7 Tips for Building a Niche Notary Business

Today’s article is about developing a niche for general notary work and contains  What does “niche business” mean? The word "niche" means a hidden spot, hollow place, or hidey-hole. You already know what the term “business” means.  Niche notary work for most notaries frequently includes several people or businesses who have rare but similar needs. They are often under-served and aren't glaringly obvious to other notaries in your community.    How would one go about finding niche notary business? Notaries may stumble upon a niche population of several or many citizens who need the services of mobile notaries, or they may develop skills to help them ferret out niche work. However, as you might guess, waiting to “stumble” into something is usually not very...

Six Steps that Will Improve Your Image

If you are a new notary public or a new notary business owner,  the six steps listed below can help to set up the right public image for your notary career.  These steps aren't new discoveries , but they can be easily overlooked while you are trying to learn how to handle your new duties as a notary professional.   Step 1 – Brand your  notary business with a professional email address. Now that you are a notary professional, don’t hang on to your Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, and AOL address.  Consider setting up an email address that projects the right image. This step entails purchasing a domain and adding email service to it.  Google is one place to do this.   It will cost...

The Story of a Mortgage Loan

Notaries who have not been through the personal agony of applying for a mortgage loan have missed learning opportunities.  Every mortgage loan has a story!  Being that involved in the process personally helps notaries understand what their borrowers have recently endured.   Without that experience, a new loan signing agent may not understand some of the impatience that borrowers have.  Applying for a loan isn't for the faint at heart.  It can be grueling and frustrating.  With that in mind, I’d like to do an overview of how a mortgage loan begins and evolves into a neat stack of loan documents on a borrower's cluttered kitchen table. Definition of a mortgage A mortgage is a legal agreement by which a lender lends money...

The Mysterious Contents of a Traveling Notary’s Bag

The bag or briefcase carried to appointments by a brand new traveling notary is usually a lightweight and slim model.  It contains very little--a few pens, a notarial stamp, notary journal, and a pocket for carrying documents.  However, once notaries begin traveling and having experiences with signers, they learn to be ready to accommodate a multitude of situations.  Soon, the traveling notary bag is bulging at the seems, a zipper breaks, or the thing won't shut at all!  It must be upgraded to a larger size. As the miles click by and notary journals fill up with signatures from appointments, a notary's bag selection leans to something bigger and more capable of organizing gear. Some notaries eventually graduate to an elaborate...

Hospital Marketing Strategies for Mobile Notaries

On April 17, I found myself driving from home to a community hospital 150 miles away.  I had to be there to help my 86-year-old mother stay near the bedside of the love of her life, a gentle and kind man named Warren who, at age 84, suffered a massive heart attack.  For a couple of days, I fretted about Warren's health, the impact it was having on my mother, and about not being at home and able to work or write this article, and I had not decided on a topic before I left my house.  However, on the third day, while prowling around the hospital campus, I could not stop thinking about ways to market notary services effectively...