Why your business doesn't need a foreign policy

Our guest this week

There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades worth of newsletter material happens.

This was one of those weeks.

Let’s cross over to the office of Humphrey Cobbold, CEO of PureGym, who was invited to appear on the BBC’s panel show, Question Time last week.

A corporate suit whose main qualification is knowing how to lay out a weights room, invited to join a debate laden with jeopardy, on national TV. What could possibly?go wrong?

Every communications expert within Internet range was thinking, “Don’t do it”.

As for Humph, his heart was saying: you’re perfect, do it, but his head was saying: you’re perfect, do it.

So he did it. And he spoke eloquently on all the obvious gym-related topics you’d expect.

You know, obesity, regular exercise, and arms sales to Israel.

I don’t know about you, but I definitely want to hear much, much more from this gym bunny about his wine bar take on the geopolitics of The Gaza Strip.

What did we learn?

Well, it turns out PureGym doesn’t need a foreign policy. It didn’t go well.

He woke up the next morning to hundreds of people cancelling their PureGym memberships, staff resigning, and PureGym properties being vandalised.

PureGym rapidly issued a statement affirming its commitment to diversity, inclusivity, and??? ...... I'm sorry, I really can’t be bothered.

There’s a reason I’m telling you this ugly story. Jump the image and read on. You’ll thank me.

Rant in haste, repent at leisure

If you’re like me, building an audience feels like a life’s work.

We’re constantly attracting, nurturing, engaging, cultivating, checking, learning, ?pruning, all with the aim of assembling 1,000 raving fans whose credit cards we can influence.

I present myself to my potential audience?as a messaging expert.

Some people come to me because they recognise that expertise (others?don’t).

The ones that do are bang up for hearing from me about positioning, targeting, and differentiation.

They’re less interested in my views on the transgender debate, the state of The Catholic Church, or the legal nuances of The Rwanda Scheme.

And if they’re women, they are definitely not beating a path to my LinkedIn account to read a rage post about women commentators in football like this guy’s misjudged hissy fit???.

He’ll be encouraged by the seven people who liked it. He won’t notice the 7,000?who saw the post and made a mental note to steer well clear ??.

He's a sales trainer. 1,900 people follow him to hear about sales training. It’s a total abuse of the privileged platform they've given him.

I don’t mind losing followers who disagree with my approach to messaging. That comes with the territory.

But the Venn Diagram of people who like my messaging schtick, and people who don't want to hear me sounding off about?politics and religion, is an image that should be captioned, "Shooting yourself in the foot".

Imagine pissing off your hard won fans just to get some personal gripe off your chest ??.

Imagine losing a crowd of paying gym customers because you felt you were the right person to rant about politics on TV ??.

Copper-bottomed stupidity.

Stick to your knitting.

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