that I looked at. It was the first time I saw that because I grew up in a family who works for the government and goes to the job. It was the first time I saw that there could be a different lifestyle. He also has way more energy than I do. He’s like an Energizer Bunny and he does 1 million things at one time. I don’t have that personality. I have more of a couch-sitting personality, so he inspires me to be healthier.

The fact that he pulls you out of that inspires you to do stuff, that’s amazing.

He does. He’s very fit. He’s the same age, but six months younger than I am. He’s very much into fitness and nutrition, so he keeps me healthy too and keeps my head in the, “You need to take care of yourself.” He’s somebody who inspires me every day. I don’t look at other people. I’ve never been somebody who’s like a celebrity worshiper or anybody like that. Everybody has something to contribute and to give. You can learn a lot from a lot of people. I follow a lot of people, certainly. I also think that everybody has a side that you don’t see. I’ve never even been much of a peer worshiper in that way.

Everybody has something to contribute and to give. Click To Tweet

If you could choose one person, real or fictional, alive or passed, that you’d want to sit down and break bread with just to ask them stuff, who would that be? It can’t be your husband again.

No, it won’t be. He’s alive, so we’ll leave him here. I was thinking of somebody who’s passed. For me, there are a lot of famous people that I could probably name that I would say, “I’d love to talk to them or pick their brains.” Honestly, the very first thought that came to my mind is my grandmother. She lived to be 96, almost 97. I miss her. She passed away years ago. She would be the person that I would want to sit and talk with. I’m getting teary-eyed.

Mine just turned 101.

That’s incredible. What a gift. I think to myself that I was so lucky because I got to know all of my grandparents, two of them as an adult. My two grandmothers did not pass away until I was in my 50s. That, for me, I feel is quite a gift when you have a grandparent that’s around so long that you get to know them as an adult.

Even your parents. It’s a close relationship.

My parents are in their 80s now. It’s a challenge. They’re getting into their mid-80s. Hold them close.

I have one last question. What is a book you’re reading now or what are your top three titles that you would recommend for people?

I have some books that I’m reading now. One is The Road to Independence: 101 Women’s Journeys to Starting Their Own Law Firms. This is something I just got and started reading. I am a multiple-book reader at the same time. There’s this book that I’ve recently reread, and it’s Traction. If anybody hasn’t read Traction, they should read Traction.

I just got a book called Master Your Emotions. I saw somebody recommend that. I thought because it’s one of those things that I’m always working on, I tell my nephews, “He who controls his emotions in any situation wins.” I’m a very empathetic person, but I’ve always worked to manage my emotions so that I’m not acting in a way that I’m later going to look back and be disappointed about how I acted. Of course, we all have those moments. I’ve had them with clients, as a leader, and as an attorney, but I’m always looking to think about mastering my emotions.

The other book I would say would be, The Science of Getting Rich by Wallace Waddles. That’s a life-changing book for a lot of people. I have to throw some wealth book in there because it’s not Wealthy Woman Lawyer without it. Those are books I’d recommend. I have many others. I have others sitting here. I have others all around. Like you, I’ve got two bookcases, plus I have a third in the corner, plus what’s on my phone, Kindle, and Audible. I could talk about books for a whole show, and I have.

Thank you. Maybe we should do that one day. You and I just talk books on a show. Thank you so much. This has been great. I appreciated this conversation so much. I’d love for us to continue our conversation beyond this show.

Me, too. I enjoyed it a lot.

Thank you. For all those of you reading, I want to encourage you to lead yourself, lead your teams, and lead your organization with audacious confidence. Until next time.

 

Important Links

• Wealthy Woman Lawyer
• Wealthy Woman Lawyer Podcast
• Feedspot
• The Road to Independence: 101 Women’s Journeys to Starting Their Own Law Firms
• Traction
• Master Your Emotions
• The Science of Getting Rich
• https://www.LinkedIn.com/in/davinafrederick/
• https://www.Facebook.com/wealthywomanlawyer
• https://www.Instagram.com/wealthywomanlawyer/
• https://www.YouTube.com/@WealthyWomanLawyer

 

About Davina Frederick

Davina is the founder and CEO of Wealthy Woman Lawyer and host of the Wealthy Woman Lawyer Podcast. She’s a Florida-licensed attorney, business growth strategist and coach. The Wealthy Woman Lawyer helps women law firm owners scale their law firm businesses to and thru $1M so they can fully fund–and still have time to enjoy–the lifestyle of their dreams. She is also a two-time author of books on law firm management and marketing. With over 30 years of experience in marketing professional services businesses, Davina has a wealth of knowledge on client acquisition, scaling law firms, and creating a wealth-generating law firm business with ease. Her clients have seen incredible results, including a 286% increase in revenue and gross revenue of almost a million dollars compared to the year prior.

 

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