Looking for a Business Opportunity

All right, that question can go either direction. Am I looking for a business opportunity, or are you looking for a business opportunity? For the record, I am ALWAYS looking for business opportunities, if I didn't then I would stagnate (not literally). By always looking for the newest trends, newest products, or just different opportunities, I keep my own ideas fresh. There is also the distinct possibility that I will find an awesome business opportunity to incorporate.

So, the million dollar question that is most likely burning in the back of you head is... what business opportunity should I get involved in, and is it legitimate? Unfortunately, that is a very difficult question. There are so many "business opportunities" out there that really aren't opportunities (at least not for us) and won't turn into a legitimate business. You don't necessarily want to throw your money away, yet you don't want to miss an up-and coming opportunity either.

There are so many new and very good pitch-men (or pitch-people) out there, that you really have to do your homework before putting money into any opportunity. Tonight I am going to suggest a few places you can look for your next opportunity and let you decide if anything looks interesting. Perhaps, with the ideas I throw out there, they will trigger something that will cause you to discover an opportunity that has not been mentioned.

You may also be wondering, why would anyone want to get involved in a new business opportunity in today's depressed economy. The answer is really pretty simple. Costs of buildings/rentals are low, product costs are going down, and people are motivated to sell stuff for relatively low prices in order to drive business. If you are able to get a business up and running in this economy, think of how successful you will be when the economy picks up (and yes, it will get better...eventually). So, now is a great time to start a business, either a home-based business or a brick-and-mortar business.

If you want to get started on a business, but don't know what you want to do, here is some food for thought: do you have the ability to help others live better for less money? Are you able to help others to trim their expenses and still live comfortably? There is a huge demand for people with that talent right now. Do you have ideas for helping cars to increase their fuel mileage? Can you organize car and van pools to help people save on fuel costs? How about helping people collect coupons (perhaps you provide the coupon service for a small fee...) so they can save at the store? Can you help people invest in higher yield investments?

If you are looking for a business opportunity in today's market, you need to look at what people are complaining about and see if you have the particular skill set to resolve their problem. Don't just take one person's problem and strive to correct it, but find a common theme and then see if you can find a solution to the overall problem. That can become a very lucrative business segment for you.

These are just a very few ideas that are out there to generate a business opportunity. The overall key is to find a need and fill that common need. That way your customers win and you win.

If you would like some other business opportunity ideas, please feel free to visit our website. We can help you start your own vehicle detailing service, or we can show you how Pre-Paid Legal could help you, or we can introduce you to our Stem Cell Nutritional line that has the ability to provide you an additional income stream. We would be more than willing to talk with you about your thoughts and ideas and answer any questions you may have. Happy business opportunity hunting...

Until tomorrow...

Need for Small Business Motivation

How do you stay motivated in your small business when it feels like you are continually struggling? You start struggling with the tough questions: is now the right time for my business; do I have the right product and service mix for the current customer base and lastly, should I call it quits? These same questions have most likely plagued all small business owners at some point (or at many points) of their business career. There is a very strong need for small business motivation. It is very tough right now to remain successful and when times get tough, it is hard to remain motivated to keep your small business going.

We have discussed in other articles the need to keep an eye on your competition to see what they are doing correctly or incorrectly. Then you strive to fill the gaps that your competition cannot fill. We have also discussed keeping your products and services appropriate for your customer base, changing or adjusting products and services as your client tastes change. What we didn't review lately is how to remain motivated while you are working to keep your small business profitable and hopefully growing.

One way to know you are going in the right direction with your business is to regularly measure your progress against your established milestones. These metrics should have been included in your business plan, but if you did not include any measurements for growth, now would be a good time to get those benchmarks developed. By measuring your existing business metrics against what you believe should be, you are able to verify either improvement or problems. Either way, you will be motivated, if you are doing better than expected, you will be motivated to continue the momentum. If you are not doing as well as expected, then you are more motivated to get your small business back on the path to financial success. Either way, instead of worrying about where your business might be, you have measured your current business standings and know for certain where you should be taking your business going forward.

Another way to stay motivated with your small business is to talk to others about what you are doing and what you plan on doing in the near future with your business. Because you have taken your ideas out into the light (talking to people) you are now making yourself more accountable for your plans, others will begin asking how you are progressing. Knowing that you have others watching with interest your success will help keep you motivated and continue on with the plans you had discussed. Sometimes we come up with so many plans, we get overwhelmed and end up not implementing any plans. By discussing these new ideas with close friends or other business associates, you can manage and prioritize the ideas (some for implementation now, others for implementation down the road) and then remain motivated to keep your new ideas moving into your business.

Lastly, remember that difficulty is part of being in business. If you look at almost anyone who has started and run a small business, most of the time the business did not grow without difficulties. You need to understand and appreciate that you will be working under pressure (a lot with a new business start-up). Some tasks will be much more difficult than other tasks, and all tasks will most likely be more difficult than you first thought they would be. The difficulty of the task should not stop you from performing the task, just keep in mind it will most likely be challenging. If it was easy to start and continue to run a small business, everyone and their brother would be in a small business. The motivation here is knowing that everyone who has started a small business has experienced difficulties. The bigger motivation is knowing that once you have passed that difficult stage, you can look back and appreciate where you came from and enjoy where you currently are. Remember, odds are that if the task is difficult, the rewards will be higher, and the personal satisfaction will be greater once you have completed the task.

Hopefully these points will help you to remain motivated while you are building your small business. The current economic times are very tough, many businesses are shutting their doors, now is the time to really focus on keeping your business successful because once the economy starts on it's upswing (and yes, it will come up again) you will be riding the front of that wave and wonder why you questioned your business.

If you are looking for a second (or third, or fourth...) income along the lines of a home based business, we may have something that would interest you (www.hawgwash.net). We offer business opportunities in StemTech (adult stem cell nutritionals), Pre-Paid Legal, Waterless cleaning technology and in Mona Vie nutritional drinks. These business opportunities all have a great pay plan and are very reliable business opportunities. Please feel free to contact us with any questions regarding these or any other business opportunity you are considering.

Until tomorrow...

4 Tips to keep moving your small business forward

Tonight we are going to cover 4 tips to keeping your small business moving forward. In the current economy, it is very easy to find that your business is not moving forward and may even be moving backwards. Instead of considering packing it all in and calling it quits, now is the time to get back to basics. New, trendy ideas right now are not what is going to gain your customers' trust, they are tired of empty promises. What is really going to resonate with your customers is good, old fashioned customer service.

As we have become more digitized, we are losing the personal touch with people, in particular our customers. How many people now choose to order products directly from the Internet instead of dealing directly with a living, breathing person. Granted, since we are all so busy, it is extremely easy to order products and some services over the Internet, but now is the time to find a way to personalize your customer's Internet experience. So many websites gather e-mail addresses, names, phone numbers, but none the ones I have seen actually thank you for providing that information. I am personally uncomfortable providing all that information when I know what I want to order. I worry about receiving mountains of junk e-mail after submitting that information. It is important as a small business to collect this information, but perhaps instead of collecting it in order to send out more marketing pieces, perhaps you would want to send out a nice, homey, friendly (and SHORT) letter to your customers, thanking them for their patronage. Do not sell them anything, just thank them for coming to you with their request. If you want to open a dialog with them, ask them for any suggestions to improve their shopping experience. I like to periodically (about once or twice a year) send just a little news letter that is entertaining. I will not sell anything directly, but will provide my website and phone number at the bottom if the recipients are interested. You want your customers curious and happy about receiving occasional messages, not dreading all your selling pieces. This friendly, fun newsletter will keep your name uppermost in your customer's mind without all the negative feelings.

Another suggestion to keep your business moving forward is to do the right thing for your customers, even if may not be the most profitable thing for you to do. Customers will remember a bad experience 3 times longer than they will remember a positive experience. If there is a problem with your customer's order and you catch it before your customer does, do the right thing and correct the error instead of waiting for the customer to come to you. It may hurt initially, but your customer will remember your diligence far longer than your brief pain. Your customer will happily tell all their friends about your integrity and honesty when you correct a problem before they even knew about it. Sitting back and hoping the customer will not notice a problem is not realistic. Sometimes customers will discover a problem and if it is minor, will not let you know. The downside is that they will probably not ever shop with you again. You may not know how many customers you lose this way, you may just notice a decrease in customer activity. If you find a problem, be proactive, let your customers know and resolve it without being asked to. This gesture will increase your loyal customer base much faster than you can imagine.

The third tip is to treat your customers like family. No, not like a dysfunctional family, but care for them. Listen to their concerns, because those concerns may provide clues for you to assist your customers further. Families talk with each other, air their concerns and offer support to each other. Do the same for your customers. Listen to their concerns, strive to assist them where you can, and honestly care about their well being. You have to honestly care because your customers will know if you are not sincere. Your customers will return to you more often if you stop to listen to what their needs are instead of trying to tell them what you believe they need. Family strives to help each other for the betterment of the whole, you should do the same for your customers. Then both you and your customers will win.

The last tip to help move your business forward is to over deliver on your promises. This all goes back to good customer service. I am not suggesting always giving more product than what the customer purchased, but to be sure you go above and beyond what your customer was expecting. Remember the days of the "bakers dozen"? If you purchased a dozen donuts, the baker might throw in an extra donut. Didn't you feel special when you found that extra donut? Do a little something extra for your customer. It does not need to be expensive, but provide a little extra service or product so that your customer will be smiling when they see what they have. Especially now, when money is tight, based on your customers' needs, find something small, that won't impact your business financially, but will give great pleasure to your customers when they get a little extra something with their purchase. If you have products to deliver, always be sure to deliver on or before the date you told your customer. They will always appreciate accurate and timely deliveries.

Following these for tips may make the difference between remaining successful or closing your doors. Remember to treat your customers with respect, do what is right, not what you think you can get away with, care for your customers like you would your family and lastly over deliver on what you promise. These four tips will pay dividends for years to come.

If you are looking for a business opportunity that requires minimal cash outlay, check our our website. We offer business opportunities in stem cell nutrition, Pre-Paid legal services and Mona Vie - a nutritional drink. We can also help you start up your own waterless technology vehicle detailing business if that is what you are interested in. Please feel free to contact us with any questions you may have.

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...

Multiple Income Streams - Why?

We have been asked several times why we have so many varied opportunities on our website. As we have discussed before, the key to real wealth is to have multiple income streams. One income stream, especially in these times, will not bring you to real financial freedom. As we are discovering, painfully in some instances, is that one income stream is not necessarily the most stable income stream in the world.

How many people do you know that have been working diligently all their adult life, to only discover that they have been laid off or "down-sized"? We are seeing this phenomena more and more often as companies continue to tighten their belts. By having multiple income streams, you know that when one line of income starts slowing down, you have other streams that may be able to increase and essentially take up the slack. You may even become bored working on one way to earn money, and choose to move into another area of interest. That doesn't mean you need to give up your income from the first business, it just may mean you won't have as much money coming in from that area.

But again, the biggest reason for multiple income streams is to have the ability to seamlessly move from one to another when the economy changes. One of your product lines may have been a great seller for years, but it may be not be as popular today as it was. By having essentially more than one pole in the water, you have the opportunity to catch more fish. We have more than one pole in the water so that we can catch fish no matter what is going on. We just re-align our emphasis when one income stream begins to decline. I don't want to imply that we stop working an opportunity, unless that particular product line is no longer viable, it is worthwhile to keep that line going, just to shift your emphasis to something that may be more profitable, now. It is almost a given, that when one opportunity does not bring in as much income now, it will down the road, when the social climate changes again. We keep multiple opportunities available to keep up with the ebb and flow of social thoughts and ideas.

If you look at the various opportunities we have to offer, we have something for almost everyone. We offer waterless cleaning technology for people who really want their vehicles to look great and help keep the environment healthy. We also offer a few different nutritional products to keep you healthy. Without your health, you won't be able to clean your car, or for that matter, you won't even be able to go out and get your vehicle dirty. The two nutritional products we carry take care of the body in two stages. STEMTech products work with Stem Cell Nutrition, where it allows your body to use it's own adult stem cells to renew itself. MonaVie products help keep your existing cells healthy. We also offer Pre-Paid Legal services because you can never be too safe. How many times did you realise after the fact that it would have been really great to have the advice of an attorney BEFORE you signed on the dotted line? We personally use Pre-Paid Legal and it has kept us out of a boat-load of trouble.

So, you can see that the multiple streams of income we offer on our website can all work together, without really competing against each other. This way, if someone is more concerned about their health, we can direct them one way, if they are concerned about the environment and clean vehicles, we point them another direction, etc... This is a great way to recession proof your business.

Until tomorrow...