In this episode of the Student of the Game podcast, host Brad Noll reflects on the significance of birthdays and the concept of "forced reflection." He emphasizes that while the present may not feel profound, delving into our past can reveal deeper insights and lessons. Brad shares his personal journey of growth, highlighting five key takeaways: embracing the grind early, investing in relationships instead of transactions, accepting plateaus as part of growth, leveraging challenges as catalysts for change, and defining success through personal values. Throughout the episode, he encourages listeners to look back at their experiences to uncover patterns and insights that can guide their future. 

Timestamps

(00:00) Intro

(00:16) Going Rogue: A New Direction

(02:15) Embracing Deep Reflection

(08:31) Embracing the Grind: Early Lessons in Business

(15:33) Embracing the Plateau and Growing

(19:24) Forced Reflection on Growth and Change

Noll Team Real Estate

SINCE 2003, Noll Team Real Estate HAS BEEN HELPING PEOPLE IN THE FORT WAYNE AREA FIND THE FREEDOM TO LIVE THE LIFESTYLE THEY WANT.

DESPITE CHANGING MARKETS AND BUSINESS TACTICS, WE HAVE REMAINED TRUE TO THIS BETTER AND IMPROVED BUSINESS MODEL BY FOCUSING ON BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS AND SERVING OTHERS IN EVERYTHING WE DO.

WHATEVER STAGE OF LIFE YOU ARE IN, OUR GOAL IS TO PROVIDE YOU WITH THE WISDOM AND TOOLS NECESSARY WHEN BUYING OR SELLING A HOME. WE PUT YOU FIRST TO ENSURE AN ENJOYABLE AND PROFITABLE EXPERIENCE.

Welcome to Student of the Game podcast where we help you master the fundamentals, fall in love with practice, and win at the game of life.

I'm your host, Brad Knoll.

Welcome to the classroom.

Welcome back to another episode.

I'm going a little rogue today.

We usually have a guest and then we do a solo episode, but today I'm the guest.

I want to share a little bit with you.

If you're listening to this, the day it's coming out, this is my birthday week.

This is my birthday week.

And when's your birthday?

Think about this.

When's your birthday?

January through December.

When is your birthday?

And I believe birthdays, just like anniversaries and New Year's are times in the calendar that provide or that could be forced reflection.

When I say the word forced reflection, what do you think of?

I mean, you know, maybe on Sunday night you're getting ready for your week, you're reflecting on your to do's coming up, but I think birthdays are just different.

I'm not somebody who, let's say, isn't looking forward to the next year.

I don't mind getting older.

I don't like it.

I don't.

I don't like the effects of getting older.

But I tell you what, you know, it's like a fine wine.

There's wisdom, you know, there's definitely some things that, you know, my roots, I think are grown a little deeper.

I'm producing better fruit as I get older.

And it's my birthday week.

And so I've got a little time for a little forced reflection.

So I'm going to share this with you.

So whatever time of the year you're listening, think about when your birthday is coming up.

And do me a favor, have some forced reflection, right?

Like, sit down, understand where you're at and where you want to go and just reflect on it.

It's a good time for forced reflection.

So it's my birthday week when I'm recording this or when it's coming out.

And I want to start with something.

My kids say, if you've heard this, this drives me nuts.

I kind of like it, but it drives me nuts.

I'll say stuff just because I'm that.

I'm that parent that always wants to make a lesson out of like something like pick up your room or do the dishes, and I'm making a life lesson out of it.

My kids say, it ain't that deep, dad.

It ain't that deep, dad.

It's not that deep.

You ever heard that?

You ever Heard somebody say, it ain't that deep.

Well.

Well, I've been reflecting on this as this is my birthday week.

I've been reflecting on this.

The present isn't that deep, but your past is the deep end.

Let me say that again.

The present isn't that deep, but the past can be the deep end.

What does that mean?

Well, to me, it's like the present isn't that deep.

Like we're just going, we're here, we're present, right?

But if you have some forced reflection and you look into your past, there's the deep end.

Are you scared to jump into the deep end?

I remember when I joined the swim team back in the day, you know, my mom and dad put me in the swim team.

I wasn't bad, but it was the only thing to do in a small town in the summer.

Here we go.

And I'm on the swim team.

My mom is an excellent swimmer, and, you know, I did the swim team.

I was scared of death to jump in the deep end, you know?

Are you scared of death to jump into the deep end?

I didn't know it was down there.

It was dark, right?

Especially at the lake.

I hated the lake.

I'm still a little scared of the lake, if I'm being honest.

But it's not that deep, is what my kids say.

And I say the present isn't that deep, but your past can be the deep end.

And are you scared to dive into that, or are you going to be strong and have some courage?

I've been reflecting a little bit.

We'll keep this business.

We'll keep it pg.

You don't need to go into my life.

Nobody wants to listen to that.

But what you want to hear is.

You want to hear how what I have to say can help you out.

So I'm going to do that.

I'm hopefully going to say something that's going to help you out.

But first thing is, if you're having a birthday, if you're listening to this and your birthday is coming up, put something in your calendar for some deep work, like go in and do some homework on yourself, on your business, where you're at, where you've been.

Man, everybody wants to grow.

Everyone wants to get better, everyone wants to lose weight.

Are you willing to do the work, the deep work that it takes to go back and analyze and look at the patterns in your life?

I talk to my team a lot about patterns.

I think one of my skill sets is I can look at somebody's business and over time Once they've created some data points, I can look at patterns, I can help them overachieve and overcome what it is those patterns have shown.

And I've got some patterns in my business, and I wanted to share with you some of those patterns.

So we're going to talk about five things today.

We're going to talk about embrace the grind early.

We're going to talk about invest in relationships, not transactions.

We're going to talk about embrace the plateau as part of growth.

I love this.

I'm going to go deep onto this one.

Embrace the plateau as part of growth.

Number four, we're going to talk about leverage challenges so that they can be a catalyst for change.

And then we're going to talk about define success through values and personal development.

Those are kind of my five things, my takeaways.

Like, if you want to know in the last 21 years how I've had success or how I've built what we have, it's not easy.

I've had to do some, a deep dive on it, and I've got some things to share on it.

Embrace the grind.

So, first of all, I go back to my college playing days.

You know, there's, there's a couple things in life that, you know, just always stick out with you.

And when you're competing, especially at the Division 1 level or any, any level, like if there's a level that you're competing at that's higher than you've ever been before, we'll just use that because, because you guys, can you understand what that means if you're competing at a level you've never competed at before, it's new territory, right?

You don't know how far you can go.

And I remember like, I remember like it was yesterday.

We're in conditioning and we're doing sprints and they time us.

And you, you have to make a certain time.

And I knew with, with my, my sprinting partner that I had to run the certain sprint, the number of sprints in a quicker time than I've ever done it before.

And I did it.

And if you hold onto those, those memories and those thoughts, that builds confidence.

Doing hard things builds confidence.

And I remember early on I just, I just knew.

I think, I think I have more capacity, I think I have more potential.

I think I have some untapped potential.

And I remember accomplishing things that pushed me beyond what I thought I could do.

And I think if you embrace that grind early, I think, I think if you're honest with yourself, you could do more Right.

I mean, this isn't.

I want to be very careful.

I'm not talking about the grind culture, right?

Grind, grind, grind.

Sleep is for suckers, you know, Trust me, there's a point where if you're sleeping too much, you might lose it all.

But the reality is you got to grind, especially early.

I remember what I did when I first got into business.

Here's exactly what I did.

So I was one of the captains of the basketball team.

And we had boosters, we had functions, we had donor functions where our community members would.

They would support.

Support our team.

And we would have to go to the Corvette museum or we would go to a restaurant and we would do like the meet and greet and the handshakes and they want to meet the athletes, and that's cool.

And I remember when I graduated, I asked the coaching staff, I said, hey, can I get a list of those donors I want to grind.

I didn't ask him that, but that's what I was in my head.

That's what I was saying.

I want to grind.

And what I meant by that is, I want to go build relationships.

I'm going to take them to breakfast.

I'm going to take them to coffee.

I didn't even drink coffee at the time.

Actually, my coffee problem, my coffee addiction right now is probably because of those meetings.

That's what successful people did, is they went to coffee.

So that's.

That's what I was going to do.

So I grinded.

I remember there was 50 of them, and I think I booked about 40 appointments.

10 of them couldn't get a hold of, didn't respond to whatever, no problem.

I'm not getting caught up.

I'm not getting caught up in my feelings that 10 of them said no.

I said, let's go.

There's 40 of them.

Let's go.

I'm in.

So I'm grinding and I'm embracing the grind.

And I'm getting up early.

I'm going to breakfast.

I'm going to Bob Evans.

I remember the Sunshine Skillet.

Come on now.

Bob Evans.

Sunshine Skillet with the gravy and the whatever tangent.

But I embrace that grind.

And you know what I did?

I went to every one of those breakfast.

This is an absolutely true story.

I went to every 40 of those breakfasts with the intent I'm a broke, just married, post college kid.

I've got no money.

I'm trying to start a business, and I'm going with the intent to pay for them.

I'm going to buy their breakfast.

I Didn't go to lunch and dinner because it's more expensive.

I'm not an idiot.

Come on now.

But I took them to breakfast and coffee, and I went to pay for every single one of them.

I paid for zero.

Out of the 40 successful people I met with.

I paid for zero.

And what I learned was successful people give clues.

Successful people see something in other people that they want to be a part of.

So you know what they gave.

And I loved it.

Embrace the grind early.

I got after it.

I started building relationships.

That goes into the next point.

Invest in relationships.

For my first four years in the business, I did everything.

I did TV ads, I did radio ads.

I was on smooth jazz.

Come on now.

Smooth jazz.

Whatever station that was.

I did TV ads, I did postcards, I did recipes.

I literally spent everything.

When I made money, I turn around and I spent every dollar I had.

And I.

And I don't say I confused myself.

I tricked myself into believing that this is what promotion looks like.

I tricked myself into believing that I can't keep any of this money.

I need to reinvest it in my business.

So it grows.

And what I learned, I learned that the investment in relationships pays the greatest return.

The investment in relationships pays the greatest return.

And so for four years, I did not know how to do what we now call relational marketing.

I didn't know how to connect with people.

I thought it was promoting.

I thought it was promoting.

Promotion is not bad, by the way.

PT Barnum says when promotion doesn't have something terrible happens without promotion.

PT Barnum says something terrible happens without promotion.

Nothing.

Think about that one.

So you still have to promote, but you have to build relationships.

And I didn't do that for four years.

I was chasing door knocking for sale by owners.

Cold calling.

I was doing this business the wrong way, and it took me four years.

And that's why if you're a new Realtor, if you just get your license, I usually say yes to every new realtor who wants to meet me to learn how to run the business.

I don't say yes to joining the team.

You got to have some certain core values and you got to have something about you to join the team.

But I typically, with any realtor who wants to meet, I meet because I don't want you to go through four years of being confused like I was.

So investing in relationships and not transactions, number one student of the game is brought to you by no Team Real estate.

Our mission is to eradicate mediocre real estate transactions on your largest financial purchase.

You shouldn't have to deal with average.

We do this by helping you save time, reduce your stress, and helping you keep as much money in your pocket as we can.

You can help us out by introducing us to your friends or family who want to make confident real estate decisions, whether buying, selling, building, or investing.

At Nolteam Real Estate, we are connected to a group of Realtors who sell one in every eight homes in North America.

If you know someone moving out of your area, there's a great chance we can connect them to somebody we know like and trust.

Remember, relationships win.

Now back to the so I'm doing this forced reflection right now, so if you forgot why I'm doing this podcast Podcast is my birthday week.

I've been doing some reflection on what's gotten me to where I am today and what would be helpful for you, the listener, and where you might be able to pick up some clues.

So number one was embrace the grind early.

Number two, invest in relationships.

Number three, embrace the plateau.

All right, if you haven't heard anything, listen to this.

Embrace the plateau.

Here's something I want to share with you.

I've been doing this 21 years.

I just took a deep dive.

I'm analytical, by the way, if you haven't figured that out.

I just took a deep dive.

I would encourage you to pretend to be analytical if you're not.

Another way to say this that most people understand.

Stay curious.

You know, just stay curious.

Ask the next question.

Here's what I want to tell you about my business over 21 years.

Do not miss this point.

After 21 years, you can be overnight success, too.

Yeah, it's a funny little saying, but it's true.

After 21 years, 15 of those years were spent on the plateau.

Listen to that.

15 of the 21 years I spent and there was zero growth in my business.

And then I would grow and then I would hit the next level, and then I would plateau and I would stay on that level for years.

And then all of a sudden something happened and I would grow and I started to take a deep dive.

This actually goes back to the first point where it's like the President that deep.

But the past is the deep end.

And I started to dive into the past a little bit, and I looked at patterns and I looked at patterns in my life, and I'll share a couple patterns with you.

I started to believe in relationships.

That's what it was.

I started to believe in relationships.

It was identical.

It was the exact same.

It was borderline.

The exact same number of homes, volume and gross commission income about the same.

Well, we just went through the recession.

But I was on that plateau for five.

Then guess what?

I spent another five, six years on a plateau.

The same.

Literally the same amount of transactions, about the same amount of volume, about the same amount of income for five years.

Now if you're, if you're two years in and you're sitting and thinking to yourself like, I'm not growing, I'm not seeing any progress, keep going like that.

The point is not to see the progress and you want it.

The point is when you dive into the deep end, you actually see how deep it is.

I think that gives you confidence when you can go to the bottom and touch the floor.

Remember that growing up as a kid, I'd dive in the deep end and your kids and your friends would be like, who can go and touch the bottom first?

Well, I didn't do it for a while.

Eventually I did it.

And then all of a sudden, what happens when you hit the bottom?

You push off harder than you could if you just floated to the top.

So when you get to the deep end, you can push up harder.

I'm now looking at these patterns.

So I, so, so 10 years I was on a plateau.

And two of those years in a 12 year period, I was on a plateau.

10 of the 12 years.

And one year I hired an assistant and the next one I had some personal things going on.

I had some personal things going on.

I don't mind sharing.

And I had some personal things going on and I got another assistant and my business went up again.

Went up 97% in one year.

That's almost double as double your income, double your sales, double your production.

It was awesome.

That's when I believed in a buyer's agent.

I went to a conference with elite producers.

But, but better than the producing agents that I met.

They were amazing people.

They challenged Me, you know, I increased my sphere.

I increased the people I hung out with.

We had better conversations.

I was growing.

So if you take that Adam up, from my first year until now, my business is up 750%.

I have.

I've gone up seven and a half times where I started.

But you gotta embrace the plateau.

You gotta stay curious.

You gotta ask yourself, what am I supposed to learn right now?

My finances, they've never been perfect.

My business has never been perfect.

My connections with my database has never been perfect.

But I'm growing constantly.

I'm getting better, and I'm embracing the plateau.

In 15 of the 21 years, I was on a plateau.

And six of those years, I saw exponential growth.

And it's because that work that you're doing takes time.

That's the crockpot.

Yeah, but I keep posting on social media.

I keep posting on reels.

Like, I'm not getting any traction.

Awesome.

Based on my numbers, I should be posting for 5 years until I see something happen.

You listen to anybody who's successful or influential?

Nobody.

Nobody happens overnight.

A viral TikTok, a viral whatever.

Ask me what they're doing a year from now.

Creating viral content constantly is impossible.

Let me get on a tangent here.

Number four, leverage challenges as a catalyst for change.

Oh, my goodness.

Leverage challenges as a catalyst for change.

Now, some of you don't love change, and most of you don't love challenges.

But if you ask yourself right now, if you reframe the question and say, what am I supposed to learn right now?

You know, there would never be a conflict ever again.

If.

When a conflict arises, your first thought is, what can I learn from this other person?

What can I learn from this situation?

That's part of growing constantly.

And number five, define success through values and personal development.

We kind of talked about that.

When you leverage challenges, you kind of go back to your values.

You know, what do you value?

Define success through values and personal development.

Your story is important, but your story carries a little more weight when you have values and when you know.

When you know what you stand for.

My mom always taught me, you know, live a principled, centered life.

To me, that just means be intentional.

Be intentional.

Have values and be intentional with your decisions that you make.

You know, I want to.

I want to thank the listeners.

This is.

I don't know if I should share my age, whatever.

This is my 44th year around the sun, and I'm recording this, and it's coming out my birthday week.

And so I wanted to have a little forced reflection.

And I think you should have some forced reflection, too.

And my kids, all the time, they're like, dad, it ain't that deep.

Dad, it's not that deep.

And I just thought, like, what does that mean to me?

And it hit me.

It's like, you know what?

The present isn't that deep.

Because they don't understand.

I don't like the present that I'm going through right now.

I don't understand.

But when you have some force reflection, you can sit there and you can realize and you can agree that the present isn't that deep, but the past is the deep end.

And are you scared to jump in?

You scared to jump into your past?

Or are you ready to heal?

Are you ready to learn?

And are you ready, get this.

Are you ready to be the person that your younger self needed?

You've done more growth than you think.

You have grown more than you can see.

But when you do some force reflection, and I encourage you to do that, whether it's your birthday or whether it's the turn of the new year or a holiday, whatever, whatever, is that kind of automatic timeline in your life, I would encourage you to do that.

I appreciate you listening to this podcast.

I do this because I like to do some deep work.

I like to think and I like to reflect and I like to learn.

But most importantly, I like to help you win.

I want to help others win.

I hope this is helping you right now.

If this episode has helped you, I hope you share this with a friend.

I hope you screenshot this if you leave a review, awesome.

If you subscribe.

I love it.

I want to grow this podcast, but the reality is I just want to help more people.

So if this podcast grows, it's just because it's helping more people.

If it doesn't grow, it's probably not helping anybody.

And I'm just grabbing a microphone and getting on for 30 minutes and talking.

So what we covered today, what we covered today was forced reflection.

When it's your birthday, when it's a new year, whether you're goal setting.

I got some stuff on that coming up.

By the way, I got a really good episode with Lindsay coming up.

We're gonna talk about how we do our family goal setting and what's it like working with your spouse.

I got my dad on the podcast coming up, so there's some cool stuff coming.

I'm excited for our next year and our next season and what we're gonna bring to you.

But for today, it's talking about reflections on my birthday week.

And my kids say it's not that deep.

The present's not, you know, but the past is the deep end.

And I hope that means something to you.

I hope that encourages you to go through your past and look at what you've been through, good and bad, the traits and the traitors.

There's lessons in all of it and have some force, reflection.

And my five points today on how I've gotten to where I am today with some force, reflection was Number one, embrace the grind.

And early get after it.

All right, Embrace it.

It's hard.

The harder you work, the easier it gets.

I think that was Les Brown that said, if you do what is easy, your life will be hard.

And if you do what is hard, your life will be easy.

Number two, invest in relationships.

We believe relationships win, so, of course, invest in relationships.

Number three, embrace the plateau.

I can't.

I can't tell you how to embrace the plateau if it's your first year doing something, but all I can say is, trust me, it'll be worth it.

Number four, leverage challenges and make sure they're catalysts for change.

Challenges help with change.

And number five, to find success through values and personal development.

My core values here at Nolteam Real Estate are serve others, earn everything, grow constantly, win together, and always repping or always represent.

If you want to join our team, feel free to reach out.

If your core values align with ours and you have a real estate license, feel free to reach out.

We can chat.

If you're somebody who just is in our area and wants to buy or sell a home and you share our same core values, this is how we serve our clients.

But for now, if you're listening to this right when this came out, it's my birthday week and we're talking about forced reflection.

Hopefully there's some forced reflection in your life because at the end of the day, remember, we believe relationships.

Have a great day.

Thanks for listening to Student of the Game podcast.

Whatever game you are playing, I'm cheering for you.

See you in the next class.