The following guest column by Randy Gage is an excerpt from his new book, Wealth Without Apology, which is being released this week, and which will be the subject of my conversation with him on my podcast this Thursday: Alan Weiss's The uncomfortable Truth

Magnitude of Scale: Why Thinking Bigger Pays Better

I’m currently conducting a comprehensive, groundbreaking, rigorous, cross-sectional, peer-reviewed, gold-standard, double-blind, placebo-controlled, first-of-its-kind, breakthrough, scientific research study. The purpose of the study is to test the following hypothesis:

In today’s environment, it is easier to become a billionaire than a millionaire.

This premise may not be as cheeky as it sounds. As I told you earlier, it’s surprisingly easier to earn a large amount of money quickly than it is to earn a small amount of money over a longer period. This is due in large part to a dynamic I call the “Magnitude of Scale Effect.” Put simply…

The more bold, audacious, and breathtaking an endeavor is—the greater the likelihood it will attract the people and resources necessary to bring it into existence.

Think about this: Airbnb went from two guys renting air mattresses to a $100 billion IPO faster than millions of entrepreneurs ever manage to reach six figures.

Why is it easier to sell a Lamborghini Veneno than a Ford Escape? The person who buys a Ford likely must plan far ahead, budget tightly, weigh sacrifices, and hopefully get approved for credit to drive home their new wheels. The person who buys a Lambo understands the concept of value-for-value exchange, has no creditworthiness issues, and brings in enough discretionary income to make the purchase an easy decision. Even an impulse one.

If you want to join me on my crusade to make the world more prosperous, it begins by increasing the level of your own prosperity. And the most important part of that process is expanding the window through which you see the world.

I use shoes as the analogy for how this process worked with me. Initially my dream was to be able to afford a pair of luxurious Bally loafers, which cost around $200 back then. Younger readers may be shocked to discover we didn’t always live in a world where sneaker drops were a thing! My siblings and I had two pairs of shoes: dress shoes (cheap leather or, more often, plastic) which we wore to school, to church, on holidays, etc., and tennis shoes for gym and after school.

By the time I grew up and had entered the business world, having three or four pairs of shoes meant you were extremely rich. In fact, I knew a few guys who had black shoes for dark suits and brown shoes they could wear with a green or tan suit. I even saw Elvis on television once wearing blue suede shoes!

Next thing you know, I’m a twenty-something hard-charger who wants to be a business tycoon like Bobby Ewing on Dallas and Blake Carrington on Dynasty,and I heard about the aforementioned Bally loafers. (Which were voted by the readers of Robb Report magazine as the most comfortable shoes in the world.) Since $200 was what I paid to buy my used car from the post office government auction, you can imagine what a daunting, almost impossible goal this was for me.

But manifest those suckers I did.

Had my mother learned at that time that I spent $200 on a pair of shoes, she would have slapped me into next week. But the spell was broken…

I learned there was another world reality out there, and that it was possible for a kid from Allied Drive in Madison, Wisconsin, to own nice things. Once I started rocking those Ballys—the window I saw the world through started expanding.

Next thing you know, I’m sporting Prada and Hugo Boss sneakers costing $500 a pair. I learned that when your dream is big enough, you can bend the Universe to your will. Of course, I was spending money like a drunken sailor (if sailors wore Prada sneakers), trying to convince myself that I’d never go back to having just two pairs of shoes.

Within a few years, I’m shelling out a thousand dollars a pair for Donna Karan combat boots and Testoni Oxfords. One weekend after regaling my prosperity seminar audience with tales of my shoe collection, one of the attendees alerts me to Lobb’s of London—bespoke shoemaker to the Royal Family. They create wooden molds of your feet, handcrafting each shoe: one person cuts the leather, another stitches by hand, another sets the rivets, etc.

Within a few weeks, I’ve booked flights BA001 & BA002 (aka the British Airways NY-London run on the Concorde) for a weekend of shoe shopping, getting my feet personally measured by John Lobb, the third generation of the clan. Not only did I break the sound barrier but also the $10,000-per-pair-of-shoes barrier. (And as a bonus became a time traveler, arriving back in Gotham City ninety minutes before I left London.)

Another fun fact: When I was renewing my insurance one year and told my agent that I had $150,000 worth of shoes to insure, she literally started shrieking.

I could amuse you with similar stories about the expanding consciousness process with my purchases of watches, artwork, automobiles, and other various bling-bling. (In fact, I once bought three different colors of the same Viper SRT so when I went out for dinner, my car could match my shoes.)

But at some point, you’d probably find the stories less inspiring and more irritating. (If you haven’t already.) If you find yourself flinching at these stories of ostentatious wealth, here’s a few things to think about…

First, I didn’t start by flying Concorde. I was the guy in the middle seat in Row 35 across from the lav. And I wasn’t like the grifter influencers you see today, debt peacocking or renting exotic cars by the day for their vapid social media posts. (Pretending to be a Lambo baller when they’re really Lambroke.) I paid cash for everything and used those purchases to fuel bigger dreams, create a larger window through which to see the world, and, as a result, was able to solve enough problems and create enough value that the Universe kept rewarding me with more and greater prosperity.

No doubt, I was an arrogant, insecure, nouveau riche kid spending money foolishly. But looking back, I wouldn’t change a thing. I’ve since learned how to become a good steward of money and grown comfortable in my own skin. In fact, my greatest prosperity superpower these days is not needing to signal my virtue or wealth to anyone. But that ferocious spending was a phase I needed to go through to completely eviscerate the poverty consciousness I was programmed with. And as Bobby Axelrod says, “What's the point of having fuck-you money if you don’t say ‘fuck you’ to the people who deserve it?”

But second, you may want to consider what makes you recoil at these stories. How much of your reaction is kneejerk programming and how much came from mindful reflection? What are your core foundational beliefs about money, wealthy people, and luxurious lifestyles?

Your version of this chapter may not be shoes—it might begin by sending your first invoice with confidence, saying no to a lowball offer, or asserting boundaries to someone trying to kill your dream. The point here isn’t monetary costs but the principle of prosperity consciousness.

If you’re like me, you might have grown up thinking that $50,000 a year is a large income. Once you reach that, you’d probably decide that $100,000 or $200,000 is a lot. But if the window you see the world through is continually expanding, at some point you might be spending more for an automobile than you used to spend for a house.

And that’s when it hits you: the most seductive, dangerous, prosperity-killing question of them all.  Four little words that sound reasonable…but will wreck your wealth if you believe them…