I know many people think it's gauche to talk money, or worse yet, money problems, but the lessons I learned through this experience, and who I became out the other side, is a story you might just need to hear.

Especially if you've ever struggled financially.

I want to tell you about the hardest financial year of my life.

And believe it or not, it wasn't one of the years where I was flat broke. In retrospect, those years were actually pretty easy to navigate because there was nothing to manage.

No, I want to tell you about the year I came within a thousand dollars of hitting a goal I'd been chasing since my early twenties: To earn an average of $1,000 for every single day of the year.

And I damn-near hit it! That year, my revenue as a loan signing agent came in at $364,000 (But I didn't even know that until April the following year at tax time).

And get this, I almost couldn't pay my rent in November.

I'd never worked so hard and felt so broke. I was driving 400 miles a day, chu...

Blood in the water...

In business terms, that's called a Red Ocean, a phrase that comes from the book Blue Ocean Strategy by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne.

A Red Ocean is a crowded market where everyone offers the same thing, competition comes down to price, margins shrink, stress climbs, and people start complaining about oversaturation.

Sound familiar?

The Red Ocean in the Notary Industry

For notaries, the Red Ocean is obvious.

It's the signing companies, the national platforms, and the low-fee order aggregators, where the whole game is being first to click and competing on speed, price, and, if we're being straight about it, desperation.

It's the low-hanging fruit, and it feels easy.

There's no prospecting, no sales, no relationship building, and no positioning. You just wait for the pings & dings from orders that are broadcast to hundreds, if not thousands, of other notaries to come in.

And because it feels easy, everyone piles in, and when everyone piles in, the market ...

I've written a lot of resources over the years aimed directly at notaries, and this one is different, so stick with me here.

My newest book, Rethinking the Notary, isn't written to you. It's written to the estate planning professionals you want to work with, the attorneys and paralegals and legal document preparers and trust companies who are sitting on more business than they can handle and don't yet realize you're the answer.

And that's exactly why I'm so excited about it for you!

What the Book Actually Does

The full title is Rethinking the Notary: The Estate Planning Professional's Guide to Partnering With Credentialed Notaries to Expand Reach, Reduce Risk, and Deliver an Exceptional Client Experience, and every word of that subtitle is doing real work.

The book makes a case that most estate planning professionals have never seriously considered, that the credentialed mobile notary is the most underutilized asset in their entire practice.

It walks them through the bottleneck t...

I have caught some flack for bringing this up before, but we have to talk about it anyway.

It's the endless parade of trainings and Zoom calls filling up our calendars. There are so many of them out there, and I know I am responsible for a good chunk of them myself. Whether I am the one hosting or somebody else is, here is what I need you to understand:

Not every call and every opportunity is meant for you.

• Some of them are sales webinars dressed up as education, and half the time they are selling us a product we already own.

• Some are actual training calls where you walk away with something specific you can use.

• Some are Q&A sessions that speak directly to your specialty and to exactly where your business is right now.

• And then there is a whole category of calls that hand us random knowledge, interesting on its own maybe, but not actionable and not relevant to what we actually need at this point in our journey.

That last category is the one I want us to look ...

What's that even mean?

Irreplaceable: Something or someone too special, rare, or valuable to be replaced with a duplicate. It indicates a lack of a substitute.

Bearing that in mind, let's talk about why you keep having to find your next client, why that can end up feeling like a grind after awhile.

You do great work at the signing, you collect your fee, and then... you start over. Next week, next search, next stranger. The relationship ends the moment the stamp comes down.

There's a different way to do this.

It starts with a word most notaries use wrong: Partner.

Here's the shift:

Instead of being a vendor that estate planning professionals hire and forget, you become a partner in their growth. You become someone who sends them business AND receives it.

A two-way street.

Not just a taker of appointments, but a giver of appointments too.

Think about what that does to a relationship. When you're the notary who refers families to the right attorney, the right document preparer, ...

There's an old idea in the business and networking world called the Triangle of Trust. These are the three most trusted advisors a person can have: their attorney, their financial advisor, and their tax professional. 

Those three get the spotlight. They get the referrals. They get treated like the inner circle of a family's most important decisions. And rightfully so, I have people for each of these in my life too. 

I've spent years thinking about that triangle, and I've come to believe it's missing a corner, because here's what few people realize:

Those three professionals spend enormous energy just trying to get their foot in the door of their prospective clients. They work hard to prove and differentiate themselves, they market, they chase the appointments. 

Meanwhile, there's a professional who gets invited in, who sits down at the kitchen table during the biggest moments of a family's life, who's already trusted, already vetted, already there.

The notary.

Think about it, not...

Shared experiences like networking events, workshops, conferences, trainings, even online meetups, have the potential to shape the future of your business in ways you can’t predict.

It only takes one conversation, one idea, or one relationship to change everything.

Sometimes it’s the content you learn about.

Sometimes it’s the energy in the room.

And sometimes, it’s the person sitting next to you.

But what makes peer networking events so powerful for notaries goes deeper than just inspiration.

It’s about building something most notaries never intentionally create:

A true professional ecosystem.

Your Business Ecosystem

This is a business that can feel isolating. You’re often working alone, figuring things out in real time, solving problems on the fly.

Peer relationships change that.

They give you:

• Support from people who understand exactly what you’re navigating

• Perspective from others trying new strategies in different markets

• Momentum from being around people

  ...

If you’ve been in this business for a while and still haven’t seen the traction you expected, there’s a good chance it’s not because you haven’t learned enough.

Most notaries I talk to have read the articles, watched the videos, maybe even invested in a few courses with certifications. They’re not lacking information. What they’re missing is a clear decision about which path they’re actually going to commit to.

There was a time when most of the calls I did were traditional coaching calls. This is what most of our coaching calls would focus on:

We’d get on the phone, talk through your situation, unpack your goals, work through what might be holding you back, and explore different directions you could take.

And those conversations felt productive. You’d leave with a clearer understanding of what you wanted and what might be possible.

But over time, I started to notice a pattern..

It usually took multiple calls… multiple conversations… to turn that clarity into anything actionable.

A Practical, Step-By-Step Guide for Doing It the Right Way

Most conversations in the notary world focus on how to start a notary business.

• How to grow

• How to get more clients

• How to make money

Almost no one talks about how to stop, and yet, notaries step away from the business every day.

Some are burned out.

Some are discouraged.

Some are overwhelmed.

Some simply realize this season of life requires something different.

All of that is human. All of it is understandable.

What isn’t okay is just disappearing in a way that leaves hiring parties, the public, and fellow professionals confused, misled, or scrambling.

Closing a notary business isn’t just a personal decision, it’s a professional responsibility. And when done thoughtfully, it can be an act of integrity rather than defeat.

Closing is Emotional

First, let’s face the emotional reality. If you’re closing your notary business, there’s a good chance you’re carrying mixed emotions:

• Disappointment

...

When I first started my signing company (11 years ago), I made what felt like a logical assumption. I thought the notaries who had been commissioned the longest would be the best at what they did. More years… more experience… better work. Right?

I was wrong.

Dead wrong.

In fact, it often turned out to be the opposite. And that realization changed how I see this entire profession, because here’s the truth that doesn’t get talked about enough:

A notary commission gives you permission to act. 

It does not prove you’re prepared to do it well.

When I was building my database of notaries across the country, I relied heavily on directories. And like a lot of people, I used “years commissioned” as a proxy for quality.

It didn’t take long to see the cracks.

• Missed steps.

• Incorrect notarizations.

• Inconsistent practices.

• Unwillingness to learn (Not coachable)

And these weren’t always brand-new notaries. Some had been commissioned for decades. That’s when I started ...