Greening Law

$200,000

Revenue in One Month

Project Overview

It has never been more challenging to run a law firm. You’re working double time to manage your own business while also practicing the law and serving your clients. Because the day-to-day grind is so time consuming, it’s next to impossible to build out a robust marketing plan in order to bring in new clients and build your firm’s brand — not to mention all the business and personnel aspects of running a law firm.

Craig Greening found himself facing this very issue.

Craig is the founder and lead attorney of Greening Law, a criminal defense group headquartered in College Station, Texas. Due to the firm’s proximity to the Texas A&M campus, they handle their fair share of college students charged with DWI and drug cases, but manage federal cases all over the country as well.

Craig founded Greening Law in 2010 and finds the entrepreneurial component to be liberating.

“I love the freedom to be able to mold this practice into an enterprise and develop core values that are aligned with my passions,” he says.

With the freedom, however, also comes a slew of challenges that can negatively impact the business. They experienced employee drama and the perpetual struggle of balancing running the firm while practicing law, yet the most existential threat to Greening Law was part of the bigger picture….

Challenge

Like every ambitious entrepreneur in the legal industry, Craig wanted to grow his firm. Like many of them, he was trying to grow his firm at too quick of a pace and overexerting himself and his team in order to realize that dream.

What Craig needed was a strategic partner to help him market his firm and improve his business infrastructure without burning his own team’s calories.

Enter Crisp Video and Founder/CEO Michael Mogill.

After initial reluctance, Craig made the call to partner with Crisp to produce a brand video to tell his firm’s story. This decision would eventually lead him to the Crisp Coach program to improve every facet of his business.

“I totally turned my nose up at the idea of spending that much money on a video. I thought Michael was reaching,” he reflects. “Then came Game Changers Summit 2 in 2019. A light bulb came on and I realized Michael has been ahead of the game for years. I needed to catch up. I dove in head first and the fruits were sweet.”

Partnering with Crisp couldn’t have happened at a more opportune time for Greening Law.

“I never would have survived COVID without Crisp,” he says. “I wanted to transform my business, make it into an enterprise, and spread my message of ‘getting back on the right path’ to all of the people who have hit a low point in their life and needed someone to lift them back up.”

Thanks to Crisp Coach, the next-level growth catalyst for the forward-thinking firm owner, Greening Law has achieved business landmarks that would have seemed impossible before launching the partnership.

I never would have survived COVID without Crisp. I wanted to transform my business, make it into an enterprise, and spread my message of ‘getting back on the right path’ to all of the people who have hit a low point in their life and needed someone to lift them back up.
Craig Greening

Strategy

The first and most essential step in the Crisp Coach process was determining Greening Law’s unique value proposition (UVP), or what differentiates that firm from the countless other criminal defense groups in his market. Once Craig’s UVP was identified, he had a direction to steer the entire ship and began building powerful marketing content to reach prospective clients.

Craig quickly realized that his firm’s location in College Station, with tens of thousands of Texas A&M student residents, would turn out to be his greatest storytelling asset.

“College students are in a unique position,” he explains. “Most of them are leaving home for the first time. They’re becoming adults, and they make mistakes.”

Craig sees addressing these mistakes as an opportunity to make a powerful impact on their lives: “We’re here to defend those people and defend their futures.”

With Greening Law’s UVP defined, the Crisp team was ready to create a powerful library of videos for use on the firm’s website and respective social channels.

With a fully fleshed-out marketing strategy in place, Craig was next able to focus on his own leadership skills thanks to the Crisp Coach program, which takes things a step further by bringing member firm owners together in a participatory workshop environment where they can share experiences, trade strategies, and develop their leadership skills.

Craig found getting a coach to be incredibly useful in addressing an oft-neglected area of his skillset.

“They don’t teach us how to run a law firm in law school,” he admits. “Ask yourself this: would you invest in a company where the leader just practiced his craft but didn’t know how to run a business?”

Each Crisp Coach member is partnered with a highly-trained coach to help them focus on elusive fluid skills like goal-setting, accountability, and leadership. In addition to these regular coaching sessions and accountability calls, Greening Law also invested in comprehensive onsite assessments and trainings together to learn more about themselves and how to collaborate as a team.

The benefits of Greening’s Crisp Coach membership has extended beyond the coaching. Craig was thrilled with the exclusive community that he joined with other like-minded attorneys in his group.

“One of the best things about the [Crisp Coach] program is the people who are badasses like me wanting to be the best lawyers and law firm owners in the business. I have learned so much from all of the ambitious lawyers out there. I am so inspired by them every day.”

Now that the strategy had been set, it was time to execute and assess results.

They don’t teach us how to run a law firm in law school. Ask yourself this: would you invest in a business where the leader just practiced his craft but didn’t know how to run a business?
Craig Greening

Impact

After partnering with Crisp Coach, Greening Law immediately saw positive results.

“In 2019 we were at $800,000 per year in revenue,” Craig explains. “In 2020 we hit almost a million. We had our best month ever in July with $200,000. Crisp saved our COVID year.”

This massive growth allowed Craig to invest more in the future of his company.

He elaborates, “We opened a new state-of-the-art office in College Station, as well as a new office in Waco that is expected to bring in $2 million in revenue per year.”

The strategic coaching sessions added new elements of success to Greening Law. They have now established their core values as a firm, which has bonded them as a team.

In addition to Greening’s financial and internal improvements, his firm has received broad positive attention from the community.

“Because of Crisp, people come up to me in public and say ‘I’ve seen your videos; you are a baller,’” Craig proudly notes.

In addition to now being a baller, Craig has noticed several improvements to both his professional and personal life. His leadership style has experienced the most significant improvements, and he has reinforced the importance of accountability for both his team and himself.

In the end, though, the PRINT Onsite Training he invested in for himself and his team has had the greatest effect on his life.

“PRINT has taught me how to be a better husband,” he says. “When [Crisp] came to do the PRINT training I learned so much about myself and how to interact with others. That made me a better husband.”

On top of these skills, Craig has changed his mentality about risk-taking.

“You have to take chances to get ahead. I am living proof,” he explains. “We are in a time where other firms are downsizing. The risk-takers will take over in the end. Life is too short to wait. You owe it to yourself and your family.”

With Greening Law progressing so far in 2020, the last thing Craig wants to do is look backwards. His eyes are on 2021.

He vows: “We are going to crush last year.”