For years, after returning from his mission, Travis began each day by writing the ending—creating a list of tasks he hoped to accomplish. On a three-by-five index card, he would write down six things he found essential to achieve, along with other things he needed to do.
In his writing, Travis often referenced his aspirations and methods to staying focused.
“Some of my days I create the day with ultimate productivity in mind. Others I am looking for a lesson to be learned or to have a life experience,” Travis wrote. “Sometimes the goal is to do some service or philanthropy, but always when all is said and done, you tend to get what you focus on. It is as simple as that. Write down what you want life to bring you today, and chances are life will bring it to you on a silver platter.”
As time passed Travis made a habit of accomplishing his six achievements each day, after which he would add a seventh and then an eighth, and so on. Eventually, he had dozens of daily goals on his list.
“Once I fill out my three-by-five card, I take a moment and look at it. I ask myself, ‘If this was all to get done would it be an amazing day?’” he wrote. “Sometimes the answer is ‘yes,’ sometimes ‘no.’ However, I never start the day until I can say that this is going to be a day for the ages. Once that is done, I am jacked out of my mind and I get to work. I have increased my productivity more than five times what it used to be and I have mastered certain aspects of my life that I would have never done if I didn’t keep myself conscious to do it.”
An example of Travis’s daily list would include activities like praying, reading scriptures, listening to thirty minutes of motivational recordings, working out, writing in his journal, affirmation, and visualization.
“Now that is a full day, with getting things done in mind,” he wrote. “Granted it’s not creating oceans and countless animals but based on the same principles that our Father in heaven followed, I am able to create my own amazing days. May you live all the days of your life, we have a limited supply of them and the clock is ticking.”
* * *
Despite his enormous drive to succeed, in his early twenties Travis struggled as he began carving out his professional path in life.
In 1998, after returning from his mission, he moved to Provo, Utah, and enrolled in college. He quickly learned, however, that while he loved learning, college was not for him. After a few classes he dropped out and moved back to Riverside, where he rented an apartment with three single male roommates, and purchased an older-model Honda Civic.
For the next couple of years he worked a variety of menial jobs, including telemarketing, retail sales, and a stint as a “substance abuse professional,” testing urine for drug and alcohol use. For a few years he also worked as an insurance agent for Allstate, an auto insurance agency.
During this period Travis often faced financial hardships, but he never lost his unshakable belief in himself, said his best friend, Deanna Reid.
“Since I first met Travis I always saw something special in him—at a time even when not many people might have,” recalled Deanna. “At the time others might have just seen him as a young punk kid, living in a house with a bunch of other guys in Riverside, California, driving around in his beat-up Honda Civic, telling everyone that he was going to be rich and he was going to change the world.”
Deanna, a fellow Mormon, lived with three other female roommates in an apartment complex across the street from Travis. Eventually the four men and four women became close friends. A curvaceous brunette with wide brown eyes and wavy brown hair, Deanna dated Travis on and off for the next five years. When they stopped dating, they remained the best of friends.
Upbeat and outgoing, Travis made dozens of close friends through the Mormon church in Riverside. There, he was a member of the Riverside Singles Ward, a congregation dedicated solely to young single Mormons from the ages of eighteen to thirty.
Singles wards are established in areas with high populations of unmarried Mormons, providing young people a chance to serve in offices in church. The wards also facilitate opportunities for LDS members to meet other singles.
“He loved to be social and date and made special efforts to be friends with everyone,” Deanna recalled. “He also continued as a missionary and strived to find those who were searching for something more so that he could share his knowledge of the gospel with them.”
Early in their friendship, Deanna discovered Travis’s passion for his faith. One evening Travis was speaking with one of Deanna’s roommates, who played on the women’s volleyball team for California State University. The roommate was the only Mormon on the volleyball team, a detail that piqued Travis’s interest.
“He busted out a piece of paper and a pencil and he said, ‘Now let’s write down the names of all those friends and let’s set a date for when you’re going to share the gospel with them,’” Deanna recalled. “The rest of my roommates and I just looked at each other and we thought it was cute because he was a newly returned missionary and that’s what newly returned missionaries do. But Travis never changed. He was always like that.”
* * *
By the age of twenty-three, Travis held three jobs, working eighty hours a week. His best job was in retail sales at the local mall, which paid just $9 an hour. Travis’s commute was up to three hours a day, as he drove from job to job in his Honda, which frequently broke down.
With little income, and growing expenses, Travis was also deeply in debt. By 2000, he owed about $20,000 to various credit cards, and was at his credit limit, unable to secure additional credit cards. At one point, after being unable to afford rent, he found himself sleeping on a friend’s couch. It was the lowest point in his adult life. Years later he commented on that period in a 2005 motivational speech.
“I didn’t know what I was going to do,” Travis said. “I was not very excited about where I was going. I didn’t know what I was going to do to get out of that mess.”
As he searched for his career path, Travis spent a lot of time at church and in the temple. In the LDS faith Mormon churches are considered public places where members and visitors meet for weekly worship services to pray and study scripture. The temples are reserved for special forms of worship and are dedicated to be the House of the Lord. Considered by Latter-day Saints to be the most sacred structures on earth, only members who are living by the standards of the church are permitted to enter.
The primary purpose of the temple is to conduct the sacred ordinances LDS members need for an eternal life. Additionally, the temple is thought to be a place to commune with God and receive personal revelations.
The nearest temple to Riverside was about an hour’s drive away in Los Angeles. The Los Angeles California Temple, on Santa Monica Boulevard in the Westward District, was then the second largest LDS temple in the country.
Each week Travis and Deanna, who was preparing to serve her own mission in Costa Rica, made the trek from Riverside to Los Angeles.
During this time, Travis often reflected on his purpose in life. He felt it wasn’t God’s plan to work as many hours as possible to simply survive. He truly believed he was capable of doing something more meaningful.
“He worked many different jobs in search for a career,” Deanna recalled. “None of them seemed to be working out so he prayed that he would find something.”
Soon, Travis’s prayers were answered. At a church function in the fall of 2001, he met a man named Chris Hughes, who would play a prominent role in transforming his life.
With a kind, round face and light blue eyes, Chris was a successful executive and personal development lecturer, and a Sunday school teacher.
One day in 2001, Chris was teaching a class Travis was attending. As part of his lecture on parenting and family values, he read an essay entitled “Father Forgets,” by Dr. W. Livingston Larned.
The story began with a father standing by his son’s bed as he sleeps, feeling remorse for scolding his son.
“What has habit been doing to me? The habit of
finding fault, of reprimanding—this was my reward to you for being a boy. It was not that I did not love you; it was that I expected too much of youth. I was measuring you by the yardstick of my own years.
“Nothing else matters tonight, son. I have come to your bedside in the darkness, and I have knelt there, ashamed. It is a feeble atonement; I know you would not understand these things if I told them to you during your waking hours. But tomorrow I will be a real daddy.”
Immediately, Travis recognized the essay. It had been republished in one of his favorite personal development books, the bestseller How to Win Friends and Influence People, by famed motivational writer Dale Carnegie.
After class Travis approached Chris. At the time they were merely acquaintances and had never really spoken. As they discussed the book, both men discovered their shared interest in personal development and self-improvement.
Little did Travis know at the time that while he had been praying for a career path, Chris too had asked God to bring him a leader to help grow his business. Both men would come to believe that God had destined them to meet.
The conversation turned to Chris’s career. Travis knew Chris was financially successful, but was unsure how he made his money. For some reason, that day Travis felt compelled to ask.
“Have you heard of Chippendales?” Chris said with a smirk.
They both laughed. Chris then explained he was one of the top executives with a company that sold legal insurance. Prepaid Legal Services, Chris told him, had been in business for more than three decades and provided legal services to more than 1.5 million across the United States and Canada.
The legal insurance plans were sold through independent contractors, utilizing multilevel marketing, also known as network marketing. Part of the Prepaid Legal business model involved recruiting new salespeople. The associates earned a commission off each sale, as well as a percentage of the contracts each person they recruited sold.
In 2001, Prepaid Legal was a growing company with promising earning potential. New recruits could make a few hundred dollars or hundreds of thousands of dollars, depending on how much they sold and how many associates they recruited to their organization.
Chris extended an invitation to Travis to attend a Prepaid Legal seminar to learn more about the company. Soon after, Travis attended the business briefing, at which several executives gave inspirational presentations about how the company had made them rich.
For a motivated individual like Travis, the presentation was life-changing. In September 2001, he scrimped together the $249 application fee and was soon working as a Prepaid Legal associate under Chris Hughes.
His first day, Travis started making phone calls and immediately closed three deals. Soon after, Travis was making more money than he had ever made in his entire life. Simply by selling Prepaid Legal plans he was earning about eight times what he made working eighty hours a week at three jobs.
Within weeks Travis quit two of those jobs, but for a while he maintained his position working part-time at the mall. One day before his shift in late 2001, Travis spent the morning making sales calls for Prepaid Legal. That day he was on a streak, going three for three—making three calls and closing each deal. His commission that morning: about $400 for thirty minutes of work.
Later, as he walked through the mall toward his job, Travis felt empowered. He was on a precipice—his dream of independent wealth was nearer than ever.
By the time he made it to work, Travis’s outlook had shifted. Strolling casually into the store, he didn’t even realize he was late. His employer, however, did notice.
“You’re three minutes late,” his boss told him.
“Yeah, well guess what? I’m going to be ten minutes late tomorrow!” Travis shot back. “You need to get used to this.”
Travis was fired on the spot for insubordination. But he didn’t care. He had developed a new attitude.
CHAPTER 4
At the age of twenty-four, Travis was ready to reinvent himself. He had always been extraordinarily driven and goal-oriented. With Prepaid Legal, he now believed he had the vehicle to succeed.
Training with Chris Hughes, Travis developed his sales skills. Very early on, Chris saw something in Travis. He could tell the young man had the personality and positive perspective necessary to flourish in network marketing. The two men shared a mutual respect that developed into a great friendship.
“Travis was so disciplined, such a great guy, just larger than life. He was charming, hilarious, and super-outgoing. He had a huge heart and he loved helping people,” Chris said. “There never was and there never will be another quite like him. He is the most unique person I have ever known.”
Through Chris, Travis discovered how to utilize the Prepaid Legal business model in a way that would maximize his earning potential. The company provided compensation on an escalating scale. The more an associate sold, the more they made per sale. In early 2000, Prepaid Legal plans cost $300 to $500 a year. For each plan sold, the sales associate received $103. After three sales, that commission was raised to $138.
While a salesperson with Prepaid Legal could earn money simply by selling legal plans, only a small percentage made a substantial living. Those who recruited and managed a team of associates rose through the ranks of the company and earned significantly more money.
For the next few years Travis sold legal plans and worked to develop a team of associates. Each week he spent about twenty hours making calls, selling an average of five plans a week. He sold legal insurance to friends, family, neighbors, local business owners, and even strangers.
At one point he sold a legal plan to Barney the Purple Dinosaur—or at least the actor inside the costume.
“I didn’t believe it at first, but he verified it. He showed me pictures of him getting in and out of the costume and him on the set,” Travis said in a 2005 speech. “He autographed a picture and I gave it to my nephew.”
When selling Prepaid Legal Travis would often use that story to say, “Now if a purple dinosaur needs legal insurance, do you think you might need it?”
As he worked to build a team of associates, however, Travis faced some obstacles. The Southern California area was relatively oversaturated with Prepaid Legal sales representatives. To climb to the next level in his business, he felt he needed an untapped market—a place where the Prepaid Legal concept would seem new and exciting. Travis decided to relocate.
In choosing a new city, it was important to him to find an area with a large Mormon community. Eventually he settled on Mesa, a suburb east of Phoenix, Arizona.
Mesa was founded in the 1870s when Brigham Young, the leader of the LDS church at the time, sent a group of Mormons to Arizona to colonize the region. More settlements followed, homes were erected, schools were built, and canals were widened to subsidize the farming community.
In addition to a growing Mormon population, Mesa was home to one of the country’s oldest and largest LDS Temples, the Mesa Arizona Temple.
In 2004, Travis packed his belongings and headed toward Mesa to establish his new life. Soon after relocating, Travis became active in the local LDS community, joining the Desert Ridge Young Single Adult Ward.
Each week the ward hosted several social functions, in which Travis quickly became a regular. In addition to Sunday school classes, the ward organized weekly church get-togethers designed for members to socialize and study scripture.
On Mondays the ward held an activity night called Family Home Evenings. For families, FHE is one night a week designated for study, prayer, or any other fun, wholesome activity. In the church singles ward, FHE was held as a group get-together at a member’s house or venue. In addition to FHE, ward members also regularly gathered for camping trips or picnics, to play sports, or engage in any number of social activities.
His first few years in Mesa, Travis met a lot of new people through the church, many of whom would become loyal, lifetime friends.
Michelle Lowery first met Travis through the
single ward’s campout. He approached her and before saying hello, or even his name, he blurted out, “You look like you’re thirteen.”
Michelle laughed. Indeed she was small in stature and had a youthful face framed with long, chocolate brown hair. However, she was actually eighteen at the time. Despite their eleven-year age difference, Travis and Michelle became close friends. Travis became like an older brother to Michelle; she, in turn became his close confidant.
In the singles ward, Travis was quite popular. Earnest and upbeat, he made a strong first impression. He had a way of greeting people so that they felt they were the most important person in the world, as if he had been waiting all day to speak with them, Michelle recalled.
“Travis had many great qualities. One in particular was that he was never shy,” Michelle recalled. “He was in his element standing in front of hundreds of people. If he had something to say—a joke, his testimony, a compliment to someone, he would share it. If he was feeling any emotion—love, excitement, passion, tenderness, he couldn’t help but show it.”
Travis was also extraordinarily giving of himself and his time. Whenever a volunteer was needed at church, Travis would raise his hand. Every Sunday, without exception, he would collect the trash from the bins throughout the church building and take them outside to the Dumpster.
“Travis was a beautiful example of service. He was always serving others and thinking of others,” Michelle recalled. “If you needed someone to talk to, he would sit with you for hours. If you were sick, he was over in a second, and he was never empty-handed.”
As his social network grew, so did Travis’s business. Networking through the church, he recruited many fellow LDS members to take part in the company. Some simply purchased a legal plan; others came to work as Prepaid Legal associates under Travis. Although some of his associates only sold one or two plans, a handful sold up to seventy-five a month. With a large and growing sales team, Travis quickly rose through the ranks of the company. By 2004, Travis had mastered his sales pitch and the contracts came easily. As a salesman, he was ranked second out of a team of five thousand.
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