Growing up, my father drove people crazy by slowly reading every part of long contracts while they had to sit and wait. I agree with him that reading contracts is essential. But, exasperating others is not nice. I think it is my karma being the son of a copious reader (that is his hobby by the way) to have signers who are just as bad (or diligent and good) as dad.

During my career, roughly half of my borrowers read too much. My average signing took a little more than an hour. I dealt with it. I was not too concerned unless they were delaying me from getting to another job. But, now that I am older, and value my time more, I realize this is no good. Three hour signings cannot happen.

You need a strategy for how you are going to deal with this. Here are some ideas. Put in the comments if you have other ideas.

1. During the confirmation call, let them know you are offering them “x” amount of minutes for the signing. I would offer more time to those paying you well to make sure you get rehired. For cheap signings, perhaps offer 45 minutes. Keep in mind that if they go over, you need to offer some leeway to avoid social friction (and getting fired). For signings that pay big bucks, you might allow up to two hours just to be nice. But, still emphasize that there is a limit. My personal experience was that the more I was paid, the faster the signing was. My worst client was a Lender whose borrowers always had to call him and ask painstakingly long questions on my time. The average phone call was 45 minutes which I had to sit through.

2. If you don’t give them a summary of your time offering before the signing, you can spring it on them at the signing. You explain that this is a signing appointment and not a reading appointment. You can explain that they have borrowers copies to read for the next 72 hours if this is a refinance for a primary residence, and that they can cancel after the fact. Explain that you have other appointments and have to leave in “x” amount of minutes whether the loan is signed or not out of courtesy for your subsequent appointments.

Having time limits might get you fired, not paid, or in trouble. But, if you want to make money as a signing agent, you need to book lots of appointments and nail them one by one. Or, you need to have two high paying jobs per day. 2 x $200 = $400 and $400 per day is a living — not a great living, but a living. If you make $80 per signing, you need to do at least five per day to get paid well and that means hustling and moving fast, especially at night when they might be back to back.

In the worst scenario, you might have to take the main copies signed or unsigned, put them in the Fedex and send them back. You can explain to the company that you ran out of time and that next time the Lender should explain the documents better to the signer AHEAD OF TIME otherwise they end up taking your time when you don’t have time. It is not a matter of what your time is worth — if you have another client waiting, it is an abuse of that other client’s time if you are late for any reason.

Please comment if you have better ideas, because this blog article is about playing rough which is not considered nice, but is the only way to get good income per hour spent. Otherwise you might get taken for a ride regularly.

There is International Women’s day and now there is International Notary Women’s Day at least in this article. My first complaint is – why is there no men’s day? How come women get all the recognition and men are just left out? Are we less than human? But, I digress. So, what is International Notary Women’s Day about? It is a day where we commemorate women in the Notary world.

The vast majority of Notaries are women. Close to 90%. As Mobile Notaries the quantity is closer to 60%. There are disproportionately high rates of blacks being Notaries as well, in particular, you guessed it, black women. Many women who are in the Notary world were Realtors before that — another field dominated by older women. Most mobile notaries are above 40 as well.

So, what do women do differently in the Notary world? Word on the street is that women are better at multitasking. I think that is a genetic fact because I can only do one thing at a time. Being a notary involves a lot of juggling and faxing, scanning, making appointments, rescheduling, etc. I think that women have a knack for this type of thing.

Additionally, being a notary requires another skill women have — shopping. You need to buy ink, forms, gas, snacks, and more to be a mobile notary. On a side note, every time I go to Whole Foods I see professional shoppers buying food for other families and most of these people are women which proves that women were born to shop.

In the real world, women, particularly young women have more patience than guys to for higher education. But, in the Notary world, few people are mastering our materials these days. We need more women passing our test!

I am also tempted to see — we need more women mobile notaries to correct the imbalance, but the imbalance is that we have disproportionately more women than men as Notaries — so perhaps I should say that we need more men. Or perhaps we should just let nature take its course.

Behind every successful man, there is a Woman Notary. Just kidding.

Another fact is that there is no glass ceiling in the notary world. It is a gig economy and you get paid for what you do. The more experienced people tend to get paid a lot more as well. Elite certified members get paid a lot more too, but try getting anyone to crack a book. This is why I think China will wipe America out one day – they have no problem cracking books, or hacking US government high security websites.

For women in the notary clergy there is the stained glass ceiling — just kidding.

Women Notaries are a little more squeamish going out at night to strange neighborhoods. I have not heard of any woman getting in trouble, but the fear is real.

So, that concludes my half realistic and half satirical view of women Notaries. Let me know if there are other points I could include.

It is always nice to hear stories like this from your former students. As you may or may not know, the mobile notary business is filled with women. Notaries in general are disproportionately women (roughly 84%) and mobile notaries are more like 60% women. I recently had a conversation with a lady who studied from my materials, mastered them scored well on my quiz, and is getting tons of work. For a beginner, she is really hustling and getting a lot more work than other beginners normally work.

But, this woman has a personality that lends itself (sorry for the mortgage related pun) to success in the mobile notary business. She reads and reads and reads. She wants to know what is going on, what the rules are, what proper techniques are, etc. She wants to do everything correctly. Not everything she does is right, so I have to correct her every once in a while. There is a lot to know as a mobile notary, so it is good to correspond regularly with those who know the business.

Carmen also started out as my student back in 2003. She always had questions. I remember the first time I met her. I was handing over a book to her in person near the guard shack in my complex. Carmen had a thirst for knowledge. Now, Carmen is someone I refer to as the queen of the industry because nobody can answer questions better than she does. I guess there is now more realism to the saying, “Grasshopper, you were once the student, but now you are the master. Can catch fly with chopsticks, can do anything.” I guess when you hear that quote, the image comes to mind of Carmen quietly meditating while facing a statue of the Buddha with a samurai sword laid out in front of her wearing either a kimono or a ninja outfit. I have been urging Carmen to meditate for years to deal with the stress of constant whining on the part of Notaries. Maybe this mental image will prove to be useful.

There are other examples of people I have instructed who became wildly successful. It is fun to think about them when people call me whining about some petty concern. It is nice to know your work paid off in a meaningful way to someone.