BACKGROUND
From Blueprints to Balance Sheets
Eric Reuschling grew up in Northeast Ohio, graduated Summa Cum Laude from The Ohio State University in 2000 with a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering and spent the next 16 years as a licensed Professional Engineer: designing, building, and stress-testing structures that couldn’t afford to fail.
Load paths. Stress points. Failure modes nobody else thought to check. When you’re a structural engineer and the steel goes up based on your calcs, being wrong isn’t an inconvenience. It’s a catastrophe. That discipline is the lens Eric brought into financial services when he joined Ashford Advisors in 2019.
“I spent 16 years finding the failure mode nobody else thought to check. That’s still exactly what I do. The material changed. The mission didn’t.”
BUILT FROM THE INSIDE
An Advisor Who Has Actually Done It
Eric and his wife Heidi don’t just advise business owners; they are business owners. Together they have built, operated, and sold businesses across multiple industries, and today they maintain an active portfolio spanning chiropractic clinics and real estate holdings across Georgia and Florida.
Eric doesn’t talk about the challenges of owning a business from theory. He talks about them from making payroll, from hiring decisions, from the tension between investing in growth and protecting what’s already been built. When a client describes the pressure of holding a team together, and carrying all the risk, Eric recognizes it because he’s felt it too.
That’s a different kind of perspective than a license and a series exam. It’s the kind that comes from street level experience, pounding the pavement and feeling the pressure.
“Understanding financial products is the baseline. Knowing how to implement them inside a real business, from the owner's chair, not just the advisor’s chair — that’s where the work gets meaningful."
WHAT DRIVES HIM
A Mission Built From Personal Experience
Eric and Heidi have always shared an uncommon level of discipline in business, in health, and in life. Heidi is a Doctor of Chiropractic, a certified strength and conditioning coach, and one of the strongest athletes in the CrossFit gym they owned together. She tracked every variable. She engineered her lifestyle the same way Eric engineered structures; with precision and intentionality.
In early 2024, after a bout of COVID followed by a series of compounding health events, Heidi became fully disabled. By November of that year, she was bedbound; unable to work, unable to walk independently, and unable to generate the income the business depended on her to produce.
Because they were intentional with their planning, Heidi had protection to replace her income if she were ever sidelined by a bad diagnosis. That protection, now yielding tax-free monthly benefit payments, is the reason their household and their business have remained financially stable while they navigate Heidi’s extended health crisis.
That experience is foundational to Eric’s practice. It confirmed everything he already knew about risk: that it does not negotiate with discipline, does not reward effort, and does not warn you in advance. And it made permanent his commitment to ensuring that every business owner he works with is protected before the unthinkable becomes the unavoidable.
“Heidi did everything right. And it still happened. That’s not a cautionary tale. It’s the most important financial lesson I’ve ever witnessed up close.”
ERIC’S APPROACH
Street Finance. Not Shelf Finance.
Eric calls his philosophy Street Finance, because the strategies that build and preserve wealth in the real world look different than the sanitized version taught in business school or promoted on Saturday morning radio.
His framework when coaching business owners — Engineer the Structure — is built around five pillars: protect the income engine, build the war chest, stack the revenue streams, retain the talent, and engineer the exit. In that order. Because none of the growth strategies matter if the structure isn’t sound first.
He works primarily with business owners generating $1M or more in personal income. Typically, they are owners of medical practices or professional service firms with 20 to 50 employees who are ready to stop leaving money on the table and start building something that runs, pays, and grows even when they’re not in the room.
If that sounds like where you are, or where you’re headed, then it’s time to talk to Eric.
Financial Representative of The Guardian Life Insurance Company of America® (Guardian), New York, NY. Ashford Advisors, Inc. is not an affiliate or subsidiary of Guardian. Guardian, its subsidiaries, agents, and employees do not provide tax, legal, or accounting advice. Consult your tax, legal, or accounting professional regarding your individual situation. CA Insurance License Number – 4084706