The Best Question to Ask Clients – And Yourself

By financial planning logo
February 28, 2019
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Written by: Chelsea Emery | Jeff Motske has one of the strongest ways to tease out client priorities I’ve heard in quite a while.

“What if?” Motske asks clients.

“What if one if your partner needs critical care? What if you want to move to Arizona? What if one of your kids starts a family on the other side of the country?,” the CEO of Trilogy Financial asks.

It’s deceptively simple, but an excellent method for getting at the heart of clients’ values and fears.

“These are critical questions,” Motske told me during a recent visit to Financial Planning offices in New York. “You want to ask them before things happen.”

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October 20, 2026

Trilogy Capital, a $5 billion wealth manager based in Irvine, Calif., is acquiring Mountain Capital Investment Advisors, a $1 billion registered investment advisor firm in Westminster, Colo.

Trilogy says the deal is its largest acquisition of the year and will establish its 11th office location and its second in Colorado.

Mountain Capital was founded in 2011 by Brandt Burns, a former U.S. Marine and airline pilot who says that joining Trilogy will provide his team of advisors with additional resources to improve their service model while preserving much of their operating model.

“We will retain our brand and unique position in the marketplace, and our leadership team, advisors, and staff will remain intact, so client disruption should be minimal,” he says. “This important move for our firm will not replace what we’ve built—it will strengthen it.”

In addition to Burns, other members of Mountain Capital have worked as pilots or in other roles in the aviation industry, and it has a niche serving clients who work in that sector. Brandt’s wife, Mountain Capital co-founder Michelle Burns, spent 14 years as a senior manager for United Airlines. At Mountain Capital, she led development of a specialized tax-preparation service designed for pilots and other aviation-industry professionals. Trilogy says that an affiliated company, Trilogy Tax & Consulting, will absorb Mountain Capital’s tax service.

Read more here.

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By Trilogy Financial
July 5, 2018

As a parent, it’s natural to want to help your children succeed. In fact, in a recent survey of parents, 37% of respondents said no investment goal is more important than saving for a child’s college education.

If you plan to pay for all of your child’s college expenses, you can expect to shell out tens of thousands of dollars for one year, according to the College Board’s 2017-2018 figures.

While it might feel good to give your child a head start in life, choosing to pay for their education might not be an easy choice for everyone.

“The decision to contribute to a child’s college education is a deeply nuanced and personal decision,” said Jeff Motske, a certified financial planner and the president of Trilogy Financial.

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