Your Network Is the Warehouse.

A normal business holds stock in a warehouse. A middleman holds people in a network - the trades you can call, the buyers who trust you, the contacts who open doors. That network is your inventory, your factory, and your moat all at once. The bigger and deeper it is, the more demand you can serve and the harder you are to replace.

So invest in the network the way a shopkeeper invests in stock. Maintain it, grow it, keep the relationships warm. Every solid contact is a unit of inventory that can fulfil a deal. The middleman with the deepest network simply has the biggest warehouse - and can say yes to things no competitor can even attempt.