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The Direct Selling Women’s Alliance, the DSWA, has just announced the dates of their annual DSWA Celebration. This year’s event will take place April 17th through the 19th at the Westin in Los Angeles, California.

The event will feature over 20 self made millionaires from some of the world’s leading direct selling companies. The speakers will share with attendees what it takes to succeed and how they themselves persevered to achieve their goals. The attendees will get business tips, learn new strategies and get some great motivational tips as well as learn how to grow their already existing businesses.

The 20 small business millionaires speaking at the conference include representatives from companies such as Avon, Mary Kay, Neways and Pre-Paid Legal, just to name a few. The 3 day event will give all in attendance the chance to learn, network and share experiences with colleges.

Some of the topics that will be covered by this year’s speakers include

• Best Booking Practices
• Approaching Coach Excellence
• Build it Big with Recruiting
• Creative Meetings People Want to Attend
• Build it Big with Internet Marketing

For more info on the event, or to register to attend you can visit, http://www.dswacelebration2009.com

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While many businesses are shutting down or laying off employees, Pre-Paid Legal believes they are well positioned, despite its recent release of membership results and the ongoing problems with Barry Minkow.

Chief Financial Officer of Pre-Paid Legal Services, Inc, Steve Williamson had this to say about this year’s growth: “In tough economic times we see increased interest in people wanting to market our Legal Services Plans as Independent Sales Associates. This increased interest will lead to our 16th consecutive year of growing our Membership revenues.”

One Independent Associate, Beth Taylor started her Pre-Paid Legal business 12 years ago. Taylor, a single parent, has a theory as to why people are signing up with Pre-Paid Legal: “People are losing their jobs today, airlines are going bankrupt, and they’re laying off the mortgage industry. People are really in need of finding something they can sink their teeth into. And that’s what I love about this business. I get up every day knowing that I make the difference. If I’m going to work, I’m going to make a difference in the lives of other people. So it’s very rewarding and fulfilling,” said Taylor.

The company, publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: PPD), develops, services, and sells Pre-Paid Legal Plans to its members across the United States and four provinces of Canada. Plan benefits include: unlimited attorney consultation, letters and phones calls made by the attorney on a client’s behalf, document/contract review, assistance with traffic violations, and defense services for automobile-related criminal charges or general trial defense. An Independent Associate can market Pre-Paid Legal Plans from home to individuals, families, small businesses, or groups such as schools and local businesses.

Pre-Paid Legal also offers an Identity Theft Shield plan that can be purchased as a standalone product or in addition to a legal plan membership for a discounted rate. This valuable service provides each member with a credit report, continuous credit monitoring, and identity theft restoration services. “You can’t stop your identity from being stolen, but what you can do is have a very proactive professional company that will go to bat for you and restore it if you should become a victim. We have that product,” said Mark Brown, Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer at Pre-Paid Legal. “And then you couple it with the fact there is no other company that I’m aware of anywhere in the world that has access 24/7 for their clients to great law firms. We do,” said Brown.

Pre-Paid Legal Membership benefits can also be added as employee benefits, by employers. Independent Associate, Rob Vest, top group producer at Pre-Paid Legal, says the legal plans are a benefit employees can use right away, “This is a NOW benefit. That’s the real key. The more economic problems that we are having out there, the worse the economy is, and the more legal problems that come up. If the employees are having those problems, that affects the employer.” Vest believes people want to spend their money on something they can get value from immediately, “So we are in the perfect place right now in the market, and we have a perfect solution to the problem.”

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Pre-Paid Legal Services released their reports on new memberships and new sales associates enrolled for the third quarter 2008. Overall, numbers were down compared to last year. Not surprising given the current state of the economy, but were up slightly over the second quarter.

For third quarter 2008, memberships produced decreased 6% percent while new sales associates enrolled decreased 13.2% percent compared to the same time last year. The one bright spot was the active membership base which increased 0.1% percent from the previous year.

The company also reported that their membership persistency rate was 73.5% for the 12 month period ended September 30, 2008. The membership persistency rate is the percentage of members who still enrolled at the end of the 12 month period who were enrolled at the beginning. This was a slight increase from the 12 month period ending September of 2007.

Pre-Paid Legal has been working hard during the past few years on a share repurchase program. During the 3rd quarter the company returned $9 million to shareholders through the repurchase of over 200,000 shares of common stock. Since the program began in 1999, the company has returned almost $400 million to shareholders.

Earlier in the year, Pre-Paid ran into some problems with Barry Minkow and the Fraud Discovery Institute. Although there has been no word lately, Minkow can be relentless and I’m sure he will cause more problems in the future. For now however, while the company’s numbers weren’t spectacular, given the current economy, they aren’t doing too badly.

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Pre-Paid Legal Services (NYSE: PPD)announced their 2nd quarter results for new memberships and new sales associates. The company had some mixed numbers for the last year, but overall, the company seems to be doing well. While sales and revenue figures haven’t been released, this news might be a hint at what that announcement, due in a few weeks, will bring.

The company reported that during the second quarter of 2008, new sales associates enrolled decreased by slightly over 30% percent compared to the same quarter last year. Membership Produced decreased 8% percent, and New Associates enrolled decreased as well, although slightly less than membership. The company’s Active membership base decreased a bit, by just over 300 memberships during the second quarter.

On the bright side… total active membership fees in force increased approximately 2.0% during the last year and membership persistency rate, which means the number of memberships in force during the year as a percentage of total memberships, increased a bit to almost 73% percent for the 12 month period ending June 30th.

While the numbers are a bit mixed, the company stressed that they are continuing to focus their stock repurchase program. During the second quarter of 08, the company has returned $14.9 million to shareholders by buying back over 340,000 shares of common stock. It is important to note that these numbers are simply membership and enrollment numbers and while they may provide a hint of what the revenue and sales numbers might be, those are a few weeks off. Pre-Paid will announced their 2008 second quarter profits on July 28th after the market closes. They will have an open conference call Wednesday morning, July 30th to discuss the numbers- we will keep you posted.

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