About Us
We're Jason and Lindsay Paquette. We live in Berlin, MA with our two kids, who go to school here. We moved to Massachusetts from Washington State in 2022 to be closer to family, and it has been an excellent decision! We love living here!
The name comes partly from that: from the “Evergreen State” to the “Bay State”; but “evergreen” also reflects our approach to business… A long-term mindset focused on building a durable, enduring company, rather than building to flip it in a few years.
Why we’re doing this
For Jason, as a child he saw the inherent instability of traditional corporate jobs when he witnessed his parents and close family friends go through multiple lay-offs. He also saw other friends’ parents running their own businesses. The idea of building something for yourself and your family was more intriguing than employment.
In time, he learned he’s less of a “0-to-1” start-up person, and more of a “1-10” growth & scaling person, so buying an existing business is more suited to his nature than starting something new.
Jason spent his career gaining sales and people leadership experience, as well as financial capital, to enable acquiring an existing business.
Lindsay grew up in her family’s custom enclosed trailer manufacturing business. Before she left for college, she worked different jobs in the family business, such as helping with bookkeeping, collecting receivables, inventory counts, and invoice processing.
After juggling work and college, she became a Nurse caring for newborn babies. She took a break from nursing to raise their kids when Jason’s business travel picked up, then helped the kids through remote learning during COVID.
After seeing the changes in the nursing profession after the pandemic, she decided it would be better to return to a life of family business ownership.
Jason’s Story…
Jason’s first jobs were during high school, working evenings, weekends, and summers in customer service roles in fast food and movie theaters. His mentor, a small business owner, recommended getting a degree in business and learning to sell, then he could do anything he wanted to do.
While pursuing his BA in Business (double-major in Entrepreneurship & Management, minor in Marketing), he worked through college in the computer labs & help desk at Washington State University, climbing the ranks from customer service, to team lead, to 2nd-line leader over the largest department in the org, ultimately winning the Achievement Award for his tenure there.
After college, he completed the Enterprise Rent-a-Car Management Training Program, running satellite branches, including: customer service, sales, fleet management, collecting receivables, and being measured on the branch’s P&L. He won multiple branch and individual performance awards after taking underperforming branches and turning them into top performers.
Next, he sought out deeper sales experience and went into B2B software sales to IT departments & MSPs. As one of the first three salespeople at Kaseya with no formal sales process or training in place, he grew with the company into Sales Leadership roles before pivoting to Sales Operations to codify and roll out the first formal sales process & systems for the global sales org of 100 people. He won multiple annual performance awards as both a top performing sales rep and as a leader.
He continued building Sales Operations teams from scratch at Simply Measured and at MongoDB, where the team he built supported a sales organization growing from about a hundred people to more than six hundred through a successful IPO, winning an Excellence Club award.
Jason’s career trajectory remained flexible and he always looked to capitalize on opportunities to learn new skills that would eventually help him with his long-term aspiration to own his own business: Leadership, sales, creating processes, and managing systems.
Lindsay’s Story…
Having been raised in a small family business, Lindsay was taught from a young age that success comes with self-sacrifice, long working hours, and shared responsibility that everyone takes part in. This foundation began early, filing paperwork and organizing parts bags for the family business as a child.
After high school, Lindsay worked to save money to attend college. A position as an office assistant for a state agency introduced Lindsay to formal administrative work: filing, tracking application arrivals through the licensing process, and identifying ways to improve office time management.
Lindsay returned to the family business as a secretary, managing accounts receivable, inventory, payroll timekeeping, and invoice processing.
Lindsay was recruited back to her previous state agency to contribute to a special Y2K project, further sharpening her technical and organizational skills.
After completing her degree in Biology at Sonoma State University, Lindsay's path shifted toward healthcare. While attending EMT School, she worked as a nurse assistant and advanced to medication technician where she helped implement a new documentation and communication system.
After deciding to become a nurse, she worked through Nursing School at a local hospital, progressing from Certified Nurse Assistant to Nurse Technician. Upon graduating from Nursing School, she became a Registered Nurse in a large hospital, working with postpartum mothers & babies, and in the neonatal ICU. During this time, she also became a go-to-person in the unit during the transition from paper-charting to the new Electronic Medical Records system.
To resolve conflicting schedules between childcare, working evening shift at the hospital, and Jason’s business travel, Lindsay decided to leave the hospital to raise her young children until they were both off to school. Then COVID hit and her role expanded to helping the kids through remote learning.
Lindsay also found ways to keep her hands-on and mechanical skills sharp through appliance repair: diagnosing and replacing numerous parts in the refrigerator, the laundry dryer, and two complete tear-downs and rebuild’s of the laundry washing machine to replace the drum’s corroded drive shaft.
By the time the kids returned to school, the nursing profession and hospital environment had changed significantly after the pandemic. Lindsay decided she’d rather return to a life of family business ownership where she could apply her skills in other ways.