Josiah Martin, CFP®
Founder and Wealth Advisor
My Story
I started FirstFruits Wealth Management to help individuals and families make wise, confident financial decisions through independent, personal advice.
My experience spans Fortune 500 corporate finance roles, professional investment management, and comprehensive financial planning. I hold an undergraduate degree in finance and accounting, an MBA degree, and am a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ professional. Before founding FirstFruits Wealth, I served as the portfolio manager at a registered investment advisory firm overseeing more than $600 million in client assets.
My passion for investing and personal finance began early.
In seventh grade, after taking Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University course at my church, I became fascinated by the power of compound interest. Before long, I was investing the profits from my neighborhood lawn-mowing business into the stock market and encouraging friends to open custodial Roth IRAs before they were old enough to drive. I spent the next few summers at the library in the finance section reading every book I could and watching Jim Cramer’s Mad Money show in the evenings on CNBC.
That early curiosity has become a lifelong calling.
After growing up in Richmond, Virginia, I went on to study Finance and Accounting at Christopher Newport University in Newport News. While in college, I was involved in the leadership of the CEE Fund, a student-run investment fund on campus, where I gained hands-on experience managing other people’s money prudently.
After graduation, I spent my 20s in various corporate finance roles. I joined Dominion Energy, a Fortune 500 company in Richmond where I worked in Corporate M&A and Treasury on teams involved in billions of dollars of merger transactions and financing activities.
Over time, though, I found myself increasingly drawn more toward personal finance than corporate finance.
On the side, I started writing a personal finance blog in my spare time about investing, money psychology, and practical financial topics. The blog quickly attracted an engaged audience of friends, family, and coworkers who wanted clear, useful guidance for improving their financial lives.
While continuing to write and advise informally, I moved to Gainesville, FL to get my MBA from the University of Florida. After graduation I held finance roles at both The Home Depot and Capital One, gaining further experience across corporate strategy, analysis, and business decision-making.
During my time post-MBA, one event became pivotal in my journey — a friend had asked for some money advice and I wanted to help. So, after finishing my normal corporate finance workday, I found myself spending the entire evening building out a 50-slide financial planning presentation to aid in our conversation. Charts, calculations, illustrations… it all came together. The time flew by because I was having so much fun. In the ensuing years, I shared this presentation with dozens of individuals, couples, and larger groups. Those experiences confirmed what I already suspected: helping real people make better financial decisions was the work I really wanted to do.
So, after nearly a decade in corporate finance, I finally made the jump into investments and wealth management, joining Financial Harvest, a fast-growing, family-owned RIA firm in Orlando, Florida. During my time there, I was an Associate Wealth Advisor and also the lead Portfolio Manager for the firm’s $600m of assets. The role gave me tremendous experience with understanding Charles Schwab custodial operations, managing investments at scale, and learning how to help and serve clients well.
After a few years there, my wife and I decided to move back to our home state of Virginia to be closer to family, and I went all-in to launch my own fully independent RIA firm, FirstFruits.
In FirstFruits I’ve combined the best things I’ve learned in corporate finance, investment analysis, and wealth management to build the firm I’ve always dreamed of — one that puts clients first and enables every individual or family to organize, simplify, and steward their wealth with greater clarity.
My Client Philosophy
I believe financial planning should be strategic, personal, and grounded in your actual goals and values. I’m not a salesman and I won’t prescribe something you don’t need. Unfortunately, our industry has a track record of some poor actors doing just that…
My approach is built around clarity, education, and stewardship. I want clients to understand not only what they are doing with their money, but why they are doing it. That means helping clients make informed decisions about investing, retirement, taxes, cash flow, risk, generosity, estate planning, and major life transitions.
I am especially passionate about making complex financial topics simple. Good advice should reduce confusion, not create dependency. My goal is for clients to leave conversations feeling more confident, more organized, and better equipped to make wise decisions. Albert Einstein once said: ‘Genius is making complex ideas simple, not making simple ideas complex.’
Ultimately, I want to help families steward their wealth for lasting impact in their households, communities, churches, and the generations that follow.
Education
University of Florida, MBA
Christopher Newport University, B.S. Finance and Accounting,
Professional Background
First Fruits Wealth Management, 2026-Present
Financial Harvest Wealth Advisors, 2024-2026
Capital One, 2021–2024
The Home Depot, 2020–2021
Dominion Energy, 2015–2019
Personal
My wife, Hannah, and I live in Henrico, Va with our two energetic sons, Eli and Micah and a baby girl on the way fall of 2026! As a family, we enjoy neighborhood walks, parks and playgrounds, time with friends, and involvement with our church.
Outside of work and family life, I enjoy exercise, college and professional football and basketball, podcasts, lawn care, and tracking the weather. As a kid, I developed an interest in tracking and forecasting hurricanes, storms, and snow events. Meteorology might have been my path if finance had not won out first!