Travis enjoyed training fellow associates on leadership skills, commitment, and personal development. One of his favorite mantras was: “The greatest leader is the greatest servant.” By mentoring many of these new salespeople, Travis discovered his gift for motivation.
“As a mentor he was able to reach people and create growth and progress and personal development,” said Aaron Mortensen. “He wanted to help people to grow and teach people to be their best selves, in a very open and honest way about his own weaknesses.”
Hosting regular team meetings, Travis preached many of the philosophies he had learned from self-improvement books. He taught visualization, successful habits, and the power of positive thinking. Many of the associates he mentored also became close friends.
“Travis was a positive individual who was not simply a motivational speaker to me. He was a motivational friend,” said Aaron. “He found the good in people and situations. Spending time with him helped me want to be a better person.”
* * *
By 2004, Travis had money in the bank, which afforded him the luxury of designing his own life. With his newfound financial wealth, he bought new clothes, ate at nice restaurants, and traveled.
Travis always dressed the part of success, wearing flamboyant designer suits in bright colors. At Prepaid Legal conferences, he stood out in the crowd. Donning royal blue and pinstripe suits, he appeared bold, successful, and confident. Travis became known as the guy in the flashy suits.
After moving to Mesa, Travis also sold his broken-down Honda Civic and bought himself a blue BMW 3 Series. His “beemer,” as he called it, was his prized possession. While he spent lavishly on himself, Travis was also extremely generous with his money—he gave selflessly without asking for anything in return.
Throughout their friendship, Aaron Mortensen, a dentist with narrow brown eyes and a broad, flawless smile, spoke with Travis several times a week about girls, the future, or insignificant things like movie quotes. They regularly went on road trips, double dates, and out for dinners.
On one occasion Aaron invited Travis to meet up with him and a group of friends for a late-night meal at an Applebee’s restaurant. They all ordered food and milkshakes, and at the end of the night Travis excused himself to go to the bathroom. Aaron watched as Travis, instead of heading in the direction of the restroom, snuck around the bar and found the waiter.
“I knew that he was picking up the table’s tab. Eventually, the server came over and told us to have a good night. Everyone was surprised and assumed the restaurant had just comped us or something,” Aaron said. “I didn’t say a word. No one else saw him do it besides me. I didn’t expose his kind act to everyone else.”
Later Aaron sent a text to Travis to express his gratitude. At first Travis was disappointed that he had been caught—he truly wanted to keep it a secret. Then Travis, who always called Aaron “brother,” simply told him, “Pay it forward, Brother.”
“The natural man would say you can pay me back another day. Not him. Pay it forward means do something good for someone else. It speaks to Travis’s character that he used moments like this to teach those around him,” Aaron recalled. “He lifted people up and shared the lessons he’d learned.”
* * *
In his mid-twenties, Travis had a near-death experience.
One late night he was at a Mimi’s Cafe restaurant in San Bernardino, California, with a few friends when a man dressed all in black walked in brandishing a gun.
“Get the fuck on the ground,” the robber screamed, waving the pistol.
Many of the patrons dropped to their knees, cowering underneath the tabletops. Travis and one of his friends tried to duck under the table, but there was no room. They both bolted toward the other side of a partition. His friend made it to the other side of the room and sought cover.
But the gunman stopped Travis, forcing him to the ground. Nudging the butt of his gun into Travis’s temple, the robber demanded his wallet. Travis, however, didn’t have a wallet. He was carrying some cash, which he handed over, along with his cell phone.
When Travis didn’t hand over the wallet, the thief became enraged. “You have five seconds to distribute the wad,” the man screamed.
Travis’s thoughts raced.
This is how I’m going to die, he thought. He’s going to kill me. All he has to do is squeeze the trigger.
“I’m seeing myself, facedown in a puddle of blood,” Travis said in a 2006 recorded conversation. “I’m like, ‘This is death. This is death.’”
In his peripheral vision, he could see a woman under another table crying uncontrollably. Travis closed his eyes, considering his last moments on earth.
“They say that your life flashes before your eyes—well, I can’t say that—but it’s amazing how many thoughts go through your mind,” he said. “I thought hundreds and hundreds of different things in just a few seconds.”
Eventually, someone took out a wallet and slid it across the floor. The gunman followed the wallet, picked it up, and moved on to the next table. A few minutes later, the robber was gone.
Travis’s adrenaline was still pumping through his veins. That night he cheated death. The next time someone put a gun to his head, he would not be so lucky.
* * *
In 2004, the country was in the midst of a dramatic housing boom, which would ultimately change the landscape of Arizona. The Phoenix metro area led the charge with new home construction, transforming the vacant desert parcels and undeveloped farmland into instant master-planned communities. Uniformly designed tract homes cropped up seemingly overnight—the suburban sprawl stretching to the edge of the city limits.
For Travis, the housing boom came at the ideal time in his life. He was twenty-seven and ready to purchase his first home. On July 27, 2004, a few months after moving to Arizona, he put up a $10,000 down payment to build a new house in an east Mesa development known as Mountain Ranch. Half an hour’s drive away from downtown Mesa, the far-flung community sat along a vacant swath of desert.
Travis selected for his design a spacious two-story house at 11428 East Queensborough Avenue. The five-bedroom, three-bathroom home was built with a formal living room, dining room, recessed lighting, a loft, three-car garage, and a covered patio. The price: $259,834.
As Travis settled into his first home, he discovered he had a passion for decorating. His home became a symbol of his success.
“He had a specific goal on how he wanted to decorate the house and he truly made it happen, from colors he was going to paint the walls, to the theater room he wanted,” Deanna Reid recalled. “He was proud of his closet and took special measures to have it organized. It was important for him to be in style and looking good.”
Travis designed the home in dark shades—brown marbled tile floors, beige carpet, oak cabinets, and tan walls. It was decorated with a masculine touch, furnished with leather couches, dark wood tables, and stainless steel appliances.
He even purchased Martha Stewart and feng shui books to help him achieve his vision. As he was improving his property, he would often call his older brothers for advice on how to fix things, such as wiring in the ceiling fan.
The heart of his home was the loft. Strewn around the floor were oversize beanbag chairs known as LoveSacs. Black-and-white framed posters of celebrities from the 1950s covered the walls. In the center of the room was a theater-style projection TV, which he purchased to host regular Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) parties.
Travis didn’t like to spend much of his time watching television, joking it was “for the weak.” As a sports fan, however, he often invited his buddies over to watch basketball or football on the hundred-inch projection screen. Perhaps because of his wrestling background, Travis’s favorite sport was Mixed Martial Arts, which at the time was the fastest growing sport in America. Travis became famous for his UFC parties. Each week, cars would line the block as friends came by to watch the UFC matches on cable or pay-per-view.
With his
friends, Travis hosted regular gatherings to watch movies or play board games. For his business, Travis hosted training seminars and recruitment sessions for prospective salespeople. Throughout the time he lived in the house, he also rented out his spare bedrooms and had several different roommates.
Travis enjoyed owning a place where everyone could congregate. Friends so frequently came and went that Travis rarely even locked his doors.
“His house was always open. It didn’t matter if he had known you for years or if he had just met you,” Michelle Lowery recalled. “If you needed a place to sleep for the night, his door was open.”
For Travis’s friends, the house on East Queensborough Avenue would be the setting for many happy memories. It would also represent the site of a tragedy.
The house was where Travis lived. It was also where he would die.
CHAPTER 5
Sauntering across the stage, Travis Alexander gazed out into the crowd of hundreds. He was dressed in a loud three-piece suit, a small microphone attached to his colorful tie. Displayed on a large screen behind him was the phrase THE SYSTEM WORKS, alongside a picture of a blindfolded woman holding balanced scales—the symbol for justice.
“With this company, I went from three jobs to no jobs,” Travis said, his voice oozing confidence. “I went from a three-hour commute to a three-foot commute. I went from a broken-down Honda Civic to a BMW. I went from bumming a couch off a buddy to owning a four-thousand-square-foot home.”
Travis paused.
“It sounds like I’m bragging.” He smirked. “There’s a reason for that—I’m bragging.”
The crowd erupted into laughter.
“Not bragging to impress,” Travis said quickly, “but impress upon you that you can do it as well.”
The audience cheered, bursting into a chorus of applause. The smirk on Travis’s face spread into a wide, unabashed grin.
It was 2008, and Travis was speaking at a Prepaid Legal seminar. By the age of twenty-seven, he was a true success story. He had about thirteen hundred people in his organization, earning him the title of Gold Executive Director.
Along the way his gift for public speaking had become recognized by the executives, and Travis became a regular motivational speaker at Prepaid Legal seminars around the country.
On stage, at the center of attention, Travis was completely at ease, completely in his element. Using his own background as a motivational tool, he preached “limitless thinking” and encouraged others to strive to achieve their ultimate potential. He spoke of God’s plan and finding one’s purpose in life.
In his speeches, Travis was earnest and self-deprecating, his enthusiasm infectious.
“He was an excellent speaker,” Chris Hughes recalled. “He brought a spiritual flair to his speaking. He would talk about his relationship with God. People just really connected with him.”
As a public speaker, Travis had a gift for inspiring. He never used his background as an excuse or to gain pity. Instead, he encouraged others not to allow setbacks to stymie their dreams.
Dave Hall was an executive with Prepaid Legal who first met Travis shortly after he joined the company. Husky with round cheeks and short thinning hair, Dave believed Travis’s troubled childhood was one of the things that made him such a dynamic speaker.
“He took the audience on an emotional roller coaster,” Dave said. “When he would speak, he could literally take people from laughing their heads off with sarcasm and innuendos to crying, in the matter of minutes.”
On stage, in moments of bleak honesty, Travis spoke about working three jobs and being tens of thousands of dollars in debt.
“Before I got started I wasn’t doing so well, to be honest with you,” Travis said in a 2005 speech. “I just wasn’t going what I thought was the right direction.”
It wasn’t God’s plan for anyone to toil away their life, barely making a living wage, Travis would say. No one should confine themselves to that lot in life. Using stories from the Bible, Travis compared today’s nine-to-five workforce to the children of Israel, the Hebrew-speaking slaves of the Pharaoh of Egypt, who were led by Moses to the promised land.
“The children of Israel worked all day. They were told when they could use the restroom, when they could go home. And when they got to go home, the next day they had to come back and do the same thing again,” Travis said. “Does that sound like anyone you know?”
Many in the audience chuckled, nodding in agreement.
Travis also sold the concept of legal insurance by sharing his personal experiences.
After being fired from his job at the mall, Travis’s former boss refused to provide his final paycheck. After three months of battling over the phone, Travis called an attorney that specialized in labor law in the Prepaid Legal plan.
“Two days later I got the check,” he said. “Attached to it was a one-word note that said, ‘Sorry.’”
On another occasion, Travis discovered he was being fined $515 for a conviction for robbery, contempt of court, and assault and battery that he had not committed. When he called the department of corrections to learn the origin of these charges, he learned that a man using his identity had just served time in jail. Travis’s identity had been stolen.
Later, Travis would learn the perpetrator was his own brother Greg, who was on drugs when he committed the offense and chose to use his brother’s identity. Travis called his Prepaid Legal attorney and his record was eventually expunged.
“This is a viable product everyone needs and no one has,” Travis said in his speeches. “There’s not a lot of selling to do. It sells itself. That’s why we make so much darn money. That’s why this business is easy. You’ll never, ever, ever find an opportunity where someone with no money can make a lot of money so easily.”
Not everyone involved with Prepaid Legal—which was later renamed to LegalShield—made a fortune. But in 2005, Travis honestly believed in what he was selling. He was truly passionate about the product and felt he was helping people by protecting them from a legal disaster.
“We’re changing society for the better,” Travis told audiences. “We’re not only making a living, we’re making a difference. It’s one thing to make a living; it’s another to be able to sleep at night.”
* * *
Working as a motivational speaker for Prepaid Legal, Travis spoke at conferences in California and New York, as well as exotic locations such as Hawaii and the Bahamas.
Chris Hughes and his wife, Sky, also attended many of these trips. Sky was pretty and petite, with bright blue eyes and long brown hair. The couple had married in 2005, and later had three children: two boys and a girl.
Both Chris and Sky took Travis under their wing and the three became great friends. Sky was like a big sister and throughout their friendship would often play a supporting role in Travis’s search for love—talking up his good traits as he courted potential partners.
When Travis wasn’t traveling, he conducted the majority of his business in his downstairs den. He spent most weekdays in the office making sales calls.
At night he typically went to church gatherings and social events. When he returned home, he regularly worked until the early-morning hours—sending e-mails and creating business proposals. Whenever he became excited about a new project or endeavor, Travis was unable to sleep. His friends became accustomed to waking up each morning with late-night e-mails from Travis in their inboxes.
* * *
By early 2006, Travis’s business was practically running itself. The first week of the month, he trained and motivated his team. For the rest of the month, he made sales calls a few hours a week and raked in the commissions from the sales his associates closed.
In an e-mail to a friend he explained how his business had evolved, freeing up much of his spare time. Travis realized he could work to grow his Prepaid Legal business, but by this time he was more interested in expanding his horizons.
“PPL is very automatic these days,” he wrote. �
�Now I could work harder if I want to, but I have a problem with doing the same thing every day all day. I don’t want to get burned out on something I love so much.”
After five years of selling, he was ready to explore other entrepreneurial endeavors. He didn’t want Prepaid Legal to be his legacy. He told several friends that when he died he feared his gravestone would read, “Travis Alexander, Prepaid Legal.”
“Something else to spin my wheels on will be good for my business I think,” he wrote. “I need to do about two hours of Prepaid a day. Then I have my personal development to take care of. And the rest of the time I have free to do what I want.”
Throughout the years Travis had recruited several of his peers and friends into his business. One of these men was Taylor Searle, whom Travis met in the fall of 2004 through Prepaid Legal.
Although he was six years younger than Travis, Taylor possessed a similar entrepreneurial spirit. Tall and lean with light brown hair, Taylor was attending Arizona State University to study accounting while working part-time for Prepaid Legal.
One day in 2006, as they were discussing business, Taylor shared an idea he had first developed in high school. Back then belly shirts and skimpy skirts were fashionable among his female classmates. As a Mormon, Taylor was instilled with a sense that women should dress conservatively and he wanted to create a clothing line to promote modesty among women, to be called CAFGSS, an altered acronym for the Coalition Against the Flagrant Flaunting of Flesh.
“Our mission is simple: We want people to start wearing clothes again,” Taylor had posted on the company’s Facebook page. “Many of us are fed up with this blatant showing of skin. Now it’s time we band together.”
The motto for the clothing line: “More than a shirt, it’s a quest!”
Immediately, Travis took to the cheeky idea. He was also excited about the prospect of building a business with his close friend. Out of all of his associates, he felt Taylor was as much as a visionary as he was.
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