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The Law Firm Marketing Minute
Best Of: The Power of a Self-Published Lawyer feat. Joel Ankney
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📚 What if writing a book could do more for your law firm than any networking event ever could? In this episode, Mike interviews attorney and self-published author Joel Ankney, who shares how becoming an author helped him attract better clients, land speaking gigs, and build a more authentic, sustainable brand—all without traditional marketing tactics. Whether you’re an introvert, a legal tech skeptic, or just tired of the same old strategies, this conversation opens the door to a bold, book-based path forward.
📌 Key Takeaways:
- Self-publishing can be a powerful branding tool for solo and small firm lawyers.
- A book creates instant credibility, even if no one reads it.
- Writing discipline—not publishing complexity—is the real challenge (and opportunity).
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If I'm in a room with 100 attorneys, let's say I'm probably the only attorney in the room who's written a book, and so it's my differentiator. For me, it has been the best thing I've ever done, frankly.
Speaker 2:Hello everyone, Welcome back to the Law Firm Marketing Minute. As always, I'm your host, Smike. Today we've got a great episode lined up for you. I'm very excited about this because I have spoken with a lot of lawyers at different conferences and a lot of them have great stories to tell. And I always say, why don't you write a book? And they say I don't know how. So this is a terrific episode. Very much looking forward to it. Welcoming Joel Ankney he is a self-published author, he is also a lawyer, and so we have that great combination there, that one-two punch, going on here. Joel, welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1:Yeah, hey, Mike, thanks so much for having me. I'm really looking. I love to talk about this topic. It's one of my favorite things to talk about.
Speaker 2:This should be a very eye-opening sort of episode for those lawyers. I'm very excited to share all that. But first let's get to know you, let's have the audience get to know you. Tell me about your background and kind of what your motivation has been to get to where you are today.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thanks. I mean, I grew up a pretty average kid in the Washington DC suburbs, never thought about being a lawyer until after I graduated from college and couldn't find a job. And I have a degree, an undergraduate degree, in organizational psychology, which is still fascinating to me. But yeah, as I started to look around, I thought I need more education. Law school looked really interesting. I thought I could get a job with a law degree. So I did that. I went to William Mary Law School and loved. Looking back in hindsight, I loved it During the process.
Speaker 1:It wasn't as fun as it sounds and then I spent 12 years at some large law firms doing transactional work. After I realized that I probably didn't fit in real well at the large law firm and didn't really see where I would be going in the future there I left and started my own solo practice and I've had my own solo practice for about 21 years now and it's a purely a transactional practice. I do a lot of small business, merger and acquisition work, small business startup, small business operations, things like that. So my motivation frankly, I intellectually enjoy practicing law and my real motivation is, like I said, I wanted to get a job, I have a family and I like them to live comfortably and be able to get the opportunities that we'd like to have for them. So law has been a good kind of intersection of things that I'm interested in. Kind of intersection of things that I'm interested in, perhaps my if.
Speaker 1:I have talents, my talents, and then a way to make a good living to support my family. So that's kind of where, if you want to ask me what my motivation is to write a book, it really came down to the asking myself the question like how can I get more business that I like and is profitable to my firm, especially when I'm a much more introverted person and I'm not really a big? You know, I don't golf, I don't like to go to happy hour or dinners or conferences.
Speaker 1:It's not that I don't like it, it's just that I feel perhaps awkward or uncomfortable. And and sometimes I feel uncomfortable just talking about myself and, um, you know, honestly, um well, I know you're going to ask me a couple of questions, but it's a lot easier to talk about a book in a networking situation than to talk about myself.
Speaker 3:Hey, it's John from Spotlight Branding. Odds are, if you're listening to this episode, you're probably curious about different avenues of marketing for your law firm. Maybe you're wondering what other firms around the country are doing. If that's you, I really encourage you to take part in the 2025 Legal Marketing Trends Report survey. It should only take you about 15 minutes and for doing your part, you'll be receiving the finished product before it ever goes public. And here's something better For every completed survey that Spotlight Branding receives, we'll be donating $1 to Western North Carolina relief aid from Hurricane Helene. Share your insight and support a good cause. Check the podcast description for the link to take the survey. Now let's get back to the episode.
Speaker 2:I know of a lot of people who, a lot of lawyers, who believe that, oh, I am not extroverted, so I can't really build my brand. I'm not extroverted, right, like I don't have any avenue. But I think that what this podcast episode is going to help them realize is that, hey, there's more avenues to it. And this just happens to be one of the avenues for those who you know, consider themselves more introverted, for them to kind of consider and go down. So well, first of all, when we had our, our preliminary call, you know, I was kind of like I thought that like you went through some you know publication, so you know through some different agency and whatnot, because that's for me it's like that's all I know, right, like I just know that mainstream kind of like way to go about it. So you're a self-published author. Tell me about that process and how is it simple for you know a solo, small practice lawyer.
Speaker 1:That's a loaded question, I think. Ah, yes, is it simple? So I have already. I've self-published three books already and I have in the process I've probably outlined another one or two books that I hope to publish sometime in the future. Is the process? I mean, it's definitely doable. Technology if you're comfortable with technology, it's very doable to self-publish to teach yourself how to do it and to get it done. There are other, you know, services out there that you can hire to help you or coach you through the process. But, um, so when somebody asks me you know, how did I do it?
Speaker 1:That question, I think, has three parts to it. The first question, or the first part of that question, is how did I come up with the idea for the book? Uh, the second question is more about process, like what was my kind of writing discipline? What did I? And then the third part is you know what are the nuts and bolts of actually using? I use Amazon. It's called Kindle Direct Publishing and we'll just call it KDP as we talk, you know how do you use KDP to actually get your work up on Amazon, get your book on Amazon and get it published. And even there's another Amazon service called ACX which allows you to publish an audio book on Audible. So we've done that as well. So let's kind of, if you don't mind, I'll try and address each of those three pretty quickly.
Speaker 1:Coming up with the idea was really more of a research project and I kind of, you know, I looked at a couple of different factors. I looked at, like, what kind of questions were my clients asking me? Over and over again, I looked at, you know, who did I want? What kind of clients did I want to bring in, like, which clients did I like to work with? I also looked at what kind of projects I was doing that were not only enjoyable and had clients that I enjoyed working with, but also were profitable to me. And then, finally, one of the things I looked at was who's my competition, like not just who's my competition from a legal perspective, but what other books are out there, what other books are out there? What other materials are out there on the topic?
Speaker 1:So when we wrote the first book the first book is called here's the Deal Everything you wish a lawyer would tell you about buying a small business I had one of my sons who was in between high school and college. Do a deep dive into my about 10 years worth of my files from my law firm and I had a spreadsheet for him and he just was extracting information and what we realized was that we were doing a lot of small business merger and acquisition work, but we weren't marketing it, we weren't even messaging it at all. We also realized we love those clients, we love those projects. I had a lot of expertise in that and they were the most profitable projects that we worked on in the law firm. Then I went to Amazon and I just did a couple of searches. I did some searches on Google.
Speaker 1:This was about eight or nine years ago. I realized there were hardly any books out there about buying a small business. And not only were there not very many books, but there were I don't even know if there were any books written by a lawyer, written about the legal process, and I thought this is it, this is the gap that I want to try and fill, and so we we published that book. It has been great. I mean, it's been the best marketing tactic, marketing effort I've ever done in my practice. So that's the. That's the kind of the how I came up with the idea, the. You know the process. The second part is you just have to kind of find your own process. Like it took me months to find my writing discipline. Like you know, at first I thought, oh, I'll come home at night and after I, you know, put the kids to bed, I'll write for an hour or an hour and a half. I kept that delusion up for about three or four months and I never wrote a word, you know never, nothing.
Speaker 1:So I finally decided that I would write, um, write from 8am to 9am every morning. Um, I was usually in the office that early anyway. Um, and it was hard, it was very difficult to kind of take a productive hour in my morning that I could use to bill, you know, on a billable project, and set that aside and just write and um, but I pushed through it and I found that writing discipline. Eventually, with all my books I have gotten to a point after a certain amount of time where I've needed to do like a retreat for like a week. I go rent a cottage down at the beach or something like that and I just finish it up. I write constantly for the week and finish up the first draft.
Speaker 1:Then there's the whole process of editing and you know I typically get outside people, friends and family. Sometimes I pay them a little something, but I've never hired a professional service. I just use, you know, people that I trust. So that's kind of the nuts and bolts. The answer to the second part. The third part is yeah, Amazon has this wonderful service called Kindle Direct Publishing. If you have an Amazon account, you can go right to KDP, it's just kdpamazoncom. You can use your Amazon account and you can create a KDP account with the same password and everything, and you can then set up as many publications as you want. It's a workflow that will walk you through like you need to upload your final PDF for your interior, your final PDF for your exterior, cover art, things like that and it'll walk you through that workflow and when you're done with the workflow, you'll press the publish button or the submit button, and it goes.
Speaker 2:So, in terms of, like the process itself, it seems, yes, the process might be simple enough, but it's the discipline is the key there, the writing discipline.
Speaker 1:Well, my wife will tell you that I say it's simple. But she looks at me and she's like how do you know how to figure this all out? And I think it's partly because I'm a very curious person and also because I'm not afraid to experiment, I'm not afraid to click a button, I'm not afraid to do something, because I figure I can always say I'm sorry or I can undo it some way. So yeah, looking back, I mean this took us the first book probably took, from idea inception to actual publication probably about 18 months worth of not just the writing but also just figuring everything out, figuring out how to use KDP, finding out that oh my gosh, you know KDP workflow is going to ask you to type in your Library of Congress control number. So then you got to figure out well, how do I get a LCCN?
Speaker 1:And you go to the Library of Congress and you set up an account. It's free, but you still have to go through their workflow and get that Library of Congress control number. And you know you have to have an ISBN and Amazon can assign you an ISBN or you can go get one somewhere else. So there are all these things that, as you get into the workflow you're going to learn and if we had three or four hours I could walk you through the whole thing. But you know it's got a lot of moving parts but you shouldn't feel intimidated by them. Like people, millions of people are doing this.
Speaker 2:That's all very interesting for me because, like I had no idea that you even needed to go through the Library of Congress to to get some, uh, a publishing.
Speaker 1:And neither did I, until I got onto KDP and I was like, oh, okay, here's another thing I have to figure out, you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's awesome that you brought up that you're a curious person, because one of the one of our core values here at spotlight branding is be curious. And it's very much um, not for everything, but for most things uh, they would rather you ask for forgiveness than ask for permission, right it's? It's very much like just just see what you can find out, just go ahead and try stuff, and then you know if it happens to go awry and you know, then ask for forgiveness. But at the end of the day it's better to just at least try it, uh, instead of like being like oh, what if you know?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think the try it. I love that. I mean, I say that same thing. You know, try lots of stuff is my one of my mantras, I guess. But you know, a lot of times you can't predict what's going to happen. And I have a daughter-in-law one time who, in a different context, basically gave us a different perspective. I think everybody was kind of catastrophizing about what if this goes wrong, and she just said, what if it doesn't? And we kind of like pick that up and we're like, okay, yeah, what if it doesn't? Like, what if it goes right? So I love that, I love that perspective.
Speaker 2:Okay. So we've got a lawyer listening to us now who is like okay, I know the process, I'm going to go through the process of it. They publish a book. What can publishing a book do for a law firm's brand? Like, what have you seen since you published your first book?
Speaker 1:Well, people know who I am and that's a really kind of interesting feeling. I have gone to two or three, three recently in the last year three conferences one at the Duke Business School which is called Fuqua they have all different, you can't call them and one at Wh Duke Business School which is called Fuqua they have all different, you can't call them, you know. And one at Wharton, at UPenn, and then one at Georgetown University at McDonough Business School. All these are on a topic called Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition. It just happens that one of my books has been picked up by that community and so when I walk into that conference and I'm networking or just mingling with people, that's how I introduce myself.
Speaker 1:I'm an author and a lawyer. They always want to know what I wrote. When I tell them what I wrote, many people say, oh, I've heard of that book, or I've actually read that book, and that's awesome. That just makes it so much easier for me to gain people's, you know, create a relationship with people and gain some trust with them. It's been amazing. I mean, my book has gotten me invited to speak to the Columbia Business School, to one of their MBA classes. I've spoken regularly as a guest lecturer at the University of Illinois Business School. I'm going to be speaking at the William Mary Business School in the spring and you know, none of that would happen, would have happened without me not only publishing the book but, you know, having my audience find some value in the book. I mean, that's something I can't really control and I've. I've been really grateful that people have found value in the book.
Speaker 2:Yeah, do you? Do you think that the just having your name attached to a, a book like, for example, if you went to a like a networking event, right, and you know you're talking to somebody, you're kind of figuring, you know out what they do, you know you talk about what you do Do you think that just having your name attached to a book gives you just a lot more credit, even if they haven't even heard the book, right? Do you think that just gives them a lot more credibility?
Speaker 1:Oh, absolutely. I mean, I've experienced that over and over again. If I'm in a room with 100 attorneys, let's say I'm probably the only attorney in the room who's written a book and so it's my differentiator. And it's quite possible that if you talk to me in an event, you'll remember me, because you'll remember that I'm the guy who wrote a book and we'll probably spend a fair amount of time talking about not about me, but about my book. You'll probably ask me how I did it.
Speaker 1:How did I come up with the idea? How did I do? You know what was my process and you know what have been the results, what's happened as a result of publishing the book. And so, yeah, networking is much more comfortable for me now, because when I walk into a room, I even have it on my business cards where it says my name and then underneath it says author and attorney, and somebody gets a business card for me in a networking event. They look at it and they're like, oh, author, what's that all about? And it's just again. For me it has been the best thing I've ever done. Frankly, yeah.
Speaker 2:so for anyone out there listening, your fear might be oh my gosh, what if nobody reads my book? What if I put all this effort in and nobody reads my book? Well, there you go. Even if they don't read it, it still makes for great use in networking, probably on your website too, like if you list out that you're an author on your website. I mean, there's just so many different uses even if someone doesn't read your book and who knows, they might read it after that networking event.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, I've had people actually buy it on Amazon right there at the networking event.
Speaker 1:You know, they've stood right in front of me and bought it. I mean, typically, when I first, when I published the first book, um, I was sharing office space with a couple of other lawyers and one of them walked in and he picked up a copy of the book and he goes I love this. This feels so good. And he said how much does this cost you? Uh, now I know what the retail price is, but I get Amazon gives me a break. I pay just a fraction of the retail price for author copies and so I usually keep, you know, 20 to 50 author copies around. He said you should hand these out like business cards, and that's what we do. The other thing I typically do when I go to a networking event is I'll bring like five copies just to hand out to people. The yeah.
Speaker 1:What if nobody reads it? Well, I try and create a, you know, an environment where people will read it. So, for example, when I published my second book, I, you know, announced on LinkedIn. I contacted just about everybody in my network and said hey, I'm just, I'm putting this out. If you want a free copy, just let me know and I'll get you a complimentary copy.
Speaker 1:And you know, one friend in particular that I hadn't spoken to for probably close to 20 years was yeah, get me a copy. I got it to him and then, within the next 12 months, he just kept referring people to me. He's like I've got these clients that we typically refer to somebody else, but now that I know that you do this, you know I'm referring them to you, and so you never know. You know there's this idea of, and so you never know. You know there's this idea of are you publishing to sell books? And for us, the answer that's never been our primary objective, and so we've always just published for marketing purposes. It's like a business card, it's like a way to show people that we know what we're doing, we know what we're talking about, and we've tried to create grassroots, creative ways to get people to read the books.
Speaker 2:So that's awesome, and so let's talk about. We talked about what, uh, you know, uh, publishing a book can do for your brand. Uh, basically, now, have you seen any kind of boost in business in terms of like, obviously, so obviously, you've got, like, the speaking gigs, but like in terms of, like you know, clients coming to you, like you've have you seen a boost in that?
Speaker 1:so the two kind of things that we've tracked are um number of books sold and um dollars. You know the the, the dollar amount of legal fees that we can trace back to the books. So, in terms of number of books sold, we've we've sold about 10 000 copies of um, and it's mainly the first book is really sold the most. But we've we've sold, um, you know, some copies of the second book, and, and the third book just came out about a month ago. So we really haven't sold much of that book at all. But 10,000 books sold translates into about a little more than $50,000 in royalties. It's not a way to get rich, but that's $50,000 over the last seven years. Um, cause we published the first book seven years ago. Um, but it's nice. It's nice to have that money. It's not, I'll never say no to that and it's um.
Speaker 1:But in terms of legal fees, um, I, you know we we kind of go back and forth about how we like to talk about this.
Speaker 1:My wife is my marketing director and she says you should talk about it in terms of number of billable hours, because then people can take their billable rate and multiply it by the hours and figure out what value that might bring to their practice. So, in terms of billable hours, in the last five years it's brought us about 1,200 extra billable hours, and again, these aren't just billable hours, these are hours that we're working with the clients we love to work with on the projects that we love to do and the projects that make us the most profit do and the projects that make us the most profit. And so, yeah, it's an extra 1,200 billable hours, but it's really prime billable hours, like the beautiful stuff, right, and so for us that translates into about $300,000 to $350,000 or more, because my rate has changed over time as well. But yeah, I mean it's been. I mean I've done nothing else in my practice that has, and I've tried lots of different marketing things in a solo practice, but nothing has been able to bring me that big of a return on investment.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you know what we talk a lot about. It's not about who you know, it's about who they know, right? So that's business there that might not have been there without the book, right? And then who knows what that business leads to from there, right? So you know, it's all about that ripple effect.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean think about it this way there is, on average, maybe three inquiries a week, just cold contacts to me saying hey, I bought your book on Amazon, I read it and I'd love to see if you could represent me in my transaction. And you know it's. Yeah, it's been great. Nothing else brings me that kind of um, lead flow, lead flow that you know nothing else that we do and we do other things. But this has been our biggest push and it's been the best thing we've done.
Speaker 2:That's awesome, Joel. Anything else that you'd like to share with the audience that we might not have touched on?
Speaker 1:I guess. I mean it's, you know, we talk about. I make it sound like it's pretty easy, but it's not. If it were easy, every lawyer would have a book, right? Sure, yeah. So that's why I love sharing it, because, um, a lot of people will perhaps feel motivated, but then it is a slug. I mean, it is not, it's.
Speaker 1:You know, the first book took me probably 18 months to write and then actually publish and then trying to promote it is a whole nother challenge that we could spend a whole nother episode talking about. It's really that's the most difficult thing, and I didn't realize that. You know, I didn't even think that far into the future. The third book probably took me close to two and a half to three years from idea inception until publication. I put it aside a couple of times, I rewrote it, I couldn't find my purpose with it, and uh. So it's not easy, but it's definitely worth it. I mean it's, and, and because it's not easy, not very many people will try it, but the ones who do, I think we'll find that it could be very beneficial, very helpful.
Speaker 2:That's awesome, Joel. Where can the audience find you?
Speaker 1:Well, it's pretty easy to find. I have a very unique name. So if you just Google my name, typically I'm going to pop up. But I have a website. My law firm website is just my last name AnkenyLawcom. I have another website that I'm kind of it's kind of a beta website. It's called RiverGuideESQcom and that's kind of my author website. But either one of those just Google my name, you'll find me. You can Google my name on Amazon.
Speaker 2:You'll find all my books there as well awesome and for anyone listening, I will put all the links into the podcast description so you can just easily click on that. But, joel, I appreciate you being on the podcast.
Speaker 1:I learned a lot and I hope our audience did, and I'm sure they did as well well, I hope I didn't sound too excited, but it is one of my favorite things to talk about, so thanks for having me on absolutely, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much, all so much. All right For everyone listening. Thank you for listening. Have a terrific weekend and we'll see you next week.