Mestmaker & Petrey Wealth Advisors Celebrating 3 years

1/30/2009 thru 1/30/2012

Self-support success

Aspiring business owner's take futures into own hands despite slow economic activity.

Jeffrey Mestmaker, left, and Daniel Petrey are partners in Mestmaker & Petrey Wealth Advisors.

Bernie Madoff was the nation's top business story when Daniel Petrey and Jeff Mestmaker launched their downtown Bakersfield investment advisory firm. Looking back at how the scandal shook people's confidence in big names, they say their timing could have been worse.

The owners of Mestmaker & Petrey Wealth Advisors had just left Morgan Stanley convinced they could be more flexible than any large firm.

In the months ahead, they said, 85 percent of their former clients followed them.

There had been no guarantee any would come.

"It was kind of a leap of faith," Petrey said, adding that the company is already in the black.

Friends naturally wondered whether the timing was right, given the economy. But Mestmaker described it as a valuable lesson.

"You know where the bottom is," he said. "You know where the floor is."

BY JOHN COX, Kern Business staff writer Bakersfield Californian
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