How FinancialMD Started: The Story Behind Financial Planning for Physicians
FinancialMD didn’t begin with a polished brand, a large team, or a detailed business plan. It started with a simple realization: physicians and medical residents needed financial guidance designed around their unique lives and careers.
In a conversation between FinancialMD’s Jon Solitro and Reuben Levinsohn, the two looked back at the journey that eventually led to FinancialMD—from entrepreneurship and financial planning to counseling, education, and the decision to specialize in working with doctors.
From Entrepreneurship to Financial Planning
Reuben’s entrepreneurial journey started long before financial planning. While attending Michigan State University, he began painting houses during the summers to help pay for college. What started as a way to earn money eventually became a business opportunity.
Reuben eventually left college and went full-time into the painting business. Over the next decade, he helped bring technology and more professional business practices into the industry, improving areas such as sales conversion, job completion, quality, and customer satisfaction.
That experience gave him an early appreciation for entrepreneurship, business strategy, and finance. But another experience planted the seed for what would eventually become his career in financial planning.
In his 20s, after beginning to earn more money, Reuben hired a financial advisor. His experience was different from what he had expected.
Instead of immediately being told what financial products he should purchase, the conversation focused on his goals, values, family, and what he wanted his money to accomplish.
That approach stuck with him. He began to see financial planning as something much deeper than simply choosing investments or financial products. It could be about helping people make decisions based on what mattered most to them.
The Importance of Goals, Values, and Human Connection
One of the biggest ideas that emerged from Reuben's experience was that financial planning should begin with the person—not the products.
Rather than starting with questions like, "What should you invest in?" the conversation could begin with:
What are your goals?
What matters most to you?
What do you want your money to accomplish?
What does your ideal future look like?
What does your family need?
This values-based approach became an important part of the philosophy that eventually shaped FinancialMD.
Reuben also began to recognize that effective financial planning required strong communication and an understanding of people. That realization became particularly important when Jon entered the picture.
Bringing Counseling Skills Into Financial Planning
Before entering financial planning, Jon Solitro worked as a therapist.
Although the industries were very different, Jon recognized that many of the skills he had developed through counseling could translate directly into financial planning.
Listening.
Asking good questions.
Understanding someone's goals.
Helping people work through difficult decisions.
Building trust.
For Jon, financial planning offered an opportunity to combine those skills with an interest in entrepreneurship and helping people create meaningful change in their lives.
Reuben saw the same potential.
Instead of building a team exclusively around traditional financial-industry backgrounds, he began looking for people who understood people.
Psychology and counseling backgrounds could be valuable because financial planning isn't only about numbers. Money decisions are often connected to emotions, relationships, values, habits, and long-term goals. That became an important part of the team's approach.
Why Specialize in Physicians?
As Reuben developed his financial planning practice, he began thinking about specialization.
Rather than trying to work with everyone, he wanted to understand a particular group deeply enough to become a valuable resource for them.
His first thought was the construction industry because of his entrepreneurial background.
But after spending more time talking with people in the industry, he realized it wasn't the right long-term fit.
He began looking for a profession with a more consistent career path and a distinct set of financial challenges. That led him to physicians.
Reuben began interviewing doctors and asking a simple question:
What do you wish you had known about money when you were younger or during your training?
He spoke with approximately 50 doctors during this market-discovery process. A pattern emerged.
Physicians received an enormous amount of education and training in medicine, but there was often little time or structured education devoted to personal finance. That created a unique financial situation.
A physician could finish years of training with significant student debt, suddenly earn a much higher income, face higher taxes, and have numerous major financial decisions to make—all while having had limited financial education.
The Financial Challenges Facing Medical Residents
The conversations with physicians revealed several recurring challenges.
Residents and young physicians often had to navigate:
Student loan debt
Increasing income
Higher tax obligations
Insurance decisions
Retirement planning
Investing
Lifestyle decisions
Family and long-term financial goals
The issue wasn't necessarily a lack of intelligence or discipline. There simply wasn't much time during medical training to learn personal finance.
As Reuben described it, physicians could become highly educated experts in medicine while still having a significant gap in financial education.
And the consequences of that gap could become more significant once physicians transitioned into attending roles and their income increased. More income doesn't automatically solve financial problems. In some cases, it can create more decisions to make.
From Financial Advice to Financial Education
One of the most important decisions in developing the physician-focused approach was recognizing that residents didn't want to feel like they were being sold something. They needed education first.
The team began developing a curriculum that could be presented directly to residency programs.
The material was organized into four major areas:
Financial Foundation
Protection and Risk Management
Debt
Investments and Tax Strategies
Each topic could be presented as an educational session designed to help residents understand what they needed to pay attention to. The goal wasn't to cover every possible financial decision in an hour. It was to give residents a framework.
They could learn what mattered, understand the decisions ahead of them, and then determine whether they needed additional help.
This educational approach helped open doors to residency programs and created opportunities to work directly with physicians.
Building a Team Around the Mission
As the concept grew, more people joined the team. Jon became increasingly involved in presenting to residents and working with physicians one-on-one.
His counseling background made the listening and relationship-building aspects of financial planning feel familiar.
His experience with public speaking also allowed him to become comfortable presenting financial topics to groups of residents.
The work combined several things he enjoyed:
Counseling and listening
Teaching
Public speaking
Entrepreneurship
Building relationships
Helping people reach their goals
The physician-focused model continued to grow, eventually expanding into additional markets.
From the Roadmap for Residents to FinancialMD
Over time, the original concept continued to evolve. The team recognized that there was an opportunity to build something larger than individual financial planning relationships. They could create educational resources, specialized content, and a recognizable brand focused specifically on physicians.
In 2020, Jon and Reuben decided to go all-in on the physician concept. The goal was to build a brand around education, content, and financial planning specifically for doctors. That became FinancialMD.
The idea was simple: physicians shouldn't have to become financial experts on top of becoming medical experts. They should have access to financial education and planning that understands the realities of their careers.
The Same Problem Exists for Entrepreneurs
Interestingly, Reuben's work eventually led him into another specialized area: entrepreneurs and technology founders. Through angel investing and venture work, he began noticing a pattern that looked surprisingly familiar.
Founders could be brilliant innovators with deep expertise in technology, healthcare, or another industry—but still lack financial knowledge.
The problem wasn't necessarily intelligence. They simply hadn't been trained in finance.
Just as residents could be highly educated in medicine but inexperienced with personal finance, founders could be highly knowledgeable about their products while being inexperienced with raising capital, financial modeling, equity structures, or building financial systems.
This led Reuben to expand his work with founders through venture investing and education.
The Common Thread: Helping Experts With the Financial Side
The physician and founder communities may look very different, but the underlying challenge can be similar.
People become experts in their chosen fields.
Physicians spend years learning medicine.
Founders spend years developing products and building companies.
Neither path necessarily provides extensive education in personal finance. That creates an opportunity for specialized financial guidance.
For physicians, that can mean understanding how to manage the financial transition from residency to attending practice.
For founders, it can mean understanding the financial decisions that accompany building and scaling a company. The common thread is helping highly specialized professionals make more informed financial decisions.
Looking Back at the FinancialMD Journey
The story of FinancialMD is ultimately a story about specialization, education, and relationships.
What began with Reuben's early experience as an entrepreneur eventually led him into financial planning. His experience with values-based financial planning changed the way he thought about the profession. His conversations with physicians revealed a significant need for financial education during medical training.
Jon's background in counseling helped demonstrate how listening, empathy, and human connection could become central to financial planning.
Together, these ideas became the foundation for a physician-focused approach that eventually grew into FinancialMD.
The journey also illustrates an important lesson for professionals in demanding careers:
You don't have to become an expert in everything. Sometimes, the most valuable thing you can do is recognize where you have a knowledge gap and find the right resources to help fill it.
For physicians, financial education doesn't have to compete with medical education. It can complement it—giving doctors the tools and framework they need to make financial decisions throughout training and beyond.
And that is ultimately where the FinancialMD story began: with the recognition that physicians deserved financial guidance built around their unique careers, challenges, and goals.
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