Episode 14

full
Published on:

23rd Apr 2020

Ep. 14 Jason Reid, Serial Entrepreneur & Founder of ChooseLife.org

We go deeeeeeeep in this episode about the life of an entrepreneur, managing crisis, losing a child, and finding hope through taking action.

Jason is a serial entrepreneur, has been a board advisor to 50 companies, and coaches CEOs. He is also the founder of ChooseLife.org, which he started in 2018 after losing his 14 year old son to suicide. Their goal is to end teen suicide by 2030.

***

FULL BIO

Jason is the co-founder of National Services group. NSG is the majority owner of College Work Painting and Empire Construction and Painting. College Works employs college students to paint residential homes across the USA. Operating in thirty states, CWP employs over 2,000 people at the peak of its season every year. CWP is the largest exterior non-franchise residential repaint contractor in the country. Empire operates across the western USA and works with HOA, apartment and commercial clients to fulfill their reconstruction and painting needs. Empire employs over 400 people year round.

As a serial entrepreneur, Jason has also been an owner in other businesses over the last 25 years. A few of them include: Platinum Capital, a leading national mortgage bank; Codeit Computing, a software firm with offices on the east and west coasts which did business with the likes of Cisco and the United Nations; New Image, a Home Depot installation partner covering over 900 stores nationwide. And there are others.

Extra Credit

Jason has been a Vistage member for 18 years as well as a member of YEO, YPO and currently WPO This has put him on the board of advisors for over 50 businesses ranging in size from a few million in sales to well over a billion.

Balance

In the last ten years, Jason has earned his Black Belt in Tae Kwon Do. He has also competed in Ironman races around the world, competing in seven 70.3 Ironmans, as well as two full books, and is currently working on his sixth screenplay. He enjoys playing guitar, cooking and spending time with his wife of 25+ years and children.

Next Episode All Episodes Previous Episode

Listen for free

Show artwork for Investors & Operators

About the Podcast

Investors & Operators
A Podcast by 51 Labs
The M&A market can be boring, but everyone has a story. The Investors & Operators podcast is about discovering the stories people were holding back, didn’t know how to tell, or forgot about. The goal is simple: fresh, authentic storytelling to bring people together in the M&A community.

With over 1M organic views and counting on LinkedIn, 51 Labs is disrupting the M&A market through the use of videography and content creation. In a market that longs for authenticity, 51 Labs helps strengthen your brand and tell your story. From concept to distribution, we strategize and produce thoughtful content to be used across a multitude of channels, to help you stand out in an otherwise traditionally boring market.

New episodes every other Thursday at 6:00am Eastern.

About your host

Profile picture for Jordan Selleck

Jordan Selleck

Founder. Recovering Investment Banker. 3x Entrepreneur. Philz Coffee Enthusiast.

Jordan Selleck is a recovering investment banker turned 3x entrepreneur. While teaching English in China, Jordan met an investment banker in a bar and before he knew it he’d spent six years in cross-border investment banking advising global corporates and private equity firms on M&A deals up to $250 million.

As much as Jordan loved investment banking, he always knew he was meant to do something more. In 2016, Jordan founded Debtmaven, a deal management platform for debt financing in the lower middle market. It was while he was marketing Debtmaven on LinkedIn that Jordan found his true passion: building meaningful relationships in the lower middle market.

Seeing over 50% of Debtmaven’s $450million+ in deals come from LinkedIn, he realized he’d found an untapped market and began his journey with LinkedIn consulting. Dozens of clients and a handful of extraordinarily talented employees later, 51 Labs is a thriving marketing agency for the lower middle market that produces captivating content and generates organic traffic across LinkedIn.

Jordan was born in San Diego, grew up in North Carolina and attended UNC-Chapel Hill. He has traveled to 32 countries, lived in China for 18 months, trains Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, is a fourth-generation private pilot, SCUBA dives, speaks Mandarin Chinese, and is a husband and father of 2.