Meet Mike & Christy Hobbs

Christy First

I grew up in Salt Lake City, UT and lived a pretty traditional Utah life with being the youngest of 5 kids; 2 older sisters and 2 older brothers. My cousins (who had 8 kids) lived next door to us, and up one house was my dad’s mom and next to Grandma was her brother!

My mother’s parents lived only a 5 minutes drive away (though now with traffic, its 15). My life was probably how most people envision Utah’s. Couple of kids, Dad went to work and mom stayed home with us kids.

I took 4-H learning how to cook and sew (although not very well – my own fault) and thought I’d grow up to be just like mom.

I spent time having sleepovers, playing Ghost in the Graveyard, swinging from trees, floating down the canal in front of our house, riding my bike everywhere, and seeing how far we could launch ourselves from the massive swing-set my dad built. What kid could ask for more?!

I adjusted pretty well to the change. Riding the bus to school was a new adventure and I used to envy those who got to do it. After a few years of that, my tune changed. But we had the best bus driver ever so it wasn’t all bad.

High school was a great adventure as I got my license and began dating. My car had been driven by all of my older siblings until they bought their own and was legendary at the high school. Classmates called it “the big brown bomb.” It was a 1976 Buick LeSabre. While it was old and ugly brown, it was comfortable and the heater worked great… All year long! Lunch periods were the daily play time for my friends and I. Oh the great times we had.

After my sophomore year of high school, I was the only child left at home and my parents chose to relocate to my dad’s favorite place, St. George, UT. Our summertime highs reach 120 degrees and they say it’s one of the only places in Utah you can have ice on your car in the morning and need to use the A/C in the afternoon.

Through my junior year of high school, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with my life; the only thing I knew was I didn’t want to be average and ordinary and that I wanted to do something special with my life. My mom got her Bachelors degree from Brigham Young University and my dad attended Univeristy of Utah (large rivals).

Family was more of an afterthought that would just kind of happen. So after high school I attended Dixie State College and received an Associates of Science in Marketing.

I always joked that I would never get married until I had at least gotten my degree. It turned out to be true (to my surprise) because it wasn’t until 5 months after graduation, I was married.

Mike’s Story

Just like Christy, I was born in Salt Lake City, UT. However, that is where the similarities stop. Before I’d hit the age of two, my parents divorced; I lived with my mom, and moved to Reno, NV.

Not too long after that my mother remarried and gave me a little brother to play with. Along with him, I played with neighbors and was always causing some kind of trouble. While growing up, I considered myself to be quite the entrepreneur – I was constantly seeking new ways to make some extra money from selling baseball cards, yard sales, taking out peoples trash, handing out fliers for Dominos etc.

My mom was never quite able to figure out where I got the money nor did she believe my ambitious endeavors when I told her about them.

Times were not always fun and games in Reno though. My parents struggled with drugs and alcohol and there were many days we went without food and power. At different times we lived with my aunt who was in the same situation my parents were. At 15, I moved to St. George, UT to live with my dad and become closer to my grandparents who would pass away in the next few years.

During my sophomore and junior year of high school I played Varsity Football where we won the State Championship Junior year.

I slacked off though in school my junior year and ended up failing most my classes (which resulted in me not being able to play football my Senior year!

Saddened by that I got my grades back up my Senior year and was able to join the Varsity Track team and during a fierce track meet, won Silver on the 4×100 race.

At the end of my Senior Year of High School I considered myself to be at a crossroad. I hated school so college was not my immediate next thought. Not knowing which path to follow, along with my best friend, I decided to join the Army National Guard.

There was one little issue with this. I failed my 9th and 11th grade years in high school so I was RIDICULOUSLY behind!

I was part of the 2/222 Field Artillery in St. George Utah, I got out of the military after 12 years in May 2013 and was made Sergeant in June 2008. Even though I was very quiet in high school and didn’t date much, before I joined the military I had a serious girlfriend and about 7 months after coming home from basic training, my girlfriend were not on the best of terms and we found out she was pregnant… So we made a drastic quick decision to get married…

We didn’t have the greatest relationship & fought all the time about stupid things and even separated a few times. When my beautiful daughter Haylee was 18 months old, I was deployed to Iraq for 18 months. This was the icing on the cake and our divorce was finalized in May 2005 (while I was in Iraq).

During my deployment with everything happening back home, I read investment and real estate books and looked to the internet to find new ways of making money.

I wanted to be available whenever my daughter needed me when I got back. I spent all my free time searching and spent ov dollars trying things and getting ripped off.

I had already been breaking my back for 4 years prior to my deployment and a week after my return back to work, I knew my life had to be better than this!

I took my Real Estate knowledge and worked into being a Mortgage Officer. I returned to “mortgage school” and drove 4.5 hours one way to Salt Lake City twice a week to learn my new skill.

I was excited to begin… until the industry took a dump. Life’s newest crossroad had me thinking “What am I going to do now?”

I decided to go to college and because of my deployments, the military paid my tuition. After many semesters of me dropping out of classes, I finally threw in the college towel and “finished” with 15 out of 41 credits. How many times have you seen a GPA of 0.96?! Hahahaha.

One day one of my co workers at Wal-Mart invited me to a meeting for a network marketing company called Primerica. Now when I went to that meeting I knew this was the answer to my prayers. Finally I found a way to start a business from home.

I was so excited I went and told everyone I knew; my first recruit was my girlfriend Christy and we loved it! Little did I know network marketing the “old school” way was a bit harder than it’s advertised. I went on 20 appointments (going into people’s homes and showing them a presentation) and ended up helping a lot of families out but no one wanted part of the business.

Every time I would get someone to join with me they would quit in about a week. It was frustrating and my friends stopped answering their phones and I began to feel like I was an alien to them. Yes the products were amazing and I helped some families really turn their finances around, but the old school marketing methods were not working for me.

In April 2007 I finally started making an income online using affiliate programs and started getting into some investments as well. We used the money we earned in affiliate programs to fund the investments.

October was a pivotal month for us. That is the month Christy and I got married. We were ready to go on our Honeymoon but my work wouldn’t let me off for 1 week. They only wanted to give me 4 days. GEEZE!

So Christy and I both quit our full time jobs decided to focus on our main online business and other income streams. Christy did however continue to work part time as a substitute teacher while we got our business off the ground…

We started making a lot of money mid 2008 from some Investment Programs that we thought were legit and our life was AWESOME at the time.

Then we made a critical mistake. We were making so much money from those investment companies that we started to take out loans, and put Tons of our own money into them…

Then you guessed it! They stole our money! WOW…

We were 100k in debt, behind on our mortgage and depressed!

The start of 2009 was the lowest part of our life! We were borrowing money from our family to pay the mortgage, the church was helping us with our utility bills and food orders, and on top of everything else, it got so stressful that I developed Bells Palsy on the left side of my face (caused by stress).

We finally were backed into a corner and couldn’t even afford to file Bankruptcy!  We lost our home we lived in for years & to put the icing on the cake, we were expecting our first son in August. Life was less than awesome.

I had 2 choices at this point. I could give up and go back to a JOB and live paycheck to paycheck, or I could FOCUS on our REAL business and not chase the quick dollar like we did in 2008…

The best part about that income is it’s based on my team succeeding just as much as it is my own efforts!  So everything is paying off and our team is even seeing BIG results!  I love it!

It took much determination, training, and personal development to get our businesses to grow and we made a lot of big money mistakes learning.

We really had to have strong minds to resist the constant criticism our families gave us.

They didn’t agree when we quit our jobs and we were spending money like we had a cash printer in the basement.

They said it couldn’t be done but we had to show them different! We knew there were legitimate ways to make money online and we have finally found them.

We have now devoted our time and energy in helping others succeed as we have.