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Katie: 📍 You don’t know. I’m a notary too, so I’m a notary in the state of Florida. I do, I run my own business as well, and that is one of the things that is like super hard for me to get my head around. And I just, I dread tax season just because trying to keep track of everything. If you like, just don’t even
but that is something that your platform does. Correct?
Susan: It’s year outta taxes. Sadly, it’s a necessary evil. We have the amazing opportunity to be notaries and to help our public. And we have, we get to do so many different things. It’s such a cool time to be a notary. I’ve been a notary in California since, Oh, 1999, me and Prince, baby. We are buddies.
But it’s been a hot second and the role of a notary has been pretty consistent across our history for decades and centuries. But And what we do now is even so much more diverse than what we’ve ever done in the past. And we’re so essential to any transaction. One of my favorite quotes is from Laura Biewer.
She was at the NNA. She’s been a fantastic resource for notaries across the United States. She says, we are the hinges that swing big doors. I love that quote, I’m always going to give her credit for that. But it speaks volumes to what we do and what we facilitate. We’re important pieces that without us it wouldn’t be as easy or it wouldn’t be as smooth.
It’s a really cool way to think about what we do. But with that, we have to keep track of everything that we do because we’re not working for a company, so we’re our own companies now, so we have to really think about how we manage our business. We are the CEOs of our own companies and our corporations and we have to act like that.
Notary Assist was designed to help make that part of our job easier. It’s not what we actually got into Notary to do, but it’s what comes along with it when we get into our business. Notary Assist is here to help really facilitate. Success of a business. So if you have a good foundation and a good system, you’re more likely to succeed.
So that’s what notary assist is about, to give you that foundation and that system so you can succeed.
Katie: Yes. I love that too because it’s I think I said it before, but like basically as you were going through the process and you taught, and you told me a little bit of your story, like you saw a need for it.
And you basically made it in the way that you would want a program to be, which is great. I was listening to Some podcasts and doing some research about Notary Assist just so that I had a little bit, yeah But everything had really good reviews Everybody said that how helpful it was for their business like and then I wanted to delve into you said that there was Some new things that you are rolling out and have already rolled out
Susan:Yeah, Goodness. Let’s start with why did it come about? When I got started in this industry, there wasn’t a software tool that was designed for our industry. There was QuickBooks and there was, I think, Quicken and Peachtree. There were some accounting softwares, but for me personally, and maybe this is just a tell for me.
It was overwhelming and it was, if you weren’t an accountant, it didn’t make sense. I wanted something that was powerful, but simple. I needed to know where I needed to go and none of those have a calendaring feature. I needed to know. What time I needed to be there, I needed to know, I needed organization for my calendar in addition to all of the revenue, the mileage, and the expenses, but I needed to keep it simple.
I didn’t want, I didn’t know, I don’t know the nuances of accounting. I’m not a CPA, I am not a tax professional, so I needed to keep it simple so I could stay on track and stay compliant. And be prepared for tax time, but without being overwhelmed and being stuck behind the computer or manually writing stuff down.
The other options that were available were manual. I, I know in California we have to keep a journal. Not every state’s required to keep a journal, so I’m not sure about Florida, but it’s always best practice to keep a journal. A journal and that’s a lot of writing. If you spend all day notarizing and writing stuff down, then you’ve got these logs, or you’re keeping tabs with another pen and paper.
I’m, my carpal tunnel was out of control, so we needed to automate something, but It, when you don’t have something that’s constantly tallying, it’s a daunting task to manually tally at the end. Yeah. I was the proverbial shoebox with a ton of receipts, and I just, I was organized because I was putting mileage in one place, my expenses in one place, and my income in one place.
These proverbial shoeboxes full of paper, didn’t organize themselves other than me chucking them in there. I had them in my three boxes, but I was buried under paper and then it would take so much time at the end of the year to actually manually tally them all. And I was actually turning down work. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Now all of a sudden you’re losing revenue because you’re having to do what’s required of us to file taxes.
So that didn’t seem very productive to me. So we came out with a solution that would not only help organize, give you sanity so you’re not double booking yourself. How many times I double booked myself between. My kids, my sporting events pickup, doctor’s appointments and signings, because you just want to say yes.
You want to say yes all the time so that you’re the best help for your client as possible. But then your mouth sometimes gets ahead of what’s actually on your calendar. And then all of a sudden you’re like, Oh, now I’ve got to reschedule this. I’ve got to reschedule that. And then now it’s a challenge.
And then the stress and the anxiety and. We decided to streamline it so that you could have a place to manage your calendar, manage your expenses, manage your invoicing, and your income all in one place. So that right there became so much more helpful and you can rest a little bit easier at night. So you’re like, okay, this is at least organized and I’ve got this going on.
Yeah. Then came in learning. When we decided to open Notary Assist, I was not a business owner. I had never run a software company and I didn’t understand. So I drank through a fire hose for the first few years. It was crazy, but exciting at the same time. So now I’ve got years worth of, Notary Assist was launched in 2007 at the NNA conference in downtown LA.
And I literally had a table and some CDs and some t shirts because that’s what I would, I figured everybody wanted a t shirt and come to my booth if I had a t shirt and they might ask me what I was selling. So that’s how I started and thank God it was received well and I got to meet thousands of notaries from across the country.
That’s where it started. So all of a sudden notaries were like, Oh my gosh, there’s something for us, just in our industry that was unique to us. So that was fantastic. And that’s how we got going. And now we work with notaries from across the country, Hawaii to Maine and everywhere in between and Florida state down there.
I’m super proud of it. And I think we even have a couple of notaries that are. International, but in the United Territories I’ve got notaries that are, that work for the military or that are stationed abroad, and they still can use it. But it’s, that’s really, I’m very proud to know that I’m helping others in the industry and we listen to their feedback.
So it’s a lot of a partnership now and I’m still out in the field. I’m still out doing notarizations just a lot of our clients are. And so we listen and we brainstorm. So it’s a community within our notary community that communicates. And we learn about what’s needed in the industry. So right now in 2023, interest rates have risen and we’re coming off of the high by 2020 and 2022, through 2022, where we had really historically low interest rates, and now real estate market’s a little stalled and we’re not seeing as many real estate transactions.
And now, our notaries are like diversifying like crazy. Now we had to evolve too. So notary assist is the only software in this space that allows you to track not only the real estate transactions like loan signings and reverse mortgages and HELOCs and commercial loans, you name it, any loan that’s under loan signing.
But we also help you track specialty and general notary work like hospitals, estate planning reservation notarizations, DMVs, I 9s, you name it. Notaries are doing so much. Yeah. Some notaries are going into jails and prisons so that the inmates can get a notary, a document notarized. It’s an incredible time to be a notary because we are a service.
industry. So wherever our community needs us is where we go. Just so many opportunities are out there and notaries are constantly evolving.
Katie: And so Notary Assist gives the ability to track a whole lot. Yeah, which is like so
big too and I like there’s two things. One, I can definitely tell that it’s been tailored specifically for notaries and that’s great because I saw on there that you guys do directions.
Susan: Oh, yeah. Turn by turn, baby.
Katie: It is incredible. The more that I looked into it, the more I was like, Oh my gosh, this is perfect. Like I don’t do mobile notary as much, but it is I used to get lost all the time.
Susan: All the time. All the time. The struggle is real, especially when we switch time, like when it’s daylight savings and we switch into it and it gets dark sooner. Oh, Lord have mercy.
Katie: I cannot tell you how many times I’ve showed up to the wrong.
Susan: You’re not alone. You’re not alone.
Katie: The directions are a good thing. But then also the other thing that I’m happy that you brought up is the diversification of the like as notaries, what you are getting into as far as yes, the loan signings are a little bit tricky right now to try and get, like that is a little bit different.
But to introduce different diverse income streams exactly for this reason, or if there is a downturn in the loan signings, you’re basically pivoted towards still having an income, like still being able to pay your bills, still being able to feed your, feed your family. So that’s how you are adding that in there as a support network thing.
Because when I first started out, I felt so like alone. And it was like I don’t know how to do the QuickBooks. That doesn’t make any sense. Like I have to add that extra thing for the taxes for the notaries, there’s intricacies that. I didn’t feel were out there, and then I found Notary Assist, so I’m like, this is literally perfect is exactly what you would need, so good job 🙂
