David Reichert • Murray, UT
Reichert Wealth​ • LPL Financial
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I grew up in Salt Lake City in a family where education, professionalism, and service were important. My parents trained as physicians and met at Cornell’s medical school. My father went on to build a long career as a neurologist, while my mother chose to stay home and raise our family. I grew up in a home that valued learning, but just as importantly, one that was supportive and encouraging.

Many of my early years were shaped by sports and music. I played golf and tennis, eventually focusing on tennis in high school and college. My parents spent many hours traveling with my brother and me to tournaments. I also played saxophone and clarinet, and I loved jazz.

I attended Willamette University in Oregon, where I initially pursued music before majoring in cultural anthropology. That may not sound like an obvious prelude to a career in wealth management, but I think it shaped the way I think about people, values, and decision-making around money.

After college, I spent a year in Israel through an internship program. When I returned home, I entered financial services as a registered representative. I later joined Waddell & Reed, where I laid the foundation for my career over the next decade. That was where I learned to think of financial planning as the center of the client relationship. I grew into a more comprehensive advisory role, bought a retiring advisor’s business in 2014, and ultimately transitioned to LPL’s independent platform when it acquired Waddell & Reed.

I would describe our mission in three parts. First, we want to provide the highest level of customer service we can. Second, we want to bring clients an institutional approach to investing, moving beyond a traditional conversation limited to stocks and bonds when it makes sense. Third, we want to provide a family-centric office experience. Investments are only one part of a person’s financial life. Clients need someone who can assess the whole picture; help coordinate the moving parts; and ensure their financial life is aligned across their investments, taxes, and insurance needs, as well as with the recommendations of other professionals.

That family-centric office concept has become central to how I think about the business. Many clients already have a CPA, an attorney, and perhaps other professionals involved. But no one is really quarterbacking the overall situation. That is where we can add value. We want to make sure good ideas aren’t siloed and that decisions in one area do not undermine those in another. Meaningful value comes from identifying a planning opportunity, asking a better question, or bringing together the right people to execute a solution.

That may mean helping a client think through a tax issue their existing team has not fully developed, showing them how a retirement-plan design could change their long-term outcome, or helping them evaluate business-structure decisions more strategically. When clients see that you are doing more than managing money—that you are helping them think more clearly about their whole financial life—the relationship deepens.

I believe financial planning is a highly personal process. Whether a client’s goals are focused on next year or 20 years from now, their future depends largely on the decisions made today. That is why our process seeks to understand the goals unique to each client’s situation and help prioritize them thoughtfully.

Our financial-planning process has six ongoing steps. It begins with collecting essential information. From there, we analyze the client’s current strategy to determine whether it is positioned to meet the objectives they care about most. Then we work consultatively to identify the strategies or behavioral changes that may best address those objectives. After that, we use visuals to show how the proposed strategy can help clients progress toward those goals. Then we move into implementation. Finally, we monitor and review the plan over time, because financial planning isn’t a one-time event.

In practical terms, we’re trying to help people understand the consequences of their decisions and whether those consequences line up with their long-term goals. Sometimes a client is broadly on track and simply needs refinement. In other cases, we discover that the current path is not aligned with what they say they want. That opens the door to modeling alternatives and showing the trade-offs clearly.

We may examine retirement readiness, investment mix, savings behavior, insurance needs, estate considerations, tax efficiency, education funding, or survivor planning. The point is not to overwhelm clients with complexity. It is to help them see what matters, what should change, and what those changes may mean.

Our strongest fit tends to be small-business owners and high-net-worth clients, with overlap between the two. That is where the family-focused office style of service becomes especially valuable. With a business owner, the conversation is rarely just about a portfolio. It may involve how their business is structured, if that structure makes sense, what salary and profit distribution mix is appropriate, whether to consider a retirement plan such as a cash balance pension plan, and how all of that ties back to the owner’s personal taxes and long-term goals. Those are areas where thoughtful coordination can be impactful.

It starts with diversification—but not in a purely conventional sense. It is important to have broad asset-class diversification and to carefully consider how different parts of a portfolio interact. For many clients, that means moving beyond a traditional framework and considering whether alternative investments should play a role. The objective is to create a portfolio that is not overly dependent on one narrow set of market outcomes. Historically, some private investment asset classes have shown lower volatility characteristics than public markets, helping create a portfolio that is less tightly linked to broad market indexes.

I also believe in active oversight. We use managed platforms, third-party managers, and model-based solutions where appropriate, and we spend a lot of time thinking about each holding’s role in the portfolio. If a strategy within an asset class is supposed to play a certain role, we want to know whether it is doing that job. If not, we need to be willing to reassess. I think of it as putting the right players on the field and having a bench if the current lineup is not delivering. That is a more proactive approach to portfolio construction than simply assembling a collection of holdings and passively hoping for the best.

Tax awareness is another major part of the philosophy. For clients with taxable assets, it is not enough to talk about returns only in the abstract. We want to understand whether a strategy is efficient for the kind of account it sits in. For clients concerned about drawdowns, the conversation has to include risk in a real-world sense. Strong diversification can help. In some cases, more buffered or tactical approaches can also make sense. The objective is not to promise immunity from volatility. It is to build portfolios thoughtfully so that a difficult market environment does not automatically become a plan-breaking event.

I think clients value two things most. The first is basic but important: customer service. They want to know that when something matters, we are responsive, engaged, accountable, and paying attention.

The second is that we look beyond investments. Clients value advice that reflects their full financial plan, not just a narrow piece of it. When a client feels that you understand their goals, tax picture, business or family complexities, and the decisions that may be coming next, the relationship becomes more meaningful.

On a personal level, I think many clients would describe me as knowledgeable, low-key, and not high pressure. That matters to me. I do not think people make their best financial decisions when they feel pushed. I would rather build trust by being thoughtful, prepared, and clear about what I think and why.

Over time, I believe that kind of relationship leads to better conversations and better outcomes.