Every entrepreneur and independent deal maker already lives inside an ecosystem. The question is whether you are drifting in it unconsciously or building it deliberately.
On a quiet morning walk, the realization often hits: for all the internal angst about deals, risk, or the next move, your environment is already giving you clues. The beauty around you, the relationships you’ve built over decades, and the flow of conversations you can access with a single phone call all point to a simple truth: you’re not doing this alone. You are standing in the middle of an ecosystem – a living network of people, resources, capabilities, and opportunities.
For an entrepreneur, this realization is not just comforting; it is strategic. Once you see yourself as part of an ecosystem, your role shifts. You are no longer simply “working your contacts” or “chasing deals.” You become a node – a connector, a curator, and a steward of value. You start to notice who sits at the center of complex networks, the way a longtime friend casually rattles off global deals, partners, and projects. Their effectiveness is not just about personal brilliance; it is about the ecosystem they sit in and the way they cultivate it.
Building your ecosystem begins with awareness. Ask two simple questions: Whose ecosystem can you ethically and respectfully tap into? And what ecosystem do you personally offer that others would want to tap into? These questions shift your thinking from isolation to participation. They force you to map the attorneys, marketers, storytellers, operators, financial partners, and subject-matter experts who collectively function as your extended team. In a large company, this shows up as built-in departments. As an independent or founder, you must intentionally assemble your own version of that infrastructure.
The moment you recognize that you already have an ecosystem, the way you use time changes. Coffee meetings stop being random. Phone calls become intentional touches into specific parts of your network. Mentoring conversations become opportunities to connect people into the right lanes of your ecosystem, not just to give advice. You naturally start seeing gaps: maybe you have strong product expertise but no media voice; or you have investors but no operator who can grind through execution. Those gaps become design prompts, not sources of anxiety.
One powerful way to operationalize this is to think in terms of a “personal board” and an “extended field.” Your personal board is the small group of people you can call at any time for honest feedback, strategic guidance, and perspective. Your extended field is the broader network – specialists, partners, and communities – that you can activate around specific deals or initiatives.
Both are part of your ecosystem, and both require investment: time, value-creation, generosity, and follow-through.
For the independent deal maker, your ecosystem is your real asset. Deals come and go. Markets cycle. But your ability to see patterns, to bring the right people together at the right time, and to be known as a trustworthy node in the network is what compounds. The realization that you already sit in an ecosystem – and that you can shape it – transforms restlessness into responsibility.
From there, the work is simple, but not easy: nurture it, grow it, and become the kind of person whose ecosystem others are grateful to tap into.
Photo by Andrew Moca on Unsplash
