Maybe you’ve heard of the Corporate Transparency Act. I had heard it, but I’ve been ignoring it because when I hear the word “corporate,” I think big business. 

I was wrong. 

As the government combats terrorism, money laundering, and other illegal activities, the Corporate Transparency Act is designed precisely to gain ownership information of small, mom & pop, or single person companies, or solo-preneurs. 

This is us, notaries! 

In many cases, notaries public who are doing business as an LLC, corporation, partnership, a fictitious name, or other registered entities will have to comply with the Corporate Transparency Act. 

If we don’t file the information on time, by January 1, 2025, we may be subject to fines of $500 per day (and maybe even jail time!). 

And if you’re thinking, “Oh well, what’s $500? Small price to pay.” That’s only assuming the government is efficient enough to notice you...

One of the benefits of owning both a signing company and an active notary directory is having a direct line of communication with hiring parties for notaries. 

Almost daily I am speaking to estate planning attorneys, real estate agents, lenders, and escrow officers to showcase the world’s best notaries on Gotary.com. 

One of my favorite questions to ask in those conversations is, “what challenges have you encountered with notaries in the past?”

You might think “mistakes” was a popular answer, but it wasn’t. In fact, aside from several nightmare stories about how notaries have responded to their errors, mistakes didn’t even make the top ten list. 

When asked how they resolved issues with notaries, most people I talked to said they love working with notaries that are professional, with a great attitude. With these two qualities, nearly any adversity can be overcome. 

That said, there are four behaviors that these...

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A friend and I bought a liquor store we found listed on BizBuySell.com in the early 2,000’s. It was just a small mom-and-pop shop, or more accurately a pop-and-son thing, and the son had lost interest so pop was selling cheap. 

It was located in a pretty busy shopping center with a Home Depot as an anchor, so I was confident I could boost revenues and quickly grow to a second location. 

My strategy? 

Offer a compelling “lead magnet” and capture email addresses of my customers so I could communicate value on my terms. 

Tapping into my experience with another business I was in, we bought a badass poker table and set it up in the store as a display and ran a promotion to win it. 

The rules were simple:

• Register with your email address.
• Earn additional entries for every $10 you spend. 

The strategy was a hit, garnering over 1,200 email addresses of local imbibers of booze. 

Following a...