Keynotes, breakouts, CLE sessions, company all-hands, and podcasts. For law firm owners, legal industry events, and founder communities.
Stories from a business I still run, not a framework I read about. I’ve built and broken companies in one of the most regulated industries in America, and today I help run a law firm. Every talk comes from that chair.
Audiences leave with one or two things they can try on Monday, and a harder question they’ll keep thinking about on the drive home.
“The proof comes afterward, when people crowd around him to keep the conversation going.”
Kylie Fahey, Director of Marketing, Case Status
“It was practical, memorable, and something I’ll take back to my leadership team immediately.”
Krystal Vargha, President, J1 Management (Poulin | Willey Trial Lawyers)
Each talk runs as a keynote or a working session, in person or remote. Law and bar audiences can ask about CLE.
Every firm runs two machines. The Hard Machine is everything you can document: intake, systems, KPIs. The Soft Machine is whether your people feel safe enough to tell you the truth. Most firms only build one, and the owner quietly becomes the missing piece.
Your people leave with one test they can run Monday: if you left for thirty days, what would actually stop?
Culture isn’t the values on the wall. It’s the residue of what people experience every week. This session shows leaders how to read the culture they actually have, and how to stop fighting the same fires.
Built for client-experience and operations audiences in law firms.
Founders are told to move faster, hire sooner, and scale harder. I did all three, and it cost me companies. The order that works is self, then customer, then the machine, then the team. The team comes last in the order, never in importance.
For founder communities, firm leadership retreats, and book events from April 2027.
Most leaders can’t say what they uniquely bring, so they end up in roles that fight who they are. This talk helps a room name its founder’s gift and put people where their gift actually works.
Strong for leadership teams and peer groups.
The decisions founders avoid usually sit behind a feeling they won’t name. A candid talk about loss, self-honesty, and why the business gets clearer when the leader does.
Best for founder communities, masterminds, and executive retreats.
“Are you the machine?” MaxLawCon 2026.
“You don’t just hear Travis; you feel what he believes, and you leave wanting to be better.”
Jay Burchfield, Vice President, Partnerships, Case Status
“What Travis knows should not stay inside one firm. Give him the stage. He will earn it.”
Paul Bamert, Chief Marketing Officer, Case Status
“If you are evaluating whether he has learned accountability, our honest answer is that he has been teaching it to the rest of us.”
I have gotten to know Travis Howard the way you get to know most people worth knowing, casually and over time, with no agenda on either side. What I found is one of the most naturally gifted leaders I have come across in this industry. It shows up in his community, in his family, and in his firm.
Travis is deeply grounded in what makes people tick. I have called him a closet psychologist, and I mean it as the compliment it is. He understands how people think, what actually motivates them, what turns a group of employees into a culture, and what makes a person reach past what they believed they were capable of. That is rare in any industry. It is rarer still in law.
I got my first real glimpse of it at PILMMA in San Antonio. Travis was not on the program. He was standing off to the side with a few members of my team, just talking. Every one of them walked away quoting him. Not paraphrasing, quoting. They were genuinely inspired by a conversation he was not being paid to have.
In March he joined our CX Mastermind, a small peer think tank where firm leaders work through hard problems together. Travis laid out his core philosophy, respectfully disagreed with people in the room, and stayed open enough to take something from every person there. By the end of the day he had done more teaching than most of the people who were scheduled to teach.
That led us to invite him to our company’s Summer Sessions, where we put a customer in front of our staff and let them ask the hard questions. Travis did it remotely, which should have been a handicap. Instead he held a room of thirty to forty people who were not even in the same state. His answers were organized and built toward a single point, which is exactly what you want from a speaker and exactly what most people cannot do on their feet.
So we gave him a stage at CX Summit in Charleston this September. His session, “Gift Givers and Firefighters: Why Culture Is the Outcome, Not the Recipe,” did precisely what he promised. He commanded the room, went deep on culture and people, and sent the audience home with something they could use on Monday.
Here is my honest view. What Travis knows should not stay inside one firm. Our industry exists to help people who never expected to need a lawyer, and it gets better when leaders like him teach other leaders how to build firms worth trusting. Give him the stage. He will earn it.
Paul Bamert, Chief Marketing Officer, Case Status
Travis Lee Howard is an operator, speaker, and the author of Your Team Comes Last (Advantage Media, April 2027). He has founded or co-founded thirteen companies, and today he is a partner and the COO of CGH Injury Lawyers, a plaintiff firm in Colorado. He speaks to law firm owners and founders about building a business in the right order: self, customer, machine, then team.
Travis Lee Howard has built thirteen companies, and he’ll tell you he broke a few of them himself. Today he helps run a law firm that grew four times over in three years. He’s here to talk about why that happened, and why it almost didn’t. Please welcome Travis Lee Howard.
Tell me about the room. I reply personally, usually within two business days.
Prefer email? travis@mindful.biz
Thanks. I’ll reply personally, usually within two business days.