Community Highlights: Meet Aaron Roush of Midwest Financial Planning Group

Today we’d like to introduce you to Aaron Roush.

Aaron, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
I started with an interest in the stock market at age 14. My mom helped me set up an online investment account and I was hooked. I didn’t really know what I was doing, but it got me interested enough that I decided to study financial planning in college. I started my career as a financial services intern at Northwestern Mutual, when I was a Sophomore in college at Ohio University. That was 2002, and I’ve spent the last 23 years working with clients, studying and learning as much as I can and building a team of professionals with that same passion to help people. I combined my solo practice with 3 other advisors who were all running their own businesses to form Midwest Financial Planning Group. We have one location in downtown Findlay, but we help clients in 35 states all over the US. From our humble beginnings we have built a firm that was just recognized as a 2025 best-in-state wealth management firm by Forbes. We achieved the success we have enjoyed by simply staying focused on always putting our clients’ best interests first, and by being as knowledgeable as possible. The best part of what we do though is the relationships you build over 23 years. That being said I always love the excitement of meeting a new client and the challenge of digging into their vision and values to help them craft a financial plan that really maximizes their life.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Starting a financial planning firm when you are 20 and most everyone you know is a broke college student was not easy. That being said I had stable parents who let me stay rent free in their house for a couple years after college, and I worked very hard to help as many people as I could and enough of them entrusted me that I was always able to survive. It is not an easy business to get into, as there is so much to learn, but I’ve always enjoyed learning so I just focused on studying relentlessly and that’s why I have so many designations. I had to prove to people (including myself) that I knew what I was doing. It’s still not easy running a business, but many of my clients are running far more difficult businesses. Our inventory isn’t perishable, it never runs out, we don’t have multiple shifts, or work weekends. Also, our clients are grateful and appreciate what we do so that gratitude is worth more than anything.

As you know, we’re big fans of Midwest Financial Planning Group. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
Our financial firm came about when 4 individual financial planning professionals, each running their own practice decided to join forces to build something that would survive them. We work with people of all ages from all walks of life, but our focus is really on business owners, retirees, and medical professionals. That group tends to have a bit more complicated financial life and so they benefit more from our expertise. My favorite clients are business owners who are trying to figure out what retirement might look like for them. They usually need some help valuing their business and determining a strategy for how they exit. There is not a lot of help for people like that out there, and so often they are swimming around with 50 ideas in their head not sure what to do or what questions they should be answering. The one thing I am most proud of is the compliments we have gotten from tax and legal professionals. A prominent estate planning attorney recently sent us one of their business owner clients and when we presented our plan to the attorney and client after a handful of meetings, the attorney said they had never seen anything like what we had done in their nearly 40 years in business.

What’s next?
We want to continue to grow our firm to serve our current clients, their families, and new clients that we are introduced to. We have a young team, but we are already thinking about how we cultivate the next generation to be able to continue to run this business. I’m very excited about the ambitious and intelligent team members we have that I know will take care of our clients after we are gone. Since I have been investing since 14, and always followed my own advice I could retire today at 44 years old, but I still have a lot of passion for helping people and I want to continue to work until I don’t have that.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://midwestfinancial.nm.com/