The Million-Dollar vs. Hundred-Million-Dollar Reality Check

I heard a saying today—literally today—and I cannot believe I’ve gone this long in my investing journey without ever hearing it before. It stopped me in my tracks:

“If you owe the bank $1 million, the bank owns you.
If you owe the bank $100 million… you own the bank.”

I laughed out loud, and then immediately thought,
…oh wow, that’s uncomfortably true.

When you owe a bank $1 million, you feel every single shift. Every mortgage payment. Every interest-rate adjustment. Every time they email you some “updated policy notice.” At that level, you’re the one playing by their rules. You need them far more than they need you.

But then the saying flips the whole thing on its head.

At $100 million?
Now you’re not just a borrower. You’re a relationship they want to keep. Suddenly the bank returns your calls. They ask how they can support you. They get invested—not in your property, but in you. Because at that scale, your success is tied to their success. Now they need you.

And that’s the point I want to land here:

Debt isn’t the danger.
Small, accidental, reactive debt is the danger.

Strategic debt—scaled slowly, intentionally, with a long-term plan behind it—is one of the greatest wealth-building tools available to us. It’s how normal people become financially free. It’s how families go from “I hope we can retire someday” to “we built a legacy we’re proud of.”

Now, I’m not saying go chase a nine-figure debt load.
I am saying this:

The size of the game you play shapes the level of power you hold.
And most investors—especially real estate agents dipping their toes in—play way smaller than they need to.

So here’s the question I’ve been asking myself all day (and the one I’ll pass on to you):

Is my use of leverage giving me more power… or less?

Because if no one else has told you this today:
You are capable of playing bigger than you realize.