This episode reveals an embarrassingly delayed optimization in Serious Land Capital’s notarization workflow that wasted years of time using inefficient UPS/bank visits requiring 45-60 minutes per signing, dealing with witness requirements, ID verification red tape, and inconsistent notary quality. The breakthrough came from establishing a reliable local mobile notary charging just $50 per signing who handles printing, witnesses, and immediate FedEx dropoff.
Key Takeaways:
- Mobile Notary ROI Calculation Spending $50-100 per mobile notary visit versus 45-60 minutes of founder time at UPS is a no-brainer efficiency play, especially for operators closing 50+ deals annually.
- Witness Workaround Value Finding notaries who operate in the “gray area” by pre-arranging witnesses eliminates the awkward customer recruitment dance and franchise ID verification bottlenecks.
- Title Company Markup Awareness Direct notary relationships at $50 per signing beat title company-arranged notaries charging $150+ while providing better service and faster scheduling.
Tune in for the complete breakdown of building an efficient notarization system that reclaims hours of founder time for high-value activities.
(Podcast transcript below)
Welcome to get serious. A brief topic today, something that probably seems pretty mundane for many of you talking about notarizations. So in our line of business, you know, this is again, probably something that nobody really thinks about too often. But, know, at least I can say, you know, I’m embarrassed to say it took me years to figure out
a more efficient pathway to figuring out a notary process within our business. And, you know, this is probably even more important for, you know, folks who are doing higher volume land deals and hosting, you some folks will be doing, know, 50, 100 plus deals a year, just routine paperwork.
that you’re going to have to be going through. mean, yeah, just in most areas of the country, especially if you work with title companies, know, remote online notaries are still a minority of cases. We always try to work with them or do that option when feasible, but in our experience and we operate nationally, like that still tends to be fairly rare, like below 25 % of the time. But, know, whenever you can.
You know try asking. Yeah, can we do a remote online? Notary do a proof calm type setup some title companies will have that as an option so whenever That’s feasible, of course like that’s going to be a go-to when it comes to Figuring out your an orderization process but
You know, if that is not feasible, I figuring out a reliable local mobile notary to work with is just such a huge time saver and can be a big money saver too. Again, depending on the amount of deals that you are doing. you know, again, when we first started this business and we were doing, you know, much
Smaller deals on average, you know some of these that were you know buy for 1k sell for 5 You know off off the bat here and you still have to get all that notarization done So Yeah First, know when we were just self-closing Yeah, I mean you can take care of that on on your own, you know go do a ups or bank whatever and and get the process done or again Yeah, it would been
It would be great whenever you could find a, you know, you’d have to call a county clerk and figure out, do you accept remote online notaries? some of the times we could do that. But, you know, assuming you’re at the stage or the, you know, level of deals that you’re routinely working with title companies, you know,
Generally, there’s gonna be way more docs that you’re gonna have to fill out, maybe multiple different notarizations. If you’re self-closing, pretty much there’s only gonna be the deed that’s gonna have to be notarized. Maybe you’re gonna have to get some witnesses depending what state you’re in. But with title companies, mean, it can just vary, right? Some of these title companies might have five docs that need to be signed. They take a few minutes to fill out. Others could be 30, 40 documents that are just…
pain in the butt, you know, we’ve closed so many deals over the years and sometimes some of these title company docs like still throw me for a loop. Like, wait, what are they asking me here? What do need to fill out? and it can be easy to trip, get tripped up. And so in some of those, you know, still early days that we were using title companies, but not, self closing on them. I can’t, just, I’m embarrassed to say how inefficient we were, but you know, I didn’t, I didn’t even have a.
printer at home. like, luckily there was a UPS near where I was living. so I’d go over there and then I’d have to ask them to print everything out. And usually that would just take forever to you have to email that over to them. Sometimes it takes a while for them to get it and they got to get that whole printing done. And then you got to go and actually sign all of those various docs. You know, of course some of those docs are
you know, not needing notarizations, you got to fill out your wire info, and then you have to get set up with the actual notary at UPS, and some of them are easier to work with than others. Again, some areas of the country, you might actually have to get witnesses, and so then I’d be like trying to ask these other random customers, hey, do you mind signing? You know, I’ve never run into, I think only once I ran into an issue where somebody was like, yeah, I’m not gonna help witness.
I was so taken aback. like, wait a second. I’m used to always, you know, friendly smile. I know it’s like a bit awkward to have to do this. Like, what do you want me to do? But usually people are pretty helpful with that. And, you know, more often than not, especially these franchises or the banks, like even if the title company says, you know, the notary can serve as a witness, particularly in these areas that might require two witnesses, they’ll be like, no, franchise rules, we can’t do that. And so then you got to find even more people.
And especially like in UPS nowadays They will require you know having the witness Provide their ID and they have to do a separate checkout at the counter like all of this red tape and it’s like no one cares like you it’s I get it you guys it’s it’s a cover your ass type situation but
You know, no more colleagues in the legal space. Like nothing has ever been held up because of questions on who is a witness on a document. So, you know, it’s just some of these old fashioned rules and now these companies are creating even more red tape, you know, for witnesses being involved there. But I don’t get it, but you know, those are just the rules you have to go through. So it’s just, there’s so many hoops and I just feel bad for these people when I ask because it’s just like…
you know, really annoying to have to, deal with all this. So like some of this could just like derail your entire day. yeah, I think that there were a couple of times during busier, busier hours of the day where, you know, it might take like 45 minutes to an hour just to get this notarization done. and then you gotta, you know, pick out your, your package and throw the,
make sure the address for the title company is correct and so forth. Like there’s all these extra steps that you really just don’t think about when it comes to closing your deals. And again, if you’re just doing this routinely and a big volume throughput, like all of a sudden your days can get really broken up and you can’t actually get deep work done because you’re you’re stuck doing, you know, $5 an hour work effectively. So.
Again, I mentioned all of this because we did this for way longer than we should have. And I can’t tell you how much time I just wasted. Trying to save a few shekels, as my partner would say, by trying to be efficient with the notarization process versus like, I don’t know, the $100 fee that a title company would choose to do a mobile notary. So once we…
you know, got to the next level within our business and just realized, wait, and, usually I would just ask title companies, okay, can you just send a mobile notary instead, whatever that fee is going to be? Yeah, we’re going to pay for it. yeah, we would start doing that. And again, the different notaries can be a various varying quality and some are going to be stricter than not. Plus you have to be, you know, and my wife always brings this up, you know, we live in a decently nice neighborhood in, Austin and you know,
A lot of notaries, like, it’s a lower paying profession, right? Some might just do it part time. Or they might be like a retiree and it’s just more of something to do. Like, you don’t know who these people are, right? Like you can just be having kind of this train of strangers that are coming in and out of your house, like, know, precisely where you live and so forth. And like, just, sometimes you feel like, this feel like the most safe and…
Then for like alternative options, it’s like, okay, is there a commercial establishment you can go to? You know like a random restaurant even it’s a fast food place or something but then you kind of feel like should I even buy I don’t know like a coffee here or something just You know show my patronage Even though I just want to get some notarizations done. So then you have to run into that consideration
when again, usually like if you can just get a notary to show up at your house at your convenience, like that’s gonna be the best option. And so we were working with this individual for a while. Cause a lot of notaries, mean, just if any notaries are listening to this, they could probably bump their business always by just like trying to leave the card or the contact information to say, hey, I work in this area a lot. I’ll come out to…
visit with you, you can pay me directly instead of through the title company, here’s my rate. And, you know, the folks who really took initiative that’s really like, yeah, I mean, we routinely close deals. This could be worthwhile for us. And so we were working with this individual who, you know, it’s very solid from the, and that’s the thing, some of these notaries like
they’ve been in the business for a long time, they know what to look out for on the various docs, make sure that everything is just aligned, they’ll scan things in prior to sending out the documentation, they’ll take the docs to FedEx or UPS, whatever, that’s the whole goal of a mobile notary.
And, know, that that’s just an extra level of the business. so, you know, one of these, these folks had suggested, Hey, you know, reach out to me. Here’s my rate. And it was generally cheaper than what the title company was going to be charging and their additional fee on top of, know, identifying the notary. So we would always just try to loop them in. Hey, here’s our local mobile notary. Here’s their email. They’ll print everything out. So we would just try to orient around that.
Sometimes title companies, they’ll need to like check if a notary is within their at work or whatever. It’s almost like health insurance. But usually it’s not much of an issue. And so we did that for a while and this first person we worked with, you know, it was just kind of sketched out a bit. You know, just a little bit of weird personality, but like good professionally. And I was like, you know, I’m fine dealing with this for now.
but it’s just, it felt like a bit of an odd, an odd situation, to kind of continue on. at one point they, just flat out forgot to send out a, or, or mail out the, the FedEx at the date that we were thinking this was like right before Christmas too. And it was like a really critical deal.
And it’s like there’s no way we’re going to blow up this deal just because like the notary is screwed up and then I couldn’t get ahold of them over text or anything. And I’m like, okay, but I don’t have that much loyalty. Like notaries are kind of a dime a dozen for the most part, right? So it’s like, okay, you’re out. We’re just going to try to find somebody else. And very fortunately after that, we found a woman locally
who was assigned to us and was actually cheaper. Plus she would just very available as far as, hey, can we like set up a meeting within 24 hours? know, again, title companies are always like so, so delayed in getting things set up. You usually have to move pretty fast to schedule things with notaries anyway. Just routinely available. She would pre-fill out a lot of the docs, just knew what she was doing, veteran of the service.
felt a little bit better about her personality and so forth, like a little less sketched out. you know, if you’re going to routinely invite somebody into your home, and also for states that require witnesses, she would have a couple of neighbors that she would just get, you know, pre-filled with the witnesses. then, you know, some of these other mobile notaries, sometimes they’ll have to bring in witnesses and charge you extra, to sign during that, and that can open up its own can of worms. So like,
You know, honestly, if I prefer folks who operate in a bit more of gray area, you know, especially when it comes to notarizations, like, yeah, just get the witness to like, that’s all just a bunch of bunk anyway, get it signed. So we don’t need to invite other people over. It’s just even faster for us to note down. And yeah, you’re just much more reliable for getting things mailed out right after. And, you know, her fee is only 50 bucks per.
signing to like that’s just really, really good rate, especially compared to what title companies will typically charge like 150 bucks or more oftentimes for placing a mobile notary with you. so again, this is like taking us years to really figure out this process on how to find a more reliable mobile notary and just save more time, be more efficient within the business because like, your time is just
better spent on higher value activities. And yeah, I mean, it’s always exciting, right? Like in order to get property sold, yeah, you have to notarize docs and get things sent out. But to spend any more time than it’s necessary is no bueno, to put it lightly. And again, I’m just embarrassed how.
how much time wasted personally, just using the low budget solution. Low budget money, high budget time, very high budget time to get all of this done. I actually, I thought this was gonna be a five minute podcast. I can’t believe I’ve talked about 15 minutes regarding notaries here, but it actually goes to show, yeah, there’s been more lessons and more things to share then.
than I thought and some of you are probably thinking, this is just like basic stuff. You figured this out ages ago, but if I can even help one person to avoid some of those issues that we ran into in the past in order to figure out our notary cadence, I will be very pleased with that result.
Hopefully this is helpful. SeriousLand.Capital for any of your funding needs. Zero cost review of your land deals at Land Daily Diligence Facebook group and LandPricer.ai for the most reliable land pricing tool on the market. With that, take care everybody. Subscribe and share. Bye.
