Getting to Know a Single Father of Three, Owner of Dixon Financial and Insurance Services

Anyone who knows Donny Everhart knows that he’s a family man, dedicated to raising his three sons – Ryan, 19, Tyler, 16, and Cameron, 5.

And while Donny is not spending time with his boys, he helps over 200 of his clients with their insurance and tax needs over at While his eldest son, Ryan, works alongside his father as the business’ office manager, Donny sets Dixonites up with a variety of personal and commercial insurance policies including home, auto, motorcycle, RV or boat insurance, as well as commercial insurance for business owners.

“About the only thing that I don’t do is health insurance, it changes too much ,too fast,” Everhart said. “I do more insurance than anything. I’m also a tax preparer, which is a big part of my business.”

Everhart opened Dixon Financial & Insurance Services after working for several years at Essex National Securities, both as a stockbroker and an operations department manager. But when Everhart lost his job, it was time for a change.

“I opened my business about three and a half years ago, but I’ve been in the field for over 20 years,” Everhart said. “In September of 2008, I got laid off. Since there was another $150,000 (job hunters), I knew getting another job wasn’t going to happen, so I decided to use my expertise to do financial planning for the citizens of Dixon.”

Aside from the insurance and tax preparation work, Everhart does financial planning for his clients, everything from helping them to make a retirement plan, a budget, save for college and many other needs.

Everhart’s clientele comes from all walks of life, mostly people that have been referred to him, he said.

“Ninety percent it is just referral business, people who have bought a home or have had another change in their life,” he said. “A lot of times people are just dissatisfied with their current carrier. I credit a lot of my success to the times in that there are a lot of people looking to reduce costs. And so people are shopping around for insurance and that’s one of the advantages that I have as an agent, is that I can shop around to multiple carriers I am no just tied to one carrier.”

Everhart is technically his own boss he said, but he treats his clients as his bosses. For example, Donny’s is readily available for them through the week and over the weekend.

Everhart, who is a native of Fairfield and has been living in Dixon for the past 10 years, is a familiar face in Dixon’s business community both as a Dixon Chamber of Commerce board member and a member of the Downtown Dixon Business Association. He is also a Dixon Little League coach who has coached little league for 10 years in Dixon, most recently with the Sea Dogs T-Ball team.

"Of all of my off-season things coaching baseball is my absolute favorite,” Everhart said. “ I love kids I really enjoy working with the kids. I’ve been doing it a long time so I have a lot of experience and it’s so rewarding to watch them, especially at T-Ball.”

10 Questions with Donny Everhart:

What do you like most about your job?

“Dealing with the people. You are constantly meeting new people and it’s very, very rewarding to know when you have done a good job for them. You meet the greatest people in this type of job.”

Did you see yourself doing this type of work as a youngster?

“Like any kid I think I changed my career choice annually, at one time I wanted to be a firefighter, another time I wanted to be a soldier, which I did. I spent three years in the United States Army, in the Calvary, I spent time in Europe and in the Middle East, but that was mostly to get my college fund. No, I wouldn’t say I really saw myself in my career, but I will say this, no matter what game we would play I always had to be the banker. I was the Monopoly banker, yeah I used to play a lot of Monopoly growing up.”

Why did you choose Dixon to open up your business?

“Well I live in Dixon so it’s a huge improvement on my commute. I am very familiar with Dixon. They have plenty of insurance agents … but nobody that could really bring the whole package. I wanted to be more involved the community and give more back to my community and what better to do it than as a business owner. It gives you a lot of pride being active in the community.”

What would you do as a profession if you could do anything?

“I have to think I’m doing it. I like what I do, I like meeting new people I like being self-employed and most important, I have time for my family. I get to walk my son to school every morning. I get to go and pick him up every day. I’ve been able to coach all my kids in little league.”

Who is your role model?

“My father because he was a family man. He was a great dad. He was always there for his kids. He loved his kids like nothing else in the world. When I was in band growing up, he never missed a performance. He was a Boys Scouts leader when I was in Boy Scouts. I was kind of his shadow. He taught me a lot about woodworking and automotive, things that dad’s teach their boys and stuff.”

If you could have dinner with any celebrity or historical person (living or deceased) who would it be?

“Sandra Bullock, because she is just the cutest person. She’s a great, great actress. She is a very attractive lady, seems to be a very classy lady. I think the favorite movie I ever saw her in was ‘While You Were Sleeping.’”

What are your hobbies?

“I live for wakeboarding. I love to go wakeboarding. I go almost every weekend during the summer. I didn’t make it last weekend because of Relay For Life. I went the weekend before that.”

What is the most challenging aspect of your job?

“Probably just getting everything done. We’ve grown exponentially since I’ve first opened my doors, that’s why I hired an office manager to help me take care of all the follow-up and al the details and things like that. Just keeping up with the workload.”

What are your hidden talents?

“I love to dance. Not so much at clubs, but I do enjoy dancing.”

What is your favorite genre of music?

“Classic rock, and when by classic I mean back in the 80’s, the good old days of Styx, Foreigner, Def Leppard.”

**Bonus Question**

What will you be doing for Father’s Day?

“Saturday, my older boys and I we, every year since my father passed away I have a tribute to him. One of the things my dad really enjoyed watching were the old war movies, World War II and stuff like that. John Wayne was his favorite actor. So we are probably going to watch some John Wayne movies – “Patton,” “Kelly’s Heroes,” some of the classics. So with my older boys I will do that and then on Sunday I will pick up my young son because he spends weekends with his mom and we are going to go boating.”

Dixon Financial and Insurance Services is located at 100 North Adams Street,  Dixon, CA 95620. Donny can be reached at (707) 678-4600.

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Editor's note: If you are a business owner and you would like to be featured in this column, please e-mail or call the editor at carlos.villatoro@patch.com or (707) 718-8160.