Ed's Big Adventure

A thick depression settled in after publishing Lit Up late last year. There’s something about the cover, or my inability to quickly describe that it’s about grappling toward a sustainable locally-based life, that fails to draw prospective readers in. I see the lack of interest as a light goes out behind their eyes. I wish I could unsee this. This melancholy is rooted in so much more than a potential commercial failure. Did I waste the last half of my kids’ childhood on this quest? So many sacrifices…. I could go on.

I began noticing high traffic to a whimsical blog post I wrote in 2018: Ditch the screen. Old fashioned minimalist accounting by pencil and paper for your small business. More traffic rolled into this post than anything else in 2023. So strange. It all began when I snapped this photo in the Duluth City Council chambers while waiting for proceedings to begin with an Artist of the Month award for Shawna.

During the crushing busyness of farm setup that is spring, I made use of the 20 minutes of enforced rest by catching up on the ledger, then a new concept that saved our financial life in business and therefore became indispensable for our lifestyle. After completing the ledger work in just five minutes, I sat there basking in the glory of this system’s elegant simplicity for the remainder of our wait, which ultimately flowered into that blog post. Years went by as I quietly enjoyed tracking the finances for all three of our businesses manually in a physical book, as we carefully built our lives brick by brick.

Upon releasing the book that required the better part of a decade to birth, I endured the pain of a marketing strategy that essentially boils down to, “Look. Look at me! Notice. See what I made for you.” The local newspaper gave it a brief mention:

I mailed them a copy, and from what I can tell sold approximately one copy, but lost the $4.13 in postage.

There was also the news appearance:

I’m not terribly well-suited for communicating any depth in the medium of television, so it wasn’t surprising that two books sold after going through all that stress. At least it was a positive net result: 2 books sold minus 1 given away to the host = 1. (by the way, this is the sort of math I practice in accounting. Complicated, right?)

What to do? Every push into serious marketing breaks off a little piece of my soul. The emotional cost is high, even when sending a text with a link to a good acquaintance.

On January 7th, a stranger by the name of Aaron Johnson stumbled onto that old blog post and sent me an email requesting the ebook that I teased all those years earlier. Since there was a demonstrated interest in this topic, I got started. It felt good to make something useful, even if it was for the smallest imaginable niche. If asked, “Who is your audience?” I would have said, “Aaron Johnson.”

So, after waking up from yet another dark night of the soul, instead of scanning Facebook for any comments about my book (always none, because it disappeared into the void) or checking Amazon for any reviews (just four, forever four), I pulled out the typewriter and began making something new:

Creating something of value for even one person was surprisingly effective in making it through the fog. And playing on my favorite toy, the typewriter, added joy daily. It’s impossible to scan sales reports while working analog.

I also enjoyed working on submitting Shawna’s sales taxes and working on our income tax return for the benefit of sharing further insights with the reader. Yes, I’ve uncovered joy in these necessary tasks, because I believe all things should be undertaken from a posture of joy and even worship.

Five weeks later it’s all uploaded to Amazon as a $2.99 Kindle ebook (and now a paperback). The only thing it cost me to produce was time. It feels amazing to make something without a whole lot of emotional investment, or expectation of success, although I was bemused to see it ranked at #20 in “One-hour business and money short reads.” (A few days later it hit #1 new release in this zany category, haha).

Compulsively, I checked my email for the next two hours until he replied: delighted, flattered, etc…

Phew. Mission accomplished.

My point in sharing this isn’t to market my new ebook. Unless you have a very small business, this strategy isn’t for you, although I commend it for teaching your children about running a lemonade stand or keeping a book for that lawn-mowing business, and you don’t need to read my book for that.

It is so fun to tell friends and acquaintances about the process of writing this book without the slightest expectation that they’ll be interested in the actual content. Freedom! I created an Instagram reel by using Pearl Jam’s song “Not for you,” which is perfect. Anyone who creates art needs to develop a kind of punk rock spirit to keep going. Well, the 99% who are ignored by the mainstream anyway.

I am certain that this difficult journey will benefit my craft in the long run.

Lastly, I want to share the book’s description. I wrote it quick and dirty in about five minutes with loud music blasting in my ears (Nirvana’s song “Tourette’s” was the most noteworthy). Oh, the irony.

The inflows and outflows of your small business are like a beating heart. Keeping track of the income and expenses of your life’s work should be an act of love. You cannot deliver excellence into anything you loathe.

Those of us who live a solopreneur existence needn’t contend with overly complicated and expensive accounting software. Since we must kill what we eat every day, and have no employees to keep the plates spinning, our manner of tracking the numbers must be dead simple.

Using a ledger—writing income and expenses by hand into a book—is an elegantly simple solution for straightforward small businesses that feed a family.

I previously endured 12 years of slow death while gazing into computer screens from a cubicle. The freedom of self-employment now extends into all areas of life, including accounting. Anything I can do to limit my time on screens is a worthy endeavor, because it places guardrails around my ability to focus. The analog way of keeping the books (literally!) accomplishes this.

I currently manage three books for our family’s three-legged stool: an urban farm, my wife’s art, and my work as an author. This method is not only enjoyable, even at tax time, but it promotes the sense of freedom sought by choosing self-employment in the first place.

Ledger-keeping with the Adams 12 Column account book is for entrepreneurs who have ample common sense and 5th grade math at the ready. You can do this!