A Notary in the Most Unlikely Places
By Cindy Medrano on June 27, 2018 in Building Your Business
Being a mobile Notary is an underrated, viable business venture. But there is no one single path to success. The key is finding your niche and figuring out how this service can add value to your existing business and customers.
Here are stories of 3 Notaries who spotted an opportunity and charged forward. These individuals added mobile Notary services as a profitable opportunity to their already established businesses and flourished as entrepreneurs.
Notary By Chance
Hugo Salazar of Irving, Texas, plans funeral services, where he helps clients in the most difficult times find peace and comfort to plan their last goodbyes for their loved ones.
As a funeral planning counselor assisting clients in Texas and Oklahoma, Salazar specializes in burials, cremations and ship outs. He is a one-stop shop. All funeral arrangements are done through him, allowing customers to feel at ease that someone is taking care of them while they mourn their loss.
Many of his clients needed documents notarized, but since he wasn’t a Notary he had to refer them to someone else. That is when he realized the potential to grow his business and add another convenience for his clients. Now when someone needs a Notary for funeral documents, such as disposition permits or documents for shipping a body out of the country, he’s able to handle that task without having to send his clients elsewhere.
“Notaries must be patient. Money comes afterwards,” Salazar advises.
Salazar is a mobile Notary. The majority of his Notary clients come from networking with various attorneys and the Irving Hispanic Chamber of Commerce members. To date, he is the only Notary within that network of professionals.
Helpful Community Member
Gail Creamer of Syracuse, New York, is the owner of a PostNet center that offers an array of printing, graphic design, and multi-carrier shipping services to the community. Being locally owned and operated, the center is a helpful resource for the Syracuse public.
By adding Notary and fingerprinting services, Creamer generated an additional stream of revenue for the business. “With fewer and fewer traditional institutions offering the service, it is nice to know we still do and that people are finding us when searching online,” she said. This brings customers to the center, where they see the other services they provide.
The idea sparked from another PostNet center. Becoming a Notary is another form of giving back and helping the community.
Her entrepreneurial, ambitious spirit doesn’t stop there. Creamer looks to further expand her business by considering becoming a Signing Agent and an exam proctor. Any opportunity that allows her to fully use her commission, she’s all ears.
Bringing Relief To Hospice Patients
People in the field of social work have it in their hearts to be helpful and a beacon of hope for families, individuals and communities around them. A Notary has similar traits. As an official of integrity, it is their duty to serve and protect the community through impartiality.
Lee Melton of Brunswick, Georgia, is a licensed social worker for hospice care who became a Notary to aid her homebound patients who needed documents notarized. By lending a hand to her patients, Melton discovered there was a business opportunity in becoming a mobile Notary, outside her normal workday.
“It had never occurred to me that there was such thing as a Mobile Notary until I needed one myself,” Melton said. “After investigating the web-based referral services available, I registered with one and it brought me more business than I had time for.”
Much of her work happens with elderly and ill patients, so she is familiar with hospitals and nursing homes. Due to her experience as a social worker, she is quick to recognize elderly exploitation and confusion.
Notaries are in every industry, and most use their commissions for their jobs. But a growing number of them are finding an opportunity to leverage their commission to help those around them and make their own lives better.