Community Highlights: Meet Brandon LaValley

Today we’d like to introduce you to Brandon LaValley.

Hi Brandon, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstories.
2014-present – Targeted Wealth Solutions, Financial Advisor. Brandon co-founded Targeted Wealth Solutions with a fellow AF pilot. We both have a great passion for personal and business finance. We were both being heavily recruited by a firm out of Kansas City among others. That firm had flown us to Santa Monica for a week-long meet and greet with the management team. On the flight home, we discussed what we perceived were the numerous shortcomings in the financial planning and financial advisory space and decided we wanted to take a big risk on ourselves, try it on our own, and change financial planning. We kicked off TWS the following year with the goal of focusing on holistic financial planning, reasonable fees, integrity in advice, and being a true supporter of our clients. We are a fee-only, fiduciary, Registered Investment Advisor with clients in 37 states. The firm now employs 5 financial advisors.

2020-present – Trailhead Mortgage, Principal, Mortgage Loan Originator. In 2020, after having referred many of our TWS clients to other lenders, we decided it was a natural progression to add mortgage lending to our service stack. We were very small and only licensed in CO and TX. We primarily originated loans for our friends, family, and TWS clients. Later that year a lifelong friend with vast experience in mortgage lending approached us with a business proposition. He wanted to leave his current company and start a wholesale brokerage firm. He knew to lend quite well but wanted a team and business support in starting a business. The next thing you know Trailhead Mortgage was born. We currently have 11 loan officers and are licensed in 12 states. We are currently interviewing two more loan officers that should be licensed shortly after publication and we have two additional states we expect to add in 2023. Everyone on our team, with one exception, is a military veteran.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
I don’t think anything about starting a small business from scratch is smooth. I took a massive pay cut when I left my Air Force active duty flying position to build Targeted Wealth Solutions.

I didn’t take a paycheck for 18 months and we were working 60 hours a week easily. But it was fun, we were building something and we were changing, at least for our clients, the financial planning and wealth management landscape that has burned so many with high fees, hidden fees, and other nefarious practices in the industry.

We’ve been impressed with Targeted Wealth Solutions and Trailhead Mortgage, but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
I’d like to emphasize that we are fee-only fiduciaries, always acting in our client’s best interest. Something we do very differently than most advisors and loan originators is that we work as an ensemble. We all have our strengths and we bring those strengths to each and every client. We don’t operate under a “my client” or “your client” construct.

We work as a team to bring the strength of each advisor to every client. I’m proud to say that as a Registered Investment Advisor, we’ve only lost one client in over seven years. She left to support her nephew who started a new career as a financial planner after college. We have clients outside our specialties but we focus on military members and veterans, medical professionals, airline pilots, and small business owners.

We’d love to hear what you think about risk-taking.
Risk is a word we use every day. We obviously took significant risks to walk away from well-paying jobs and future career opportunities to start our business. We also discuss risk with our planning clients in great detail. We believe that accurate measures are at the foundation of portfolio construction and wealth management.

To say it another way, we believe too much risk in a portfolio keeps clients up at night and our goal is to alleviate that concern. Not enough risk and you might jeopardize your ability to meet your financial goals. We take risk management very seriously and spend a lot of time making sure we get risk analysis correct.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.targetedwealthsolutions.com and www.trailheadmortgage.com
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/search/top?q=trailhead%20mortgage
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brandonlavalleympas/