What is My Greatest Achievement

While searching for an interesting topic for tonight's blog, I came across a great question from Plinky.com. Tonight I am going to answer the question, what's your greatest achievement? How many of us can actually answer that question? There are so many small achievements to be proud of, but to find one that you would classify your 'greatest", well that takes some serious thought.My greatest achievement to date is having started Hawgwash, LLC and kept it running successfully for over 4 years. We have beaten the odds for new start-up companies so far. This January Hawgwash, LLC will be 5 years old. This is a huge achievement, especially since we have had a declining economy for most of those 5 years. (no the decline in the economy is not because we started Hawgwash, LLC)

I had been a corporate person for the majority of my adult life, working my way up from general sales, into accounting and finance. It had been tough, slowly climbing from rung to rung, long hours, minimal pay increases, but with time I succeeded in the corporate world. The difference was that I was still working for someone else, helping them to get rich. Four and a half years ago, with help from Steve, I left the corporate world to start Hawgwash, LLC.


We now travel around the country, from various shows (Motorcycle Rallies, Car rallies, RV Rallies) meeting the neatest people and promoting our products ad services. When we first started Hawgwash, LLC, we had a pretty basic business plan and a limited product offering. We were the Waterless Cleaning people. We would detail cars, trucks, motorcycles, boats and RV. Basically any vehicle you had, if it had decent paint on it, we would clean it for you.


As the economy started changing, we started adjusting our marketing strategy and expanding our product line. Our initial products went from the waterless cleaning items, to towels and additional cleaning supplies. At the suggestion of a good vendor friend of ours, we began carrying other items not specifically related to waterless cleaning techonolgy. This way, if we were in an area where they could care less about keeping the paint of their vehicle clean, we had other product offerings to entice customers.


We continued experimenting with other product offerings and removed products that did not produce solid results. As time goes on, we will continue to expand our products and services, always on the lookout to provide the best of the best for our customers. This philosophy has served us well over the years and we will continue to review products and services to be sure we are providing the best value for our customers


Because of our constant search, we have changed our goal of Hawgwash, LLC. We are not just the waterless people anymore, but are now Second Income Specialists. We offer several small business opportunities for people looking for a second or additional income stream. We have business offerings in the legal, nutritional and waterless technology fields. We are always open for questions and are more than willing to help guide people to find an opportunity that best suits their needs, even if it is an opportunity that we do not work with.

If you are interested in what we have to offer, or have questions, please check out our website at www.hawgwash.net or feel free to e-mail us. We welcome your comments and suggestions. As you can see, after almost 5 years, I am still very proud of this business of ours, Hawgwash, LLC. I consider it my greatest achievement to date.


Until tomorrow...

Pre-Paid Legal and Hawgwash

Today we are going to briefly cover another type of business opportunity offered by Hawgwash, LLC. Along with the STEMTech Stem Cell nutritional line we also offer a Pre-Paid Legal business opportunity. As we have discussed in prior posts, our original core business was in Waterless Wash Technology. We did not initially look for other business opportunities immediately, but as our waterless wash business grew, we knew that we needed occasional legal advice. At one of the rallies we attended, we met some people promoting Pre-Paid Legal and the business opportunity associated with it.

Since we were looking for legal advice on some business issues, we started talking to these people about what Pre-Paid Legal had to offer small businesses and how it could help us. What Pre-Paid Legal offers, is low-cost legal assistance to members. Pre-Paid Legal provides professional legal counsel for everyday events such as purchasing a car or house, creating a will, handling problems with insurance companies, and dealing with identity theft, to name a few. There are a wide number of issues that can easily be handled by the Pre-Paid Legal plan, and for those legal issues that require more in-depth work, they offer significantly discounted legal services. For our needs, access to legal advice was only a phone call away.

We really liked the concept of having access to legal advice with a phone call. How many times have you wanted to ask a legal question, but was faced with a lawyer looking for some type of payment even before the question could be asked? Pre-Paid Legal allows you to have access to attorneys for a low monthly fee (as low as $26/month) along with the comfort knowing that you can ask legal questions before committing to any particular plan of action. Even better, is that with an annual plan, Pre-Paid Legal allows for preventative legal services (will creation, unlimited phone consultations, contract and document review, etc) , motor vehicle legal expense services, trial defense services (hopefully you will NEVER need these services), IRS Audit Legal services, along with some other legal services. This is awesome on a personal level, but we also needed some legal protection for our home based business.

We discovered that Pre-Paid legal also offers home based business riders along with other plans for larger businesses. All of these options are slightly different based on what state you personally reside in, but if you want to know, the information for what is and what is not covered is easily and readily accessible. This series of legal services was exactly what we at Hawgwash, LLC was looking for. As we talked about what Pre-Paid Legal had to offer, we realized that this is a service that would be very beneficial to others as well, so we not only signed up for Pre-Paid Legal services for our personal and business needs, but we began the process of being able to promote the Pre-Paid Legal Business Opportunity.

The business opportunity for Pre-Paid Legal is quite lucrative. We discovered that 71% of U.S. Households have experienced some event within the last year where they would have been better off with some type of legal representation. How many people do you know that have had a legal issue within the last year or so? It is quite a large number, and the costs to obtain legal representation when you are in need is quite high. By pre-paying for legal services (that you can use almost any time) the people you know are in a much better position to make better decisions that would not require further legal representation. It is wonderful to be able to ask a question of an attorney before the issue becomes a legal nightmare. So, many people could easily use this type of affordable legal service.

This is a product that can have immediate benefits to all involved, and is relatively easy to explain to people. Pre-Paid Legal has been around for 30 years, so they are not a fly-by-night type of outfit. Commissions can be paid out daily and you receive commissions on every sale that you make. This is a great way to create leveraged income even while working at your "regular" job. Once you get a strong team working with you, you can explode your earning potential. With the right team, the sky is the limit with Pre-Paid Legal services.

This business opportunity does not appeal to everybody, which is why we have included it on our Hawgwash, LLC website. As we have discussed before, all business opportunities do not appeal to everyone. Personally, this is an awesome business opportunity, and in today's economic climate, the timing is perfect. If you would like more information on what Pre-Paid Legal may be able to do for you, you are more than welcome to e-mail me at hawgwash1@yahoo.com. You can watch the opportunity movie or you can review our Pre-Paid legal website at your convenience.

Until tomorrow...

What is a Living Trust?

With the passing of my Stepmother, I have learned a lot about Living Trusts and have discovered that this is something we should all think seriously about. As adults, home owners and small business owners, it is important to protect what we have worked so hard to build. You always hear about how important it is to create a will, but you really don't realize the importance of that until you lose a loved one and then have to deal with the ramifications.

There are differences between a Living Trust and a Will. A Living Trust is not what I had originally thought it was, it is actually a legal document similar to a Will, but it creates a Trust during a person's lifetime in order to save money on taxes and possibly to set up long term property management. A Trust is a relationship where the property is managed by one person for the benefit of another. Living Trusts are also designed to avoid probate proceedings and may also reduce taxes on inheritance property. These Trusts are used often because they can allow assets to be passed on to heirs without going through the probate process. These Trusts, if created properly can also help reduce future legal contests and arguing.

A Will on the other hand is a legal declaration where one person designates another person to manage their estate and provides for the transfer of that property at death. Basically a Will is limited to real property and indicates how you want that property distributed at the time of your death. It is revocable and subject to amendment at any time during your lifetime. You can draft your own Will with or without the aid of an attorney, but depending on your location, there may be more limitations. There is no legal requirement that a Will has to be created by an attorney, but there are many problems that can arise if an attorney is not active in the creation of the Will. Many of the problems could be due to items that were innocently left out of the Will instead of what may be placed in the Will. Wills are subject to probate proceedings, which can tie up the estate for a year or longer and possibly incur court fees. A Will does provide court supervision for handling beneficiary challenges and creditor disputes.

The popularity of a Living Trust has expanded in recent years as many more people realize the estate planning benefits. They cost more to prepare but the avoidance of probate costs can more than offset the up front costs of creating the Living Trust. Regarding my Father's situation, the Living Trust was the best option for him. Each person has their own set of needs and anticipated goals, so please be sure to research what you want to do before committing one way or another.

If you are considering creating a Will, a Living Trust, or even a Living Will (we didn't even touch on that tonight) it is highly recommended that you do consult a legal professional prior to creating any one of these documents. There are so many loopholes and rules to trip up a regular person. We have even seen lawyers get hung up on the various legal maneuverings of wills, versus trusts. If you are interested, Pre-Paid Legal Services may be a great place to start for obtaining some version of legal representation or at best a great place to start to obtain legal advice. As part of the Standard Family Plan you can get a will created for you at no additional charge with free yearly reviews and updates. You can also have a directive to physician/living will prepared at no additional charge with free yearly reviews and updates and limited assistance for probate proceedings.

If you have questions about what Pre-Paid Legal Services may be able to do for you with regards to Wills or Living Trusts, or any other general questions regarding Pre-Paid Legal Services, please feel free to e-mail us at hawgwash1@yahoo.com. We would love to help you with your questions.

Until tomorrow...

Legal Questions

We attended a legal seminar last night, and thought that the majority of us could all benefit from what was covered. We have been working with Pre-Paid Legal for the last few years, and it has been the best thing we could have gotten involved in.

For starters, how many of us can afford legal coverage for the following common issues: do you have a will; what will you do if the IRS chooses to audit you; what recourse do you have if creditors threaten to take action against you for your ex-spouse's debts; you receive a letter from a creditor and it is not your debt? Also what can you do if you cannot make your mortgage payment anymore now that you lost your job or took a deep wage cut? With our Pre-Paid Legal services, we can get these and many other questions answered by attorneys without having to pay extreme fees. Depending on the topic and / or question, many times the questions can be answered by a call on the phone, at no extra cost to you.

In the seminar we attended last night, the discussion was centered around "distressed homeowners". The firm covered Foreclosure Options and Loan Modification Solutions. This seminar was extremely beneficial even for the people who are not in financial straights. It is good to know what options are available, and to understand what other homeowners in your neighborhood may be experiencing. Once people know and understand their options, the stress levels can be greatly reduced. Having ready access to a lawyer (without worrying about hourly fees) is also a great stress reducer.

The seminar covered the broad topics of Foreclosure, Loan Modification, and Refinancing. They could not go into detail without infringing upon any attorney/client privilege. Basically, we discovered the meaning of a foreclosure/trustee's sale, what the options are, and some options on how to stop a foreclosure (if you want or can). They also covered what a short sale or Deed-in-Lieu of Foreclosure was along with the tax ramifications and compared that with the types of bankruptcy available.

The next segment reviewed the basics of the government's Making Home Affordable Loan Modification Guidelines, who is eligible, what the borrower must do and what the banks are required to do (all lenders accepting TARP or Federal Government financial assistance MUST participate in this program). We also briefly covered loan modification on second liens and when loans cannot be modified.

There was a tremendous amount of information provided in this hour and a half long discussion, and I don't want to bore you with the details if it is not anything you are interested in, but if you are interested in more information on any of the topics I listed above, please send me a message, and I will respond to your request the best I can.

If you are interested in more information about Pre-Paid Legal and if it is a good option for you, please contact me at hawgwash1@yahoo.com with your questions. I also have a pretty decent Pre-Paid Legal website that covers some of the options. There are limitations to what can be offered based on what state you live in (and no, I don't mean the state of confusion), so if you have questions, please feel free to contact me, I will help you to navigate and obtain the answers you need. As I mentioned, we have had PPL for several years, and have lots of opportunities to use it. The neat thing is that we have asked questions of our attorneys that if we didn't have easy access, we would have guessed the answer. It is very nice to be able to pick up the telephone and ask a legal question, knowing you will receive a response no later than 2 hours down the road AND you didn't incur any additional charges. We are much more willing to pick up the phone for a legal question rather than guess and get bit hard down the road.

The best way I can sum up Pre-Paid Legal: it is like legal health insurance...you may never need to see the doctor (attorney) but it is sure nice to know you have access if you do need advice.