In this episode of Your Practice Mastered Podcast, we dive into the world of law firm profitability with our guest, George and Danielle McCranie. Join us as we explore strategies and insights that can help your law firm boost its profitability. 

From effective billing practices to streamlining operations, McCranies shares valuable tips and advice that can make a significant impact on your bottom line. 

Don't miss out on this informative episode that can help take your law firm to the next level of success. Tune in now! 

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Let’s Chat About Growing Your Law Firm. 

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George McCranie: I mean, it's,

Danielle McCranie: every single day

George McCranie: you,

Danielle McCranie: eat, sleep, and breathe. Your basics. And the basics are those PCLC numbers, because to me it's

George McCranie: like,

Danielle McCranie: without that there is nothing.

George McCranie: Mm-Hmm. you know,

Danielle McCranie: you can have all these other problems, but if you're not making money, you're not in business.

​

Welcome to Your Practice Master Podcast

MPS: Hey, Law Firm Owners, welcome to the Your Practice Master Podcast. We're your hosts. I'm MPS.

Introducing the McCranie: A Journey of Growth and Profitability

Richard James: And so we are gonna have a great conversation with the McCranie about profitability. I'm excited about it. Thank you both for being here.

George McCranie: Thank you. We're glad to be here.

Richard James: Yeah.

George McCranie: I want Todd who was here before us to hold my beer because he said he was from the smallest.

Richard James: Oh, they need you to.

Yeah. There you

George McCranie: I want Todd to hold my beer because he said he was from the smallest town.

Danielle McCranie: Not the smallest.

Richard James: Do you wanna add anything to that Danielle, anything that anybody doesn't know about you or you want to keep it to yourself?

George McCranie: He brought me in 15 years ago and I've been doing it for 15 years.

Richard James: 15 years. It started with, didn't you tell me that you used to bring Madge?

Danielle McCranie: Oh yeah. I didn't get a maternity leave.

Richard James: Yeah. No maternity leave?

Danielle McCranie: No.

George McCranie: Uh,

Danielle McCranie: After she was three days old and the only reason it was three days is 'cause a really bad storm came in when she was born, so I had to stay home for three days and return to work with her.

Richard James: Yeah. So you would go to run the office. You would go to court?

George McCranie: I would go to court.

Richard James: How many miles did you drive every day?

Richard James: That's what life looked like? Okay.

George McCranie: That's what life looked like.

Richard James: Right. Wow. But here we are.

George McCranie: Here we are.

MPS: Here we are. I want to unpack the profitability, but I have the pleasure and the opportunity to work with your sales team. Both on intake and consultations every week. And they absolutely crush it. And when I say crush it, I mean they crush it. So I'm curious.

The Secret Sauce to Consistent Sales and Profitability

MPS: For you guys, how do you continue to consistently hit your sales goals while maintaining the profitability that you do?

Danielle McCranie: First of all, it's hiring a superstar staff. I don't think you can do anything without that component and making sure that they stick to the process week after week, believe in the process.

Danielle McCranie: They're well compensated for sure. So that helps, we take a team approach to it, not an individual approach, and we run like fun contests and things, and I'm very involved with my staff.

Now that doesn't mean that I'm meeting with them daily. They do their own daily huddles and stuff, but it does mean that I sell it to 'em. I talk to 'em about it. I tell 'em, Hey, this is gonna be one of the greatest things we've ever done. And I think that really helps too, to see that how on board and how much belief I have in it.

Yeah. And then I tell 'em, I said, we're gonna do this. And when you start sticking to it. It's gonna prove itself. That makes it easy for me. Really. And I believe in you guys and what you do, and I always have. So that made it super, I would say just the message I had to convey was really.

Don't get me wrong. I certainly do, but yeah.

Danielle McCranie: I am a good student.

Richard James: You're the best student.

Danielle McCranie: I am. I actually took a profile test one time and the top thing on it said is, you're a good student. Yeah, I am. I do what you tell me to do.

Richard James: And you do it. George, what do you think about that? Why do you think your team does as well as they do?

Danielle McCranie: Well, I think people have asked me before, what do we need to do to be like y'all. And I said, the first thing you need to do is to marry Danielle. She is all about process. She makes it flow. She works through it. She's also a big team leader. Now y'all have to understand I'm basically retired.

George McCranie: I have been basically retired for five years. I don't go and work in the office. I go to the office and I say, Hey, and how are y'all and what can we do for you?

The Power of Teamwork and Investing in Education

George McCranie:Danielle's ability to get our team to cooperate. She runs all kinds of events. She has contests with the teams. She does a great job and her background working for the state she worked for family and children Services, taught her the process. And how to work through process.

Danielle McCranie: But, Rich last year we invested seventy-two thousand dollars in education. Just education.

George McCranie: Mm-Hmm.

Danielle McCranie: Leadership education,

George McCranie: right.

Danielle McCranie: process education,

George McCranie: you know,

Danielle McCranie: mindset.

George McCranie: I mean

Danielle McCranie: Every kind of part of the puzzle to make ourselves better leaders, business owners. That's what we do. That amount of money, to me was like nothing.

Richard James: Because the return on investment. The return on investment.

Danielle McCranie: Exactly.

Richard James: Where do you want to go? Sorry, I can keep asking and I'm gonna override your question.

Mastering the Fundamentals for Law Firm Success

MPS: But from the conversations you guys have had what do you feel is one of the key things firms seem to struggle with when it comes to profitability?

Danielle McCranie: I think Todd and Sam said it was a lot of times people don't nail down those fundamentals. And they're not consistent with their fundamentals, and it's because life gets in the way. It's very understandable. It happens to all of us. It's basically taking your hand off one of those knobs.

And then realizing it when it's too late, so you have to constantly tell yourself, am I throwing money at a problem or am I actually coming up with a solution to the problem? You know? It's hard because it's, like you said, I think one time we're spinning a lot of plates up in the air all at once, or changing the tires on the car as it's going down the road.

Richard James: What's your set rate?

Danielle McCranie: Oh, our set rate. It's, we're keeping it now after Michael's Group, we're keeping it around a ninety-five percent.

Richard James: Ninety-five percent.

Danielle McCranie: Yes.

Richard James: What's your show rate?

Danielle McCranie: Our show rate stays above a 90% at this moment. It dips a little down to an eighty-five percent. Every now and again, my team makes that adjustment because they monitor their set and show rate weekly.

We monitor our hire rate daily. Our hire rate is, the sales goal is a daily goal for us. That we look at. We also take every appointment we need to fill. And that goes to the phone team, fill these slots. 'cause this is what we have available today.

Richard James: Oh. You're like, Hey, this is the inventory that's open today. Go fill it.

And so they're like, oh, you gotta sell, you're on fire. Let me go out, I'm gonna work harder. What's your And the follow-ups are also monitored daily?

Richard James: What is your hire rate?

Danielle McCranie: Our hire rate right now it's at 70%.

Richard James: 70.

MPS: What is your 2% is your practice areas? For everyone that doesn't know.

Danielle McCranie: We do DUI and criminal defense. We also do accident cases and we also do family-based immigration.

Richard James: They must think because you're in a small town, you guys probably don't charge very much for your services.

Danielle McCranie: Oh, we charge. Yes.

George McCranie: Yeah, we charge. Yes.

Richard James: So what's a DUI

DUI is eighty-five hundred.

Danielle McCranie: Yeah. We're three times as much as everyone around.

We have,

George McCranie: We have attorneys in our area that will take a DUI for $1,200.

Danielle McCranie: Yes.

Richard James: I don't even know where to go.

MPS: Yeah, I mean, you could drop the mic right there and it's good.

Richard James: I know where I want to go, but go ahead.

MPS: No. Please take it.

Why do you think. It's not because you're just a great student and you work hard, but why do you think it's been easier for you than it is for the attorney who's still practicing law?

I mean, How many hours a week do you practice law?

Danielle McCranie: I don't practice law at all. Right.

Richard James: So you spend a hundred percent of your time focused on the business, is that correct?

Danielle McCranie: I work when everything's going well. Around 15, 20 hours a week.

Richard James: 15, 20 hours a week.

Danielle McCranie: I do.

Richard James: And summers?

Danielle McCranie: In summers I keep 15, 20 hours a week.

That's a steady flow for me, and sometimes I'll scale back. Just according to what we got going, you know, what we're doing for vacations and stuff. And holidays. I do the same. There may be days that I don't really touch the office, but a little bit. \

Danielle McCranie: Yes.

Richard James: And there's not a lot going on and Madge doesn't have a vacation or whatever, and you're not going to a horse show, and so you'll put in hours, right?

Danielle McCranie: I will. I will. I get ready.

Richard James: And it, is it fair to say in the beginning what did it look like when you first started in here and you were first starting to get this stuff under wraps?

How many hours did you have to work then to get it done?

Danielle McCranie: To get it done in the beginning. It was, we were putting in sometimes 50, my babysitter was getting 50 hours a week.

Richard James: So you were paying your babysitter 50 hours a week.

George McCranie: Yeah. And still bringing work home and working.

Richard James: So, that's a really important point that I wanna make. Like George, she was. There was a long time when she wanted to get you out of the courtroom. And then you were trying to get her to stop having to work like 50 hours a week. Am I right about that?

George McCranie: Exactly. What I said is I want her to be as free as I am. If we can get to that point, our family will be fantastic.

Danielle McCranie: That was our strategy.

Richard James: That was your first strategy?

Danielle McCranie: That was the first strategy.

But we knew that we needed to do that. And I had a really good mentor that's a good friend of ours from Atlanta, and he told me, he's like. You need to hire another attorney to take George's place. And I was like I don't think we have the money to do it. And oh my gosh, I had so much fear.

I was like, what if I hire this attorney to take George's place and then I have to fire him and let him go because I don't have my stuff together enough to be able to afford to pay him.

George McCranie: You know?

Danielle McCranie: That was like my biggest fear was having to hire somebody and just let him go. 'cause I'm sorry, I can't afford you.

And he was on point. Now, let me explain something to you. When we hired the first attorney, it was a disaster.

George McCranie: Disaster.

Danielle McCranie: Second attorney that I hired disaster. Yep. Third attorney that I hired, disaster. Fourth attorney that I hired. Disaster. I do not give up because I knew, but I just want y'all to know.

Don't go out there and hire an attorney and think this is gonna be your life. It's not. You are gonna have ups and downs and it's hard. Hiring attorneys are hard. I've already spoken to some people in here that have, 10 or 15 attorneys working for 'em, 20 attorneys. It's hard. It's really hard, but the end result is so worth it.

It really is, and you will figure it out. And each time that something goes wrong, you develop and gain skills for the next one and the next one and the next one.

You were representing these clients. It's a small town. They knew who you were. There was no question that everybody knew who you were, and now you had to be willing to go, I'm gonna let somebody else do this. As an attorney who is good at your job and was dedicated to your practice. How did you feel about letting go and how did that process look to you?

George McCranie: It was hard for me to do that. I had gotten to the point where basically people with unwinnable cases would come to me and say, basically I expect you to get these charges dismissed 'cause you're so good. That kind of thing. If you've got a client that is on the wrong side of the road in the ditch state, patrol pulls up behind him.

That's where I was. It was.

MPS: That's great.

George McCranie: And if you didn't get it dismissed, they thought, what in the world, you failed kind of thing.

You saved their driver's license, but still you failed. So it was really hard for me to hire another attorney, to get them in the office, to take my place in court when my name is on it. Everybody knows it's me. So I used education to educate the attorneys to get them up to speed to where I was, almost to where I was, and they're able to go into court, represent me now effectively.

Every court I went to was a fight. So it was pretty rough. But now that we have three attorneys in doing the criminal force we've got it. We've got it rolling pretty smart.

Danielle McCranie: We have an immigration attorney too that does.

George McCranie: And the three attorneys say how busy they are.

Richard James: They do.

George McCranie: They're so busy. And I'm thinking, I did what y'all are doing.

Richard James: I did it by myself.

George McCranie: Yeah. Plus about 200 divorces, so it was not a

Danielle McCranie: well,

George McCranie: fun time

Richard James: You get to look 'em in the eye and go, I don't want to hear it. I don't want to hear it. I've already done it. I wanna talk a little bit about the staff down here?

MPS: I do. So obviously you guys were at the Fiesta last night. You had a table full of your team, right? So would you say that leveraging global labor talent is one of the proponents that allows you to keep the profitability that you do?

Danielle McCranie: Oh yeah. 'cause it just solved a problem for us. Really.

And Burt was like, I think I can help you with that. I said, so he invited us in. And then we started hiring in Mexico. Now it's the heart of my business.

George McCranie: I mean,

Danielle McCranie: how truly, How many team members do you have in Mexico total?

I have 16 now

Richard James: And how many do you have in the U.S?

Danielle McCranie: We have about 16 in the U.S.

Richard James: So about 50 - 50?

Danielle McCranie: Yeah.

Richard James: Okay. Is there a difference between the two? You love 'em both. They both have their role, right? And so the folks in Mexico, are, they do phone work, but they also help with the legal process.

Danielle McCranie: Listen, here's our method to this madness of the way I do things.

During that time, that's your get to know period. That's where you score that person. You have a way to do this, a strategy and then you start to see what they're good at and that's where you place 'em.

So I can't say that I have on only my legal assistants here in the U.S. No. I have some people that are jam-up legal assistants that are in Mexico. Phone team collection team. I have 'em spread across the U.S and Mexico, it's just what is that person? A superstar rep.

Richard James: Was it easy to find staff here? And it went no problems at all, super smooth or?

George McCranie: No.

I had nightmares about it. Burt after Burt was like, we're going to, you're gonna, I'm gonna get you some interviews here. Think I didn't sleep for three nights and one night, one of Burt's managers and I were on the phone till 10 o'clock at night while I was sitting at my desk. I was like. I just can't do this.

Richard James: Did it make training better? Did you make you a better trainer?

Danielle McCranie: Oh, yes.

Richard James: Because you had to do it virtually.

Danielle McCranie: Yes, it did. It made you set up procedures and a process, and we built our McCraney University now, it's much better than it was back then when it was just me doing it. And now I have a whole team that handles it.

Richard James: How do you feel about the team down here, George?

George McCranie: I love the teams down here. They do a great job. They are hard-working people.

Danielle McCranie: Yes, they are.

George McCranie: They're competent at their job. And like last night I was talking to 'em, we talk about family issues. We talk about, any questions they have, we treat 'em like family And the people that we have down here we treat just like the people we have.

Danielle McCranie: We do.

Richard James: Yeah. By the way, if y'all want to see the micromanaging of the client experience, and Michael hasn't had the pleasure of experiencing it himself, but go down and visit the McCranie at one of their offices. You will experience micromanaging in the client experience.

Everything we've talked about from cookies and having the books out and testimonial books, and the receptionist and the nurse doctoral every, they do everything we've ever talked about in more because they've invested additional coaching and learning how to make it better.

Danielle McCranie: That's right.

MPS: It's all about going back to earlier, you guys are both great students, but being a good student is only half the equation. Implementation is the other half of the equation, and you guys have done both, and so it's been really exciting to watch. I'm curious, what's got you guys fired up today?

What's got you excited?

Richard James: I think you'll do fine too. How about you Danielle?

Danielle McCranie: It's the workflow.

Workflow stuff we're doing now.

Richard James: You're excited about workflow?

No doubt. No doubt.

Richard James: So for somebody who was doing a, and we'll end this with this last-minute statement to the world here, you started in the few hundred thousands, whatever, less than a million to the multiple millions with the profit level you have today. What's that? That person sitting out there that's listening either on the podcast or in the audience right now?

That just feels stuck. Yeah. And they can't break through. What's your advice to them?

Final Words of Wisdom: Starting Small and Trusting the Process

Pick the fundamentals, get those in place first, and try not to get too wrapped up into deeper things until you've nailed down those basics. The basics are gonna, what, is gonna make you money, honestly. And then once you get that money, you can start investing in, into other things. And listen to the advice that you're giving by experts.

They're experts for a reason. It's true, isn't it?

Richard James: It's true.

George McCranie: Um,

Danielle McCranie: When Rich says, Hey, this works, he knows it works. He's not gonna tell you something works. Don't argue with yourself about it in your own mind. Just understand that, he knows what he's talking about and that might, pick what you gotta pick and get started on it.

Danielle McCranie: Yeah. My team says to me, all the time what about what do we do about this? And now I say, what does Michael say do about this?

George McCranie: Mm-Hmm.

Danielle McCranie: He's not just seeing our firm and our results. He sees everybody's, he's tested so many things. So I tell him,

George McCranie: well

Danielle McCranie: ask Michael find out what Michael thinks about this. I know what I think about it, but he's tested it and I haven't tested this. Yeah. So let's go to what's test been tested.

George McCranie: Well,

Richard James: We certainly appreciate the faith you've put in us.

MPS: Yes, we do.

Richard James: We appreciate that. We're honored by that. Your success is our joy. There's no question. Where do you wanna go from here? I think we're wrapping it up.

MPS: Yes. Outside of thanking you both for taking the time to be here and obviously invest in giving back to the members and to the podcast.

And we appreciate you tuning into another episode of the Your Practice Master podcast, George and Danielle. Thank you. Thank you.

Richard James: Little bit of love. 1, 2, 3.