Can Growth Ever Be Truly Mutual?

Reflections from Simbiosis Bisnis 2025; on true collaboration, comfort zones, and finding mutual growth in business and life.

Maybe real success isn’t about expanding outward, but about digging deeper where you already stand. — Nuniek Tirta Sari

It was my daughter’s 19th birthday, hubby and I waited until midnight to congratulate her and gave the birthday present she'd been requesting for: black cat neck pillow from Mr. DIY 😄

A few days before, the personal assistant of Ryan M. Tallulah (founder of Bardi, among other 14 companies he built and invest), texted to invite me as a VIP guest to Simbiosis Bisnis 2025.  “We’d like to prepare VIP seats and special arrangements for you.”

Guess what, prior to that, hubby and I were even considering to buy tickets for the event, but remember that it's our daughter's birthday. So we asked her. And like the calm, mature human she’s become, she said, “It’s fine, Mom, Dad. I’ll be in class all day anyway.”

So off we went: my husband dropped me off at Graha Bhakti Budaya Taman Ismail Marzuki and he continued the journey for a meeting with his angel investor, and came back to join me after the meeting. 

I spent the day listening to entrepreneurs talk about business moats, comfort zones, and symbiosis. Also, networking with other attendees. The event was called Simbiosis Bisnis, “Business Symbiosis.” 

Ryan Maurice Talullah, Nuniek Tirta Sari, Natali Ardianto

Ryan opened his session by classifying four types of symbiosis:

Commensalism, Parasitism, Amensalism, and Mutualism.

He asked, “Can there really be win-win-win? Or does someone always lose for others to gain?”

Sometimes what looks like mutualism from one side feels like amensalism from another.

He gave an analogy: the difference between seeing a “6” and a “9” depending on where you stand.

Perspective defines everything.

“Even when you’re right,” Ryan said, “you can still be seen as wrong by people who are wrong, because everyone is just too focused on their own world.”

And I thought, isn’t that true not just in business, but in life?

One of my favorite metaphors of the day was when Ryan talked about the business moat, that protective trench around your “castle.” Most motivational speakers love to tell people to “get out of your comfort zone.” But Ryan flipped that narrative:

“Instead of escaping your comfort zone, expand it.

Keep digging. Make it wider and deeper. That’s how you grow.”

Growth isn’t about chasing newness. It’s about rooting.

Like deepening your well instead of drilling a hundred shallow ones.

When you focus on what you already do well (the skill, network, knowledge, or experience that’s uniquely yours), you naturally start building your moat. You stop competing, and you start compounding.

And that, Ryan said, is when real collaboration becomes possible. When multiple “islands of business” each strengthen their own moats, eventually they form a bonus land: new territory created through mutual growth.

Bonus land. I loved that phrase.

Because it’s not about taking from others, but about building together; like five islands connecting through the rising tide.

Ryan M. Talullah and illustration of Bonus Land analogy

Ryan also spoke about the three stages of an entrepreneur:

1. Sell yourself.

2. Sell a solution.

3. Sell a dream.

Each stage sounded simple, but as I listened, I realized how many people (myself included) sometimes try to skip ahead to “selling dreams” without fully understanding what we’ve already built.

Selling yourself is about reputation; what people instantly associate with your name.

Selling a solution is about turning your strengths into systems.

And selling a dream is about inspiring others to journey with you, even if they’ll get off halfway.

As he put it, “Tell people you’re going from Jakarta to Bandung. Some will join you only until Karawang, and that’s okay. Cost sharing.”

That’s exactly how relationships work; in business, in friendships, even in family. Not everyone is meant to walk with us to the very end. And that’s okay.

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Then he continued with how to actually sell solutions, not just ideas.

He said, for us to sell a solution, we only need to do three things:

1. Documentation

Document your process.

He mentioned BPMN (Business Process Model), Notion, and draw.io, simple tools that help turn intuition into systems. Because when things are written down, they can be improved.

2. Duplication

This one takes patience.

Duplication depends on our capacity to fix what fails.

That’s why duplication can’t be rushed, it grows at the pace of our own learning curve.

3. Delegation

Ryan shared six stages of delegation:

1. I do, you don’t see.

2. I do, you see.

3. I do, you help.

4. You do, I help.

5. You do, I see.

6. You do, see you.

And he reminded us that duplication and delegation aren’t the same.

From the point of view of a team, duplication means imitating the founder’s way first, then delegating it to others, so the task can be documented and repeated.

And then came the part about the idea of non-financial assets.

Ryan listed three:

Knowledge, experience, and network.

And then he added two superpowers we often forget:

Reputation and hobby.

Reputation is how people know you. Hobby is what keeps you sane when the applause fades.

He said, “Why hobby is very important? Because when it’s winter, when income slows and validation stops, hobby keeps you consistent.”

When life feels barren, writing is what keeps me warm. It has always been that quiet fire for me.

Maybe that’s my own moat; my way of expanding comfort by returning to what grounds me.

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Toward the end, Ryan shared his view on consistency:

“Consistency isn’t doing the same thing every day.

It’s waking up fifteen minutes before you’re needed.

It’s taking one step in the same direction, every day.”

I smiled at that. Because consistency often feels like an enemy of creativity. But maybe, when framed this way, it’s actually its best friend; a rhythm that frees us from chaos.

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At the event, we were treated as VIP guests: given our own Liaison Officer, invited backstage and into the speakers’ lounge, introduced to several speakers and partners. The committee even asked my husband if he’d be willing to speak at next year’s event.

At one point, just as Pak Sandiaga Uno’s session ended, Ryan Tallulah himself came over to where we were standing near the stage. He chatted with us warmly for quite a while, until one of the crew gently interrupted to remind him he was being called for a group photo with Pak Sandiaga.

By the time my husband and I left at six, Jakarta was pouring. The traffic was merciless, the roads shimmering with rain and headlights. We reached home two hours later, soaked and starving, only to rush back out again for dinner with our birthday girl at Holycow! to redeem the birthday treat chicken steak 😋

While enjoying the steak, we talked a lot about meaningful stuff. I looked at her across the table: nineteen, independent, full of dreams, and realized how everything I’d heard that day circled back to this moment.

Building a life, after all, is not so different from building a business.

It’s about expanding our comfort zones, nurturing what we’re already good at, protecting what matters, and finding people whose paths align with ours, even if just for a while.

Maybe that’s the real simbiosis.

Not about who wins or loses, but about learning to grow together, one deeper step at a time.

Wednesday, 29 October 2025

Nuniek Tirta Sari