Vivaldi wrote one of the most famous pieces of music ever written called “The Four Seasons.” In California, we only have two seasons and in India they have three. Looks like Antonio Vivaldi didn’t travel enough. But, what if he wrote for Notaries?

Here are my ideas.

The Four Signatures
The Four Notaries
The Four Brothers who were Notaries
The Four Italian Notaries.
Notarizing in Legato
Andante con moto Notario!

Personally, I never liked Vivaldi. I love Bach, Rameau, and some of the German Baroque composers. But the other French and Italian Baroque composers I didn’t care for.

Notaries these days who invest in Notary education study all types of topics. Some study Notary basics, others study TRID, Reverse Mortgages, Helocs, situational knowledge, elite knowledge, or just plain signing agent knowledge. Marketing skills are also taught by many agencies. So, which skills are the most valuable?

As a signing agent, companies typically babysit you unless you are very advanced and work purely for title companies. If you make mistakes, that is very unprofessional, but they generally catch you before it is too late due to the scan backs and fax backs. Notaries do not get complaints about errors on our site these days. When they do get complaints it is because they are rude or don’t show up, don’t return phone calls, or don’t get documents back on time.

So, let me make a pecking order of Notary skills in an order that makes logical sense to me.

Notary knowledge
If you don’t know how to be a solid Notary, you are endangering the public as well as yourself and leaving yourself open to legal liability. A mistake identifying someone, or filling out your journal can lead to a lawsuit, or lack of evidence in a legal proceeding. That is very serious and can ruin not only you, but all who are involved in a transaction with you. Failing to properly administer an Oath (when required) can lead to the termination of your commission if you ever get caught and is considered Perjury which is a Federal crime! If you don’t fill out forms properly or follow Notary law and procedure, you can ruin your life. So, Notary knowledge is the highest priority as a Notary Signing Agent and THAT is why we teach the finer points at no cost in Notary Public 101 on the blog.

Signing Agent knowledge
Knowing how to initial, date a right to cancel, and understanding the basic documents in a home-owner Refinances are skills that you will need to use a lot. You can ruin a signing if you miss signatures or initials, or put wrong dates on documents. Signing Agent skills seems to be a definite #2 in the pecking order of what you should study.

Marketing
If you know your basics, but don’t know how to attract work, you might get a few jobs here and there, but won’t have a side career of any scope. Learning Notary marketing is easy because there are good teachers everywhere. 123notary and LSS do a nice job teaching notary marketing. Some of the knowledge is available in our loan signing course and a lot more is on the blog in the marketing category on the right.

Specialty Skills
It is always good to learn more. Being TRID trained, or trained in reverse signings is great. But, that is the last step in my opinion. It impresses clients when you go above and beyond in your training. It shows motivation and effort and makes them more likely to hire you. But, learn the other stuff first as that is a lot more critical for basic survival.

How many certifications should I get?
The more the merrier. If you advertise with us, you should consider ours. If you are a paid member, we sometimes offer to test you by phone at no cost if you study from Notary Public 101, but we get very few takers. Our test is the hardest in the industry and our teaching materials are the most practical — and NOT the most expensive. We have the least expensive certification compared to the big players!

I forget if I wrote about this before. But, the people who are supposed to keep your healthy and not healthy themselves.

It is common knowledge that to be healthy you should:

Get enough sleep
Not work too much
Have a balanced diet
Get natural sunlight
Be happy and have a normal social and recreational life.
Not live under too much stress or distress
Believe in God (false Gods are equally good for health purposes) and have some sort of worship.

People who do the opposite are a lot more likely to get cancer, strokes, heart attacks, or die young based on what I have read and seen in real life with people I know!

However, the people who take care of your health
1. Had to go through a grueling experience going through medical school, going without sleep day after day, year after year, and cramming excessively under severe distress.
2. Before medical school, they study like crazy so they can get into medical school.
3. To survive medical school, they sacrifice their friends and family because their time is all zapped up.
4. Natural sunlight? Not unless it happens indoors while cramming.
5. Balanced diet? Does the “Mac N Cheez” they serve at the hospital lunchroom count as a balanced diet? I’m sure it must — otherwise why would they serve it at a hospital unless their goal is to keep us sick (or unless they are clueless or don’t care?)
6. Medical professionals work themselves to death doing long 12 or 36 hour shifts under miserable and grueling conditions.

If these people choose to devote their entire lives to living under inhuman, unhealthy and grueling conditions, should you be hiring them to keep you healthy?

I use holistic doctors and the doctor at the clinic who works 40 hours a week and doesn’t over do it. I hire medical staff who look healthy and kept me healthy. But, what about the rest of you?

We just ad a Surgeon join 123notary. His body just couldn’t handle the punishment of the 80 hour workweeks at his age. But, he loves driving around doing signings and he lives in an area with amazing scenery which makes the driving heaven. I talked to him about this issue of doctors being the least healthy people and he agreed with me. That is why he quit being a doctor. I think we need to redesign the way the world works.

SUMMARY
We should all live happy and well balanced lives and believe in God or Gods. According to Christianity and Judaism if you worship the wrong Gods you go to hell. But, according to long life research you can worship false Gods all day long and the more you do it, the longer you live. So, we’ve finally proven religious fuddy duddies wrong about something. However, there is no proof that after your happy long life of worshipping false Gods that you will have a positive after-life. The long life specialists don’t seem to discuss the afterlife other than the fact that some people believe or don’t believe in it. Hmmm.

We are writing about this topic and others on our forum. Please reference the forum to read more about this and other interesting notary topics.

http://www.123notary.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=7702

Don’t ask me how I came up with the idea for this. I think I must have been at Wood Ranch sitting at the bar waiting for my asparagus and baked potato talking to the cool bar tender Adolfo. Yes, he is not only a bar tender, but musician, philosopher and cool guy. I was thinking how nice it would be if there were particular bars where the people were at a measurable level of coolness. And then thought — what if it if were for Notaries only? They would probably just complain about signing companies which is totally uncool — but, we do have a lot of very cool people on the site and I talk to them periodically.

Here are some comments…
1. I literally laughed out loud while reading this witty tale… #lovededit

Jeremy’s take — glad someone liked my ideas and my comedy. Usually it is my paid comedy writer Andy who gets the hits. He is a pro and worked with Seinfeld and Cheers, so he has paid his dues. All I did was notarize stuff and come up with weird ideas.

2. I figured you didn’t sleep, let alone hard enough to dream! How do you find time with everything you do?

Jeremy’s take
I sleep odd hours. It got so bad I was staying up all night and going to bed at 7am. It was out of control. I need sunlight. So, then I disciplined myself and now I am going to bed at midnight and getting up at 9:30am. I need a little more than nine hours normally. But, how do I find time to write? First of all I love writing. It nourishes my soul and creativity. I feel empty without doing it. Second, I have to write because the Notaries need tips and laughter, otherwise they dry up (but, their stamp’s ink doesn’t dry up.)

SUMMARY
I had no idea this blog entry would take off. I’m glad it did. It was just a spur of the moment idea. It just came up. We thought of other crazy ideas in that bar too. A bar just like Hooters, but where they make smoothies and juice. We decided to name the idea “Jooters” or “Smooters”. I told the bar tender all my crazy ideas for pick up lines too and he had a lot of commentary. But, he’s married now so he is out of the game.

You might also like:

A bar only for “cool” Notaries
http://blog.123notary.com/?p=22546

3 Notaries walk into a bar
http://blog.123notary.com/?p=3660