Kestra Nabs Veteran Merrill Team in Ohio: Recruiting Roundup

Written by: Matthew Phillips | The last words of the email stood out the most. “… the thing is … we are deaf.” This is how the prospective client closed her message to me in 2017.

When I agreed to meet with the woman and her husband, I was feeling uncertain about how to best communicate with them. To prepare, I added captions to my usual video presentation. But halfway through, I realized the couple was completely overwhelmed with the financial vocabulary I was using, which was entirely new to them. Improvising, I pulled up a blank Word document and started typing which allowed us to converse back and forth. I felt completely inadequate and regretted not preparing more, but did my best to connect with the couple.

To my surprise, the meeting concluded with the wife rejecting my handshake and instead grabbing onto me tightly as she began to cry. “Matthew, thank you for what you have done,” she said. “We have sat with five advisors, and none have come close to helping us like you have. I know we have missed out on financial opportunities because we are deaf.”

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“We all must work together for the client, connecting and collaborating to help solve their problems.” – Jeff Motske

Robert Reiss: Let's roll back to 1999. Talk about your vision for Trilogy.

Jeff Motske: I created the model that we use at Trilogy Financial, which is the combination of tax, financial and estate planning. In my previous life I was in the retirement planning space, but I knew there was more out there. I was working with my clients, and I recognized they had needs that we didn't service. So, I built a little network to better serve those needs, specifically tax and estate planning. Then I realized that a more comprehensive solution needed to be created, and the only way to realize this vision was to start my own firm…and that was the very beginning of Trilogy Financial. The way I look at it, tax, estate and financial planning may be in different lanes, but they're all on the same highway heading toward our clients' final destination. We all must work together for the client, connecting and collaborating to help solve their problems.

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