To say Crownland founder Dan Francis is a self-made entrepreneur would be an understatement.

If it can be bought, sold, traded, or moved – Dan has probably done it.

It all started when he was selling life insurance as a junior in high school. While his classmates were worrying about who to take to prom, Dan was making well over six figures and on his way to a lifelong career as a businessman.

After high school Dan served in the U.S. Army for four years in the Explosive Ordinance Disposal (EOD) company. He went from insurance sales and driving fast cars to blowing up stuff. Francis sounds almost disappointed when he says his team only saved the world once when they defused a bomb in Indianapolis!

With the military in his rearview mirror, Dan tried to get back into the insurance business. It wasn’t quite the same, so he ended up in paper sales, doing advertising sales for a company called Senior Circuit Newspaper. That lasted a few years but wasn’t enough to satisfy the entrepreneur inside. So, he expanded into the mail business and a company called St. Louis Presort. He started with a couple of people doing hand sorting. Ended up with a couple of million pieces of mail a day. It is still around today as an employee-owned company.

His resume also includes owning a couple of restaurants in the St. Louis area. The work Dan did took him to central Missouri and the Lake of the Ozarks. There, Francis worked in real estate where he was fortunate to be able to do some developments on some of the more well-known retail centers at the Lake. He also had a hand in dock manufacturing at the Lake. A little-known fact about Dan – he used to race a boat called Zipp Express where he won four world championships for offshore racing and a still holds a couple world speed records.

Everything was going great in Dan’s life until about 2008/2009 when the banks crashed, and the economy came tumbling down. His story is like most Americans. One day his company had 100 employees. The next, it had two! And, like most red-blooded Americans, Dan busted his tail and fought his way through the economic crisis. His efforts took him to Colorado where he started doing internet merchandising  – everything from mining crypto currency, to garage sales, storage lockers, flea markets – he even jumped into a reality TV show called ‘One Man’s Junk”. They did a few pilot episodes, but the show was never picked up by a network. All of this just emphasizes what was stated above – If it can be bought, sold, traded, or moved – Dan has probably done it.

It was at this time Dan started to dabble in buying agricultural equipment. He would get overstocked items and sell them to someone who needed that product. Francis found himself buying and selling across the country. It wasn’t just ag equipment – it was everything from Pop Tarts to dry cereal to harvested products as well.

Francis’ past experiences and business model helped his company not only survive Covid, but thrive during and after the pandemic! He has been able to broker and barter business between companies of all sizes – from those who couldn’t make it because of Covid, to those who could take on extra product.
About Dan Francis by Kevin Pyles, Moto-Marketing