The Penthouse
The Penthouse Move: Middleman the Middlemen.
The highest position isn't taking a cut of the work. It's taking a cut of everyone taking a cut.
There is a level above being a great middleman, and this is it: instead of standing between a buyer and a supplier, you build the place where all the other middlemen come to do their business, and you take a slice of every one of them. The platform. The marketplace. The exchange. You stop competing with the brokers and start charging rent to all of them at once.
This is the penthouse move, and it's why the very richest businesses on earth own no product and touch no work - they own the doorway that the doorway-owners depend on. Set your sights here. Master being a middleman first, then climb to the level where you middleman the middlemen, and you've reached the highest floor this book can take you to.
Build the place every other middleman must transact through, and take a cut of them all.
This is one of 48 laws from MIDDLEMAN - The 48 Laws of the Money in the Middle. Read it in full to climb the whole building, floor by floor.