I spent years trying to study the world monopolists and stupendously rich men to find out the secrets for dominating the marketplace. Then one day, I heard Dr Myles Munroe preach on Genesis 1:28 and I was blown away by the obvious ‘secrets’ for marketplace dominance in that one singular verse. I was stunned when I finally realized that God had actually given the recipes for dominating the marketplace to Adam and Eve all the way back in the garden of Eden!.
In Genesis 1:28 we saw the secrets clearly revealed when God said to the newly created Adam and Eve: “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over every living thing that moves on the earth”. A careful reading of Genesis 1:28 actually contained the recipes for achieving dominance and monopoly in any business enterprise.
After identifying the surprisingly simple steps, I checked every monopolist and market dominator’s practices against them and found out that they hold true in every industry or calling. Every successful business man who ever achieved total dominance in their market followed these four steps. These four Keys are very simple to understand from the passage. Get these four Keys and you will open the door to marketplace dominance in any industry!
#1:THE FRUITFULNESS KEY- The first commandment of God to Adam and Eve was that they should be FRUITFUL. This is the genesis to marketplace dominance. You must have an original idea. You must create something new (fruitfulness is products coming out of the hard ground to the surface!). You cannot just be a copycat. You must have a definite niche and a fresh approach or new application of a product, idea or thinking. Microsoft. Apple.CNN. Walmart. Pastor Adeboye of RCCG. Kodak. AMAZON. GOOGLE. Ford, UPS etc were all innovators of new ideas or new approach to what is already in place. Look at any industry’s leader. They were fruitful in a way the market cannot deny. They were FRUITFUL in an original way. They were productive in an innovative fashion. Everything starts and ends with an original idea. ‘Fruitfulness’ is the first key to marketplace dominance. The question we should all take time to answer in prayer and fasting is: What is my ‘fruitfulness’? What original idea has God given me? What new approach can I introduce to a crowded market? This is the first key. Without this key, the Kingdompreneur is destined for a life of mediocrity or mere sufficiency. Abundance cannot happen without ‘fruitfulness’
#2 THE MULTIPLICATION KEY- God then told them to MULTIPLY. Multiplication involves replication and mass production of an idea. It involves creating a system that allows the idea to move from one prototype to many copies for consumption. It involves thinking beyond the local or immediate use. It involves the idea being duplicated in different offices, locations and mediums. Until you learn to multiple your ‘fruit’ or idea, you can never dominate the market place. This is the 2nd step to achieving market place dominance. A look at the champions in every industry will confirm this astounding fact. Pastor Adeboye found a way to MULTIPLY the evangelism and church planting ‘fruit’ by creating the Model Parish system that transformed the RCCG church from less than 100 parishes when he became G.O to over 30,000 parishes with more than 12 million followers in less 20 years. Bill Gates took the market away from IBM by finding better ways to multiply operating system. Ford took the automobile industry to another level and ascended to dominance by mass producing automobiles that everybody can buy. Google revolutionized the advertizing industry with its pay-per-click search engine that makes internet advertising accessible by any computer in the world. Amazon took over the book store by globalizing the bookstore and making books available for purchase by everybody all over the world at the same time. You cannot be a dominator or a monopoly until you find a way to mass produce the ‘fruit’.
#3 THE REPLENISHMENT KEY- God directed then that after Adam and Eve has achieved fruitfulness and figured out how to multiply, the next step is to REPLISH. Replenishment involves distribution of the multiplied fruits to the final consumer. To become a dominant force, you must strive to control the system of distribution. A multiplied product is useless. Many great ideas never achieve their potential because the originators could not master and control the source of distribution for the ‘fruits’, product or idea. This is the third inescapable Key for market place dominance for any business person. This key explains why an industry like Nollywood (Nigeria’s much vaunted movie industry) has not yet achieved the world wide breakthrough its potential demands. We have mastered the ‘fruitfulness’ part (we pioneered and mastered theater of low budget films on cheap video cameras. This was so innovative that even Hollywood and bollywood sent people to study the phenomenon. I know because I met some of this stunned investigators from the U.S). We have also mastered the ‘multiplication’ part. You can generally do mass production of any quantity in Nigeria now with less than 30 days delivery time. However, we are non-starters in the area of REPLISHMENT. The distribution system in Nigeria is still largely limited to 3 or 4 major markets in 3 cities, controlled by a few people who have no clue or who have chosen to ignore the new world realities and imperative paradigm for worldwide distribution of content which include theater releases, merchandizing, per-per-view, internet streaming, stores, rentals. Walmart, without producing anything, became the world’s leader by solving the distribution problem in the retail industry. They invested heavily in massive stores located in little towns and villages and then held producers to ransom with their pricing strategy. General Motors and Ford are losing the fight to Honda and Toyota in the market place because while the Japanese companies were busy finding more and more distribution markets in Africa, Asia, Europe, Australia and even in the U.S with cheaper cars and faster turnarounds, American companies are trapped in their own provincial thinking, rising costs of labor compared to other countries, corporate gluttony and debt which continues to hamper their multiplication and replenishment efforts.
#4. THE SUBJUGATION KEY- The final commandment God gave them for achieving dominance was to subdue the earth. This involves a corporate strategy and alliances that subdues the competitors in the marketplace makes your organization indispensable or a force to be reckoned with in its industry. Even with anti-trust laws in the U.S, Microsoft continues to be the superpower in micro computer software by systematically swallowing up upstarts and disrupting their source of multiplication or replenishment. Bill Gates understood the power of subduing the competition. After dealing with fruitfulness, Multiplication and replenishment key, Gates spent years to cultivate the final key. For years Bill Gates insisted that only his own operating system could be carried on computers that want it. Because of the multiplication and replenishment capabilities of Microsoft, the other companies had no choice. Same strategy, Walmart spent years honing its replenishment skills before utilizing the final key to marketplace monopoly in undercutting every other store in the retail business.
Indeed The ‘rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer’ is actually a biblical statement! The first three keys are absolutely essential before you can apply the fourth key of subduing the marketplace. Once the market is subdued, Dominance becomes automatic. Of course getting to the fourth key is a long way for most of us at this time but we can certainly start working on the first key. We all need that fresh idea and that cutting edge ‘fruitfulness that will launch us on the road to dominion in the marketplace.