For those of you who don’t know, 123notary has a long history filled with twists and turns. The very early history happened when Jeremy (that’s me – owner of 123notary) had trouble with his web designers at some Chinese company in San Gabriel and needed to find someone new. So, I (Jeremy) called some other local web companies and found Mitch who ran eMarketingAssociates. Mitch had only four total people in his office including himself. They fixed up my programming on 123notary and have been helping me ever since.

1999: The day I first drove in.
I remember meeting him. This was back in 1999 or 2000. He was in his 40’s. A very handsome, kind and charismatic guy (still is.) I enjoyed talking to him. He has memories too and perhaps I should get him to share his early memories and add to this article with those memories.

I remember a talk with Mitch back in 2006 when he said that he remember the day he met me. The memory of paranoid me, driving into his parking lot with my beaten up 1984 Toyota Corolla stuck in his head forever. Of course, at the time of that conversation in 2006 I had a 2004 Toyota Corolla which looked new and nice. I was a mess in those days, and in many ways still am. It is hard to keep my life in order when I have more things to do than I can handle. Now in 2018, I still have that 2004 Toyota Corolla, but it is now somewhat beaten up and the paint is fading, and I am missing two hub caps which are soon to be replaced. Such is life. But, now I can afford a new car. I just prefer my old one.

Mitch’s Business Grew
Mitch’s office slowly grew and grew from four people to twelve. Mitch is smart and got an office in an industrial zone which is a lot cheaper than getting it in an office area. There is also a lot more parking as well. So, he kept moving his office around in the same complex as his business grew.

His Business Evolved Too
Mitch went from doing web design and web programming to focusing mainly on social media and he runs all of my campaigns. This was good for my social media, but I was never able to find programmers as good as the ones Mitch had for the rest of my career. It is ten years after the fact and I still cannot find good programming. This is partly due to a change in the market, but also due to the good people Mitch hired.

Having Fun
One day, I asked both of the programmers in 2008 to go out to dinner with me for fun. They declined, but Mitch reversed the offer and took me out. Since then, Mitch and I go out two or three times a year to fun spots in Los Angeles and surrounding areas for Thai, Chinese, American, Italian and other types of cuisine and drinks. In fact we are going for drinks at the intercontinental next week.

Good Luck
Over time, I began to think of Mitch as one of my three best good luck people. That sounds very Chinese, but I believe it. Mitch’s suggestions and things I do with Mitch regularly turn out to be very lucky in the long run. He got me doing social media, blogging, and we found some lucky feng-shui hang out spots that bring us good luck as well. I guess God punishes me sometimes, but also gives me people who point me in the right direction and my life would be ruined without those people.

Uncanny Things in Common
The strange thing is that Mitch and I have a lot of things in common that other people would not have. We both new many people from Israel when we were young. We both do business with a lot of people from India (I lived in India briefly before.) We both are entrepreneurs or small business owners. Additionally, I studied Chinese in college as my major and Mitch’s wife is from Taiwan. What a bunch of uncanny commonalities. I only have this much in common with a small bunch of others who I can count on one hand.

Summary
I am glad I met Mitch. My life would not have turned out the way it did had I not known Mitch. Of the people in my entire life, he is one of the six including parents, my piano teacher and a few others, who had a profound effect on my development and success.

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All about 123notary — who we are, advertising with us, and how we started.

Many people know that 123notary is the one venue to advertise your Mobile Notary service that systematically gets results. We are the go-to site for notary advertising. Some people rave about the results we get. Others complain about how they don’t like our sometimes strict policies. But, almost all love the zany stories and helpful tips in our blog. So, let’s break it down how 123notary got started, and what we do.

The History of 123notary

123notary started back in 1999 and was originally designed to be an advertising site just for Jeremy. The other sites weren’t getting him enough business, so it was time to take control of advertising so there would be enough work. As time went on, the site graduated from being a purely Southern California directory covering only five counties to covering all of California. By 2001, we covered the entire United States.

Building up 123notary from scratch

We started this directory knowing almost nothing about the directory business. We just put a bunch of names and numbers on a list. Little did we realize that there is a lot more to running a directory than that. We realized we needed critical mass, so we added more than a thousand names to the list. Along with a bunch of other technical realizations about placement levels for additional counties, zip search results, etc., we realized that people drop out. As people drop out of the Notary business, we need new Notaries dropping in. My huge project adding 1000 Notaries to the list was something that would have to be repeated. So, a few years later, I added more people. Our numbers went up, and then month by month the numbers went down. This arduous process of adding names to the list would have to be repeated once again as our stats kept going down. After a while, it became a realization that we needed an organized way to keep our numbers up. So, I decided to create a monthly plan to add new Notaries to our list every month, and remove defunct listings every month as well. That system worked miracles and from that day forward, 123notary maintained a steady quantity of Notaries around 6200-7400.

Amazing breakthroughs in 2008 & 2009

Additionally, in 2008, the online advertising with Google Adwords started to get a lot more expensive. It was necessary to find a more cost-effective way to get clicks. Learning SEO was something that took a few years, but with a fantastic programmer named Mark, Jeremy was able to learn the art of SEO and get 123notary double the clicks it was getting before. The following year (2009) Mitch got Jeremy started on blogging and social media which again worked wonders for 123notary’s SEO, although that miracle took years to unfold.

What is 123notary now?
123notary is a the premiere Notary directory in the industry. No other directory has as high a quality of Notaries or gets as much traffic. We keep more information on our Notaries than any other directory. We have the general contact info, hours of operation, but also get into Notary specialties such as Reverse Mortgages, Hospital Signings, Immigration Documents, E&O insurance, Foreign Languages, and more. Additionally, 123notary goes through and helps Notaries edit their notes sections to make them easier to read and more informative. 123notary gets about 170,000 visitors per month and has about 6900 Notaries on board as of June, 2016.

Advertising

You can advertise with 123notary as a Mobile Notary for as little as $59 per year. Although we offer FREE listings which appear at the bottom of the search results, you can also elect to get a preferential listing for $99 or be #1 on the search results for a quoted price which might range from $200 on up depending on the area.

eCourses

123notary also sells loan signing certification courses and combos. Our most popular is the LS#3 combo which gives a thorough guide to loan signing, keeping records, marketing your services, examples of loan documents, and more. You can get a physical book or an ecourse. Read the course description!

How do I do well on 123notary?

To do well on 123notary requires more than just paying us an annual fee. You need to maintain your listing a little bit too, but it isn’t rocket science, and you have experienced professionals who are here to help at no extra cost. You need to write an amazing notes section about your experience, what’s unique about you, equipment, memberships, coverage areas, etc. We will help you edit your notes section at no cost to make it better organized and attractive. You also need reviews from your satisfied clients on your listing. All you have to do is ask, and email them a link, and some (but, unfortunately not all) of them will write you a review. A few reviews are like gold and will magically transform your listing as that is what the users want to see.

Help is always there when you advertise with 123notary

Other directories just take your money and leave you on your own. At 123notary, you can email us or call our 888 number for help. We give help with passwords for your listing, or ecourse. We also give free marketing and technical tips if you have a question. We’ll help brush up your listing at no cost as well as help you choose a business name — at at no cost if you have a paid listing with us!

Our Newsletter

In addition to providing advertising and courses, 123notary also has a free newsletter which has more than 5000 followers. Our newsletter is a free source of great industry information and laughs as well. We have articles about new signing companies, signing company gossip, technical signing agent tips, mobile notary marketing tips, and also comedy articles especially written for the Notary industry. No other newsletter provides the same diversity or quality of articles as we do. So, email us at info@123notary.com to sign up today!

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The story of 123notary
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We had several situations where there was a small drama because more than one Notary had the same name.

In one instance, a Notary in Michigan named John Smith got the check for a Notary also named John Smith in Alabama. They had the same name. The Michigan John Smith deposited the check too.

In another instance a Notary who had been offline was put back online. The Florida Melody Smith was put back online. Then Melody Smith emailed me to let me know that she was still not online. Then I took a closer look and realized that there was a California Melody Smith as well who was not online. Ooops! So, I put California Melody Smith online and explained my mistake.

Then, we had a new Notary named Howard Lee. I was horribly afraid because I had had a roommate named Howard Lee. What if it were the same person? They were both in California. Gasp!!! However, my heartrate went down when I learned that Notary Howard Lee indicated Korean as a second language, where the ex-roommate who wanted to kill me because of a lie his girlfriend told him spoke Chinese.

In another instance Samantha Cornfield got the other Samantha Cornfield’s password. Ooops — security breach. She emailed me and I sent the password for a completely different person with the same name.

The moral of the story is that I need to really be more careful and check people’s email address when they contact me because email addresses are unique, but there could be infinite numbers of people with the same personal name.

2016 was a great year for Notaries. Here are some of the highlights of what happened at 123notary and in the Notary industry in general.

Jan 2016 — The Notary industry was slow for most of the year, but worse in the last quarter. To the point where some short of change for the laundry didn’t even have a last quarter.

Feb 2016 — Snapdocs becomes a force to be reckoned with and Jeremy writes many snappy blog posts over the next several months about them. Snap becomes jealous. Crackle & Pop couldn’t care less.

June 2016 — Jeremy visits Facebook headquarters to see where his Facebook advertising money is going. But, Facebook refuses to give him a tour after a seven hour drive, which Jeremy tells them he didn’t like. Since they’re used to seeing a thumb down instead, they have no idea what he’s saying.

Sept 2016 — 123notary introduces mobile pages for city and state search results pages. The pages still need to be tweaked.

Nov 08, 2016 — Trump elected. Half of Americans made America great again while the other half made America grating again.

Nov 09, 2016 — 3253 of Minnesota Notaries applied for a Notary commission in Saskatchewan. The Somalis in MN wanted to make America great for the first time by legalizing Shariah law, while Notaries in Colorado are staying put as notarizing while stoned remains legalized.

Nov 10, 2016 — 123notary removes many reviews in an attempt to motivate people to get new reviews.

Dec 10, 2016 — 123notary puts old reviews back online as many Notaries got upset and Google rankings fell.

Dec 11, 2016 — Carmen stubs her toe on way to Affidavit signing, and feels better after the ID for the signer had a really funny photo where the lady looked surprised and her hair was a mess. When Carmen diplomatically told the lady she took a nice picture, the lady looked surprised and her hair stood up just like her picture.

Dec 14, 2016 — Interest rates go up a quarter of a point and are expected to go up two to three times more. We could be looking at a very slow 2017. Which is good news for people living paycheck to paycheck and can’t believe how quickly the next month’s rent check is due.

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When we think of jury duty we think of doing our duty to our country in order to ensure one of the facets of due process in that we provide the opportunity to a defendant to have a fair trial that is free of bias, partiality, and prejudice. The down side of the way jury duty is practiced in the United States is that in order to ensure the rights of the accused, regular citizens are stripped of their freedoms for an indefinite period of time while they are trapped in long and arduous court cases — and often without financial compensation other than $15 per day which does not even cover lunch or a cab fare.

However, upon further and closer inspection it seems that jury duty is not only a sacrifice of the juror’s short-term rights for the benefit of a defendant, but much worse. Jury duty has many parallels with human trafficking and actually meets the definition of human trafficking to a T.

HUMAN TRAFFICKING
Human trafficking can be defined as the transport of human beings from one location to the other in order to perform forced labor or sexual exploitation. Although it normally includes various other types of abuses as a matter of practices, those other abuses are not part of the definition.

JURY DUTY
Jury duty involves what I call “self-abduction under duress” as a primary stage of the process. This means that a jury member or prospective juror forces himself into a vehicle of some sort because he or she realizes that he/she will face a $1500 fine or possible incarceration if he/she doesn’t comply with the request made in writing by the court administration. The mafia also makes threats when they want you to do something. They threaten you with physical harm or threaten to harm loved ones or your possessions. Maybe the supreme court is more similar to the mafia than we think.

Jury duty involves the transportation or trafficking or “self-trafficking under duress” of jurors or prospective jurors from one location to another (home to a court building) for the purpose of forced labor in the form of decision making shoddily performed intellectual labor. The irony is that most jurors do not have the intellectual capacity nor care enough about their cases to give the defendant a fair trial.

Here is a satirical line from one of my comedy routines:
“Your honor, I believe that jury duty is similar in essence to human tracking. Both involve the transport or self-transport of individuals from one location to another for the sake of sexual exploitation or forced labor. I am relieved that I am here for forced jury related labor and not for sexual services because quite frankly your honor — you’re not my type.”

LEGAL QUESTIONS
Kidnapping is the unlawful abduction, transport, and holding of a person against their will. But, is it lawful for the court system to hold people against their will in a court room? If a juror does not complain about being there it does not appear that they are being kidnapped. But, what id they do announce that they do not consent to being strong-armed into staying there? Denying a person their freedoms as a law abiding person is a violation of their human rights. Is it legal for a court to cheat you out of your human rights? Is holding someone in court against their will hostage taking, kidnapping, or none of the above? I am not an Attorney and don’t know, but it seems that a lot of these accusations are up to interpretation.

EXCESSIVE WAITING
Since America has a policy of offering a public trial by jury to criminals and also sometimes for civil trials, that necessitates having a jury. Whether the jury is assembled by paying them, giving incentives, or forcing them to come under duress seems to vary. But, putting aside whether jurors are consensually performing their duty or paid is one issue — whether they should be allowed to be required to wait for five hours in a room doing absolutely nothing is a very different consideration.

Imagine a brain surgeon whose time is worth $2000 per hour is summoned (or as I call it “drafted”) to do jury duty. But, all he does is sit in a room all day long. That is a gross waste of the individual’s time. And that waste is justified because the law stipulates that a jury needs to consist of a cross section of society. But, to get the higher level members of the cross section of society, is it fair to waste $1600 of their time having them just sit around? That seems criminal to me, yet society in its incompetence allows this.

The duration of trials is another point to be considered. Some trials go on and on and on with new evidence and witnesses being called in slowly day after day. If you have a critical job, you will get very behind while you are trapped in a court room which could affect your co-workers, boss, and customers. It seems that there should be limits as to how long a trial should last. It also seems logical that those with critical jobs be put on shorter trials. The courts used to honor hardship, but these days they do not which is dangerous.

Personally, I feel that for smaller cases, there should be an option to have a very quick trial where all witnesses come at once, there is almost no waiting time, and you get in and out in a few hours. Jury selection is another topic that takes time. But, a pre-selection could be done online or over the phone to see what a juror’s prejudices are which would help the court choose what type of case to put them on.

I wasted two hours in a court room where a police man was on trial a few years ago. I spent five hours waiting in the waiting room, then spent two hours in a court room only to find out that they couldn’t use me, perhaps because I mentioned having had several bad experiences with Los Angeles Police Department members. If my style of jury preparation had been used, all of the screening would have happened by phone the night before and they would have picked a nice short trial the next day for me to go to with no waiting time. Efficiency saves a lot of money, but the court system is government run and therefore not very good at erring on the side of efficiency.

I hope that my article was thought inspiring. I am very frustrated with having to do jury duty. I like being on a jury, but cannot stand being virtually kidnapped by the court system and than having my time wasted. When bank robbers rob a bank and then find themselves surrounded by the police, the hostages in the bank do very much the same activities you do on day one of jury duty — namely sitting in a room for hours on end doing absolutely nothing — oh, and having to ask permission to go to the bathroom.