Why the 360 Mindset Matters: Purpose, Not Just Planning (Ep. 2)

 

Many people spend years saving for the future, yet struggle to enjoy the life they worked so hard to build. In this episode, Jon Meyer explores why purpose, permission, and perspective matter just as much as the numbers.

Jon shares how the 360 Mindset came to life, talks through the connection between health, wealth, and time, and explains why so many people feel stuck even when they have the resources to move forward. Jon also opens up about the language we use around money, the fear that keeps people from spending confidently, and the role permission plays in helping clients find joy.

What You’ll Learn

• Why purpose leads to lasting joy and not just short bursts of happiness
• How the 360 Mindset helps people make decisions with clarity
• The hidden cost of living unbalanced and waiting too long to enjoy life
• A simple mindset shift that helps people give themselves permission to spend
• And more!

 

---

 

Watch us on YouTube at https://youtu.be/r9djTczaQNY.

 

Resources:

• From Strength to Strength by Arthur C. Brooks

Connect with Jon Meyer:

• BGM
• LinkedIn: Jon Meyer
• Email: jmeyer@BGM360.com
• Schedule a Meeting

 

---

Transcript

Jon Meyer: If you think about the financial services industry, we tell people to save all day long, and it’s a good answer. Save, save, save. Problem is we don’t tell people how to spend. Joy comes when I find purpose, and I think too many people don’t find joy. They’re constantly searching for happiness, and therefore when they don’t find joy.

Because they don’t have a purpose. They don’t really enjoy life. You can develop new purpose. Now, for some people that might be volunteering. For some people it might be consulting. For some people, it could be writing a book. The next purpose is simply what else? What other strengths do you have that you wanna exploit?

Intro: Welcome to Mastering the 360 Mindset with John Meyer from BGM. Join us as we explore ways to make the most out of your wealth, health, and time. Unlocking opportunities for balance and lasting success. With insights from John’s years of experience and guest experts, you’ll gain the tools to design a life that works on your terms.

Now onto the show,

Patrice Sikora: Mastering the 360 mindset. While that may sound like a yoga class or a Six Sigma Black Belt certification, it is a serious approach to your financial life. It’s the blueprint your host John Meyer wants to share with you. I’m Patrice Kora, Jon, I have to admit the name does sound a little bit daunting, but, and we talked about it a little bit in your first episode, but please tell us more about the 360 mindset and where the concept came from.

Jon Meyer: Thank you, Patrice. When I think back to how we’ve built our company, we built it along the lines, not of just one thing, but of many things side by side. So it started out as a. CPA firm that then added wealth management, that then added a trust company that then added other types of consulting. And so what you ended up with was a bunch of individual companies side by side that could service a client in so many ways.

And what became apparent over time is that we can see problems from different angles because we have so many people with so much. Expertise. And I think over time that came back to me as we, we have to approach things from all these different angles to optimize people’s short-term decision making because the short-term decisions have long-term ramifications.

And that’s kind of where it came from. I have added to that a little bit in the pa in the past, uh, few years with this idea of intersecting health, wealth, and time. Because I think there’s a bit of other stuff going on besides those of us in the numbers game. I think when we talk, when we talk about numbers, it’s easy, but when we start talking about people’s time and their health and the, and behavior issues that kick in and sometimes prevent ’em from making good decisions, that’s where I really get excited about trying to nudge people.

Patrice Sikora: Tell me more about that. About people not making good decisions.

Jon Meyer: People basically feel stuck out of a couple of things, a fear, but B, I think a lot of times people just need permission. Too many times we go along a path where we’re told, do this, do this, do this. If you think about the financial services industry, we tell people to save all day long, and it’s a good answer.

Save, save, save. Problem is we don’t tell people how to spend. And, and so when it comes to the idea of, okay, I saved a ton, but I don’t know how to distribute that money. Now all of a sudden it just locks people up. Fear might be the answer, but I think permission to spend is a, is a big question for a lot of people.

And so from our perspective, I’m always trying to get people to see things differently. Good example that. I have a client who, uh, wanted to take a trip overseas and their spouse is got an issue where they kind of have some problems with, with, uh, think of it as arthritis. And so they’re gonna take this big trip.

And I said, great. I assume you’re flying first class. And their answer is, well, no, we can’t afford it. And they said, well, hang on a second. You’ve got millions of dollars, I think you can afford it. Let’s talk about what’s gonna happen on the back end of the trip when you land. ’cause when you land, your spouse isn’t gonna be able to move sitting in economy.

It just isn’t happening. That’s, that’s actually a bad thing for that person. And so now you spend the first two days of a, of. You know, two week trip basically just waiting for them to get unstuck.

Patrice Sikora: Hmm.

Jon Meyer: To me, that’s not living comfortably when you can’t afford to do something. After that conversation, they actually, interestingly changed their flight to first class.

And when they got back, they, they can’t stop talking about that. And they are so thankful that, and they said it like you gave us permission to do something we never would’ve done. Um, it’s kind of weird ’cause I feel, I don’t wanna make it sound like I have to be the guy that gives ’em permission, like they should do it to themselves.

But at the same time, it seems like someone needs to nudge ’em.

Patrice Sikora: That phrase though, I can’t afford it. Everybody uses it. I mean, that’s what you grow up with. At least in my experience, that’s what we did in the family. Well, it’s not in the budget right now. Yep. So that’s what, how I grew up. If it’s not in the budget, then we can’t do it.

Jon Meyer: It’s a horrible phrase. You know, the, the one thing that I, uh, changed in the language of my, with my children real early on in my life was not to ever, ever, ever say, we can’t afford it. ’cause we can’t afford it. Right. My phrase was always we choose to spend our money differently. Hmm. Because when you teach people that there’s choices, now they get the why behind it.

If you don’t explain the why, they get frustrated. But when I told my kids, we’re not eating out every day, but when we travel overseas, we’re gonna stay in four star hotels and you can eat anything you want. To them, that was a good enough why. And so they didn’t complain that we weren’t eating out as much when their friends were eating out a lot.

And I think that’s the thing that people forget is we all have choices, but words matter and we have to say it in a way and we have to teach our kids and our grandkids this now say it in a way that they understand what, that there are choices in life. Most of us have plenty of money. Hmm. We should never use the phrase, we don’t have it because our kids can see it.

Patrice Sikora: Interesting concept. I like that. Uh, one of the questions that I wanted to ask you, but I don’t quite understand it, is living unbalanced. We were gonna talk about the cost of living unbalanced. What does that mean?

Jon Meyer: Going along with what I just said, I think too many people don’t enjoy life. I think there’s this idea of, if you, if you think about what we’re all trying to do, everyone says, I just want to be happy.

I would argue. I don’t wanna be happy. I wanna find joy. Happiness is fleeting. Happiness is moments I can be happy over eating a steak. But then that moment passes and now I’m not happy anymore. So joy comes when I find purpose. Hmm. And I think too many people don’t find joy. They’re constantly searching for happiness, and therefore, when they don’t find joy, because they don’t have a purpose, they don’t really enjoy life.

I think that’s what we see time and time and time again. And you would think as people get to retirement, for example, they say, oh, well now I’m gonna have time to do this, that, or the other thing. And the answer is maybe, but too many people spend so much time looking backwards at what they’ve accomplished instead of looking forward at what they’re trying to do next.

And that’s the one thing where I really focus in on trying to get people to enjoy life is let’s find the purpose. That brings joy. Let’s discard the word happiness.

Patrice Sikora: Joy is a word that we don’t use enough. No. And joy, I agree with you wholeheartedly. People don’t know what joy is. I think most of the time it’s a happiness.

It’s, it’s not the joy that is, it’s a richer concept of happiness for me anyway. But tying it to a purpose, how do you find the purpose?

Jon Meyer: That is a great question. So. If you, I don’t know if anyone’s read the book from Strength to Strength from Arthur Brooks. Um, he talks a lot about this idea of finding purpose, where you went from one strength.

A lot of us have this strength in work and we develop our entire persona around work. And then we decide, okay, work’s done, and we’re gonna go on to the next thing. And all of a sudden we lost purpose. When we were working, it was work, but when we’re not working now, what? You can develop new purpose. Now, for some people that might be volunteering.

For some people it might be consulting. For some people, it could be writing a book. The next purpose is simply what else? What other strengths do you have that you want exploit that maybe you haven’t had time to exploit? And I, I even look at my son for a lot of years. He was a, a soccer player. He thought, I’m gonna go play soccer in college.

And then he decided not to. That’s cool. Um, but he shifted his purpose then, ’cause he still wants to stay in shape. He shifted his purpose from being a soccer player, a skinny soccer player, to this giant weightlifter because he’s still a physical specimen. And I watched that and I’m like, huh. He found joy in a different way.

Now he’s not one 170 pound soccer player. He is a 230 pound weightlifter. Um, but it’s still purpose. It’s just driving him differently and how do we go from strength to strength? I think that’s a f fabulous thought process to go through, and I think it’s hard for most of us.

Patrice Sikora: So is purpose tied to identity?

Jon Meyer: Oftentimes it is, yes. I think for a lot of people it is. Particularly when you look at work.

Patrice Sikora: Yes.

Jon Meyer: A lot of people identify who they are with their work, and they don’t realize the day they leave, the saddest person there is them. Everyone else just moves on. And I think that’s, it’s interesting to look at it and say, you know, in our, in our world, we all think we have all these friends at work.

But the reality is as soon as you leave, you find out that, eh, most of ’em liked you, but that didn’t really mean much. Um, and for a lot of people that kind of spirals them downwards. And so to me, purpose is something we gotta constantly be searching for as a forward-looking thing, instead of thinking backwards to who was I?

Patrice Sikora: So it almost sounds to me like learning to embrace permission to enjoy life. The sooner you learn to do that, the better you are or the more likely you are to find joy in your purpose and your identity.

Jon Meyer: Yeah, I do think so. Too many times. We spend a lot of time not giving ourselves permission, and so I talked earlier about giving someone else permission, but sometimes you have to give yourself just the permission, and I find it just as hard as the next person.

I’m not saying I’m perfect at this either, so I look at it as how do I, if I, if I know I want to head towards something. Let’s say my next strength is to, well, let’s, let’s go back to my son to become a bodybuilder of some sort. He’s not a bodybuilder, but just to do something totally different like that, I have to put money into it, right?

I have to buy gym memberships and I have to probably eat different and, and get protein powders and whatever else I’m doing. Too many people don’t take the step of giving them permission, themselves permission to spend the money to do that, so they never get there. And that’s to me where I think we have the ability to say, things have to change.

We have to do it different. Do you talk to your clients like this? I try to, yes, I do. Um, and I tell ’em stories about me personally struggling with some of this too, because at the end of the day, we’re all human beings and we’re all struggling to figure it out, right? So why not just share where you are and what you’re doing?

I, I remember a great story where. I was having an issue at, at the office with trying to figure out it’s, it was nothing big, but it was trying to figure out how to assess people. And I looked around and I thought, Hmm, I’ve got a client who has this exact expertise, but that client is, I mean, he’s super busy.

This, this guy’s got a big title, but I thought, you know what, I’m just gonna check. A and he, he said, let’s go out to breakfast and, and talk about it. So we went out to breakfast to talk and he graciously gave me plenty of time. And I look at that and I’m thinking that’s the perfect example of what I want to be to clients too.

Like I never want to be too busy and I never want to not share with them what I’m dealing with too, because I think I can always help someone and in the process probably learn a lot more. So. Yeah, I do kind of talk this way with a lot of clients.

Patrice Sikora: How do you start your, your first discussion with a client, your first introduction, introductory meeting?

Jon Meyer: If I just go back to what we all learn a long time ago is people like you when you ask about them. And so quite honestly, I live by the 80 20 rule. I wanna talk 20% of the time. I wanna listen 80% of the time. And so for the most part, I just sit and ask them questions about themselves, what they’re trying to accomplish, where, where things are at, you know, what’s failed?

What am I missing here? Oftentimes, you know, it’s no different than we, we talk about AI nowadays and everyone’s like, oh, I did this in ai. If you go back and just ask the ai, what did I miss? You’re actually gonna get a better answer. And so I, that’s the way I am with people too. In my meetings. I spend the last few minutes of every meeting just keep asking, what did I miss?

What did I miss? What did I miss? And you’d be shocked what people come up with. I hear so many interesting stories where I learned something about, oh, I forgot to tell you I got this problem with my child and I really don’t wanna leave him a lot of money. Or, I forgot to tell you about this account I’m gonna inherit, or I forgot to tell you.

And that stuff matters. So. I think to your question, I just am super curious and I just love hearing people’s stories. That’s the one thing about this job that’s fascinating is I get to meet so many cool people, and when I say cool people, it doesn’t mean they’re flashy people. It means they’re just average people.

But they all have such an interesting story, and to me, that’s the fun part.

Patrice Sikora: All right. Well then I’m gonna throw it right back at you, John. What have I missed?

Jon Meyer: What have you missed? That’s a really good question. You haven’t missed much. I think, you know, when you, when you talk about all this stuff and you say, well, how do you talk to your clients and how do you do this?

What you missed is, okay, John, what are you doing? What exactly do you do personally that is a little bit different. Um, and I can’t tell you everything I do because I don’t remember off the top of my head, but I’ll tell you a couple things that’s interesting. Whenever I make decisions now, I, I’ve gone through life to be fair, worrying about money a lot because I grew up from a household that was, you know, it was middle class, but probably lower middle class.

Um, and we never had tons of money. So I always thought, I gotta have money. I gotta have money, I gotta have money. Today. I don’t, I don’t think that way anymore. And in fact, for the most part, what I do is I always look at the decision and I think, is this matter to my net worth? So, for example, let’s say my net worth were a hundred thousand dollars.

I would look anything after that, that, uh, comma and say anything that’s under a thousand dollars decision will not impact my net worth. So if it’s gonna cost me anything up to a thousand bucks, I won’t even think about it. I’ll just do it. Now, let’s say my net worth changed to a million dollars. I’ll look at that comma, and I’ll say, well, I’ll go a step past that.

So anything that’s below. $10,000. So anything from 9,999 or below probably doesn’t impact my net worth that much. So I can make those decisions. It allows me to move on faster, it allows me to make decisions faster. And it’s usually not about buying stuff, it’s about buying experiences. Um, but it’s just a little trick I learned over the years to get me, myself, and I’ve shared this with a few clients, but to get myself past this idea of, oh my God, I gotta hoard money.

Patrice Sikora: Experiences. Yeah, that’s the big thing. Buying an experience.

Jon Meyer: Buying an experience is the, one of the biggest things I try to get people to understand because at the end of the day, we all pass away. The one thing we have until we pass away is our, our our thoughts. And then when we pass away, the people we left behind have those same thoughts.

And so if you want something to go on for generations, it’s the experiences. It’s not the fact that you bought the boat, it’s the fact that you spent eight hours in the boat with your daughter teaching her how to do a 360. If you could do those things now, the experience matters. Uh, it’s not the boat.

Patrice Sikora: Oh, John, that’s beautiful.

So if I haven’t missed anything further, uh, why don’t you tell people how they can reach you?

Jon Meyer: Absolutely. You can reach me, uh, by going on our website@bgmthreesixty.com. You catch my bio there and there is a link if you wanna schedule a meeting.

Patrice Sikora: And be sure to like and follow this podcast. Please share it with others as well.

Share it with friends and family, and thanks for being with us.

Outro: Thank you for tuning into mastering the 360 Mindset. If you enjoy today’s episode, help us spread the word, share it with your friends and family in anyone you think you could benefit, and be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode.

---

Want to learn more about working with BGM? Visit BGM360.com today. Until next time, keep mastering your 360 mindset. The information covered represents the views and opinions of the guest and does not necessarily represent the views or opinions of Jon Meyer or BGM. The content has been made available for informational and educational purposes only.

The content is not intended to be a substitute for professional investing advice. Always seek the advice of your financial advisor or other qualified financial service provider with any questions you may have regarding your investment planning.