Private Advisory in Lehi: Who We Serve and How Our Advisory Team Works

TL;DR

Private Advisory’s Lehi office serves families, founders and employers through wealth management, family office services and workplace retirement consulting, with defined roles for advisers and outside professionals.

Who is the Lehi office designed to serve?

The Lehi office serves individuals, families, business owners and employers whose financial decisions involve more than one moving part.

Private Advisory serves Utah clients from 1557 W. Innovation Way, Suite 500, Lehi, Utah 84043. Our website calls this the “Salt Lake Office,” but it is physically in Lehi. The firm also has an office in Redmond, Washington.

The Lehi office offers three service paths: wealth management, Family Office services and workplace retirement plan consulting. The right path depends first on whose decision is at stake, then on how much coordination the decision requires.

For a household, that may mean connecting a portfolio to retirement spending, equity compensation, charitable giving or an estate plan. For a founder, it may mean preparing for a business sale while coordinating liquidity, investment risk and work led by independent tax and legal professionals. For a family, it may mean assigning responsibility for recurring financial and administrative work. For an employer, it may mean reviewing a workplace retirement plan’s design, providers, investments and participant support.

Location alone does not determine fit. A useful test is whether an advisory relationship would connect decisions that are now being made separately. If your investment account, estate documents, tax work and cash-flow plan rely on different facts, coordination may be as important as any single recommendation.

Private Advisory Group LLC, doing business as Private Advisory, is an investment adviser registered with the SEC under CRD 170043. Registration does not imply a certain level of skill or training.

How do you prepare for a useful first conversation?

Use these five steps to turn a broad inquiry into a decision the proposed team can assess.

1. Name the decision and deadline. Write one sentence about what must happen and when. You are ready for the next step when you can distinguish the immediate decision from your longer-term goals.
2. Choose the service path to discuss. Use the table below to separate household planning, broader family coordination and an employer retirement-plan engagement. Confirm which agreement would cover your situation.
3. Identify each professional’s role. List who gives investment, tax and legal advice, who may act and who tracks completion. A useful result assigns a person or role to each task instead of calling everyone “the team.”
4. Prepare the relevant records. Start with the document list for your service path below, then ask Private Advisory what is needed and how to send it securely. Check that the records show current balances, responsibilities and deadlines.
5. Compare the written proposal with your decision. After the meeting, review scope, total costs, conflicts and the proposed contacts. Proceed only when you can explain what is included, what remains with you or another professional, and how unresolved work will be followed up.

Which Private Advisory service should you ask about first?

Start with the person or group that owns the decision: a household generally starts with wealth management, a family with broader administrative needs can discuss expanded coordination, and an employer starts with workplace retirement consulting.

This is a decision framework, not three levels on one ladder. An employer plan is a different engagement from a household relationship. The Family Office service is broader in scope than the firm’s standard wealth-management offering, but “broader” does not automatically mean more suitable.

What does wealth management include?

Private Advisory’s wealth-management service combines portfolio management with financial planning for the household decisions that affect the portfolio.

Depending on the engagement, planning may cover the mix of stocks, bonds and other investments (asset allocation), retirement accounts and retirement scenarios, education costs, net worth, cash flow, insurance, estate planning and strategic tax planning. Private Advisory says its investment team manages equities in-house. Client assets are held by a qualified custodian, a separate financial institution such as Charles Schwab or Fidelity that holds the investments. Private Advisory manages investments within the authority granted by the client’s agreement.

The main question is not how many topics appear on a planning list. It is whether the written scope connects those topics. A planned retirement date can affect cash reserves and portfolio risk. A charitable gift can require input from the adviser and an independent tax professional. An estate-plan change may also require updated beneficiary designations and account titles.

Review the Private Advisory Form CRS, the firm’s short relationship summary, for retail services, fees and conflicts. The SEC’s Investment Adviser Public Disclosure database, or IAPD, provides the firm’s Form ADV regulatory filing. Its Part 2 brochure explains business practices and conflicts in narrative form. When acting as your investment adviser, Private Advisory is required to act in your best interest. The way we are paid still creates conflicts, which the filings describe.

When does broader family administration make sense?

Broader family administration makes sense when recurring work extends beyond a portfolio and needs a clear coordinator.

The firm’s Family Office service includes investment management and estate and tax coordination. Concierge assistance may be available to some clients at the firm’s discretion. Eligibility is subject to a minimum investable-asset requirement. The public service page does not state that amount, so confirm what qualifies.

Asset size is only one input. A family may have several entities, trusts, properties and professional relationships but no clear owner for deadlines or decisions. That is an operating problem. A family with substantial assets but few recurring needs may require a narrower scope.

Before discussing structure, write down the work that repeatedly causes delay or rework. Examples include tax estimates, estate-document reviews, private-investment records, charitable commitments, major purchases and family meetings. Then ask which tasks Private Advisory would perform, which tasks it would coordinate and which tasks would remain with the family or an outside professional.

Who provides investment, tax and legal work?

Private Advisory provides financial planning and investment advice, while independent certified public accountants (CPAs) and attorneys provide tax and legal services under separate engagements.

That boundary matters. Coordination means the professionals can work from the same facts, but it does not make every professional part of the same firm or contract. Ask who would coordinate the professionals involved in your proposed engagement.

For example, Rachel Paxman, CPA, is listed by Private Advisory as an independent partner with Paxman Tax & Accounting. Her published biography states that any accounting or tax services she provides are outside Private Advisory and require a separate engagement. Check the actual agreements for the role and scope of every outside professional.

How does workplace retirement consulting differ?

Workplace retirement consulting serves the employer and its plan, not the owner’s personal household plan.

Private Advisory’s workplace retirement service covers plan design, operational support, employee guidance, investment-lineup oversight, vendor management and benchmarking. Ask how the adviser would coordinate with the plan’s existing providers and which duties each party would accept in writing.

Wes Jensen is a Senior Advisor whose published role includes work with plan sponsors on design, fees, investment selection, participation and fiduciary governance. His biography can help an employer frame questions, but it does not establish who will be assigned to a specific engagement.

Hiring a provider does not remove every employer responsibility. The U.S. Department of Labor says selecting a plan service provider is itself a fiduciary act. A fiduciary must act prudently for plan participants. The employer should identify needed services, compare providers, understand the agreements and document the selection process.

The department’s 401(k) guidance also says an employer retains responsibility for selecting and monitoring providers. Ask how reviews will be documented, how fees will be checked and which reports the plan committee will receive.

The Private Advisory Form CRS is background information about the firm’s retail relationships, and IAPD provides access to Private Advisory’s Form ADV and Part 2 brochure filings. For an employer, these documents do not replace the plan-specific agreement or required disclosures about services and compensation.

How does the advisory team work around your decision?

Ask the proposed team who will coordinate the engagement, handle each task and track open decisions.

Private Advisory’s public team information can show areas of focus. It cannot tell a prospective client who will attend the first meeting or be assigned afterward. Ask directly about the proposed service team.

A clear answer should name:

• Your primary contact
• The person responsible for financial planning
• The investment decision process
• The support contact for transfers, forms and meeting follow-up
• Any independent CPA, attorney or other professional who needs a separate engagement
• The person responsible for tracking open decisions

The non-obvious risk is not simply having too many professionals. It is having no clear handoff between them. A technically sound estate recommendation still stalls if nobody sends the final document to the custodian or updates the affected account records.

What should you bring to a first conversation?

Bring a one-page decision summary first, then the documents needed to show the facts and deadlines behind it.

Write the decision at the top. Examples include “Can we retire in three years?”, “How should we prepare for a possible business sale?” or “Does our 401(k) provider structure still fit the plan?” Add the date by which the decision must be made.

For a wealth-management conversation, bring:

• A list of financial accounts and approximate balances
• Recent custodian statements
• Income sources and expected changes
• Monthly or annual spending
• Major debts and insurance policies
• Your latest estate documents and beneficiary information
• Equity-compensation or business-ownership records, if relevant
• The three decisions you expect to make in the next two years

For a Family Office conversation, add:

• A list of trusts, companies, partnerships and other entities
• The names and roles of current advisers and family decision-makers
• A calendar of recurring tax, estate, reporting and governance work
• A list of tasks that lack a clear owner
• Questions about eligibility, authority and separate engagements

For a workplace retirement conversation, bring:

• The plan document and recent amendments
• Provider and adviser agreements
• Fee disclosures and recent invoices
• The current investment lineup and review materials
• Participation and deferral information
• Committee charters, minutes and recent monitoring records
• A list of recurring payroll, service or participant issues

These are suggested preparation materials, not stated Private Advisory intake requirements. Confirm what the team needs and do not send sensitive records through ordinary email unless the firm has given you an approved secure method.

How should you evaluate fit after the meeting?

A useful fit conversation ends with clear scope, named responsibility and costs you can explain in your own words.

The SEC’s Investor.gov adviser-selection guidance recommends comparing the services you need with those offered, along with service limits, fees, compensation and conflicts. It also advises reviewing the agreement, Form CRS and Form ADV.

Use these questions before deciding:

1. Which of my stated decisions would the engagement cover?
2. What work is outside the scope?
3. Who would be my primary contact?
4. How are investment decisions made and monitored?
5. What will I pay, including costs outside the advisory fee?
6. What conflicts could affect the advice?
7. Which professionals require separate contracts?
8. How will open tasks and deadlines be tracked?
9. How can I end the relationship or change its scope?

The SEC’s Form CRS bulletin explains that the relationship summary covers services, fees, conflicts, standards of conduct and suggested conversation starters. Read it before the meeting. Use the meeting to test whether the written disclosures and spoken explanation match.

How would the process work for a Lehi business owner?

Consider a hypothetical owner who may sell a company in 18 months and needs to plan household spending afterward. This is an illustration, not a client case or a projected outcome.

The owner starts with wealth management because the immediate need is personal planning and investments. The investment adviser models household finances; the separately engaged CPA addresses taxes; the transaction attorney handles sale terms. The proposed agreement must identify any additional work the owner wants, such as coordinating ongoing family tasks.

The useful result is a short list of unresolved items: a cash-flow assumption for the adviser, a tax question for the CPA and an unsigned document for the attorney. Each has a responsible person and deadline. The owner can use that list to judge whether the proposal addresses the actual gaps before committing.

What is the most useful next step?

If the service paths above fit your situation, contact Private Advisory’s Lehi team to discuss the proposed scope and the records needed for an initial meeting.

FAQ

What if my household and my business retirement plan both need advice?

Define the household decision and the employer-plan decision separately, then ask which agreement and professionals would cover each. Private Advisory offers wealth management and workplace retirement consulting, but a conversation about one does not establish the scope of the other. Request separate explanations of responsibility, fees and authority.

What should I do when my current advisers disagree?

Ask each professional to state the recommendation, assumptions and unresolved question in writing. Private Advisory can discuss financial-planning and investment implications, while separately engaged tax and legal professionals address matters within their roles. Agree on who makes the final decision and what needs to be resolved before anyone acts.

How should I involve a spouse or adult child in the first meeting?

Decide who should attend and what information each person may receive before sharing records. Ask Private Advisory how the proposed conversation would handle those preferences. Participation in a meeting should be distinguished from authority to make account, trust or business decisions; confirm those responsibilities with the relevant professionals.

About Private Advisory

Private Advisory is a wealth management firm serving founders, business owners, executives and families across the western United States. The team combines financial planning and investment management to help clients navigate business sales, equity compensation, retirement and the transfer of wealth across generations. Its work connects investment decisions with cash-flow needs and family priorities, while coordinating with clients’ independent tax and legal professionals. Private Advisory also offers family office services for eligible clients and workplace retirement consulting for employers.

This is not tax or legal advice. Consult your own tax and legal professionals.