Build A Bigger Life

Forrest Willet on Life, Love and Almost Dying I first met Forrest Willet at a Jack Canfield Train The Trainer Event -- and to meet Forrest is to love Forrest. He absolutely exudes love, loves life, and loves other people for who they are and who they can become. I had no idea about Forrest’s traumatic brain injury when I first met him, and through our interactions he shared the events that led up to him lying in bed in a seriously depressed (and near suicidal) state. It was clear from the moment I met him that he would be a great interview on Build A Bigger Life. Forrest’s first piece of advice was to accept where you are in life. Today, he works with other victims of brain injuries to help them recuperate and re-envision their lives. One such story is Melinda, a young woman who had a traumatic brain injury, was in a coma for 9 months, was told she’d never walk or talk again -- yet goes to coffee every week with Forrest who tells them they can do anything they set their mind to. (15:00) With a son who was two

What is your retirementality? What do you do with your 401K, equity in your home or financial investments? Every financial expert has a “golden method” for retirement, what is right for you? On this Solocast, Adam digs into his personal thoughts and insight on retirement. The 3 themes Adam speaks on: Your Risk Tolerance Your Retirement Timeline Your Lifestyle or your “ideal lifestyle in retirement” Listen in to hear Adam’s insight, advice and tips on retirement. You will never have more time then you do right now. Change your retirementality today! Enjoy.

BABL EP 27: Diego Corzo on My American Dream I first met Diego Corzo about four years ago when he was a student at Florida State University. Immediately struck by what a driven, inspired and motivated young man he was, we struck up a keen friendship, mentorship, and profound level of mutual respect. Diego’s story is an inspiring one of someone who didn’t let obstacles stand in his way -- you’ll be impressed at the level of responsibility he takes for his life, his success, and for finding ways over, around and through everything life put in his way. Around the 9:00 mark, Diego talks about going to Succeed Faster and how that changed his life forever because his mindset changed. As a recent college graduate with no green card, Diego pursued work with GM in Austin, TX -- but roadblocks kept appearing -- no drivers license, knew no one, and the immigration process was lagging on months longer than he thought. At 16:00, Diego talked about how he pushes through obstacles by viewing them as challenges to be tackled

On this Solocast, Adam dives deep into the speaking industry. He leaves you with tips and resources to launching your speaking career.

Sarah Peck is an adventurer, a writer, a learner, and in my humble opinion, a complete badass. She boldly states she’ll have a million liquid by the time she’s 40 so that she can live off the interest and I have no doubt she’ll do it. I found Sarah by way of some other dynamic BABL interviewees, all of whom said the same thing -- “Sarah is incredible”. Most notably on the interview is her story of how she raised $33,000 for Charity Water on her 29th birthday. Without spoiling it too much, she promised to something very bold (and very naked) if her tribe could raise over $29,000. This one is definitely worth a listen. Sarah is employed full-time with the start-up OneMonth.com, and through a very generous partnership, they’ve arranged for BABL listeners to receive a discount on their monthly education programs. Books recommended by Sarah: The Martian by Andy Weir Man’s Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami Thanks for tuning in!!

Do you have a vision for your life? Whether it be with your partner, your family, your business partner, or your co-worker? On this Solocast, Adam discusses the importance of having a vision playing against your perceived reality and how having a clear vision and adding weight to that it will always overcome. You need to have a vision and lead in all aspects of your life. It should be so clear that you can articulate it to anyone that asks. What is your vision? For your family, your life, your career, your money, or your health? What does the next 6-12 months, 5 years or 20 years look like for you? To get started download the Build A Bigger Life Blueprint and start outlining your vision. Show Quotes: "We are Love, We Are One, We are how we treat each other when the day is done." "Be Nice to Each other" - House Rules Recommended Books The Magic of Thinking Big-David Schwartz The On Purpose Person- Kevin McCarthy

BABL Ep 23: Jake Chesney on Creating Your Own Bank Jake Chesney is definitely someone building a bigger life for himself. He’s been an entrepreneur for the past 20 years, and when you’ve really never depended on anyone but yourself for your paycheck, it changes your mindset around work & money. Thanks to a strong financial upbringing by his father, Jake operated his own business while in college, carried that forward 7 years, and was ultimately introduced to something known as The Infinite Banking Concept. He’s built a very substantial business for himself over the past 15 years, centered around helping people build a foundation for real wealth. In the nature of full disclosure, Jake and I both sold books door-to-door for the SouthWestern Company back in college, which is partly how we reconnected several months ago. SW recruits about 4,000 college students every summer to knock on doors selling study guides to families. It’s extremely lucrative for those that apply the SW principles. During his SW experi

Jenny Blake is a creative powerhouse and a force to be reckoned with. She authored the book Life After College and a new book titled Pivot, all about making great changes in your life, meaningfully, powerfully and strategically. On the recording, you’ll hear Jenny talk about high net growth individuals -- smart, hungry people that are about building themselves as much as building business. For those that are ready to pivot and you’re stuck or frustrated figuring out your life purpose, just try helping other people as much as possible. (And maybe it’s about helping yourself!) Jenny’s dream job at google collided with an entrepreneurial drive to launch her first book and do her own thing. At that point, she saved 6 months worth of expenses and plowed forward on her own in New York City. (9:00) In January 2014, Jenny hit a roadblock in her business and learned some valuable lessons about pivoting into another way of doing business. Those realizations directed her to create a strategy around making changes in you

BABL EP 21: Danny Beyer on Networking With Style Danny Beyer is the author of The Ties That Bind, Networking With Style and a networking ninja. His core message behind the book is the importance of and the power of networking will literally change your life. Most of the books on the market were focused on high level ideas but not actionable tasks, so Danny decided he’d publish the book on the topic. Danny’s level of branding himself is second to none when it comes to consistency. He wears a bowtie 5 days a week (though never when he’s mowing the lawn). The bowtie has become his calling card, what he’s most known for, and ultimately formed the bowtie ball, a charity event where everyone wears a bowtie in the name of raising money for great causes. Around the 8:00 mark, Danny talks about the Bowtie Ball, how much has been raised, and how they’ve grown the event year over year. Danny is a guy who is building his life and reputation on relationship and service freedom. Having only been networking professionally f

Kids are tricky beasts. Not only do they need food and shelter, but then you have to figure out how to raise them in a way where they’re not the kid that everyone talks about behind your back. Our goal was always to raise kids who are intelligent, caring, compassionate, savvy, and well-adjusted. Since money savviness is kinda my thing, we’ve worked really hard to build the capacity to understand money in our kids from a very young age. Every trip to the bank or credit union had some discussion points and questions asked -- essentially turning every swipe of a credit or debit card into a teaching opportunity for our kids. I did a TED talk about it recently that you can view HERE. Please leave a comment and a thumbs up if you dig it. In the meantime, take a listen to the podcast about allowance and how we handle that in our home. Enjoy!!

Jeff Mitch on Blasting Away Student Debt Jeff Mitch was a man on a mission -- to blast away ALL of his student loan debt in record time. Jeff paid off a significant amount -- nearly $50,000 -- worth of student loan debt from Duquesne University in just under two years! Jeff used Google Sheets in the Google Drive app to create a monthly expense tracking mechanism. Through this, Jeff and his wife used this method to track how much they’ve spent, AND to keep their spending at a certain level. “Why is the guy who runs 10 miles a day skinny? Because he runs every day.” Same is true for someone that tracks what they’re spending and is conscious about blasting away debt. Jeff shares his methods for blasting away his debt around the 9:00 mark. The numbers Jeff shares on this podcast are phenomenal. He and his wife put nearly $30,000 a year towards student debt, and are now focused on the future of what an extra $30k can do for them. The first step, according to Jeff is maxing out all of the tax advantaged accounts,

There are some books that getting through the entire thing can be an enormous struggle and then there are books that you race through to the end and become life changers. Today’s solocast is about a book that changed the way I perceive the world and how I approach everyone and everything in it. The book is called A Happy Pocket Full of Money and is by David Cameron Gikandi. I hope you enjoy the solocast and order your copy of the book straight away!!

Rob Pivnick on Raising Money Savvy Kids Rob Pivnick is Associate General Counsel for a major investment firm with a passion for educating young people about money. Our connection was made through some financial education contacts that have promoted each of our books. Because we’re in the same space, I thought Rob would be a fantastic addition to the Build A Bigger Life Podcast interviews. Rob is passionate about two things: Negotiating Financial Literacy Pivnick wrote a book called What All Kids (And Parents Too) Should Need To Know About Investing. It’s a very simple way to explain investing to kids, a product of Rob’s desire to teach his kids about investing in the market. Around 7:00, we discussed the philosophies around allowance, how to pay kids for chores done, and what kids should be responsible to pay for. Rob suggests having kids paying 10% of the fees to sports and activities that they’re a part of -- it puts skin in the game and keeps them from making excuses about why they don’t want to go to prac

Adams Favorite Apps and Sites In this solocast I give a rundown of his favorite Apps and Sites that help me stay productive. Travel Hilton Honors American Airlines Hip Munk - Go to for looking up airline travel Airbnb.com vrbo.com Organization/Productivity Evernote Toggl Timer Asana Financial Expensify Bench.co Shoeboxed Zen Payroll Fun Starbucks 94% Netflix Entertainment Calm Omvana SNL Ted I would love to hear the Apps that you are using. Tweet @adamcarroll.

BABL Ep 15: Dorie Clark on Standing Out Dorie Clark is embarking on a 6 week book tour for her new book Stand Out, How To Develop Your Breakthrough Idea and Build a Following Around It. The book is a follow-up to her successful TEDxBeaconStreet talk. Dorie interviewed 50+ business executives in creating her book, some of the most notable names: Seth Godin, Robert Cialdini, Dan Pink, John Maxwell, and a handful of people you may have never heard of but are doing incredible things in their lives. Around the 10:00 mark, Dorie discusses how everyone could become a local expert -- thought leaders that have breakthrough ideas. Her mentality is by creating a framework through which people have a greater understanding of what your expertise is, you are logically thought of as the thought leader. In Dorie’s pursuit of acquiring best-selling status for her book, she found out that hitting the list is less about cumulative sales and more about what is sold in ONE WEEK, generally speaking, the first week. As a result, D

I was honored to present on the TEDx stage, my second in the past 8 months, at The London School of Business. Today’s solocast is all about my experience speaking on TEDx stage in the great British land of London, England. I will take you to my seat in the auditorium and share with you my feelings, emotions and outlook before I took my step on the stage.

BABL Ep 13: Chad Carden on Success is Simple, But Not Always Easy Chad Carden is a name you will be hearing very often in the near future. He is a speaker, author, consultant and success strategist for some of the most well-known companies in the country -- Weight Watchers, AT&T, UBS Financial -- the list goes on and on. What I love most about Chad’s message on the podcast is the fact that the choices we make every day help us achieve our visions. The choices must be conscious which at times is exceptionally hard to do. “Experience is not necessarily the gift of life, it’s the experience of others that helps us get closer to what we want to achieve.” (8:00) Chad got caught up in the lifestyle game and when he woke up one day with more payments than he really wanted, he made a conscious shift in his business to build his future. (12:00). He discusses paying off debt, investing for the future, and making choices to keep him involved in family, friends, and building his legacy. Chad’s mentors were very influ

BABL Ep 12 SOLOCAST: My $10,000 Experiment In this solocast I share the story of the psychological experiment I conducted on my children. The premise of which was $10,000 in cold hard cash sitting on the kitchen table with a sign that said ‘Don’t Touch The Money Yet’. You’ve honestly never seen a kid’s eyes light up as mine did when I handed each of them $1,500 in starter capital. The podcast recording is my re-telling of the story as well as a take-away message of teaching financial literacy to young people early and often. I maintain that the next generation is inheriting a new way of paying each other - one that is based in financial abstraction. And, if history is any indicator of our ability to manage debt, we’re setting the next generation up for failure. Enjoy the solocast and I’ll be very curious to hear your feedback, including how you’re raising money savvy kids of your own! To building a bigger life!

BABL Ep 11: Amanda Brown on Being A Leading Lady Amanda Brown is a force to be reckoned with. She has a smile that warms a room, an interest in others that is palpable, and the desire to help women realize their calling to be the Leading Lady in the movie of their lives. Amanda teaches The Lipstick Principles through her business The Leading Ladies Company based in the U.K., impacting women everywhere. The Leading Ladies Company is a relatively new business venture for Amanda, someone who’d been doing coaching and consulting in the corporate world, but was seeing lifeless looks from some of the women in the audience. The Lipstick Principles were developed to help women step into their starring roles and Make Life Happen. The Lipstick Principles are success steps and strategies we can all apply to our daily life: L ove I magine P assion S tepping In T ruth I nvite others in C elebrating K eeping It Simple Around 11:00, Amanda and I spoke about comparing ourselves to others. The fact that when we play the “than