Pre-Paid Legal Services, Inc
LIFE EVENTS LEGAL PLAN
We give members access to professional legal counsel not only for traditional legal problems, but for everyday events such as buying a house or a car, creating a will, handling a problem with an insurance company, dealing with identity theft, and much more where legal review should be routine, but rarely is. These events can be among the most important events in a person's life, yet there is a tendency for them to take place without proper legal review. For Pre-Paid Legal members, access to legal counsel is only a toll-free phone call away.
BUSINESS SUMMARY
Pre-Paid Legal Services®, Inc. was one of the first companies in the United States organized solely to design, underwrite and market legal expense plans. For a low monthly fee of $26 or less, the Company's legal expense plans (referred to as memberships) offer a variety of legal services in a manner similar to medical reimbursement plans or HMOs.
The Company currently provides legal services to over 1.5 million families across the U.S. and Canada. Plan benefits are delivered through a network of independent provider law firms. Members have direct, toll-free access to their provider law firm rather than having to comb through a yellow-page style directory for a referral. Provider firms are carefully selected and the quality of service is closely monitored to maintain the high standards of Pre-Paid Legal.
SERVICE
Our members are served by a provider law firm which has been carefully screened and selected by Pre-Paid Legal. Using the plan, members simply call their provider firm directly at the toll-free number on their membership card when they have a legal question or problem. It’s really that simple. Pre-Paid Legal does all the work; no searching for a qualified lawyer, no claim forms, no worries about being able to afford a lawyer – just peace of mind.
THE PRE-PAID LEGAL STORY
1969 – July 11, 1969, Harland Stonecipher is involved in a head-on collision which results in serious legal fees. He has auto insurance to cover the damage to his car, medical insurance to cover the cost of his hospital stay, and even life insurance had the accident been fatal. But he has no coverage or protection for the legal bills that accumulate. He begins researching the industry of European legal expense plans. See the Pre-Paid Legal story for more information.
SUCCESS WHAT ACHIEVERS READ
Last month I interviewed bestselling author, speaker and leadership coach
Steve Farber

for our exclusive
SUCCESS Audio Series. The response has been so great that Steve and I decided to offer some free follow-up ideas and material here for everyone to benefit from.
We all know we should seek mentors for our life. This concept is about you being the mentor and helping people realize or advance their own greatness. There are some truisms that tell the inherent values of this principle:
- Satisfaction and fulfillment come not from what you get, but what you give.
- Giving starts the receiving process.
- The giver always receives more than the receiver.
- It is the teacher who always learns more than the student in the act of teaching.
Steve sums up the concept here:
“The greatest leaders that I’ve seen, the best extreme leaders that I’ve met over the years are the ones that never seek credit for their own greatness, but instead, invest themselves in such a way as to make other people around them greater than they are. So instead of shining the light on themselves, they lift other people up and build a track record of creating superstar after superstar.”
Here is a great interview between Steve, Patrick Lencioni and his GTY project (mentee) Matthew Kelley (also acclaimed writer and keynote speaker) describing the process and the value of their GTY relationship:
SEE VIDEO AND REST OF POST
What does…
- a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow
- a functional family
- life balance
- …all have in common?
They all sound nice, but don’t exist.
As a follow-up to the
Forgotten “Secrets” to Success and our decline of hard work ethic, one of the great misnomers I continually hear touted by toga-wearing “life coaches” is the idea of “life balance”.
It’s malarkey (love that word!).
There is no such thing. Just like everyone comes from a “dysfunctional family” (every family is dysfunctional – it has people in it), everyone’s life is also out of balance. Pursuing this illusion is only going to frustrate you (causing you to be even more imbalanced… and a little insane).
Every life is out of balance; that’s life… and what happens in life? Shitake happens! And you have to ebb and flow with the changing tides, the shifting winds, the weather, the seasons, oncoming obstacles, etc.
Life is in a constant state of flux. There are times when you need all hands on deck for tacking the boat to avoid collision and there are other times when you can go hang out in the galley and play cards with the boat on autopilot. Through it all you are always going to be changing the priority of your time and attention. You will always be off kilter and shifting your balance.
Now don’t start throwing your meditation mats at me; of course we can’t sacrifice everything for the sake of any one thing. We have to constantly keep up our health, relationships, finances, spirituality and nurture of self during and through it all.
Interviews between SUCCESS Publisher, Darren Hardy and Jack Canfield
For the CD bound into the
August issue of SUCCESS I sat down with success expert and bestselling co-author of the billion franchise
Chicken Soup for the Soul,
Jack Canfield, to get his insights on a few important topics.
These exclusive interviews are usually only available to our
SUCCESS magazine subscribers, but Jack shared so many great ideas that it all didn’t fit on our SUCCESS CD. (If you are not a subscriber, be sure to grab this month's issue of SUCCESS on the newsstands to hear the best part of the interview that did make it into the publication - great stuff!)
I decided to share the rest with you here in a three part series. The three topics include goal achieving, wealth building and basic success principles to live life as you’ve always dreamed of.
Goal Achieving
THIS segment is focused on the topic of goal achieving. Here Jack walks you through deciding what you want, to taking action and maintaining momentum. Stream: [audio:canfield_goalachieving.mp3]
No Pain, No Gain
My dad taught me to snow ski when I was 6 years old. By the time I was 8, I was skiing on my own. At the end of a full ski day, I eagerly announced, “Dad, I didn’t fall once all day!” My dad replied,
“If you didn’t fall, you didn’t get any better.” What? This was the opposite response I was expecting and hoping for. The bewildered look on my face compelled him to elaborate, “If you are going to get better, you have to push yourself. If you push yourself, you are going to fall.”
My dad was a former university football coach, so we had a full Olympic standard weight set in our garage. On the wall he had painted, “No Pain, No Gain.” To build bigger muscles, you have to inflict pain on them, literally tearing down the fibers of the muscles and bringing them to the point of failure. That’s actually the goal. Then in recovery, the fibers will rebuild bigger and stronger than they were before. Building a muscle is a lot like the process of building success in life.
I owe much of the success I have been able to achieve to my dad and this philosophy. My dad taught me it was not only OK to fail, but it was proof you were improving. I never saw setbacks, obstacles, rejection or even pain as things to avoid; rather, they were markers on the journey toward greatness and should be appreciated, even celebrated.
This issue is packed full of real-life examples of those who, because of obstacles and setbacks, became stronger and, ultimately, more successful. Les Brown, who was...
READ REST OF ARTICLE
Over the next several posts, I’d like to help clear up some of the very dangerous illusions I think our current culture has created about what it takes to be successful.
Hollywood, commercialism and our own decadence has falsified our reality and is leading us into a form of self-destruction.
What Ever Happened to HARD WORK?
I interviewed the “Hit Man” David Foster this past week (He will be on the cover and interviewed on the CD of our September issue of SUCCESS).
Not familiar with the name David Foster? There is no question you are familiar with his work. David is deemed the No. 1 music producer in the world. He’s the guy who discovered Celine Dion while singing under a tent in the rain in Quebec, Canada, and introduced her to American audiences. He also discovered and produced Josh Grobin, Michael Bublé, Andrea Bocelli and tons more. He has produced numerous records under his own label and has won 15 Grammys in his four-decade career… bottom line, this is a guy who knows how to create success—over and over again. You will love the feature story on him, incredible!
During my interview I probed David repeatedly on what his secrets to success were. He had some incredibly insightful tips and philosophies which I won’t spoil here, but the recurring theme was—
the guy just outworks everyone else. Sometimes we need to be reminded of the obvious. It’s true, there is a common reality to the superachievers I have interviewed and we have featured on the cover of SUCCESS, be it Donald Trump, Dr. Oz, Colin Powell, Donny Deutsch, Suze Orman, Richard Branson, etc—
they all are hardworking.Now there are a few caveats I need to add here:
You Lose One out of Five for Being Too Aggressive But you get the other four!

When I was in real estate there was this mega successful mortgage broker named Mari Mahoney. She did more business than any ten “successful” mortgage agents
combined.
I asked her how she did it; what was her key to success. She rapidly responded with,
“I lose one out of five for being too aggressive, but I get the other four!”
This statement, this philosophy, this testimony changed my life.
Before then I was overly concerned about being too assertive or overbearing. If someone got mad or called the broker (my dad!) to complain that I was calling too early, too late or showing up on their doorstep too often, I was horrified. After my lunch with Mari, it was my goal.
I was at my in-laws this past weekend. One of my brothers-in-law is looking for a job. I asked him how it was going and he responded, “I sent out 42 resumes, but no one has gotten back to me.” I asked him how many times he has called each one and how many drop-ins he has made to their office. I asked if he had sent any of them his favorite book, valuable article, press clipping on their organization or on their competition. The answer of course was “zero” and “no” to all these.
I offered him two pieces of advice that you too might find valuable—whether in finding a job, making a sale, finding an investor or any other person or account you need to land.
1) Shock and Awe—Narrow your list to your highest-priority targets. Then unload every bit of arsenal you have. Call, fax, email, FedEx, telegram, show-up, court the gatekeeper, bring lunch, send gifts (books, magazine articles, swag, etc.), network the contacts around them (peers, underlings, superiors, vendors, attorney, CPA’s, etc.).
Here is the magic: READ REST OF ARTICLE: http://darrenhardy.success.com/2009/06/get-aggressive/
Learn Less. Study More.
As the chief champion of self-education and continual learning, this probably sounds like an odd statement, but here is the conundrum I think we find ourselves in. For any
SUCCESS reader, and certainly anyone reading this blog,
learning is not what we lack; in fact, it might be what’s bottlenecking us.
Beyond CDs, DVDs and books, we also live in an age of e-zines, blogs, RSS feeds, personalized readers, Digg, Facebook, Twitter, et al. We have a never-ending flow of ideas, tips, quotes, suggestions and advice being constantly pumped at us.
Swimming in a sea of infinite information, we paddle like crazy just to keep our nose above water. It can be exhausting, right?
We read an article and then move on to the next. We listen to an audio and then seek the next. We finish a book and then start the next….
Therein lies the problem: We are reading a lot, seemingly learning a lot, but never really stopping long enough to digest, contemplate, act, review and improve on anything we have just learned.
As you know, knowledge is... CLICK HERE FOR FULL ARTICLE: http://darrenhardy.success.com/2009/06/wa-step12wa-step12/
The Perfect Storm: A Trifecta of Opportunity
The new issue of SUCCESS hits newsstand today! This issue features our cover story with Richard Branson on Going for Bold. July is one of our most important issues. This is the month we focus on entrepreneurship, and it couldn’t be at a better time.
While it might look like a tough time for the national or global economy, we are actually in the middle of the perfect storm for entrepreneurship. In fact, it is my prediction that 20 to 30 years from now we will look back longingly at these times and call this the greatest window of entrepreneurial opportunity of our lifetime. It is over the next 12-18 months that the wildly successful companies of tomorrow will be born or make their bold move.
Candidly, this is no great prophecy. Did you know that 16 of the Dow 30 companies were started in a recession or depression? It’s true; these are companies like Procter & Gamble, Disney, McDonald’s, General Electric, Johnson & Johnson and others—once entrepreneurial startups, now the behemoths of industry.
Let me help reinforce this point and build up your confidence on why now is the right time to strike out on your own. I call this the trifecta of opportunity for you as an entrepreneur.
CLICK TO READ ENTIRE ARTICLE: http://darrenhardy.success.com/2009/06/go-for-boldgo-for-bold/
CLICK HERE TO READ FULL POST: http://darrenhardy.success.com/2009/05/wa-step11/
Refueling the jets… Learning to Value Time Off

How does America regain its supremacy in the productive world? How do you improve your personal productivity?
ANSWER: Go on vacation.
438 million. That is the number of vacation days American’s failed to take in 2007 according to Harris Interactive research group. More than any other industrialized nation.
Here is the result: America ranks #1 in depression and mental health problems. Americans are experiencing burnout, reduced productivity, diminished creativity, failed relationships, stress or stress-related ailments such as depression, heart disease or stomach ulcers in record levels.
Our entrenched puritanical conditioning, being valued on how “hard” we work, fear of being replaced or left behind, and our addiction to always being “busy” are actually
not only destroying our mental and physical health, but also destroying our creative productivity.
This is especially true in our new global economy where our advantage and future is as knowledge workers, not laborers.
Our future, your future lies between your ears – your mind and your ability to think: creatively, innovatively and productively.
When you are working 80 hours a week, your mind gets cluttered and stale. Like a pressure cooker, if you don’t give your mind some time to clear some steam out, it will boil over causing the ailments above and
loss of effectiveness and real productivity.
I am not suggesting you need to take a vacation to better “enjoy life,” “find your bliss” or have “life balance.”
I am telling you time off is an important component of hardcore achievement and productivity.
Benefits of taking time off:
CLICK HERE TO READ FULL POST: http://darrenhardy.success.com/2009/05/wa-step11/
You asked for it... A convenient digest incase you missed any of the ideas or resources shared over the past week...
DARRENHARDY: Speaking of branding... RT @guykawasaki: I try to explain "The Art of Branding" here http://adjix.com/3nna
Fri May 22 13:03:13
DARRENHARDY: Personal Brand-How to Build Yours on Twitter: http://is.gd/BGpV
Fri May 22 13:02:37
DARRENHARDY: Speaking of branding... RT @guykawasaki: I try to explain "The Art of Branding" here http://adjix.com/3nna
Fri May 22 13:03:13
DARRENHARDY: Personal Brand-How to Build Yours on Twitter: http://is.gd/BGpV
Fri May 22 13:02:37
DARRENHARDY: See classic Jack LaLane show on SUCCESS Video: http://bit.ly/jVNv0 I'm gonna beak out in song @the gym too!
Fri May 22 12:39:59
DARRENHARDY: How Jaimie Moyer,oldest player in MLB still kicks butt: http://snipr.com/hpfoa Out prepare your comp!
Thu May 21 19:22:12
DARRENHARDY: Never negotiate your value: http://short.to/alm7
Thu May 21 17:03:23
SEE COMPLETE DIGEST HERE: http://darrenhardy.success.com/2009/05/tweet-digest-5-22