It seems that as we have groups gathered there’s a concern about sharing your top secrets on your product or your services because there’s inevitably someone in the group that’s going to copy that and become your competitor and we advise people when you’re in your groups not to talk about the details of your business and your secret recipe and the way you formulate some things but obviously you’re going to talk about a lot of things that someone could copy you and then become your competitor.

I’m going to address this with two analogies the analogy of business and then I’m going to talk to you about the analogy of a church in the same situation and I’m going to explain the sign behind me that’s called garden farm and market and how we’re approaching this same issue now let’s start with the church most pastors know that they need people helping them volunteers and probably have an associate and in u.s or around the world in a and in developing nations alike there’s a risk that your best your assistant pastor or someone in the congregation that’s close to you someone that you’ve helped immensely decides they can do better and they’ll just start a church and they’ll start a church just down the road and they will be part of your congregation will join them because they have become close friends with them not a good way to start a church.

I will tell you well the same things true in business you have a business you start explaining to your helper or someone that’s close to you or your associate or your assistant and pretty soon they become your competitor same things in your group you have a group that are talking about business and someone sees you becoming successful in their own eyes and they say I can copy that so they become a copy and now they’re your competitor this stinks this is not the way business is supposed to operate.

And I have followed many of these both churches or businesses that start because they copied and they are not successful very long but they do sure cause a lot of habit now if you listen to our teachings long enough we ask you and consider you to encourage you to find something that really fits you really well so that would eliminate a lot of people because they see someone that’s doing chickens and they see the success of that and now they try to become their competitor and open up a chicken not just the farm to produce but the selling of those chickens so that is a inevitably not a good fit for that person but what if it is well here’s my advice and here’s how the picture in the background comes into play you know you all have a realm of influence in your church maybe that’s within five miles or ten kilometres that most of your people come in your business that may be a business you walk and they walk close by so to just be a mile or so or five miles or at least your own city and so we say concentrate on developing and knowing where your limits of your typical customer comes to you in in real terms that’s called your demographics who’s coming there and how far away did they come.

And we suggest that as you’re meeting in your groups your peer groups you could approach it by first signing an agreement to say you will not copy but you know if this person’s wanting to copy anyway there’s nothing really binding with that agreement so that could be an upfront agreement you could guilt that person into saying hey you you’ve disobeyed our agreement in the group that here’s a group in the group then there’s people Regan raising eggs, there’s another person doing the restaurant, and there’s another person of wide diverse types of businesses and you can talk about business and then if you happen to have two people in the same business they just come to some agreement or agreement that others in the group would not compare come become a competitor.

But maybe another way to look at it is like what we’re doing so we believe that you could actually benefit from someone’s success if you would choose to go outside their demographics outside the realm of where they would be drawing their customers let’s apply it to the church our church is very active in helping start other churches they’re very confident in this cells are not going to take a lot of risk and so they’re well established but they’re helping other churches get started all the time they have conferences saying here’s how we do it let’s help you let’s help you let’s help you but the idea is that the young pastors that are being trained at our church are going now way outside our city limits way outside of a realm of influence they’re not opening up a church like two miles down the road and trying to attract the current congregation to that church.

Same things true with you if you’re in business it just really hurts me to see you go to the market and there’s ten people selling tomatoes all exactly the right the same tomatoes and they’re lined up one after one after another after another after another you go see the general market where you’re selling maybe chewing gum and a motor oil or general bread or supplies into and here’s another market opens up just right across the street and you find out it’s the first owners cousin or their close relatives.  That is not going to work.  That is not going to be good.  So you could join in to say, “hey, I’ll help you start and we’ll collaborate.  We actually have benefits and learning from each other but why don’t you start your business far enough away that you’re not affecting my customer base.

Well let’s talk about garden farm and market my friend Octavian and I have entered in mostly to stay connected with you be active and in business in a similar way we’re fight we’re applying the same business principles as we are teaching so we’re fresh with those and here we go there are other what’s called a farmers market in our in our vicinity some of them are on Saturdays only that’s a different market we could join that well we decided to open up our own market we’re going to farm and market but we know that there’s a person in town that has a well-established 25 years they pitch a tent during the season and they’re open from 8:00 in the morning 8:00 at night and they have a full array of produce to sell from day one Wow we go over and talk to them and we talked to the gentleman’s name is name is Mike and we say hey we’re wanting to open up a market but the first words out of my mouth are this I am not intending to become your competitor and if you could see that and you would be willing to collaborate with me and our plans and maybe even open up the market to first year and you help us open up our market and you benefit we have to have win-win both of us must financially win in this deal and he’s very open to it we don’t know if it’s going to happen yet but he knows that we’re pulling a market of people that do not come regularly to his market and so we’re no competitors that’s what we’re talking about.

So I used the example of eggs okay so anybody could grow eggs and we have our friend a Khamisi and the key to growing eggs is he’s found a great market actually two and a half miles hours away in the Congo well there’s all kinds of people raising chick from chickens to produce eggs and now they’re collaborating because they have a place to sell a way to truck now somebody that has a restaurant okay if you have a restaurant you might want to create a particular niche whether it’s Spanish or Italian or African national dish but it would be not very proper for someone to use your same menu and open up real close to you that’s going to be counterproductive but if you have that secret of how to really run a restaurant you could consider helping someone maybe even a relative but they agree that they’re going to be like five miles away or on another main highway someplace where it’s logically not your customer base.

Well I hope those are two answers to this situation you could create an agreement that happens when we I had a trucking company and we had to agree that we would not allow another same brand in a particular area for both for two parts of my business that’s like a contract but number two you could actually benefit by collaborating and helping someone grow if they would do their marketers their service or their what they’re providing outside your customer base.

Well I hope this helps you we’ve got to get past this we’ve got to help each other grow and excel in their businesses please be a part of that please understand that we’re here to help you with that and you should be working together among yourselves to be the best business people in the area thanks for being a part of Inspiring Better Business