Interview With Ev Bogue, Author of "Minimalist Business", Part II

This is part II of an interview I recently conducted with Ev Bogue, who just released a completely rewritten version of his best-selling ebook "Minimalist Business".

You can read part I of the interview here. I would like to again thank Ev for taking the time to answer my questions.

6. What are some common mistakes that new minimalist business owners make with respect to attracting attention / getting permission?

Right now the biggest misstep I see is assuming social media is a list of people who are supporting the work. Social is a great way to get in touch with almost anyone when I need to make a request. However, it’s not a list of clients.

There might be a few clients in the bunch, but most of the people I follow on social fall into three camps.

1. Masters

2. Peers

3. Friends

Customers don’t fall into these three groups.

So where are customers? To find out, I need to gather permission in social spaces. I have to ask ‘would you be willing to hear more about the work I’m doing?’ I ask people to sign up for a list. Then I have an honest list of people who are actually interested in the work I’m doing.

This is hard, because the honest list for someone just starting out might be three people.

7. Can you give a rule of thumb, based on your experience, about how a new minimalist business owner who is struggling to attract attention (i.e. he/she is in "The Dip") can decide whether to keep trying, or should perhaps switch to a new topic?

I’m in a constant process of experimenting, measuring, and untethering when what I’m doing isn’t working. If I stuck with one topic, I’d almost certainly be bored – and the people who read me would be bored too.

Knowing this, I continue to innovate based on what interests me, and how I benefit the people who support my work.

8. Can you briefly describe how your specific attention-gathering process (Google+, EvBogue.com sign-up box, daily letters) works? Why isn't the EvBogue.com page longer (describing your background, your products, etc)? Is the Google+ step suppose to make people comfortable enough that EvBogue.com only needs to present the sign-up box?

I haven’t gathered permission until I have permission to contact you in your inbox. My goal with social is to tell a compelling story about the work I’m doing, to incentivize new readers to sign up to hear more.

I look at the work I’m doing online as a constant experiment. The website I have right now may not be the one I have in one week. My social presence may shift to another service. The reality is, I need to be constantly trying new things to see how they land.

What works for me may not work for you.

9. Given that you switched EvBogue.com from a blog to a sign-up page / daily letter, why did you re-launch the "Minimalist Business" site using a blog format? Was this another experiment?

This is an experiment. Will having a blog associated with Minimalist Business boost sales? The blog is another tool for gathering permission to contact customers in their inboxes.

This being said, all of the information I push to the public web is solid. All of the experimental work I’m doing right now is behind the scenes. If you’d like to hear more, you’ll need to sign up for the list. The public work is just scraping the surface.

10. Finally, could you tell us why you distributed the new edition of "Minimalist Business" as a .mobi (Kindle) file, as opposed to pdf format (like the original)? Was this another experiment, or do you see an advantage to this format? Was this format easy to generate using "Scrivener"?

Exactly. Using the Kindle format allows me to compile quickly. I see Minimalist Business as an evolving book.

As the world changes, Minimalist Business will change with it. As the experiments I do teach me more about how the current world of the web works, I will update the book with what I find.

I’m beginning to see a book less like a brick of information, which can never be changed, and more like a fluid entity. This has been confusing for some, because we’re just at the start of the evolving book era. The trouble with a bricked physical book is it’s two years out of date by the time it’s published. With a digital book, I write, compile, update and distribute in a fraction of the time.

Ultimately, the goal of creating a Minimalist Business is to be flexible. It’s about changing based on the needs of the people who support your work. What works today may not work tomorrow.