A Mind and Heart to Serve the Least: Melyn Campbell
Her university finance, accounting, and economics studies have taken her places that few women have the qualifications or gumption to go. But her focus has always been serving the underserved.
“Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction (KJV James 1:27).” “Then shall the King say … I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me. Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink? When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee? And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me (KJV Matthew 25:34-40).”
The above verses of the Bible are Melyn Campbell’s lifetime themes. She has a finance degree, along with credentials in accounting, economics, and statistics. She has served in notable positions at leading financial institutions such as Merrill Lynch, Smith Barney, and Zions First National Bank. Her extensive career in the financial sector includes many executive roles: CEO, Co-Founder, and Board Member. She is the newest member of the Editorial Board of Veritas Chronicles. Her university finance, accounting, and economics studies have taken her places that few women have the qualifications or gumption to go. But her focus has always been serving the underserved. I recently had a wide ranging discussion with Melyn and was inspired by both her exceptionally upwardly mobile experiences, and her heart to serve “the least.” — Ben Watson
Ben: If someone is Googling your name for the first time ever, Melyn, and they stumble across a bio sketch of you, what are some things that you want people to know about your background professionally? What should they know about your professional background, your educational background?
Melyn: Well, my educational background is all in finance. That's my degree, finance. I have a minor in accounting, a composite minor in accounting and economics, and an extra major skill in statistics. So, I’m all about that kind of nerdy side of things. Just as a side note, I chose finance over accounting because they’re very close. Accounting dives deep into debits and credits, while finance focuses more on the strategy side of things, if you will. I just couldn’t see myself wearing the green visor, not talking to anyone all day. I wanted to be on the other side of it, so that’s why I went down the finance road.
I’ve really used my degree throughout my whole career, which isn’t always the case for everyone. It’s great to go through the experience of learning and earning a degree, but not everyone gets to use it so directly in their career. I’ve been fortunate in that way.
I’ve done loan origination for private equity groups and worked in traditional banking. When banks first started incorporating stock brokers and financial services professionals, I was one of the first to cross over. I’ve sold commodities and worked in the commodities world. I was also the first female stockbroker at Merrill Lynch in Provo, Utah—ever. I’ve blazed a lot of trails for women in finance.
Ben: Were you a broker dealer?
Melyn: I was never a broker dealer, but I had all my licenses—Series 6, Series 7, Series 63. I was a certified financial planner for a period of time. So I've done all of that, and I've done everything in banking, from a teller to a branch manager to a loan officer. And then, when the bank decided that they wanted to go out and seek loans, not just wait for people to come and get their loans, because they didn’t have a lot of deposits, that became my role. And so, I was a commercial loan salesperson, really. I wasn't the loan officer doing the analysis—I was out there seeking loans. Mrs. Fields Cookies was one of my accounts. I really went after the large loan accounts that the bank wanted. They called it corporate sales. It was a first for that bank to be seeking traction in the corporate sales arena. So, I blazed a lot of trails in the financial world.
I've raised funds. So, I've raised money for investment funds, from start to finish. I've done a lot of things in the financial world.
And just as a side note, when I was a stockbroker, just a regular broker for Merrill Lynch and Smith Barney, one of the groups that I would run into would be widows. Their husbands had passed away, and now they're trying to figure out, “What do I do?” For many of them, they had not run the financials in the family, and now they were faced with a puzzle: “What do I do with all of this?” I would see a lot of male brokers, and on the one hand, these women would want to lean towards those male brokers because they felt like the man was the one with all the experience. And yet, what they really needed was financial literacy. That’s what they really needed help with. Not just, “Here’s what you need to invest in,” but, “Here’s why you need to invest this way,” and giving them that little bit of help and education. So I have a very tender heart for people who need that financial education. Really, I think that probably defines me.
On another side note, I've been in a couple of bank robberies. It's been really “fun.”
Ben: Oh, tell me more about that. I mean, just from a personal interest here, not that I'm a bank robber.
Melyn: One of my first banking jobs was when I was in college. I became a bank teller for Draper Bank. My grandfather was one of the founding officers and investors in Draper Bank because he owned Draper Drug. It was all just small-town kind of thing. So I got a job at Draper Bank as a teller, and they decided they were going to expand and open another branch. They planned to move over to Sandy, Utah, which is just a few miles away. They bought a piece of property and put a trailer there. I was moved over to the trailer bank as the new accounts rep, and we had a couple of tellers.
Sure enough, one day, these two gentlemen walk in. It's wintertime—December—and they're wearing beanies over their heads. You could see this little edge of nylon stockings they were going to pull down over their faces. One of the tellers caught that. She moonlighted for Sandy Police as a dispatcher, so she quietly called and said, “I think we're about to get robbed.” But between the time she made the call and when the police got there, sure enough, they pulled the stockings down, and one of them had a .357 Magnum.
They decided to make me the hostage, so I had the .357 pointed at my head as I crawled across the little bank. It wasn’t a very big lobby since it was just a trailer.
I was, let’s see, I would’ve been 19 years old—18 or 19, somewhere in there. Anyway, the teller gave them the cash, which they put in a pillowcase, and then they ran out the door. Here’s the fun part: this trailer bank was in the middle of a field, because the permanent building was still being constructed. So, as they’re running across the field, two of our banking customers saw what happened and said, “Our bank just got robbed!” They chased the robbers down in the field and started giving them noogies on their heads.
It wasn’t until after the police showed up in the middle of all this that they realized, “Oh my gosh, they had a .357 Magnum!” Probably not the smartest thing to chase them down. Later, while the robbers were in the holding tank, one of them tried to commit suicide by using his sheets. He clearly had no value for life, which made it even a bit more scary after the fact. Anyway, that was my first bank robbery experience.
Ben: Whoa, what? I lived in Draper for a little bit, Melyn, but it's not a small town anymore. Although, it still has that—you know—when Draper was first developed, they had, I think, a city ordinance that the lots had to be like an acre. So you still see these big lots in Draper.
Melyn: There’s still a few big lots, and there are a lot of farmers. You know, in my first marriage, my husband’s family were mink ranchers. They had a big mink ranch in Draper, but of course, it got squeezed out because it had flies and all kinds of things. As the big homes came, they subdivided their farm into one-acre lots and got out of the business. But yeah, when I was little, Draper was pretty much all farms, cows, and that kind of thing.
My grandfather’s drugstore served the whole town. He was truly like Marcus Welby MD. You know, they had Marcus Welby on one side, and on the other half of his building, there was a dentist and a doctor. It was the good old-fashioned small-town vibe. Draper was a great place.
Even Sandy, where I grew up, was very small when I was a kid. But when I was in junior high, it became the fifth fastest-growing city in the United States. It just exploded.
Ben: So, you know, something intrigued me about what you were saying earlier. When you talked about the intersection between accounting and finance, and how you were more drawn to finance because you wanted to be around people and talk with people. It was more of a people thing than just a numbers thing. Can you tell me more about that—your draw to people? I mean, you gave a great example of how you were drawn to find ways to help widows with financial literacy. Tell me more about this interest you have in helping people.
Melyn: I think it came from a journey of self-discovery because numbers come easy to me. I understand debits and credits. For some reason, I just get that. I get the relational data between numbers and how they fit together in finance, or how they fit together in compensation plans, for instance. That seems to come naturally to me.
When I first became licensed as a broker and was out there, I thought everybody kind of already knew this stuff. I thought it was just a basic thing because it came so easily to me. I assumed it was something everyone understood. But as I realized it wasn’t, I struggled at first with self-esteem, wondering, Why would people listen to me when they already know this, right? Then I came to the realization that they really don’t know this.
When I understood that, I began to think, “How are people functioning right? How are they managing in their financial world when they’re not equipped to take those next steps?” It’s kind of like looking at someone who’s great in small business. So many people succeed in small business simply because they don’t know any better—they don’t understand the risks, so they just take them without overthinking.
I used to wonder how people function in their financial world when they’re just surviving? That’s when I realized people don’t take the next steps—they just survive. That’s all they do. If they could understand basic principles, like the old question, Would you rather have a million dollars or a penny doubled every day for 30 days? At first, you’d think, I’ll take the million dollars. But if you pause for a moment and double a penny every day for 30 days, 15 days in, you only have about $350. At that point, you’d think, Oh, the million dollars was the right choice. But by the 29th day, that penny doubling every day becomes $5 million. By the 30th day, it’s $10 million.
So many people are living in those first 15 days—they’re just getting by. They don’t understand what could happen if they had the financial literacy to take them to new heights. That’s when it really clicked for me how important it is to help people understand and take those next steps.
Ben: That’s so powerful, at least for me. What I’m hearing is—it’s not just the financial literacy component. And this is something I can totally apply to my personal life. There’s the financial literacy aspect, but then there’s the paradigm shift of what to do with that knowledge. Once you’re equipped with this knowledge, your paradigm can be unlocked and unleashed, giving you a totally new outlook on life.
When did it really start to click for you, the difference between having money and having financial wisdom, or literacy, if you will?
Melyn: Without giving names, I think one of the moments where I really started to feel this was when I was helping people who had built wealth for their families. They had built it on their own backs, through their business, while their children grew up with a more privileged lifestyle. Not that they were spoiled rotten, but they had a more privileged life and didn’t really understand what it took for mom or dad—or both—to create that wealth.
As much as parents try to teach their kids, sometimes it’s easier to do than to teach. Right? If you’ve figured out how to be a good entrepreneur and build wealth for your family, it doesn’t necessarily mean you know how to teach that. You know how to do it, but not how to teach it. I had a lot of opportunities to work with wealthy families and see how that wealth transferred to their kids. I helped them navigate that transfer, because kids would either take the opportunity and go on to become good professionals—doctors, lawyers, or other careers that provide a good handle on income but not necessarily true wealth—or, on the other hand, they’d become spoiled. They’d get everything they wanted, go to five different colleges before finally finishing, and sometimes even inherit money they weren’t ready for.
I’ve even worked with business owners who didn’t want their kids to know how much money they had because they believed it would ruin their lives. Teaching a few key principles made all the difference. Once those kids inherited money, they had to learn how to put financial principles into practice. But not everyone does it. That’s the other challenge—you brought out a great point. Even if someone learns something, they have to put it into practice.
It’s like learning how to eat right or exercise. I can know all the principles, but if I don’t do it every day, I’ll never see results. I can learn how to read notes on a piano, but if I don’t practice every day, I’ll never get good. I can learn how to swing a golf club, but without regular practice, I’ll never improve. It’s a principle of life—you can know something, but if you don’t put it into practice, you won’t see results.
That’s where I think we can take financial literacy to the next step. It’s not just about teaching concepts; it’s about spoon-feeding just enough to help people bridge the gap between knowing financial literacy and putting it into practice. Giving them that taste of success makes all the difference. Because once I hit a golf ball really well, I’ll want to go back. Once I play one piece on the piano and people say, “That’s amazing,” I’ll want to keep playing. Or, even if I just enjoy the satisfaction of finishing that piece, I’ll go back.
Similarly, when someone says at the end of the month, “Oh my gosh, I have $10 extra. I can go invest, or I have $100 extra,” and after a year, they look back and realize they’ve saved $1,000—that taste of success motivates them to keep going. It’s about helping them see the results of putting financial literacy into practice. I saw this most often with my clients who had large amounts of money and needed to transfer it to their kids. It’s about giving people that bridge and those small wins that make them want to keep going.
Ben: Having grown up in Montana, surrounded by a lot of poverty, my worldview—and that of my friends and peer groups—never even permitted us to think that financial success was available to us. It wasn’t even something we considered. I don’t even know if we really knew about it. But even those who did know about the potential for financial success never really permitted themselves to dream about it, because it was for everybody else.
So, yeah, I see the great power, as you mentioned earlier, of someone learning and becoming financially literate. If they can just taste one little moment of success—just taste it once—it can make all the difference. Even if it’s just an additional $10 a month, as you gave in your example. For the people I grew up with, even something that small could be enough to motivate them, to turn on the light bulb and say, Really? This isn’t just for everybody else. This could be for me too.
I feel like so much of generational poverty is tied to this mindset. A big part of it—though I’m not an expert, so you tell me your thoughts—is that people simply don’t know how to permit themselves to think that success is possible for them.
Melyn: It's easier to believe the bad than it is to go for the good, right?
Ben: Can I just throw in maybe a twist to the conversation here? I think the rise of crypto—what we’ve seen with Bitcoin and so on—might be an opportunity for people to see the world differently than it’s been for decades. You’ve got the standard options: you can put money in a bank and earn interest, invest in stocks or bonds, invest in precious metals, or start a business. But for decades, those were the frameworks people operated within.
When you were a broker or a licensed financial planner, your repertoire consisted of a certain set of things. There were multiple versions of those things, but the diversification options were still limited to that set. Now, the diversification landscape and the scale of entry are changing dramatically.
It might be worth pausing here to reflect on what the current scenario looks like in terms of opportunity— the point being, we couldn’t think that way; we didn’t know how to think that way—and talking about how we can help people see the world differently now.
Melyn: Well, I think, you know, to tie a bow around this idea, I think not only do you think you can't think that way, I think part of where I grew up—and I don't know that I want to put my parents’ upbringing out public—but I'll just tell you guys, it was more, you know, being really wealthy is bad. It brings bad things into your life. You want to stay humble. You know, you don't want to marry for money, marry for, you know, humility. And, you know, staying humble was more the world. And so I think there are those, whether it comes from, “That’s just my lot in life,” or, “I shouldn’t pursue that because it’s not godly,” right? Whatever that is, that type of thinking ties you down. And it comes from all walks, all places.
Leaning back into what you are saying, I think, yes, the world has changed, or is changing. The brokerage house, Robinhood, for example—you can now invest in a fraction of a stock. There is a much greater breadth of what you can do. But even beyond what you can invest in, I think it’s also about how you find ways to end up with the money to invest in crypto? You know, as small as it may be, it’s learning those initial finance principles.
The initial one is, when I have extra money, do I want to get caught up on the things I want, or do I want to invest in my long-term wealth? So there are some financial literacy things that come into play. It’s not necessarily putting it in a savings account in a bank because, for the longest time, a savings account or a money market account was 1%, now it’s a little higher, but not game changing. In today’s world, bank interest and inflation are in a neck and neck race, with inflation winning.
You’re not going to keep up with where the world is going if you don’t stretch your knowledge and understand how to measure risk. Because there are people who are going to say, “Oh, crypto is risky. It might go up, it might go down.” Teaching people how to diversify, and have a reasonable basis for their expectations. You don’t want anyone to put their next mortgage payment into crypto thinking that next week they’re going to double their mortgage amount. So there are some principles to learn.
Money is nothing more than a store of value. Money is a convenience. Instead of trading sheep and pigs, money is a store of value versus corn versus, wheat, etc. That store of value now is not just in fiat currencies. It’s in cryptocurrencies, it’s in stablecoins, and it’s in the ability to invest in small businesses—or whether it’s through crowdfunding, for example, where you can invest $100 in a company, where you don’t have to be an accredited investor. Smaller scale, easier to access, more options, is all part of the newer, digital world.
For many, investing has always been a scary thing, “Only for the rich people.” “Put your pennies in a piggy bank.” Now, you can invest in something that has tremendous growth capabilities, even if it’s just a little bit.
Ben: Stretch your knowledge. Learn how to measure risk, diversify, keeping up with what money means, I sense a book in your future! Each of these is its own chapter.
Melyn: Well, I think the biggest key here, with what we're really trying to say—is that people don’t even have the hope that there’s something different for them. Increased financial literacy can help provide a more open playground of hope, where people realize, “I don’t have to become a financial analyst to have an investor’s mindset.” It’s about learning those small principles of investing and shifting to an investor mindset, not just a consumer mindset, right?
People who get caught in a consumer mindset often end up in consumer debt because they feel so poor all the time. When someone offers them a credit card, they think, “Oh, I can go buy all these trinkets and things that aren’t investments.” They’ll buy a bread maker, a butcher’s knife set—whatever—and it’s really just junk in their lives. I mean, I don’t know how we say that kindly when we’re putting it into an article, but that’s what happens.
If I buy, I feel a sense of hope in the moment. But if I invest, wow, now I have real hope. That’s the shift—from a consumer mindset to an investor mindset.
Ben: That's a big, huge step, especially in America, where our entire economy is so consumer driven,
Melyn: Well, and then, you know, when you have things like Temu—oh, now I can buy it for a fourth of the price I would pay in the United States because I can buy it on Temu for next to nothing, right? And so it flares up even more consumerism—they get into a consumer mindset. And I see that so often with people who get into financial troubles.
You know, if they’ve got trauma—maybe they have medical trauma in their life, or they’re taking care of an aging parent, or whatever it is that’s bringing them stress in life—how they self-salve that is by bringing on a consumer mindset instead of an investor mindset.
Ben: Right? And as you say, that investor mindset—making that shift isn’t a big leap. You use terms like small, fractional, micro. These are little, little things, little changes that people can make that are almost imperceptible in the day, in the moment, but over time will yield great dividends. But it really is just these little, small steps that we need to start taking.
Melyn: It’s the power of habit. I’m in Duolingo and Babbel, and I’m learning Spanish every day, right now. And I’m on that streak now, so I don’t want to break my streak because I’m just learning a little bit every day. Well, I’m an impatient enough person to think I should be further ahead in my Spanish than I am. But when I look back and see where I’ve come, that power of habit—doing something a little bit every day—is incredible.
Invest a little bit every month, a little bit, and when you look back, it’s huge, the progress you make. It’s the same with losing weight—it’s a calorie deficit, right? If I use my calorie deficit. So the principles are everywhere in our lives, but it seems like so often, in the financial arena, is where we apply those principles last.




Ben: Something that would be interesting and worth a couple of minutes—in five minutes—is the linear narrative. You know, you went to school, you got your degrees, repeat all those, and then you went and did it. Just to give a linear framework to everything.
Melyn: Yeah, so I actually had a scholarship to go to college in performing arts. I was a Sterling Scholar in performing arts here in Utah, so I represented my school as the Sterling Scholar. I had a scholarship in performing arts, but I realized very quickly that if I wasn’t going to go to Hollywood, I needed to do something that would be more applicable. And I didn’t really want to be a teacher—that would have been the other, you know, normal thing I would have done as a student at BYU.
Ben: What was your skill in performing arts?
Melyn: Dance and drama. In high school, I was the dance club president. I started dancing when I was little. My mom took me to dance, and I learned how to tap dance and all those things when I was just a little—one of those toddlers running around like a little pack of bees.
Ben: Born Shirley Temple?!
Melyn: Yeah, I was. In fact, my sister used to curl my hair like Shirley Temple because I would sing. My mom would take me around when I was three years old, and I’d sing in Relief Society. Back then, Relief Society—it’s an organization in the LDS church, used to meet on a weekday morning. When I was little, that’s how it was. Now it’s different; it’s a different schedule because of people’s busy lives. But she’d take me around to Relief Societies, and I would sing songs like Thank Heaven for Little Girls and all kinds of things. So that was really fun.
My grandfather taught all of us to play the piano. He was a music teacher, and he taught piano and voice. All of us kids learned how to play the piano from the time we were little. Performing arts was very much a part of my world. I had a scholarship in performing arts, but it didn’t take long to start thinking about computer science, because I understand programming logic. But when I looked around at my fellow students, I realized it wasn’t me. I wanted something different.
So then I moved over to accounting. I did very well in my accounting classes, but again, I wanted something more. That’s when the finance degree really clicked for me. I graduated with a major in finance, a composite minor in accounting and economics, and an extra major skill in statistics.
Ben: Was that from BYU or somewhere else?
Melyn: BYU. And then I also worked at banks while I was going to college, so I had banking experience under my belt while I was doing that. I worked for a couple of different banks. It was during college that I had that first bank robbery. I took a semester off after my freshman year to get some more funds for school, and it was during that semester off that the bank robbery happened.
At that point, I was tempted to think, “You know, I could just move up the banking world, start a career, and not finish college.” But after that bank robbery, I realized, “No, I’m going to finish college. I’m going to go all the way.” That was a turning point for me to realize that’s what I wanted to do.
When I graduated from college, I worked for a small private equity group, putting together some large loans. I did that for a short period of time and then got on at Merrill Lynch in Provo. Actually, right before that—let me take that back—right before Merrill Lynch, I worked for Howard Ruff. Anybody know Howard Ruff? Did you ever know about the Howard Ruff Newsletter?
Ben: The Ruff Newsletter?
Melyn: That’s where I got my commodities experience. We sold gold and silver on the market. I worked at a brokerage that was tied to his newsletter. And so, when gold was exploding—contrary to when the markets crashed, like on Black Friday—you know, that was when people were jumping off roofs. That happened right after I was selling gold and silver.
It was fun to watch all the variety there. We did a few pork bellies and things like that, but mostly, we were in the precious metals.
Ben: Don't let me distract you from your linear narrative, Melyn, but on the road from Provo, across the top of Deer Creek coming into Midway, there is still a sign near someone's letterbox promoting the Ruff Letter.
Melyn: Oh, really? I, for the life of me, can't figure out how there's any life left in that concept. You know, one of the things he was really touting when I was there—and we actually sold a lot of them—he called it store the core. He sold a lot of coins that had actual silver in them because, if everything were to fall apart, you know, precious metals would be the thing you would barter with since paper money would no longer be good.
We dealt a lot in the silver dimes that had enough silver quotient, or the 50-cent pieces, and you wanted it to be in small pieces of silver. So he’d call it store the core. And we sold these little piggy banks that looked like a pipe, and you would store it under your kitchen sink, so it just looked like part of a pipe, but really, you were hiding your core. That’s what they called it: store the core. He was very much doomsday.
Ben: I have another laptop to my left, and I’m feverishly looking at Howard Ruff notes.
Melyn: Yeah, that was a fun time. But then I decided I wanted to get out of the precious metals and really go in and get my licensing. So that's when I got hired on at Merrill Lynch and went through all the education. And again, this is me tooting my horn, which I don’t like to do very often, as you can tell. But when I got through all the studying—there’s a lot of studying you have to do and tests to pass—most of the guys in the office, who were there when I started as the first female, were like, “Yeah, you just have to get 70 to pass.” And I thought, “Oh my gosh, can you imagine?”
I mean, I’m thinking, I’m going to put my money with this broker, and he’s thrilled he got a 70—a D-minus—on the test? It’s like anything with positions, right? Oh, I just barely passed the medical exam; yeah, let’s do your brain surgery. But anyway, when I got my score back, I got a 97. So I was really pleased with that. They gave me help, but that’s when I realized not everybody has that financial acumen.
The world spins, the sun comes up every day, and you don’t have to have a 97 on your scores to navigate the financial world, but I did. I was with Merrill Lynch, when I went through a divorce. So I moved back up to Salt Lake City, because that’s where I grew up. I moved back to the Sandy/Midvale area, and I transferred to Smith Barney.
Smith Barney helps people the old-fashioned way: They earn it. That was their slogan. That’s when I really got my experience. But that’s my story of being a woman in a man’s world.
Ben: What was your core product in Smith Barney? And, yes, it was absolutely dominated by men and probably had horrible stories.
Melyn: There are horrible stories. Yes, you know, I won't go into all of them. Other than, the manager at that time was a man named JP, who owned all the Ponderosa Steakhouses. He kept saying, “I’ll share my book with you, everything—you just have to sleep with me.” Of course, I never did that, but those kinds of undertones were always in my world.
I think those undertones actually gave me strength. Having the principles I grew up with as a child—that humble part of my parents, the grounding that I was given—actually helped. You realize that if you hold to your values, if you stay aligned with what your values really are, then you find all the juicy goodness that’s in the world. And that’s probably the best principle I learned when I was at Smith Barney.
Helping those widows, who oftentimes had been taken advantage of by a broker who put them in investments that were not proper for their portfolio—commission-driven portfolios instead of what was best for them—was so important. I learned a lot, but it was a yucky world that I didn’t like.
Ben: Smith Barney—after that, what happened?
Melyn: Then I went to Zions Bank. I had a mutual friend who said, “You know, you need to come on to Zions Bank. They're looking for this thing called corporate sales to help find these larger loans.” So I did that, and it was a wonderful experience. I loved, loved, loved working with companies and helping them determine their needs.
Now, it was interesting, because back then, the only way you could really get a loan at the bank—we would always tease tongue in cheek—was, “Well, if you have $100,000 in the bank, we’ll give you a $100,000 loan.” You really couldn’t leverage yourself with loans. But it was really fun to be there.
During my stint there was when they opened up the brokerage for banks, so I moved over into the brokerage account. Then I decided, You know what, as much as I loved working in those worlds—and that's a straight commission job when you’re a broker, it’s straight commission—if you go on vacation, so does your paycheck.
So I decided I wanted to become an entrepreneur and kind of do my own thing. I became a mailing list broker, and that was back when...
Ben: What a massive transition. That is a huge transition.
Melyn: And it’s because my ex-husband at the time said, “You know what, I was such a dork. Let’s see what we can do to do this again.” So we went into business together. It still didn’t work out—he ended up cheating on me—but we became a mailing list broker, and we were the third-largest mailing list brokerage in the country.
This was in the days before the internet, right? So, you know, the way people marketed back then, your mailbox was filled with Value Pack and all kinds of things. What a mailing list broker did was tap into three of the largest databases in the country. You would learn about demographics, what made people tick, and what made them buy based on where they lived.
Because people tend to clump together in neighborhoods, they’re often similar within those neighborhoods. So I learned a lot about consumer habits.
Then, of course, when emails became prevalent, that really sidelined direct mail. There are those in today’s world who say it’s coming back, but I’m not sure about that. They say that if you put something in someone’s mailbox, they’ll still go to the mail and get it. They’re not getting as many bills because everything is online now, so some argue that makes it ripe for a comeback.
I’m not so sure. It’s a very expensive way now to do outreach. But I learned a lot about consumers and what they wanted to do. Alongside all this, I also dabbled a little bit in direct selling. One of my first forays into direct selling was World Marketing Alliance. For that, you had to be licensed—you needed at least a Series 6 license to sell investments, insurance, or mutual funds.
They were trying to do it through direct selling, where you’d make a little override on the people you brought in, and so on and so forth. But when I got in there and realized people weren’t getting their licenses, I didn’t want to put my license at risk. So I tabled that and just kind of did investments for a while. I did my own dabbling in investing, bought some software to monitor the markets, and did a little bit of that for a while.
I played a little bit in trying to do day trading, which, for the most part, you’d win big, but you’d lose a little, lose a little, lose a little, lose a little, and then you’d win back. So I did quite a bit of day trading and played in that world.
But what you realized in the end, is that you had no control. The traders, the people at the top, manipulated those markets, and you had no control. And actually, getting back to something I skipped—you asked me what I primarily did at Smith Barney. Smith Barney was very much about IPOs (initial public offerings). And so you had to sell.
One out of eight or ten IPOs would be a really good one that was going to be hot, and you wanted to put your clients into that. But in order to get an allocation of the hot stocks, you had to sell everything. If you didn’t sell the junk, you didn’t get the allotment of the good stuff.
And, again, that’s where I just lost my appetite. How do I go to these sweet little widows and say, “Hey, I’ve got a hot bargain for you, right?” It was just so counterproductive. I just had such a bad taste in my mouth about what a racket it all was that I left. It felt like you didn’t have a chance, which really comes full circle to how, in today’s world, you can have a chance, right?
Ben: Some people wonder if the system is stacked against the little folks—you’ve had that practical experience of decades of it?
Melyn: And being a person who really was almost facilitating it, I had to go home and take a shower because I just felt yucky at the end of the day. I had to push the yucky stuff in order to get the good stuff. It was just a different world, a completely different world than what we appear to be on the cusp of today, a more egalitarian, democtratized system. We’re not there yet, but it’s coming.
You know, when you think of, what was it—GameStop—where so many people invested against the people who were betting against it. To me, that was one of the first early risings that was publicly seen and understood, showing that the masses really can take control.
There are more ways now that allow people to make tiny investments, to get started. There are people now who take an interest in cryptocurrency, asking, “What does that look like?” People who are trying to say, “You know, banks aren’t fair, right? It’s not fair. If I’m not bankable, I can’t function in this world. How fair is that?”
So there is that uprising of the masses who are saying, “No, I want more.” Or at least, “I want to learn more.”
Ben: Okay, so the databases, direct sales, your own tinkering, day trading, then what?
Melyn: And then I really got dipped into direct sales and, more importantly, into compensation plans. Some of the compensation plans in direct sales leave a bad taste in people’s mouths because only the people at the top make the money, right? And again, it’s a parallel. Only the people at the top of day trading or at the top of the institutions make all the money. The banks are the ones who make all the money. Look up the top 1,000 companies in the world—the majority of them are banks or financial institutions. They aren’t companies that make something and make the world better.
And it was the same thing when I got into direct selling. The reason I went into direct selling was because it was an even playing field, right? I could know and shape the back end of the machine. I could do the same as my male counterparts. I was on an equal, even playing field.
I didn’t tell you my other banking story. When I got hired for corporate sales at Zions Bank, there was another man who got hired the same day as me. We go to the employee orientation. Our papers are right there. I’m looking at my salary on my paper, and I’m looking at his salary on his paper, and I’m like, “How fair is that?” I have more banking experience than him—he’d just been a real estate broker. So I thought, “Great. I’ll just work really hard, outperform him, and at my 90-day mark, I’ll go to my boss and say I deserve the same salary.”
So I do that. I outperform him. I go to my boss and say I deserve the same salary.
“How do you know what he’s making?” my boss asks.
“I saw it on the paper,” I tell him.
“Well, I could fire you for looking at his paper.”
And, you know, that was it. Uneven, and not going to change. So direct sales was a way for me to have an even playing field and help people rise up who didn’t have the same advantages. I’m educated, I’ve got my licenses, I’m a financial person first. I’m okay. But what about the people who don’t have a chance—people who don’t have a chance to go to college? If you don’t have a college degree, can you not go anywhere in this world? I saw it as a platform for an even playing field.
When I got in, it had the same dirty plays as the financial world. There were companies that weren’t doing right by their distributors. There were compensation plan structures where the people at the top made all the money, and there was no way anybody else was going to make any money. So then I found myself, because compensation plans come easy to me, saying, I can fix comp plans.
So I became a consultant in the industry and worked with over 53 companies to help them make their compensation plans better. There were a lot of companies that didn’t understand comp plans, and it put them out of business because they didn’t understand a payout structure. They would end up paying out too much money, and they couldn’t sustain it. Their distributors would leave because they had to cut back on the commissions, and all that kind of stuff.
So I found a playground to try and help that industry as well, to help comp plans match what their demographic was and what their product style was, to help them become better companies.
Ben: What an interesting journey. I mean, we’re talking banking world to the mailing brokerage company—to that expert consultant for an industry to create compensation plans. You’re very nimble and can pivot well.
Melyn: It has a common theme. There is a common theme, I think, which is, again, what draws me to the Veritas Chronicles project. My whole common theme is, to a degree, finding ways to teach people how to fish instead of just giving them fish—taking principles that came easy to me, finding a way to make them simple for others, showing them where the fish are, and showing them that there are fish.
Yes, there are fish. Yes, there is an abundance out there. And it’s just a case of choosing to take advantage of it. Here’s the thing—it doesn’t necessarily have to take away from the ‘haves.’ In other words, there’s more out there than we see. You don’t have to take away from someone else in order to gain for yourself, right? There’s more than enough multiplication that can raise up the whole and give abundance to millions of people, and hope, confidence, and legacy for their families.
I mean, all the things that some people don’t even think about because they just don’t think that’s in their wheelhouse. And yet, it can be. I think part of the financial literacy that needs to be given to those people is understanding why they go buy the crockpots you were talking about. It’s because they say, “I have $50, but I don’t know what to do with it.” They see investing as needing large chunks of money. So training their brain to know where to go and how to do that—that’s the key.
They don’t see it as, I have $20, I can invest it. And they don’t see that as easy or accessible. And when they do ask people about investing, as I have in the past, they’re laughed at. Like, $500? $1,000? Just wait until you have more saved up. Right? So that’s not even a crockpot. That’s what I would like to add later—what platforms and methods are we going to use to teach people to find those affordable entry points, besides just saying financial literacy.
I just ran into a friend, and I’m going to do the research on this because I didn’t know this had happened. But apparently, even in Utah, there was a financial literacy program that supposedly was just a money scam—fleecing the flock even more. So I think we want to be really careful.
But I think we have to take it very seriously—what we’re teaching people—and find ways to give them a practical playground. Because you can teach someone about investing, even if they only have $20 or $500. You can’t do everything, but you can start, and then keep going. I always like analogies because they help people relate. It’s like my first day in the gym. You’ve got a bunch of gym rats in there with muscles this big, and you might say, I’m not going to go to that gym ever again. Therefore, I’m not going to get fit. I’m not going to...
Ben: And there might be the person in Africa who's investing $1.50?
Melyn: Exactly! “Okay, I have $1.50. What can I do with that?” Instead of spending it to buy rice for my family, “I’ve got rice and I have an extra $1.50. What’s next?” It is a different mindset.
You want to give them a little bit of breathing room and take a little bit of risk—not a lot—because you might need rice for your family, right? But teaching them about measuring risk is so important. We used to have an analogy we’d use in banking when we were looking for loans, and we’d say, “It’s okay to eat peas off a knife, as long as you know how sharp the knife.” And so it’s okay to do that.
I do measure risk a lot, and that’s my baseline. Not that I’m not willing to take risks—I just want to measure it. As long as I’ve measured it, then I’m the only person to blame, right? Then I can’t blame someone else for something I did. I measured it, and then I made the decision.
There’s something very empowering in making those decisions for yourself and realizing that you absolutely can. Thinking that you don’t have the ability to make those decisions, or that you’re not good enough, smart enough, or rich enough to make them, is false. You absolutely can. It’s so empowering to do that.
Now, back to that question about what do you do with $1.50? There are, in the current world, investments in various coins that can be made for a 1,000th of a cent. You can buy 1,000 coins for a cent, and losing a cent is not going to hurt you. But if those coins become worth 2,000ths of a cent or become worth a cent or a dollar, then it hasn’t hurt you and you’re underway.
The ability to separate into 1,000s and fractions gives everyone the chance to take a look at new things. Don’t spend your last dollar there, but if you have an extra dollar, put it in there and then be willing to let it take its course. It’s can’t be the dollar that you need tomorrow. It might be 10 cents. But put that in there and watch it, and learn the exhilaration of it going up and the patience of letting it go down and rise up again, or not. But pay attention to that which is making it rise or fall. Because nothing is stable, and nothing’s guaranteed to do this.
It’s starting to give you the education. What coin do I choose? What’s backing it? Pay attention to the little things. And not with, like, a PhD education on it, right? Play, learn, go, play, experience. Steve, my husband, his dad used to say, “Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment.” I love that. And that’s the playground—you gain good judgment by playing with small stakes. You gain a sense of what it’s like by going through those experiences.
Ben: That’s a good point, Melyn. I think something that we need to overcome is people being afraid—the fear of loans. I just talked to my brother about this, and he has a very good salary, but he’s not a risk taker. And he said, I’ve never done it because I’m too afraid of what could happen.
Melyn: The very first stock market crash in my lifetime was October 19, 1997, and the market then was about 2,200. Not the 40-some-odd thousand that we’re at today. The market was 2,200, and it fell to 1,700, and there were men who went and jumped off their roofs because it fell. Had they been able to just understand that it recovered—in a matter of months, it recovered—it did recover. The trends tend to recover.
And so you just have to be able to learn that experience of, “Yes, things will fall, and things will go back up.” If you listen to Warren Buffett, he’s one of the wealthiest men in the world. And yet, he lives a very modest life. The car that he drives and the home that he lives in, all that. But he learned how to invest by falling in love with what he was investing in.
When he would choose a company, he says, “I invest because I like what the company is doing. So whether the company is going up or down doesn’t matter to me, because I like the company. I like their mission, I like what they want to do.” And so that’s what he learned to do. Those are the principles—learning the ups and downs, not being afraid. Don’t be afraid if it goes down. You didn’t make a bad decision; you made a decision. You learned how to invest. That’s all part of it. Great principles of life.
Ben: You know? I’m in Phoenix at the moment. Here in Phoenix, there is a golf course that was purchased, I think, a year ago, by a farmer who was a neighbor of ours in Montana. He bought this golf course here for $30 million.
He grew up on the farm that was next door to the one I grew up on, and I’m asking myself, “What did you do so differently?” I had no idea. It was not obvious to me, as I was growing up, that he was doing something different from my dad. And my dad did a good job. I just want to pick his brain, and I’m telling you, I know exactly what he’s going to say. He’s going to say the same thing that you just told me, Melyn. He’s going to talk about these small decisions, these timeless principles.
And, you know, the sad thing is, these principles aren’t new to the world. But to so many of us, they are new. And sadly, most of humanity won’t benefit from them.
Melyn: That’s true, Ben. But we are in a time in the world when the digital piece can be egalitarian in a way that the rest has not been, because it’s outside the control of the brokers, the banks, and the manipulators. The principles are the same. This is something I’ve tried to live by. And again, I’m not perfect. It’s one thing to have your principles and another to be perfect with them.
But the principles are the same; the practices are different. That’s what we have. The opportunity in today’s world is that the practices are different, and the opportunities are there.
Ben: We all have a computer or phone access. You don’t have to be a licensed investor, as you said, Melyn, to start applying these principles to build wealth in your life. So this democratization of access is something I think should be a clarion call to all the little people—like from Fairfield, Montana, where I’m from—and others. Look, you can do this!
Melyn: Well, I think that’s it. It’s getting started, right? It’s getting the start. This publishing project will be looking for and writing about ways for ordinary families to get extended buying power, and then by extension, how to get extended investing power. In practical ways, we will be saying to people, I don’t have to spend everything that I’m going to be able to save. I’m going to take some of that which I save, some of that where I’ve increased my ability to get more for my budget. That opens up an opportunity for me to have a little extra that maybe I can go invest in.
And then we give them a fun playground through literacy, education. And then, as is our goal, connect our readers to places where they can earn rewards from their prudent spending. They may only get something that’s worth 0.0001 cent of a penny. Well, maybe that doesn’t seem like very much, but don’t discount it, right? Watch it grow. Learn those principles.
So through financial literacy resources, and connecting the dots to low-entry, low-risk playgrounds, I think we’re really trying to give people a ramp-up to experience what it feels like to be an investor.
It really comes full circle back to my early beginnings. I grew up in a humble household—very humble. My mom sewed all our clothes. We didn’t have a lot of money. All my friends got skis for Christmas, and we got homemade dolls. I mean, I wasn’t poor. I didn’t feel poor growing up. I just felt like I was in a more humble state.
And I think that carries all the way through full circle to where we are today, because what this changing world offers, it’s much bigger than all of us. I’m just a small piece of it, and I’m grateful that I have the experience I have—that I can bring my small piece to it, however small or great that might be. You know, I can now have the mind of a philanthropist, and yet I don’t have a billion dollars in the bank.
I think that will also be a principle we can teach people—that they too can not only have the mind of an investor, but they will also, in a small way, have opportunities to be the mind of a philanthropist. And to me, that’s when it becomes full circle. Because we are about alignment, thriving or human flourishing, and a new kind of prosperity. Part of that is the joy of what it feels like when I’ve given back, to whatever small degree. Help people learn to fish, teach them where to fish, and then show them how to help others learn the same.
There are days when I feel very humbled by this—for whatever reason, Peter listened to my husband and said, You should talk to my wife about where we go. I feel very humbled by the opportunity I’ve been given to be a part of this. I’m quite humbled by it. Some days, I shake in my boots, right? I think, “I pulled the wool over everybody’s eyes.” You know, sometimes we get that imposter feeling. There are days when we feel that.
Ben, I have dragged my feet to have this conversation because I’m not the person who enjoys talking about myself. When I do, I enjoy talking about what I’m passionate about, but I don’t really like to talk about me and my accomplishments. Now, my husband has no problem with that. He’s really good at it, but he does it in a way where you don’t think he’s being necessarily boastful. And maybe that’s because I love him—I could have some blinders on about that as well. I fully admit that.
He toots my horn way more publicly than I ever would myself. But, I do feel very confident bringing my strategic brain. I’m a mostly strategic person. Even though I’m good at the analytical side, I much more enjoy the strategy side, and I love building culture. So I think that gave me great experience, and I will love being a contributor to this mission of Veritas Chronicles and its commitment to “publishing good stories of good.”

