Brad Noll's Season 1 Recap: Lessons to Carry Into a New Year
Mindset · From Student of the Game
Brad Noll's Season 1 Recap: Lessons to Carry Into a New Year
Student of the Game launched in 2023, and for the final episode of season one, Brad Noll recorded his first solo show. It is part highlight reel and part year-end reflection, released as listeners were heading into a new year and thinking about what they want the next one to look like.
Rather than repeating each conversation, Brad pulls out the threads that tie the season together and turns them into questions for the listener. What shot are you going to take? What are you willing to go through? And who is cheering for you?
Three Goals Behind the Podcast
Brad started the show with three goals. The first was to create legacy content for his children, recorded conversations with people he knows and respects that his kids can return to for the rest of their lives. The second was to become a great communicator, not just a good one. He believes many problems come from communication, and the biggest lie is believing it happened. For him, great communication means active listening, and asking the next question instead of waiting for a turn to talk.
The third goal, which he calls a shameless plug, was to proudly promote his family's businesses, including Noll Team Real Estate and his wife's interiors business. He is not too proud to say his team is the best option for buyers and sellers in Fort Wayne, because of the work that goes on behind the scenes.
“Everything that you can think of has fundamentals to it. Fundamentals will never change. It's the strategies and the tactic that you employ. Those will always change.”
Brad Noll
Janus and the Art of Looking Both Ways
While doing annual reviews with his team, Brad talked about Janus, the Roman god of beginnings, transitions, time, passages, and endings, often shown with two faces, one looking back and one looking ahead. January takes its name from Janus.
Brad's point is that you do not have to wait for January 1 to start fresh. The first line of his journal every morning is "today I begin a new life." Short cycle execution, a theme from earlier in the season, lets you have a beginning and an ending every 30 or 90 days. Still, the end of the year is a natural time to ask what worked, what went well, what to keep, and what to let go.
Underneath it all is the show's framework. Fundamentals exist in parenting, business, relationships, and everything else. When life feels like it is constantly changing, Brad says, what is changing are the strategies and tactics. Falling in love with practice is where mastery happens, in the mundane work nobody sees. And while you can learn a great deal through defeat, he reminds listeners that winners tend to get bigger platforms to help others.
Which Shot Are You Going to Take?
Brad's favorite story of the season came from his friend Ben Andrews. As a young man, Ben walked into Pauley Pavilion at UCLA and found the legendary coach John Wooden sitting in the bleachers. Ben asked if he could borrow a ball and take a shot. Coach Wooden asked him which shot he was going to take.
Ben made a layup, then one at the other end. When he asked why Coach Wooden, then in his eighties, was still coaching, Wooden told him he was not still coaching. He was still learning, because if he stopped learning, he would have nothing to teach. Brad turns the first question back on the listener: what shot are you going to take this year in your faith, family, relationships, business, finances, and health?
A Vision That Costs Something
Brad invites listeners to pause and picture this time next year, then describe what a great year looked like. Plans may not go the way you expect. His sister, the show's very first guest, overcame four knee surgeries and a move going into high school to become a standout player. Ben had to give up basketball and discovered a gift for running track. It is okay for a vision not to work out exactly, Brad says. The point is to have one that gets you out of bed.
Then he gets vulnerable about his own year. His family chooses a word of the year, and this year's word was strength. After a great previous year, he thought strength would mean growth. Instead, it was a year of highs and lows, in business and at home, and the word became what he and his wife leaned on. Both of them could not go backward at the same time, so one of them had to be strong.
That leads to Brad's reflection for the new year:
- What is your vision? Write down what a great year would look like.
- What are you willing to go through to get there? If the answer is nothing, it may be a wish list.
- What anchor thought or word will carry you through the hard parts?
- Who is cheering for you, and who do you need in your corner?
- Who do you want to become? Brad sets be goals, because being comes before doing and having.
A Season of Stories
Brad then walks through the season's guests and what stuck with him. Rodney Pryor talked about identity and now helps young people find theirs. Lindsay Noll joined him on their 20th wedding anniversary and shared how her gift for helping people, first expressed through nursing, led her to start an interiors business. Greg Johns told the story of coming to America from England for school and basketball, a journey Brad's own kids had never fully heard.
Bree Noll set out to average a score she had never shot in a tournament and finished at 78.9. Mike Gandolfo shared how he communicates with and leads his team. Dave Simon said he will retire when he falls out of love with practice. Cam Cameron described LaDainian Tomlinson running to the end zone every time he touched the ball in practice. Joe Pechota talked about winning practice, and Jon Coffman about the preparation behind his team's success. Charity Middleton, Steph Winger, and Michael Yoder rounded out the season with lessons on balance, blending life and work, and hope.
Who Is Cheering for You in the Year Ahead?
Brad closes with the thesis of the show: relationships win. When people get stuck on how they will reach a goal, he encourages them to make a list of who instead. In his business, the aim is to serve clients so well that the givers rise to the top. And if you want to find givers, he says, you have to be one.
He sends his flowers to the listeners and to every guest who took the time to share their story, and he invites listeners to tell him their goals and what winning looks like for them. Looking ahead to season two, he promises more conversations about mastering the fundamentals, falling in love with practice, and winning at the game of life.
▶ Listen to the full episode
Season 1 Recap with Brad Noll, on Student of the Game.
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