Eighteen years ago, Jason Urbaniak joined Oak Partners Inc. as a founding member to the Wealth Management Group. “When I started at Oak I had to build my practice from the ground up,” Urbaniak said. “You have to take classes, pass one of the hardest tests in the country, it all makes a pretty huge barrier of entry. Once you get through it, you sit down in your office and realize, ‘Oh, I don’t have any business yet.’ That’s when you start getting clients and building your business up.”
And that is where one of Urbaniak’s biggest talents came through – working with people. Since he first picked up the phone to start recruiting clients, he has always worked with the same philosophy: treat everyone as if they’re family.
“It’s about honesty, I walk every client exactly through where they’re at and I tell them, ‘I look at you as if you’re my father, my family member,’” he said. “If you approach your clients like they’re your family, like you see them on Thanksgiving, you’d better do right by them. It helps you guide them in making money, without losing principles. I’m honest, I’m blunt, and I give them the best advice I can. That’s treating them like family.”
Building those relationships with clients is Urbaniak’s favorite part of his work.
“Many of our clients have been around for almost 18 years, nearly the entire time we’ve been a team here at Oak Partners,” he said. “We manage their money, but we’re also really close friends at this point and that’s important to me.”
He also loves how Oak Partner’s status as an independent practice affords them flexibility and adaptability that is hard to find at massive, heavily corporatized firms.
“The evolution of our money management is very exciting to me,” he said. “We are independent, meaning we don’t have products to sell people, we actually go out to the markets and create our own models. A lot of firms just hand their clients cliché models and forget about it, we don’t do that. We tailor everything to each client individually, and work quick on our feet to adapt to the market as it changes.”
Urbaniak’s leadership at Oak Partners has helped them accrue thousands of clients, and without needing to buy out many other firms to grow in size. Clients simply trust his work, and spread the word.
“Oak Partners is just so much different in how we run things,” he said. “We’re a large family firm managing nearly a billion dollars but we’re still the same guys from Andrean who grew up in the Region. Our clients aren’t just a number to us.”
To learn more about Urbaniak and the rest of the team at Oak Partners Inc., visit www.oakpartners.com.
Securities and Advisory Services offered through LPL Financial, a Registered Investment Advisor, Member FINRA/SIPC.
