However, Lenovo Yoga 7i laptops just make it so hard to do a USB boot and clean install.

Here are the issues I ran into (with fixes):

1) USB drive with windows setup won't boot:  First, you need to make sure you use the windows media creation tool to create a bootable USB. That's the ONLY way you'll get the laptop USB boot to run the windows 10 setup. I tried using the DISM tool via PowerShell to format my USB into a bootable one. But it didn't work.

2) Windows setup won't recognize any (NVMe) storage devices:  If you get an error during the windows setup which states no storage devices found, then fear not. First, on a separate computer, go to https://lenovo-drivers.com/ and get the latest STORAGE driver. It might be called Intel RST or something. Download it and run the setup. DO NOT INSTALL. Click on the "extract only" option. Locate the extracted folder and copy it onto the bootable USB. Oh, and also browse the folder and look for a .inf file. Make a note of where it is. Then, insert the USB into the Lenovo laptop and boot from USB. When you reach the part where you can't see any storage devices, select the "load drivers" option. Find the driver you just loaded onto the USB and select it. This will allow windows setup to read the NVMe drive. Format the drive and you're all set!!!

Thanks to Sahil_007.