TME 16 | The Main Event | Build a Bigger Life, Not a Bigger Lifestyle: The Real Path to Freedom with Adam Caroll

In this episode of Raise the Bar Radio, Seth Bradley welcomes Adam Carroll, who shares his journey from being a traveling professional speaker to building sustainable wealth through passive income strategies. Seth Bradley and Adam Carroll discuss how, after realizing the limitations of trading time for money, Adam Carroll developed The Shred Method, a cashflow reorientation system that minimizes debt interest and frees up capital to build liquidity and invest.

By leveraging lines of credit and algorithm-driven cash deployment, Adam Carroll explains how individuals can rapidly pay down debts and reallocate savings into passive income streams such as real estate syndications, intellectual property, and other alternative investments. Seth Bradley and Adam Carroll highlight that most high-income earners don’t have an income problem, but a liquidity problem tied up in low-access retirement plans and excessive spending. Finally, Adam Carroll shares his philosophy of "building a bigger life, not a bigger lifestyle," urging professionals to align spending and time with their values to achieve fulfillment and financial freedom within 10 years.

 

Links to watch and subscribe:

https://youtu.be/TAyai9li9dU

Bullet Point Highlights:

• Trading time for money is limiting. Adam shifted from paid speaking gigs to building passive income streams for true freedom.
• The Shred Method minimizes interest expenses. By using cashflow more efficiently through lines of credit and optimized algorithms, debt is paid down faster, freeing liquidity for investing.
• Passive income is key to wealth. Adam focuses on real estate syndications, ATM tranches, intellectual property, and digital products to generate consistent, diversified passive cash flow.
• Most people have a liquidity problem, not an income problem. Money is often locked in 401(k)s or spent wastefully — instead, creating accessible liquidity allows for opportunity-based investing.
• Building a bigger life requires intentionality. Aligning spending and actions with core values (like family, freedom, growth) leads to fulfillment — not just more stuff.
• The game becomes fun. Once passive income starts flowing, investing becomes strategic, diversified, and compounding — eventually replacing active income and creating financial independence.
• Anyone can implement this. While you can DIY, Adam recommends coaching to fast-track understanding and execution of the Shred Method.

Transcript:

(Seth Bradley) (00:02.094)

What's up, Builders? This is Raise the Bar Radio, where we talk about building wealth, raising capital, and all in all, raising the bar in your business and your life. This is the No BS podcast for capital raisers, investors, and entrepreneurs who are serious about scaling their business and living life on their own terms. I'm (Seth Bradley), securities attorney, real estate investor, and entrepreneur, bringing you world-class strategies from the best in the game.

 

If you're ready to raise more capital, close bigger deals, build a better you and create true financial freedom, you're in the right place. Let's go. Adam, what's going on, brother? Welcome to the show.

 

Hey Seth, thanks for having me, man. I'm excited about our conversation today.

 

Yeah, dude, super stoked to have you on today. It's going to be an awesome show, man. Let's dive right in. Tell us a little bit about yourself, your background. Take it back as far as you want to. Yeah.

 

Well, for the last 15 years or so, almost 20 now, guess, I've been making my living, opening my mouth and just speaking on stages all across the country. Had the opportunity to do a couple of international gigs, which was a blast. And in the midst of all that, making my living as a professional speaker, I realized that if I was very similar to your audience, if I wasn't doing the deal, doing the gig, doing the engagement, I wasn't getting paid.

 

(Adam Carroll) (01:26.184)

And so a mentor of mine said, the goal is not to go to work and get paid. The goal is to go to work and get paid, get paid, get paid, get paid, get paid, get paid, get paid. And so I started figuring out that what I really wanted to do with the messaging that I was delivering was turn it into sort of a mediapreneurship where I was a mediapreneur creating content, but then I'd get paid for the content over and over and over again. And that today looks like I've written a bunch of books.

 

I've got a documentary that I produced that aired on CNBC. And now we're starting to get into more of a SaaS business, which I'm sure we'll talk about. Th