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Dan Meylan (Business Mentor)
Dan and Kathy Meylan
Personal
How it started: Dan was raised in New Jersey, the son of Swiss immigrants who came to the US in 1946. His great-grandfather was the pastor of 5 different Calvinist churches in Switzerland from 1895 until 1929. His father was an engineer and his mother was a Methodist Sunday School teacher. Dan got saved in 1972. He met Kathy in college and got his first job in the insurance business in rural Missouri. His insurance career led him to an agricultural community in Western Kansas, the Kansas City area and Colorado. His profession seated him across the table from business owners, helping them make decisions about how they should operate their businesses and how they should manage their risk. Dan’s profession for 37 years has been commercial insurance and banking. Throughout his career, Dan has served his commercial clients with sophisticated insurance, financial and risk management solutions. Dan started 7 new businesses including 4 insurance ventures and others in transportation, technology and ministry. He has originated or participated in 16 business acquisitions or divestitures. His first start-up company was created with an investment of $5,000 and achieved profitability with 18 months.
In addition to operating his own businesses, Dan served as a National Accounts Producer for an international insurance broker, as an underwriter, as the Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing for the largest privately held insurance broker in the US, as the president of a bank-owned insurance agency and as the CEO of an insurance company. Dan has extensive experience with retail, service and contracting risks, high hazard products liability insurance, workers compensation including self insurance, off-shore captives, international risks, homogeneous insurance programs, insurance sales management, insurance mergers and acquisitions, wholesale insurance agency operations, and bank insurance operations. In the course of his career, Dan has insured more than 15,000 privately and publically owned businesses: farmers in Kansas, fishermen in Alaska, contractors in all 50 states, manufacturers, luxury resorts, grocery stores, restaurants, hospitals, airports, aircraft operations, schools, car dealers, trucking and many other types of businesses.
Dan is currently President and Founder of Weavers, a business and ministry that teaches, trains and coaches men and women how to operate businesses according to biblical principles. His relationship with the Lord re-ignited in 2000 after a corporate “pink slip.” That event was a turning point and a blessing in disguise. Since that departure from corporate America 10 years ago he has been vitally involved in men’s ministry and transitioned to a business-consulting ministry.
Dan and his wife, Kathy, have been married for 37 years and are both graduates of Ottawa University. They have three children and five grandchildren. Dan serves as the leader of a men’s prayer group in Colorado Springs that has been transforming men’s lives for more than 10 years. Dan and his family are avid skiers or snowboarders. Dan is a private pilot with over 1,400 hours. They live north of Colorado Springs and enjoy riding horses and mules, hiking and traveling.
Kathy’s Ministry: Kathy has been vitally involved in women’s ministry for over 30 years. She has engaged in individual life coaching using Neil Anderson's “Freedom in Christ” material and currently serves both men and women using Sozo ministry material out of Bethel Church in Redding, California. She has trained women leaders internationally under the ministry of Women With a Mission. Kathy is an avid and talented quilter and canner and uses her equine skills to volunteer with a local therapeutic riding program.
Personal passion: Dan’s entire career has been spent helping business owners make profitable decisions. In 2000, he realized the Lord was asking him to put his accumulated professional skill to work to strengthen the testimony of Christians who owned and operated their own businesses. He started a class for his church on how to write a business plan, that became known as Weavers. It grew in scope and popularity until it became a full time, for-profit kingdom business in 2008.
That original class expanded Dan’s understanding of the power of transformational Kingdom impact through marketplace ministry. His goal with Weavers is three fold:
Jesus can transform our hearts on a personal basis, but transforming culture in a positive way is our responsibility. The primary tool to accomplish that objective is through thriving businesses that operate profitably, employ people, offer great services, and have a vision to expand the Kingdom of God.
Personal benefit: Dan’s life message is helping people align spiritual maturity and business competence to make a practical difference in their bottom line and the people-ministry quotient of their business. Dan has written a book entitled The Compound Effect that articulates the balance and alignment between maturity and competence necessary to have positive Kingdom impact. Selling business insurance is a lot like being a personal counselor and coach. Dan enjoys seeing the lights come on when a practical solution is offered that helps the dream of a business owner become a profitable reality.
Value to others: Dan helps people anticipate problems before they happen. Operating a business requires nine core competencies; the challenge is that most are only competent at four or five of those skills. Dan and Weavers will help identify those places where we are not competent, and develop a plan to improve them through training or obtaining help from others who have demonstrated competences in those areas we are lacking. Dan’s message helps people count the cost of business in three ways:
Business upside: Weavers started as a non-profit ministry endeavor in 2000. In 2008 Dan decided to do it full-time and created a for-profit business. The business model is built around a basic membership that offers a suite of services with an additional hands-on coaching option. Dan’s business model is based on membership subscriptions, online sales of proprietary training materials, proprietary business assessment tools, webinars, workshops, consulting, seminars and conferences designed to accelerate businesses. The basic annual Weavers subscription is $249 with higher increments for those who utilize additional services. There are 13.5 million businesses in the United States; of those businesses, 10.7 million employ 20 people or less. Dan’s target audience is the Christian business owner or entrepreneur within this demographic.
Business downside: Weavers itself is a new business experiencing the normal pains of start-up growth. Cash flow and marketing to the right people are two obvious areas of challenge. Dan is also grappling with the fact that the church currently doesn’t embrace the potential of marketplace ministry. His vision to impact the culture through business is in a pioneering stage.
Vision for the Kingdom: One of Dan’s goals is to impact unreached nations in the 10-40 window. His training materials have been used in places like Peru and Pakistan. One of Dan’s members, Harvest Field Corners, is providing micro-business loans in combination with Dan’s materials to start businesses in Pakistan. Dan also sees the obvious opportunity to minister to businesses right here in the US. The need is great, but the opportunity to start viable businesses has never been greater than in this nation, in this hour.
Impact from Releasing Kings: Dan found a kindred spirit in Releasing Kings. It’s encouraging to find that God has already given the identical message to others in the body of Christ…. And to find that they have a nearly identical vision to teach God’s people how to prosper and use business as a vehicle to expand ministry.
How can Dan help you? Through Weavers, Dan provides a personal touch than can dramatically improve a business in several ways:
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