FOUNDATIONAL
Jason Rousseau
- Third generation of a family that owned and ran its own business, raised on finance and entrepreneurship at the dinner table in Metro Detroit.
- Grew up working on his family’s rental properties with his father, swinging hammers, chasing leaks, and learning early that most fixes cost more than the estimate.
- Over 10 years in finance, from data analyst to licensed financial advisor (Series 7 & 63) to partner at a wealth management firm, building budgets and forecasts for multimillion dollar organizations.
- Taught himself online advertising and lead generation, restructured ad accounts, and cut wasted spend by a third. He reads marketing dollars as fluently as financial statements.
- Now it all goes into one thing: financial leadership for the repair & replace trades. Capped at ten clients, every one working directly with him.
This story doesn’t start with me.
My grandparents grew up in the heart of Texas. In the 1960s they came north and put their roots down in Metro Detroit, and that’s where this family, and eventually this story, really begins. Then in 1976 my grandfather started a business of his own supplying parts to the auto industry, selling to the Big Three in a town that lived and breathed the assembly line. He wasn’t a big operation and he wasn’t trying to be one. He found his customers, he did right by them, and he kept showing up. That business fed a family, funded futures, and set the tone for everything you’re about to read.
My grandfather had a simple philosophy about business, and he repeated it enough that nobody in this family will ever forget it. Find your people. Do good work. Become friends. That was the whole playbook. No funnel, no framework, no fine print. And he lived it. His first two connections in the early years of his business ended up getting breakfast with him every Tuesday morning, and that standing breakfast outlasted the work itself. They kept that table straight through retirement. Love, honesty, and effort always win at the end. That’s what he believed, that’s how he ran his company, and that’s what he passed down through this family to create wealth and opportunity for the people he loved. I watched what that approach built. You don’t forget it.
My parents eventually took the business over and ran it. So money was never a mystery in my house. It was the family business. Literally. Around our dinner table in Metro Detroit, my two sisters and I weren’t just hearing about “work.” We were hearing about margins, payroll, slow seasons, and what it actually takes to keep something you built alive.
Now, my parents also owned rental properties, and that’s where my other education happened. When something broke (and something always broke), I was in the truck with my father. I’ve patched drywall, chased leaks, and gone to war with more stubborn fixtures than I can count. I’ll be honest with you: I was never the professional. Some of my “repairs” needed repairs. But I put in real hours, and those hours taught me something that never left: the people who fix and maintain things work way too hard to be flying blind on their money.
And it didn’t stop at our front door. My uncles, my aunts, my cousins… they all run their own things too. Nonprofits. Law firms. International real estate. One even makes his living as a comedian. Entrepreneurship isn’t a buzzword in my family. It’s in my blood, and it’s the only version of success I ever saw growing up.
Finance was always the thing that pulled me. I earned my finance degree at Oakland University while working full time as a data analyst. Reconciling files, digging into variances, turning messy data into reports people could actually use. And that job taught me the unglamorous truth about numbers: they only help if somebody does the digging and then explains it in plain English. That second part is where most finance people lose the room.
From there I became a licensed financial advisor at one of the largest financial firms in the country, top five in the nation by assets under management. And here’s the thing: the real lesson from those years wasn’t products or portfolios. It was people. Sitting across from clients, hearing what actually kept them up at night, and translating financial complexity into decisions they could feel good about. No spreadsheet teaches you that.
Then I became a partner at Leigh-Erin, a wealth management firm, and grew that seat from a side venture into my full time work. Annual budgets and monthly forecasts for multimillion dollar organizations. Reconciliations. Audit ready books. Hands on tax work. A team of two reporting to me. And because a firm doesn’t grow itself, I taught myself the other half of the business: online advertising and lead generation. I restructured our ad accounts, audited every dollar of spend, and cut the waste by about a third. That’s why I can look at a trades company’s marketing budget and its P&L and see one picture, not two. Most finance people see two.
Foundational CFO Group is where all of it converges. The family business instincts. The hours on job sites with my father. The decade in the numbers. The advisor’s ear. The marketer’s eye. I built this firm for the owners I grew up around, the people who fix and replace what’s broken in every building around us. The moral of the story is simple: they deserve the same caliber of financial leadership the big companies get, from someone who speaks both of their languages.
When I’m not in the numbers, I’m watching or playing sports, cooking something new, or behind a drum kit. And unlike drywall, drumming is something I can actually claim some skill in.
My grandfather started his company in 1976. I’m starting mine in 2026. Fifty years apart, same blueprint. Find your people. Do good work. Become friends. That’s the structure and the passion I’m carrying forward. And if you’ve read this far, I’d genuinely enjoy meeting you.
Meet Jason.
Thirty minutes, free, no obligation. Bring your questions. He’ll bring straight answers.
BOOK AN INTRO CALL or just call (313) 764-7083Read his insights first.
Two briefs a month on what’s going on in the economy and in the trades. Plain language, no noise.
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