Jonathan Nadler, Jessica Demler, and Masa Yamazaki
Starting a business during a pandemic is probably not a course they teach at Harvard Business School, but the principals of Oxler Private Wealth will tell you that nothing is impossible if you are equipped with a good plan, patience, and a strong work ethic.
Jonathan Nadler, his daughter Jessica Demler, and his son-in-law Masa Yamazaki, who is married to his daughter Lisa Nadler, are fortunate people. They are intelligent, well-educated, love working as financial advisors, and love one another.
Jonathan was born in Israel but moved to England as a teen-ager and earned a degree in Economics before coming to America in 1975.
Jessica and her sister grew up in Scarsdale, as did Belgian-born Masa, although they didn’t know one another. Masa went off to Duke University and planned to be a veterinarian. In 2014, his father-in-law asked him to join him at Oppenheimer.
“I was already thinking about providing continuity for the business,” Jonathan said.
Jessica went into the high-end rug business. “My clients were not unlike those of my father’s and brother-in-law’s. They expected professionalism and quality.”
In 2019, when all three of them were living in New York City, Masa convinced them that they should start thinking about going independent. “I imagined it would take a year. Jessica laid the groundwork.”
Being a family serving families, Jessica said they were always testing their advice on themselves. “When I bought a stock for clients,” noted Jonathan, “I bought it for myself.”
It took the trio months to come up with a name for their new wealth management business. “All the good ones were taken,” they quipped.
On August 20, 2020, they launched Oxler. “The ox is a quick learner that calmly and capably does his work,” offered Jonathan, “and my last name ends with ‘ler’”.
They kept an office in Manhattan but opened another on Westchester Avenue in Rye Brook. “We wanted to have boots on the ground in Westchester, where many of our clients live,” said Masa.
When they opened their own firm, nearly all their clients went with them. They work with one family so closely that 19 members of that family are clients.
Success in the investment management field is always half-qualitative, remarked Masa, but what their clients most often ask for advice on today is the growing importance of cash in unpredictable times.
Another thing you can count on the family for is good design sense. In their ads, they use the artwork of Carl Richards, a financial planner whose “Sketch Guy” column appeared in The New York Times for over a decade.
In 2021, Jessica and her family moved to the Glen Oaks neighborhood in Rye, a few months later, Masa and his family moved to a home in Greenhaven. “We both soon learned the value of having a real home office,” said Masa.
Jonathan, who has homes in both New York City and Miami Beach, visits Rye often, not so much for work as for the opportunity to spend time with his grandchildren.
