In this episode of the Student of the Game podcast, host Brad Noll is joined by his wife and business partner, Lindsay Noll. Brad and Lindsay share their unique framework for goal-setting, emphasizing the value of having a word of the year, which for 2025 is "elevate." Throughout the conversation, they discuss how this theme influences their personal lives, relationships, and business aspirations. The couple highlights the significance of reflection on past successes and challenges. With practical advice on financial planning and the importance of communication, Brad and Lindsay provide insights that can help anyone looking to enhance their life’s direction and achieve their goals together.

Timestamps

(00:00) Intro

(01:24) Setting Goals as a Married Couple

(10:25) Elevating Through Humility

(21:36) Looking Forward: The Importance of Bucket Lists

(31:08) Defining a Good Life

(34:24) Setting Business Goals for the Future

(40:28) Setting Goals Together

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 the 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 of Student of the Game.

I'm excited even though we have a little technical difficulties today.

For those of you watching the podcast, the video for Lindsey's off.

But for those of you listening, you're not going to skip a beat.

So, Lindsey, welcome to the episode.

Thank you for having me.

I think you're the first time repeat guest here.

That's awesome.

The first time we had you on, we talked about your background and we talked about, you know, kind of how you got into nursing and, you know, really assessing who you are as a person, what fills you up, and your transition to Nolteam Interiors, where you could still help people with the designs of their home.

So you give us an update on how Nolteam Interiors is going this year.

Of course.

Yeah, it's been a great year of growing and learning and just a lot of great clients that we've had a chance to work with.

We've grown a little bit in the way of having just different people that we've gotten a chance to work with, but also some customers who have had us come in and work with their home in several different rooms, and we've done some commercial projects.

So it is.

It's been quite the year for an old team.

Interiors.

That's awesome.

Well, one of the things we want to do today is we want to talk about, you know, what's it like setting goals as a married couple?

You know, you might be listening and you work with your spouse, or you might be listening and you don't work with your spouse, or maybe you're not even married, you know.

And so I think what we want to do is we want to talk about how Brad and Lindsay set goals as a family and as a business.

And if you can hear a little bit of yourself in this conversation today, we want you to be encouraged with our framework.

So take our framework.

If you don't have one.

If you have a great framework of setting goals, good for you.

Tell us, encourage us with what you guys do.

But we're going to help you understand how we set goals, how we look at our business, how we look at our family.

And we just got back from our trip, so usually early December, we take our trip.

It's called December to Remember.

And we just kind of go through a couple points from last year.

We talk about Our word of the year, our verse of the year.

And then really just start setting goals, bucket list, personal business, and try to land on our direction.

So you know, Lindsay, do you, do you remember Our word for 20, 24?

Put you on the spot a little bit.

Okay, what, sorry, what is it?

Connect.

Connect.

All right, so what has that, what has that word done for you all year long?

Like, like when you think of the word connect, what are some things, some wins that you've had when it comes to connect?

What I love about the word of the year is that it gives us a, a focus for the year.

So we spend our time with our family, with our business, really incorporating that word into our lives on a daily basis.

And so we start the year out and it's, it's just an intentional focus on something.

When we connect, we.

We think about who do we want to connect with.

When we started the year we did and try to be more intentional.

I know we had some family members we really wanted to connect with.

Whether it was siblings that we wanted to take a trip with or, you know, your aunt.

We intentionally set out this year to have more one on one time with her, with our parents.

I mean it from a personal perspective.

It's been really effective, I think, in building relationships with our family, but also during, with or among our team.

It's been really fun to see how you've incorporated that with our teammates and connecting with them on a monthly basis with, coaching them up and really being intentional with your time with them.

Same here.

Connecting with our clients.

It's amazing what we put out there, how it transitions into our daily lives really with just one word and focus.

Well, and I think, you know the phrase, I may get this right here or I may butcher it.

Energy flows where your focus goes.

Energy flows where focus goes.

And one of the things that I've really been studying is capacity.

Like, you know, how do you take on more, how do you have more capacity?

And that really has to do with your health, you know, making sure you stay healthy throughout the year, you know, and a part of health is, you know, when you're healthy, when you're arrested, when, when you're in shape, when you are sharp, that creates energy and where energy will flow, where your focus goes.

And so our intention of the year or our word of the year is to set that intention and really to create energy around the thing that we feel is kind of our one word mission statement.

We got that from a real estate conference we went to.

Heard a speaker one time talk about a One word mission statement.

We just kind of fell in love with it and we're like, you know what?

Let's do that.

So we did it.

We lost sight of, you know, the connections.

And, you know, we realized, you know, let's get back to relationships.

That relationships were never, you know, put on the back burner for us.

But I think, you know, when you get busy and you get caught up and, you know, you've got kids that have, you know, busy schedules, you know, Lindsey, I don't know about you, but for me, it's easy to kind of lose track of what our intentions are, you know, with the busyness of our day.

So anything to add to that or.

You want to get into this conversation about goal setting?

No, I agree.

I think we can let life happen to us if we don't have any direction.

And when we do have a one word mission statement, which, I mean, we started that back when we were leading that small group among our Sunday school class, and we did, like, canvases where we got everybody together and we painted pictures with our one word so that we had it in front of us every day.

And.

And now we've gotten a little simpler with it as life has gotten busier.

But having that word in front of you every day, it allows you to refocus on that and keep it in front of you.

Yeah.

Love it.

So let's get into, you know, at the end of the year, this is gonna come out here in December.

This is really good.

If you're listening to this, in January or June, no matter when you're listening to this, this is actually a great framework for every quarter, you know, maybe for every month.

You know, we do it annually, and then we do it quarterly, and then sometimes we revisit this on a monthly.

Really important that you stay connected to your goals.

There's a story, I think it was Michael Andretti, Indy 500 race car driver and one of the greatest race car drivers, IndyCar drivers in the world.

And they said, do you have any tips for any of the new guys?

And he said, don't look at the wall.

And that was his tip.

Like, don't look at the wall.

And they said, okay, well, tell us a little more.

Why should race car drivers not look at the wall?

And he goes, because your car will go where your eyes go.

You know, your car will go where your eyes go.

So that goes back to energy flows, you know, where your focus goes.

So what are you focusing on?

Are you focusing on the positives?

Are you focusing on the negatives?

What are you focusing on?

Here's our framework.

All right, let's get into it.

You know, we've.

We've talked enough, but let's get into our framework.

So we start our time together.

We usually go away.

If you don't have any kids or if you don't have a ton of distractions, this is probably easy to do at home.

But with our lives, you know, we have kids, they're busy, and we choose to go off site.

And I think it's really important to get a new frame of mind, frame of reference.

And we go off site, and we start with our word of the year.

And then we go into.

In our faith tradition, we have a verse of the year, but you can call it a quote.

So this can be a quote of the year, a theme of the year.

And then we'll talk about five circles.

You know, our five circles, our five driving forces in our life that we make decisions off of.

Our faith, our family and relationships, our personal, which is mind and body, our business and our finances.

And those are the five circles.

And so we set goals in those areas.

We have intentions of those areas.

But this one word resonates with every one of those circles.

Once we.

All right, what were the highlights?

What went well?

What did you love about it?

Remember when I think that allows us to kind of stay grounded and have gratitude with the busyness and the things that did not go well and the challenges that were up against.

To go back through your camera roll.

The simplest thing of, like, just go back to your camera roll month by month and look at what did you do this year?

You know, what did you.

What did you do that was amazing?

So we start with the highlights.

Go ahead.

Tell you.

Tell me about that.

Yeah, that's the fun part, because then you get to look back and you get to see all the things that you did do.

And you start with the positives.

Yeah.

And it's like.

And then.

Then you're able to write down, well, what I want to do more of.

So then the next session we do is our bucket list and life goals.

After that, we talk about money, we talk about our net worth, we talk about Profit first, which is how we run our business.

And we have conversations around money, you know, because at the end of the day, the good life costs money.

We break for lunch, we do something fun.

Lindsay gets facial and I go to the gym and work out and go to the sauna and, you know, have a good time and get a light lunch and then come back and really talk a little bit more about money as it relates to our goals.

We talk about the cost of these goals.

You know, how are we going to allocate the funds necessary to chase after these goals.

And so we're going to dive into each of these here a little bit.

We're not going to take long on the podcast.

Maybe some follow up sessions.

I've been asked by multiple people to share this, this framework with them.

So I've done that.

I've got a copy, a printout we also have on my Instagram, it's a pinned reel and it kind of talks about, you know, what we did.

So you can go to underscore, Brad Noel underscore and check that out if you'd like.

It's, it's on my reels page and it just kind of showed, you know, what our framework is.

But let's get into it.

So our word.

Elevate.

Elevate.

Elevate.

You know, it's something that we've, it's been on our hearts and our minds to, to elevate.

We want to elevate, you know, our faith, we want to elevate our relationships.

We want to elevate our mind and our body.

We want to elevate our business, we want to elevate our finances.

And that's a, it's a word that, you know, we sat on for a little bit and I think doesn't matter who gets the credit for it.

But I, I want to say I think that's the word you came up with this year.

Yeah, it just seemed to start popping up.

And we were, I think at the lake house when we were doing some business planning with our consultants and it just came up over and over again.

And yeah, it kind of is.

It's been like that in the past too.

Wouldn't you agree?

Yeah.

And it's because, and it's because we knew that this was coming up again.

Like if this, if this is your first time, you know, coming up with the word of the year, it can get difficult, it can be daunting.

Right.

I mean, I think, Lindsay, it's fair to say you were struggling with goals and struggling with words of the years for, for a while.

And, you know, the more you do it, the more you flex your muscles, the more, you know, in shape you are when it comes to this stuff.

But, you know, elevate is just something that really kind of stuck with us.

And then the quote, verse or quote or scripture called whatever you want, that really resonated with us is because serve others is our number one core value, is whoever elevates himself will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be elevated.

I'll read that again.

Whoever elevates himself will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be elevated.

You know, it's interesting.

This is some deep work.

It's funny, we took our daughter this year, Bree, our oldest, she wants to go into business school and she wants to learn the business.

And so we said, hey, this is before she goes to college.

Let's take her with us and let's show her what mom and dad actually do.

And I think this was hard for her to understand as a 17 year old girl.

I think it's hard for adults to understand.

How can you have a word, elevate?

Lindsey, this is a question for you.

How can you elevate with a focus of others first?

How do you humble yourself but then still elevate?

What does that mean to you?

That's such a deep question.

I mean, I think in order to elevate, you have to be humble and those who seek humility will be honored.

So it, it seems kind of counterproductive, but it, I mean, you can think about all the times that you've spent serving others or helping others and how it felt or how it appeared to other people.

And you can see not only that it's the right thing to do, but how good it feels, I guess, to humble yourself and be a servant to others versus just pumping your chest and talking all about yourself and being the top producer.

And yeah, that feels great for a very short term, but that's not our goal.

And you know, a lot of people could misunderstand having the word elevate as a word of the year, but our approach is going to be humility, not elevating ourselves in the business and in life.

So I want to go back to something that you were talking about just before that too, because I've heard people say, well, I don't want to pick a word of the year.

They feel the Pressure.

Like we have to pick one word.

How am I going to pick one word?

Well, we've been picking one word for what, like 12 years?

Yeah, something like that.

So we've had 12 different words now.

And the more, and the longer you do it, the less pressure you feel and the more excited you get about having a word that you get to choose.

And it can really lead your family and lead your business in a positive direction because it does give them one thing to focus on.

Because let's be honest, our word is very distracting and we are a very distracted people.

And having a focus can actually simplify your life, which I think we all would strive for.

Yeah, I was, I was having a conversation last night with a business owner and it's something that I enjoy doing is like, you know, how do we.

Iron sharpens iron, right?

So if you believe iron sharpens iron, then we're called to, you know, really challenge other people and we're having a conversation.

And you know, one of the things that I said is there's a decision that needs to be made.

And I just said, you know, you can't make decisions with your feelings.

You have to make decisions with your values.

Like, what do you value?

Right.

And so that those could be core values.

If you run a business, we have core values for our family.

But you have to, I think, start with what do I value?

And when you understand what you value, that will then help set your intention for the year.

You know, what do we value?

Well, we value high standards.

Like this next, going into this next season of our life, we have high standards.

You know, we're raising young adults at home.

You know, we have high standards.

We want to elevate, you know, the, the curve at home.

We have high standards in our workplace.

You know, this, this isn't, you know, this isn't a vacation.

You have to come in and you have to earn it.

Earn everything is one of our core values.

And so, you know, I like what you said where, you know, how do you do that?

When you set goals, if our words elevate, how do you set goals?

That doesn't feel, I guess so one sided, doesn't feel selfish.

Like I want more money, I want more sales, I want more, like more, more, more.

And for me, I think I go back to elevate.

And it's in its simplest form is I will be elevated once I humble myself.

And it's almost a positioning of my heart.

Right.

So we talk about mindset.

Like what's your mindset?

It's big, right?

Now, culturally, you know, it's just a buzzword.

We talk about mindset, but also heartset.

You know, how are you positioning your mind?

But then how are you positioning your heart?

And if I truly position my heart to serve more people, eventually through the process of serving others, I will then be elevated.

And if my service is no good to other people, I won't be elevated.

You know, that's kind of the accountability in that if my service to other people is no good, if my service to my children is no good, I will not be elevated as their father.

If my service to you, Lindsay, is no good, I will not be elevated as your husband.

And so it starts with, with, I'm going to go set some big goals, but it's going to come from the mindset or the heartset of I'm going to go serve other people first.

And then the amount of people that I serve will then dictate how big of goals I will actually be able to accomplish.

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Remember, relationships win.

Now back to the let's keep moving on.

I think people understand the concept of this, whether whether you have a word or not.

Our words elevate.

Our quote of the year is whoever elevates himself will be humbled.

So if you start about what's in it for me?

What can I get?

You're going to be humbled.

There's going to be some tough times, but if you start from.

And those who humble themselves will be elevated, you know, in my faith, how can I humble myself in my family and my relationships, how can I humble myself in your business and in your finances and then in your mind and body, you know, elevate is a word.

And then.

And then I get a little crazy.

So last thing here before we move on, Linds.

So then I looked up elevate.

What's the definition and it's to raise or to lift up to a higher position, raised to more important or impressive levels.

But it also says the word elevate is a rich history tracing back to the Latin word elevare, meaning to raise or to lift up.

The Latin root levare is related to levy, meaning light in weight, suggesting an uplifting motion.

All right, let me stop there.

If something's light in weight, if you want to elevate something, I think the deep thing that we talked about before we left, and this is the work that we're going to have to do afterwards, is if you want to create something that's lighter so that you can lift it up so that you can elevate it, you have to let go of something.

People right now, I know, Lindsay, are like, you guys are weird.

You just like, deep thinkers and, like, what do you do?

Do you guys have any fun ever?

Or is this just like, you know, it's a seminar every night at home.

So we definitely spend a lot of time having these conversations.

Yeah, we do.

We do.

But.

But that's.

That's in the preparation, right?

Like, that's in the work.

So when people see what we have or what we do or who we are, you know, what they don't see is everything behind the scenes.

So, yeah, it takes time, it takes work.

But the thing we' through right now is before we flip the calendar in the new year and we elevate everything in our lives, we have to decide what are we going to leave behind, what are we going to let go of so that we're lighter so that we can elevate.

It's not about just doing more.

And then recently, you know, the term has taken on figurative meanings and symbolizing growth, improvement, enhancement in personal and societal contexts.

So that's really what elevate means to us.

We studied the word, we researched the word.

You know, that's kind of what we do, and then we move on.

But once we get the word of the year and once we get the verse or the quote of the year, you know, then we really move on to the highlights.

So, Lindsay, you are.

You already talked about the highlights a little bit.

Any.

Any highlights from.

I mean, I did have, like, a whole page of them, and if I remember correctly, I had two more than you did.

So in our competitive family, that was.

A lot of highlights.

Absolutely.

I did have a lot of highlights.

I mean, we.

We spent some time with the siblings in Napa.

That was our first trip there.

That Was definitely a highlight for me.

You know, I had a lot of kids activities on there.

Yeah.

But I think, you know, what I want people to hear is like we intentionally set out to do things based on our word of the year, right.

So like your side of the family, your siblings brother lives in Denver, your sister lives in la.

And it's like we don't get to spend time just as siblings together.

So let's go to Napa, let's have fun.

And then my cousins came down from San Francisco and we just connected.

And to us that was the theme.

And then a lot of other highlights that you're talking about with our kids is like we intentionally connected.

Whether it was like a one day trip with one of them or you know, a golf tournament or a basketball tournament.

It's like how do, how do we intentionally connect, you know, and spend more time together?

So I think it's really, really important to go back and look through your camera roll and say, what did I do?

That was a lot of fun this year.

You know, what were the highlights of this year?

Remember energy flows, where your focus goes.

And we, we decided to focus on gratitude and what went well this year.

After that we get into kind of a bucket list.

Lindsay, how do, how would you do with bucket lists?

Like what does that mean to you?

Bucket lists are hard for me because I'm very specific and I like to, you know, go more day to day.

So this has been a stretch for me living with you.

I know you're, you're more of a future thinker and you get really excited about the bucket list.

Mine was really short, it was very non specific and committal.

But I mean, there are some things that I want to do in the future and I want to look forward to.

And I think that's where we, this, this portion of the planning is so important because it allows us to look forward to something or have something to look forward to, because we all need to have that, right?

So any, any of the listeners who are out there who might feel stuck right now, they need something to look forward to.

So I would encourage you to do a bucket list.

And just because you do a bucket list, it doesn't mean that you have to do everything on the list.

You might pick a couple things from that list and not do 10 of them in your lifetime.

But having a couple that you can look forward to and work towards, I know for you, it, it allows you something to inspire you each day to get up and to go connect with people and really work hard, because you do want to work towards meeting those goals and doing some of those things on your bucket list that you said you could get excited about.

And so, yeah, there's definitely a few things on the list for us that I think we'll be doing in the future.

Yeah.

And for people who want, like, just practical feedback is like, well, what.

What do I put on that list?

You know, it's again, we use the frame of reference of, you know, what do you want to be, what do you want to do, what do you want to feel, what do you want to have?

You know, having things are okay.

You know, I think it's okay to have things.

You know, you need to balance that with how do I want to feel, who do I want to be?

You know, as well.

But, you know, one of the things that you and I talk about a lot, it's like, we've never been to Europe together, you know, and I think that that's something that is down the road.

I mean, we've got some college ahead of us.

We've got a few things.

You know, another bucket list is, you know, have our kids graduate with no debt, you know, in college.

And that's a.

That's a bucket list.

You know, we talk about, you know, home renovations.

You know, we're in the business of helping people, you know, navigate home purchases and just.

Just to give some feedback.

We've lived in our home 17, going on 18 years now, and we've got a big renovation that we're excited about that want to do.

You know, will it get done?

Maybe, most likely.

But we're writing it down.

That's.

Those are things that we're looking forward to.

You know, I think.

I think we tend to forget sometimes that, yes, looking back, we're grateful, but looking forward, what excites us?

You know, who do you want to be?

Do you want to write a book?

Do you want to, you know, take a cooking class?

You know, do you want to build an online course?

Like, what are the things that just kind of wake you up every single day?

But for people who've never written a bucket list or done goals and, you know, I fell into this category years ago.

I found that that 12 week year, 12 week year workbook that Kristen gave me was very helpful because it walked me through some steps in how to write those.

It was very.

It was a clear path of how to get to the have to be.

And that's where we got that from.

And so just a Little plug there for the 12 week here.

Michael Lennington, Kristen Tavern, Shout out.

This is a 12 week year.

If.

If you're not driving right now and you're listening to how we set our goals, it's through the 12 week year framework.

Go get that on Amazon or wherever books are sold.

But the 12 week year has been a huge part of our life.

So, yeah, Kristen has helped with that for sure.

Yep.

So we get these bucket lists.

We have goals for 20, 25.

We start writing stuff down.

Let's stop, and let's talk to the married people.

What happens when you have two opposing goals?

Let's say you have a goal to go one direction and I have a goal to go in another direction.

You want to go to Europe and I want to go to Hawaii.

Make something up.

How do we decide on who gets to be right?

Isn't that more of a both and mentality?

Can't we do both?

You know what?

It may not be this year, but.

If you.

If you didn't hear anything today, hear what Lindsay just said, both and.

Right.

Well, you go to both Hawaii and Europe, you just may not do them in the same year, and you just may not do them in the order you want to do them.

But you talk about it and you collaborate and you figure out, you know, what's your why?

What's your why?

Why?

Why do you want to go to Europe?

What's important right now?

Maybe in the world today, you know, Europe is more interesting to you.

Maybe you really just need a vacation and you don't want to do the sightseeing stuff that you think you're probably going to do in Europe, and you just need to relax and you want to go to Hawaii.

Awesome.

You know, think through that, Talk about it, but it takes hard work.

Thank you for sharing a little marriage advice.

How do we get through things?

Both and yes, Lindsay gets to do what she wants.

Brad gets to do what he wants.

Usually Lindsey's list goes first.

Anyway, moving on.

I don't know.

You're pretty persistent.

Yeah, I'm pretty focused.

I don't disagree with that.

But it takes both, right?

We told Bree that you're great with the details, you're great with what needs done right now, and I'm great with pointing our family in the direction of where we think we need to be in the future.

And both of those are important.

By the way, if you're married to somebody and they're kind of this person always looking in the future, and you're looking always into the future, you're probably in.

In the midst of a little chaos right now because you don't know what's going to happen today.

And if you're both focused on today, then the challenge is, are you excited about your future?

Are you excited about some goals, you know, that you have?

How do you feel about that, Lindsay?

My eyes start to glaze over usually.

Yeah.

But it is very helpful for being a woman in this relationship.

And like most money provides security for us.

And so knowing where our finances are actually helps me get excited about the future and where we're going.

So if I know I've got some security in where we are, then I'm probably more apt to be like, okay, maybe we should take a trip to Europe.

Or, you know, we've got a daughter going to college.

We probably should hold off on that trip for a couple years and make sure that we're able to provide that for her.

And, you know, we really just sit down and do a deep dive, evaluate where we're at, and then look to see what we've got moving forward.

And I think the most important thing is that we're able to make that decision together because we're talking about it, and a lot of people either avoid the conversation or, you know, it isn't a whole lot of fun to sit down and talk about money.

Depending on what your position is, too, because we've been in both positions.

We've been in a position where we're like, okay, this year, we really need to be careful about our spending, and we've been in positions where it was a little more fun.

Yeah.

But the important part is that we're there having that conversation together, and we're transparent with each other, and we make the decision together.

Yeah.

I think that's a huge thing, is getting on the same page.

And by doing this December to remember more often, it's easier to stay on the same page and get on the same page.

But when it comes to net worth and money, one of the things we talked about with Bree is net worth and cash flow.

What's the difference between net worth and cash flow?

Net worth is kind of like your scorecard on how you're doing with money.

And before you feel bad about where you're at or before you feel maybe too good about where you're at with money.

You know, I look at money in terms of, well, a couple things, but at face value, I look at money like a destination.

You know, if, if.

If you're going to go on a trip, you have to know where you're starting from.

You know, if you have.

If you have financial goals, you actually have to know where you're starting from.

This is a great analogy.

If I say, how long does it take to get to Indianapolis?

Think about that.

How long would it take for you to get to Indianapolis?

All right, let me shift your perspective from where you might be listening from Fort Wayne.

You might be listening from Traverse City, Michigan.

You might be listening from San Diego, California.

You might be listening from England.

You might be listening from Florida.

Where are you listening from?

Determines how far it's going to take you, how long it's going to take you to get to Indianapolis.

So we're all starting from a different place, and that's okay.

You know, have some grace for yourself, and it's okay.

But net worth is your scorecard.

You know, at the end of the day, you know, it's not about retiring.

It's not about becoming wealthy.

It's not about any of these things other than what do you want for you and your family?

And net worth to me is more of a legacy play, right?

We invest in real estate.

We have rental properties.

That's a legacy play.

That's how do we, you know, how do we build for our future?

And net worth as a part of that?

But guess what?

You can't spend net worth every single month.

That's cash flow.

So you have to set some goals for income.

What are you going to do for your income?

And we talk about that.

We take a deep dive because it's important that we start dreaming.

But the good life costs money.

Lindsay, what does a good life mean to you?

Let's take a pause in the money conversation.

But what's a good life mean to you?

The good life is spending time with family, being present with whoever you're with, whoever I'm with, helping others.

Low stress.

Helping.

That's a big one for you, is helping others.

I love it.

You like the queen of helping other people.

For me, the good life, and this is a word that we used before, but the good life is margin.

You know, I want to have margin with my time.

You know, I don't want to be stressed out.

I want to have margin with my finances.

I want to be able to donate.

I want to be able to.

If there's a pair of Jordans that I like.

I can't believe I'm saying this on the podcast, that just to Go get them.

But I don't have margin with my finances.

I want to have margin with my time.

I want to have freedom, the flexibility to make those decisions, to chase things that are.

That I'm passionate about.

You know, to me, that's a good life.

It's margin with my kids being able.

That our schedules don't become, you know, monopolized by their activities, you know, and I think margin is a good, good place to be.

All right, so we're pretty deep now.

Into the weeds.

It's lunchtime.

We talked about money.

And now this is the point where it's like, okay, pause.

You need a break.

I'm going to go work out.

You went to the spa.

Much needed break, wasn't it?

Yeah.

Yeah.

We spend a lot of time thinking during those times and talking, and it does take quite a bit out of you, but it's also good to have some margin to use your word in our day, to be able to come back and refocus after that time.

So very important.

Okay, so we're gonna get through the next couple conversations, but there was two more sessions that we had.

The next one is more of a money conversation.

So we talked about net worth as a scorecard.

We talked about cash flow in terms of income.

But now we need to figure out how to set goals around how much money we're going to need to live the good life, to live the life we're talking about, to maybe take a trip or to travel, to connect with family, to elevate our experiences with our kids.

Like, you know, I don't know about you, the listener, but.

But we've got a daughter who's going off to college next year.

And this is kind of like the last go around the last Christmas as our family unit.

The last spring break is our family unit.

That's a slippery slope, by the way.

I think Bree's done a good job of not completely trying to make it so expensive.

But the reality is we had to talk about money again as it relates to what are our goals and what are our goals going to cost and what does our business need to look like?

And so we took a deep dive into the businesses that we operate.

Our investment company, our Nolteam Interiors, which is Lindsey's business, and then Nolteam Real Estate, the one that I lead.

It's important to take a deep dive in each of those areas to Know where we're going to get some help from.

And then the last one really came back to, okay, now let's wrap up the day, let's take the last two hours and let's set business goals.

What are our business goals?

We talked about what we want in our personal lives.

And by the way, the first thing, if you caught it is, you know, we believe there's five circles to life.

We believe that there's your faith, your family and relationships and then your personal, which is your mind and body.

We believe that's your lifestyle, the business or your career or your job is the machine and the money that you earn from that is the fuel, right?

I mean, think about that.

Whatever job or career you have right now, that's the machine.

You want a bigger machine, you want more fuel?

Go learn something new, go look for a promotion, go switch jobs, go start a business, you know, a side hustle, right?

This is a gig economy.

And the money is the fuel, the fuel to fund what it is you want your lifestyle to be.

And we believe in that.

And so we come back and we talk about our business goals at the very end.

And then, Lindsey, I think the last piece of the puzzle is preparing our calendar.

Why don't you tell everybody about preparing our calendar?

I mean, this is where you get excited, where you can actually get your hands dirty and get in the garden and start tilling the soil a little bit.

But talk about preparing the calendar, what does that look like?

Well, we mainly put the big rocks in first.

The things that we've said are important to us, whether it's kids activities or family commitments.

And we do our 12 month calendar with things that we know are coming, that are already scheduled, or things that we look for gaps or areas that we have some room to put, some things that we put on our bucket list to fit into the schedule.

Because we all know that our schedules are going to fill up if we don't fill them up for ourselves.

So when you say yes to one thing, you're saying no to something else.

So we want to make sure that if we've said it's a priority at the beginning of the year, that we put it on the calendar and we make it happen if we can.

Now we also have to remember that we have to have some flexibility for things to change.

So we may plan something and you know, one of the kids activities or their sports or something comes up and we have to reschedule it.

And we know that it's a fluid calendar, but we are able to do more of what we said we wanted to do with intentionality if we put it on our calendar.

So I would just say we're more in control of our decisions when we plan ahead.

And that way we feel less stuck throughout the year because we've, we've said that's what we wanted to do in a time when we were thinking more clearly versus being reactive.

So, yeah, I love it.

I think in the, in the, in the words of the famous philosopher Mike Tyson, everybody has a plan until you get punched in the face.

And, you know, we talked to Brie about that, and Lindsey and I laugh about that and joke about it, but really the goal is to put the plan together, but then not hold that so tight that you can't be inflexible to things that come up.

And then, and then just.

The other piece of advice on this is, you know, once we finish this, we will leave having another date already planned.

You know, the goal is to have the first quarter, you know, at the end of the first quarter already planned so that we can make sure that what we talked about, you know, for the year, you know, gets done.

And then we'll have these little sessions, you know, in March or in June, you know, throughout the year.

So that's a little bit of how we do it.

This may not work for everybody if you don't have a.

If you're not working with the person you're married to, if you're not even married, if this doesn't make sense to you from a marriage or a partnership standpoint, go do this framework with a friend.

Go find an accountability, you know, person to do the same framework.

So again, just to go back through our framework as we choose a word of the year, this is our theme.

It's going to be elevate.

You know, you research that word a little bit.

What does it mean?

What does it mean to you?

Then we come up with a quote or a verse in our faith tradition.

And what does that quote, you know, how does that quote, you know, sit on your heart and sit on your mind, and how can you use that all year long?

And then, and then we go into our five circles.

Our faith, our family and relationships, our personal, which is mind and body, our business and our finances.

What does this word mean to each of those areas of our lives?

Then we get started with our day when we go Back and we look at what happened.

What was great about this last year?

What do we remember?

What are things that we want to continue to do?

This is a time where we dream.

We kind of get a little crazy.

We looked at Bree, and we said, if you can do this next week and you have enough money to do.

It's not really a goal.

It's called a to do.

You know, if you set something up and you're like, I got enough money to do this, and I think I can do this by, you know, in two weeks.

That's not a goal.

That's a to do.

Make sure you understand the difference.

Then we talked about our net worth and had some money conversations.

We wanted to know, where are we right now, and where do we want to see ourselves?

Where can we see ourselves?

Then we got a little more specific when it came to finances after lunch, because during lunch, we took care of ourselves.

How much these business.

How much do we need to earn?

You know, what do we need to do with our finances?

How do we need to be strategic?

What advisors do you need in your life to help you get to this place?

I think that's something we didn't talk about, is all the advisors we have in our life, whether they're coaches or advisors or, you know, friends or family, people we lean on mentors.

You know, part of building this is through our advisory team.

Iron sharpens iron.

And then the last part of it was preparing our calendar.

It's really important that you write down what you want.

And I can tell you and Lindsey, I think you'd agree with this is our life has been more fulfilled because of the things we've written down.

Because the things we've written down, we typically do.

All right, let's wrap up.

What advice would you have to couples?

Let's say we're speaking to married couples, or we're speaking to married couples who work together, or we're speaking to the single person who has an accountability buddy.

But what advice would you have for people setting goals together?

I mean, I think it could even apply to business partners because they, you know, you're in a relationship with someone that you need to be transparent with as well as have these conversations in order to move your.

Your business forward or your relationship forward.

So writing goals together, I think you have to take some time individually to reflect on your year.

Just like we did and see what went well and what you would like to continue doing.

But then what can you get excited about?

Like, what's your true why and what's going to get you out of bed in the morning and motivate you to.

To work hard or to grow in your relationship?

I'm trying to think of a specific example, if I can.

Maybe you could come up with one.

Well, I think the specific example comes back to your word of the year.

You know, it's using that as kind of like your anchor thought, you know, and.

And your anchor thought is, you know, kind of what just gets you through, you know, your year.

So there's going to be hard times.

Well, it might be an area that you want to grow in.

Like, you know, last year, I felt like I could learn a little bit more about color, and so I took a color class, and I really wanted to become a color expert so that I could help more people with color in their.

In their homes and businesses.

And for those of you listening that don't know, Lindsey has an old team, interiors.

And so when she talks about color classes, that's for, you know, painting and carpets and textures and fabrics and, you know, how to.

How do things go together and line up.

So you have a great eye for that.

But you wanted to, you know, you wanted to increase and do a little more and do a little better.

But, you know, as it relates to this podcast, you know, this.

This podcast was birthed out of me having a master's degree in business, but it was from the locker room.

And so what I learned early on is that there's clues everywhere in life if you pay attention to them.

And we talk about mastering the fundamentals.

And I think mastering the fundamentals of business planning is all about the planning and the preparation.

Like, the work that we did before we went on this trip was the fundamentals.

The fundamentals was we showed up to this trip without a blank piece of paper.

We all showed up to this trip with things written already, you know, and that's.

That's.

The fundamentals is the planning and the preparation for a time like this.

Falling in love with practice, that just means that, you know, tough times don't last, but tough people do.

Like, you're going to get punched in the face.

You're going to have a plan, and you have to fall in love with that plan.

You have to fall in love with the life you're.

You're intentionally designing for yourself.

And if you don't spend time intentionally, you know, I guess charting Directions or having a roadmap of a place you want to go, a destination, you're going to get lost.

You're going to get caught up in the burnout and the fatigue and the challenges and the problems.

And that's where your focus is going to go.

That's where your energy is going to go if you don't have that destination.

So you got to fall in love with your vision.

Every single day, you know, is not easy.

Every single day is hard.

And it's okay to take a step back every once in a while, but really falling in love with your destination and what it takes to get there.

And then winning at the game of life.

Winning at the game of life for us, Lindsay, I would not to speak for us, but it's just being intentional with our time, our thoughts, our resources, you know, and to set those intent intentions and to be on purpose and to live a principle centered life.

You have such great questions, and I'm not always prepared for them.

I mean, elevate.

We're just going to keep it very simple and focus on.

I want to elevate my faith and spend more time in the word.

I would like to continue with the word connect, connecting with our family and our.

Our clients and really deepening relationships with them.

And I think those relationships will elevate as well as with our team.

Totally agree.

I appreciate it.

You know, rarely do we get a kind of a look inside.

What do they say?

Look inside the kitchen or see how the sausage is made?

I have no idea.

We pulled the curtain back today to show you a little bit about the boring life Lindsey leads.

Having to have these conversations with me all the time.

But in all sincerity, it's time to send some flowers.

So if you don't mind, Lindsay, I'd like to send some flowers today.

I'd like to send flowers to you because I cannot do this with a different or a better life partner than you.

You know, you are amazing and we are a great team and I truly believe that.

So I'm sending flowers to you.

And I'd also like to send some flowers to Greg and Vivian Casino because they're the ones that got us started on the December to remember and really taking some time to plan out and set some goals and to just dream.

And it's.

It's interesting how a lot of those things are coming true.

We've had a lot of challenges the last few years.

We've been doing this but we definitely are headed in the right direction.

So I want to thank Greg and Viv for that.

But, Lindsey, thank you for being another guest, a repeat guest.

Our first repeat guest on Student of the Game.

Thank you for doing this.

No problem.

Can I send some flowers, too?

Sure.

I want to send some flowers to our three kids because they participate in this with us.

We do small goal writing sessions with them, which I think would be probably a whole other podcast where we get to talk about goal writing with your kids, because we've also had people ask us about that.

But Trey Delaney and Brianna, we.

We love you and we appreciate that you are good sports, about learning and growing along with us and writing goals, and they inspire me because I can't believe some of the goals that they choose to write and accomplish.

It's inspiring to me.

So thank you.

That's awesome.

No, I appreciate that.

Well, if you're out there and you're trying to get your kids to write goals, I'll just.

I'll share.

One piece of advice that Lindsey and I live by is kids won't listen to what you say because they're too busy watching what you do.

Kids won't listen to what you say because they're too busy watching what you do.

If you want your kids to write goals, you need to write some goals.

If you want your kids to have vision, you have to have vision.

Drop the mic there, and that's a wrap.

Thanks for listening to Student of the Game.

Lindsey.

This has been a great time.

Whenever you're listening to this, just know that the planning and preparation that goes into being intentional is a real thing.

Till next time, have a great one.

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.