The Marketing4Notaries family at NNA Conference 2025 I spent five years writing a book I told everyone would take a few months. Five years, arguing with a voice in my head that had zero credentials but somehow still got a vote on whether I was allowed to finish it. Here is what coaching thousands of notaries since has taught me: almost none of you are stuck on the mechanics. You know how to notarize. You are stuck on the story running in the background about whether you are allowed to build something real. That is the actual bottleneck, and no checklist fixes a bottleneck that lives between your ears. That is the whole premise behind the Woo Woo Summer Series. And before anyone assumes "woo woo" means crystals and vibes, here are four tools from that series, and the real research behind each one. 1. Name the Fear to tame it Next time your stomach drops before a big signing or before you hit "post," do not push the feeling down. Say what it is, out loud or in your head: "I'm anxious right now." That is it. That is the whole move. UCLA neuroscientist Matthew Lieberman found that simply putting a feeling into words quiets activity in the amygdala, the part of the brain running your alarm system. Researchers call this affect labeling, and Lieberman compared it to tapping the brakes the moment you see a yellow light. You are not fixing the fear. You are taking your foot off the gas before it takes over. 2. Stop trying to calm down. Get excited instead. Everyone tells you to relax before something big. Take a breath, settle down, calm yourself. Harvard researcher Alison Wood Brooks actually tested that advice against an alternative, and the alternative won. In her studies, people facing high-pressure tasks, public speaking, singing, timed math, were split into two groups. One tried to calm down. The other said three words out loud: "I am excited." The excited group performed better, consistently. Here is why that works. Anxiety and excitement produce the same physical response: a racing heart, heightened alertness. The only thing that changes is the label you put on it. Going from anxious to calm is a hard U-turn. Going from anxious to excited is just relabeling energy that is already there. So before your next big ask, whether that is pitching an attorney or hitting publish, do not talk yourself down. Talk yourself into it. 3. Action comes first. Motivation shows up late. Most people have the order backwards. They are waiting to feel ready before they market, waiting to feel confident before they make the call, waiting for motivation to arrive so they can finally act. It does not work that way, and there is an entire evidence-based clinical treatment built on proving it. It is called behavioral activation, and a meta-analysis of 26 randomized trials found it performs as well as medication for lifting people out of a depressive slump. The core finding: action precedes motivation. Waiting to feel ready is the thing keeping people stuck, not a symptom of it. Translate that to your business, and it is blunt but useful. You do not wait to feel like marketing before you market. You market, and the confidence follows the action, not the other way around. Whatever you have been waiting to feel ready for is your move today. The feeling catches up later. 4. Fight your brain's negativity bias with a wins log You had a great week. Four signings, a new referral partner, a glowing review. Then one lead ghosts you, and that is the thing keeping you up at night. That is not you being dramatic. That is a documented feature of how your brain works. A landmark paper by Roy Baumeister and colleagues, titled plainly "Bad Is Stronger Than Good," found that across nearly every domain studied, negative events and feedback carry more psychological weight than positive ones of equal size. One complaint outweighs a stack of compliments by default. It is not a flaw. It is wiring that once kept our ancestors alive, and it will just as easily talk you out of a business that is actually going well. The fix is simple and a little unglamorous: keep a running wins log. Every booked client, every referral, every kind word someone says about your work, write it down. Not because it is cute. Because your brain will not hold onto that evidence on its own, and you will need it on the weeks fear tries to convince you otherwise. None of this is about never being afraid Fear is not going anywhere, and I am not selling you a version of confidence where it does. The goal was never to eliminate the feeling. It was to stop letting an unqualified voice in your head cast the deciding vote on what you build. Name the fear. Relabel it as excitement. Act before you feel ready. Keep the receipts on your own wins. That is the whole toolkit, and none of it required abandoning the no-fluff, research-backed approach this brand has always stood for. If you want to work through this alongside notaries who are fighting the same internal argument, come sit in on Tuesday Notary Titans. It is free every week. And if you want the deeper version of this work paired with the full 5 Point Marketing System, that is what Marketing4Notaries is built for.

Delivering an Elevator Pitch (or Universal Selling Proposition) isn't hard if you have good direction! Someone at a Chamber mixer asks what you do, and out comes the résumé voice. "I'm a mobile notary and trust delivery agent servicing the DFW metroplex, specializing in loan signings, general notarizations, and estate planning documents." Their eyes glaze over before you hit "metroplex." You watch it happen in real time and keep talking anyway, because you practiced this and you're finishing it. That answer is not wrong. It is just useless. Nobody remembers a job title. They remember a problem solved. Why the first few seconds of an Elevator Pitch do all the work You do not get two minutes to make a first impression. Research on thin-slice judgments out of Princeton found that people form a reliable read on a speaker within the first thirty seconds of talking to them, and other first-impression research puts the real window even tighter than that. Harvard Business Review has pointed to the first eight seconds as the actual hook, the stretch where you either earn a "tell me more" or lose the room for good. That is not a lot of runway. Which means the goal of an elevator pitch is not to say everything you do. It is to say the one true thing that makes a stranger lean in. The Bad, Better, Best model Here is the same notary business described three ways. Notice what changes, because it is not the facts. It is who the sentence is about. Bad: I am a mobile notary and trust delivery agent who services the DFW metroplex, specializing in real estate closings, general notary work, and estate planning documents. This is a job description. It answers "what is your title," which nobody actually asked. Better: I help real estate professionals and attorneys ensure smooth, error-free signings by providing reliable mobile notary services whenever and wherever they need them. Closer. Now there is a "who" in the sentence. Still reads a little stiff, like it was written for a brochure instead of said out loud to a human. Best: You know how frustrating it is when a closing gets delayed because of missing paperwork? I help title companies and attorneys keep things moving by handling all their mobile notary needs on the spot. This one opens with the listener's headache, not your credentials. It sounds like a person talking, not a LinkedIn summary. That is the version people repeat to somebody else later, which is the entire point of saying it in the first place. Build yours in four steps 1. Identify who you help. Not "everyone who needs a notary." Get specific. Real estate agents? Estate planning attorneys? New parents doing wills for the first time? Name the person, then name the exact problem you solve for them. Vague audiences get vague pitches, and vague pitches get forgotten by the time the elevator door opens. 2. Highlight what makes you different. Is your edge speed? Availability nights and weekends? A specialty other notaries in your market do not touch? Find the one thing you do that the notary two exits down the highway does not, and build the pitch around that instead of a full service list. 3. Make it conversational. Say it the way you would tell a friend, not the way you would write it on a business card. If a sentence would look natural in a résumé bullet, cut it and rebuild it in plain language. Ditch the jargon. Nobody outside the industry cares what a loan signing agent certification is, they care whether their closing runs on time. 4. Practice. Do not memorize. Say it out loud to three different people this week and pay attention to what changes each time. A memorized script sounds memorized, and people can hear it. A pitch you know well enough to bend to the person in front of you sounds like a conversation, which is the whole goal. You are not reciting a line. You are opening a door. The part everyone skips Nobody drafts the perfect version on the first try, and that is fine. Write your Bad draft first. It will probably sound like your current answer, résumé voice and all. Then write your Better draft. Then sit with the listener's actual problem for a minute and write your Best draft, the one that starts with them instead of you. Know it well enough to bend it, not recite it. The goal is a conversation, not a pitch. 👆 This guide that we use inside the Certified Notary Trust Delivery Agent program can help you write and recite your unique elevator pitch! Feel free to pass this along to your notary friends so they can work on their Universal Selling Proposition, too. 👆 If you want to work through this with a room full of notaries who will tell you honestly whether your version lands, that is exactly what happens most Tuesdays at Tuesday Notary Titans, free, no pitch, just notaries helping notaries get sharper. And if you want the full playbook this comes from, along with the rest of the 5 Point Marketing System, it's all laid out in On The Move, available on Amazon.

Voyage Dallas recently asked me to tell my story. Sitting down to answer their questions, I realized the version most people see- the author and speaker and coach with a community of notaries across the country- skips the messy middle that actually made all of it possible. So here's the whole thing. Including the parts that don't fit neatly on a highlight reel. The stamp I ignored for four years I became a Texas notary back in 2013, and not because I had some entrepreneurial vision. My employer in the mortgage industry asked me to get commissioned so I could notarize company documents. That's it. For four years, that stamp sat in a drawer between uses, and I never once thought of it as a business. I barely thought of it at all. Then in 2017 I got laid off. If you've been there, you know the specific flavor of that gut-punch. One day you have a title and a paycheck and a plan, and the next you're staring at a crossroads with two options: go crawl back to corporate America, or bet on yourself with no guaranteed paycheck, no benefits, and no roadmap. Here's the part I couldn't see at the time. In my mortgage years, I had hired mobile notaries constantly, and I kept thinking the same thing every time: this service could be delivered so much better. More professional, more communicative, more human. When I suddenly found myself unemployed, it hit me that the business I'd been quietly critiquing for years was already sitting in my hands. So I didn't go back to corporate. I built the thing I wished existed. The first networking event I ever hosted in 2018. The lesson nobody teaches new notaries Here's what I figured out fast, and what I've now watched play out with thousands of notaries: almost nobody is stuck because they don't know how to notarize. You learn that in a week. The thing that actually determines whether you build a real business is whether you know how to market yourself, build relationships, and get remembered and referred. Nobody teaches that part. So I taught myself. I studied networking, relationship marketing, and referral development, and I tested every bit of it in my own business first, keeping what worked and throwing out what didn't. That messy trial-and-error eventually became the 5 Point Marketing System, which is just a fancy name for "the map I wish someone had handed me in 2017 so I could have skipped a few years of guessing." The part I don't usually lead with because it's not all business all the time I could stop there and let this be a tidy success story. But that would be a lie of omission, and you deserve better. In 2022, I was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes and an autoimmune disease (and covid, and all at the same time). It would have been easy to accept that as my new normal. Instead I got stubborn, made significant lifestyle changes, and reversed the diabetes. That experience hammered home something I now say constantly: your circumstances don't define you. Your response to them does. Then there's the book. On The Move took me five years to write. Five. Not because the words were hard, but because I spent most of that time arguing with a voice in my head that insisted I wasn't qualified and nobody would read it. I'm a grown woman who had already built a business from a layoff and a stamp, and I still let imposter syndrome run the show for half a decade. I've also spent years doing quieter work, healing from things I carried out of childhood, setting boundaries, and learning that my worth is not up for a vote. And I've learned that the more visible you become, the more people will happily tell you they disagree with you. Criticism, it turns out, comes standard with leadership. I'm telling you all of this because I think the highlight reels do real damage. They make it look like successful people are a different species who never doubt themselves. They're not. They just learned the one thing that changes everything: confidence isn't something you're born with. You build it by taking action before you feel ready, and then letting the evidence pile up. An early marketing piece for Marketing4Notaries (formerly Signing Agent Marketing) What I built for the notary who's where I was Everything I do now grew out of that stretch of not feeling ready and moving anyway. Marketing4Notaries is the training and community I wish I'd had. It's where I teach the 5 Point Marketing System and where a room full of notaries who actually get it cheer each other on, swap what's working, and remind each other they're closer than they think. I also host Tuesday Notary Titans, one of the longest-running free coaching calls in this industry, alongside my partner in crime Laura Biewer. And Laura and I co-founded the Certified Notary Trust Delivery Agent program to help notaries move into estate planning work with real professionalism. Somewhere along the way, the system got effective enough that people in other industries started asking to learn it too. That's flattering, and it's coming. But notaries will always be home base. You're the ones who built this with me. We're halfway through the year. What are you waiting for? If you're reading this in the back half of July, doing the mental math on where this year has gone, I want to gently point something out. The notaries who will look back on this year proud of what they built are not the ones who felt ready. They're the ones who took the next step anyway. So take it. Come to Tuesday Notary Titans every Tuesday afternoon at 12:15pm Pacific/2:15pm Central/3:15pm Eastern. It's free, every week, no pitch. Just come get a feel for the room and bring your real questions. You can register for a free reminder email here: Marketing4Notaries.com/TNT And when you're done waiting to feel ready, join us inside Marketing4Notaries for $24 a month or 199 dollars a year at Skool.com/Marketing4Notaries. If you'd rather start with the book, On The Move is on Amazon for $24.99, and it will teach you how to build a business people remember, trust, and refer. My layoff turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to my business, but only because I finally bet on myself. Your version of that bet is sitting right in front of you. You don't have to feel ready. You just have to take the next step. I'll see you inside. ⭐️ Read the Voyage Dallas article here!

Let me get the eye-roll out of the way first. "Woo woo," I said it. I can already feel a few of you reaching for the unsubscribe button, muttering that you came here to learn how to land title companies, not to journal about your inner child. Stay with me for ninety seconds. I spent five years writing a book I told everyone would take a few months. Five. Years. The delay had nothing to do with my typing speed and everything to do with the running commentary in my head that insisted I wasn't qualified, that nobody would read it, that who did I think I was. I was a competent adult who had already built a business from a layoff and a notary stamp, and I still spent half a decade arguing with a voice that had no credentials whatsoever. Here is what I've learned coaching thousands of notaries since: almost none of you are stuck because you don't know how to notarize. You know how to notarize. You're stuck because of the story you tell yourself about whether you're the kind of person who gets to build something real. That is the actual bottleneck. And it is not solved by another checklist. That is what the Woo Woo Summer Series is about. And before you decide it's a bunch of vibes, let me show you the receipts, because I don't teach anything I can't back up. The "woo" has a research budget Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck spent three decades on a deceptively simple question: does what you believe about your own ability change what you actually accomplish? The answer, across large studies including a national experiment published in the journal Nature, is yes. People who believe their abilities can grow through effort consistently outperform people who believe their abilities are fixed. Same skills. Same starting point. Different story in their head, different results. (Dweck, Mindset, 2006; Yeager & Dweck, Nature, 2019.) Then there's Albert Bandura, another Stanford researcher, who spent forty years studying "self-efficacy," which is a fancy term for whether you believe you can pull off the thing in front of you. His finding was blunt: your belief in your ability predicts your performance, sometimes more than your actual ability does. And critically, it predicts how fast you get back up after you fall on your face. (Bandura, 1977.) That is not a horoscope. That is data. The inner game is not the soft part of business. For most of you, it is the whole game. Here's the part that made me build a community instead of a course Bandura didn't just prove that belief matters. He identified how you actually build it. Three ways, specifically: stacking small wins so you have proof you can do hard things, watching people like you succeed so your brain stops treating it as impossible, and getting encouragement from people you trust when the doubt gets loud. Read that again and tell me it doesn't describe exactly what happens in a good community. You cannot mindset your way to confidence alone in your car between signings, white-knuckling affirmations you don't believe. You build it in a room full of notaries who are one step ahead of you, celebrating the win you're still working toward, and reminding you that you're closer than you think. The science of self-belief points straight at the thing I've been building this whole time. I didn't plan that. I just noticed it worked, and then found out why. What the Woo Woo Summer Series actually covers No sage required. Here's the lineup: The stories you inherited and mistook for facts, and how to spot the difference. Why "I'm not a salesperson" is a belief, not a personality trait, and what to do about it. How self-talk quietly sets your prices before you ever open your mouth. Building resilience so that a slow month reads as a data point instead of a verdict. And the boring, unglamorous truth that confidence is not something you're born with. You build it by taking action before you feel ready, then letting the evidence pile up. Every session is grounded in real psychology and delivered by someone who reversed a diabetes diagnosis, healed a lot of old wounds, and finally wrote the book, all by doing the work instead of waiting to feel ready. I'm not teaching this from a mountaintop. I'm teaching it from the trenches, with the scars to prove it. This is not for everyone, and that's the point If you think mindset is nonsense and you only want scripts and templates, this particular summer probably isn't your thing, and I'd rather tell you that now than take your money and disappoint you. Marketing4Notaries has plenty of nuts-and-bolts strategy too, but the Woo Woo Summer Series is specifically for the notary who has quietly suspected that the thing standing between them and a real business is not one more tactic. It's the story in their head. If that landed a little too accurately, come find your people. Come try it before you commit Not ready to pull out a card? Good. Come to Tuesday Notary Titans, our free weekly call where Laura Biewer and I answer your real business questions with zero pitch. Get a feel for the room. And when you're ready to stop waiting to feel ready, the Marketing4Notaries community is $24 a month or $199 a year at Skool.com/Marketing4Notaries. That's less than a dollar a day to be in a room engineered, whether we knew the research or not, to make you believe you can do the thing. And then help you actually do it. You don't have to feel ready. You just have to take the next step. I'll see you inside.

Let's Cut Through the Noise Marketing is not complicated. People just make it that way. Somewhere between the gurus selling six-figure course packages and the algorithm changes that happen every fifteen minutes, the average mobile business owner, the notary, the photographer, the mobile massage therapist, the traveling hair stylist, got convinced that marketing requires a degree, a team, and a full-time content calendar just to survive. It doesn't. What it requires is clarity, consistency, and a system simple enough that you'll actually follow it when business gets busy and life gets loud. That's it. No viral strategy. No paid ads (unless you want them). No posting three times a day on six platforms while also somehow doing the actual work that pays your bills. Just five points. Done consistently. Repeated forever. That's the whole secret. The Real Problem Let's be honest about what's actually happening for most notaries and mobile business owners, because pretending the problem doesn't exist won't fix it. The cycle goes like this: You start strong. You're excited. You set up your profiles, you tell everyone you know what you're doing, you post consistently, and you show up to a networking event or two. Leads come in. Things feel good. Then you get busy. The signings pick up. The appointments fill in. You're doing the work, which is great, except the work starts consuming every hour you used to spend on marketing. You tell yourself you'll get back to it when things slow down. Then you stop marketing. Completely. Not on purpose, it just happens. Weeks go by. Then a month. Your posting drops off. You miss a networking event. You stop following up with past clients because you're focused on current ones. Then you panic later. The busy season ends. The referrals dry up. You look at your calendar and it's suddenly wide open, and you realize you haven't planted any seeds in months. So you scramble. You post five times in one week. You reach out to people you haven't talked to in six months out of nowhere. You drop your prices. You start over from scratch. Sound familiar? This is the feast-or-famine cycle, and it doesn't happen because you're bad at business. It happens because you don't have a system; you have intentions. And intentions, under pressure, always lose to urgency. The fix isn't working harder during the slow periods. The fix is building something that keeps working even during the busy ones. The 5 Point Marketing System The 5 Point Marketing System Fixes That This isn't a trendy framework. It's not built around any particular social platform or algorithm. It's built around something that doesn't change: people do business with people they know, like, and trust. The 5 Point Marketing System is simply a structured way to build that know, like, and trust consistently, whether you have five clients or fifty. Here's what each point actually means in practice: Point 1: Brand Clarity Know what you stand for. Before you can market anything, you have to know what you're marketing. And for most mobile professionals, this is the step that gets skipped entirely. They set up a Facebook page, slap on a logo, and start posting without ever answering the foundational questions that make everything else easier. What do you actually do, and who do you do it best for? What's your style: fast and efficient, warm and educational, or premium and white-glove? What do you want people to feel when they interact with your brand? What would your best client say about you to someone they're referring? Brand clarity isn't about having a perfect logo or a fancy color palette. It's about knowing your answer to those questions well enough that every piece of content, every conversation, every email signature is pointing in the same direction. When you have brand clarity, marketing gets easier because you're not starting from scratch every time you sit down to post. You already know what you stand for. You just have to say it, again and again, in different ways. Point 2: Follow Up Stay consistent. The fortune is in the follow-up. You've heard it. You know it. You're probably not doing it consistently, and you're not alone. Most mobile business owners follow up once, maybe twice, and then let the lead go cold because they don't want to seem pushy. But here's the reality: people are busy. They're not ignoring you because they're not interested; they're ignoring you because life happened, and you slipped to the bottom of their mental to-do list. A follow-up isn't an intrusion. It's a reminder that you're still there and still ready to help. A simple follow-up system might look like this: someone inquires, you respond the same day, you follow up 48 hours later if you haven't heard back, you check in again two weeks later with something of value, a resource, a tip, a relevant post. That's it. Three touchpoints. Most of your competition stops at one. For past clients, follow-up looks like a check-in a few weeks after the signing. A note around the anniversary of their closing. A holiday message. A quick text when you're in their area. Small things that remind them you exist and that you valued the relationship beyond the transaction. Point 3: Monthly Touchpoints Build long-term trust. One-time interactions don't build businesses. Relationships do. And relationships require ongoing contact, not constant contact, not daily contact, but regular, predictable, valuable contact. Monthly touchpoints are the minimum viable relationship maintenance for a mobile professional. Once a month, you should be reaching every segment of your network with something: a newsletter, a social post that tags or mentions people, a check-in call or text, a referral sent their way, or an event invitation. The goal isn't to sell every month. The goal is to stay on the radar of the people who could hire you or refer you, so that when the moment arrives that they need what you offer, your name is the first one that comes to mind. Think of it like watering a plant. You don't water it once and expect it to thrive forever. You water it consistently, on a schedule, whether or not anything is blooming yet. The blooming is just a matter of time. Point 4: Social Media Stay visible. Social media's role in this system is not to go viral. It's not to build a massive following. It's not to perform for the algorithm or ride every trend or post three reels a day until your creative soul is fully depleted. Its role is simply to keep you visible to the people who already know you, so that when they think of someone who does what you do, they think of you. That's a much more achievable and sustainable goal. It means posting consistently, not constantly. It means showing up as a human being who exists in a real community, doing real work, with real opinions and real local knowledge. It means the kind of content covered in your other posts, local highlights, behind-the-scenes moments, community celebrations, and plug-and-play engagement that keeps your name in the feed. One good post three times a week beats seven mediocre posts every day of the week. Quality, consistency, and locality will always outperform volume and virality for a mobile professional building a local client base. Point 5: Networking Create real relationships. This is the point most introverts want to skip, and most extroverts think they've already mastered. Both groups usually get it wrong. Networking is not collecting business cards. It's not showing up to every chamber of commerce event and doing a lap around the room, handing out your contact information. It's not connecting with 500 people on LinkedIn and calling that a relationship. Real networking, the kind that actually generates referrals and long-term business, is built on genuine mutual investment. It's knowing what another professional does well enough that you'd stake your reputation on referring someone to them. It's showing up consistently in the same rooms, so people see you as a fixture, not a visitor. It's following up after you meet someone, staying in touch, and sending them a lead before you ever ask for one. For notaries, your referral network is everything. Real estate agents, loan officers, estate attorneys, financial advisors, senior care coordinators, these are your people. Not just because they can send you business, but because you can genuinely serve their clients at a critical moment. Approach those relationships with that mindset and the referrals follow naturally. Why It Works There are a hundred marketing strategies out there. Most of them work, at least sometimes, for at least some people. So why this system? Because it's repeatable. It doesn't depend on a specific platform that might change its algorithm tomorrow. It doesn't depend on you having a creative breakthrough every week. It doesn't require a team, a budget, or a marketing degree. The same five points, executed the same way, work in month one and year five. That kind of repeatability is rare, and it's what separates a system from a strategy. Because it's relationship-driven. Mobile businesses run on trust. You're going into people's homes. You're handling documents that represent some of the biggest moments of their lives, closings, estate plans, and medical directives. The transactional marketing approach: get the lead, close the sale, move on, doesn't fit that reality. The 5 Point Marketing System is built around the way trust actually develops: slowly, through consistent contact, real conversation, and genuine care for the people in your network. Because it's sustainable. You can run this system alone, part-time, in between signings, without burning out. It doesn't demand perfection or constant innovation. It demands showing up in the same places, with the same clarity, with the same consistency over and over again until momentum builds and the system starts working for you instead of the other way around. How to Start Without Overwhelming Yourself If you're reading this and thinking, "I need to implement all five of these immediately," don't. That's how people get overwhelmed and do nothing. Start with one point. Pick the one that feels most broken in your business right now and fix that first. If you don't have brand clarity, nothing else will stick. Start there. If you have leads going cold, your follow-up system needs work. If you've disappeared from people's awareness, pick one social platform and commit to it for 90 days. If you've been avoiding networking, find one local group and show up three months in a row before you judge whether it's working. One point, done consistently, will move your business. Five points, done inconsistently, will exhaust you and produce nothing. Build the habit before you build the system. Then, one by one, add the next point until all five are running in the background like a quiet engine, steady, reliable, and always moving you forward. Final Word You don't need more ideas. You need a system you actually follow. The notaries who build sustainable, relationship-driven businesses aren't necessarily the most talented or the most credentialed. They're the ones who show up with consistency when everyone else has gone quiet. They're the ones who follow up when others assume the lead is dead. They're the ones who are still posting, still networking, still making touchpoints in the middle of a busy season because they know that's what keeps the busy season from ending. Marketing doesn't have to be complicated. But it does have to be consistent. Five points. Repeated. Forever. That's the whole game. Interested in training like this? Visit skool.com/marketing4notaries today!

Your Bio Is Not Your Life Story Let's get something out of the way right now. Nobody needs to know where you went to kindergarten. Nobody needs your full career timeline, your college GPA, or the fact that you've "always had a passion for helping people." That last one especially...everyone says it, which means it says nothing. Your bio has one job: make people trust you fast enough to take the next step. That's it. Not to impress. Not to summarize your LinkedIn. Not to prove you're the most credentialed person in the room. Trust. Action. Done. The problem is that most professionals write their bio the way they were taught to write a résumé, chronological, formal, exhaustive, and then wonder why nobody reaches out. A résumé gets you a job interview. A bio gets you a client. Those are two completely different documents with two completely different goals. So let's rewrite yours with the right goal in mind. Jen Neitzel at the Empower Summit 2024 The 5 Step Formula to Write a Professional Bio This isn't complicated. It doesn't need to be. Follow these five steps in order, and you'll have a bio that actually works. Step 1: Who You Help Be specific. "I help people" is not a niche. "I help first-time homebuyers in the Dallas-Fort Worth area navigate the closing process with confidence." Now we're talking. The moment you name your who, the right people lean in. Yes, being specific means some people will self-select out. That's not a loss, that's the filter working. The people who see themselves in your words will feel like you wrote this just for them. And that feeling is what turns a browser into a buyer. Ask yourself: Who do I do my best work for? Who do I actually want more of? Write that person's name at the top of a blank page, not literally, but mentally, and write your bio to them. Step 2: What You Do Clear and direct. Not: "I leverage my multidisciplinary expertise to facilitate transactional outcomes across diverse client verticals." Yes: "I'm a commissioned notary serving small business owners and real estate professionals in Coppell and surrounding areas." Say what you do in one sentence. If you can't, you haven't gotten clear on it yet, and if you're not clear, your client certainly won't be. Clarity is not dumbing it down. Clarity is doing the hard work so your reader doesn't have to. Avoid jargon. Avoid buzzwords. Avoid anything that sounds like it was written by a committee. Write like you'd explain it to someone you just met at a community event because that's essentially what a bio is. Step 3: How You're Different This is your edge. And yes, you have one. Even if you don't think you do. Your difference might be how you communicate, you're the one who explains what you're signing before clients sign it. It might be where you operate, you're mobile, you come to them. It might be who you serve, you specialize in elderly clients or non-English speaking families, or real estate investors closing multiple deals a month. Your difference doesn't have to be dramatic. It just has to be real and specific. "I answer my phone" is a differentiator in industries where people don't. "I offer evening and weekend appointments" is a differentiator if your competitors work 9 to 5. Think about the thing your best clients say when they refer you. That's usually your edge. Write that. Step 4: Your Experience Relevant only. Not everything counts. Not everything belongs here. The question isn't "what have I done?" It's "What have I done that makes me better at serving this client?" If you've been a notary for eight years, say that. If you've completed thousands of loan signings, say that. If you have specialized training in estate documents or medical directives, say that. If you previously worked in real estate, finance, or law, mention it, because it's the context your client actually cares about. What to leave out: anything that doesn't connect back to why they should trust you with their specific need. Your bio is not a trophy case. It's evidence that you can solve their problem. One to three lines of relevant experience is enough. If you feel the urge to write more, ask yourself: Does this help my ideal client feel more confident choosing me? If the answer isn't a clear yes, cut it. Step 5: Call to Action Tell them what to do next. This is the step most people skip entirely, and it's the one that actually turns a bio reader into a lead. Don't make people figure it out. Don't assume they'll find your contact page. Don't end with "I look forward to serving you" and leave them nowhere to go. End with a clear, simple, low-friction next step: "Book your appointment at [link]." "Text me at [number] to check availability." "Connect with me on LinkedIn or visit [website] to get started." Pick one. One call to action is an invitation. Three calls to action is confusion. Make it easy to say yes. Where This Fits in the 5 Point Marketing System Your bio isn't just for your website's About page. When it's done well, it becomes a foundational asset that powers your entire marketing presence. Here's how it connects: Brand clarity: A tight, specific bio forces you to get clear on who you are, who you serve, and what makes you different. That clarity doesn't just live in your bio; it bleeds into everything. Your social captions sound more confident. Your elevator pitch tightens up. Your emails stop rambling. When you know how to describe yourself in five sentences, you know how to show up everywhere. Social media: Your bio is the first thing people read when they land on your profile. On LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, wherever you're showing up, your bio sets the tone. A weak bio loses the visitor in three seconds. A strong bio makes them click the link, send the message, or follow the page. Every piece of content you post sends people back to your profile. Make sure your profile closes the deal. Networking conversations: Here's a secret: if you've written a clear bio, you've essentially written your elevator pitch. The next time someone at a networking event asks what you do, you'll have a real answer, not a fumbled, rambling response that ends with "it's kind of hard to explain." Know your bio. Practice it until it sounds natural. Use it in rooms full of people who could refer you tomorrow. What to Avoid Even with the right framework, a few common mistakes can still sink your bio. Watch for these: Long paragraphs: Nobody reads walls of text, especially on a screen. Keep it scannable. Short sentences. White space. If a paragraph runs more than four lines, break it up. Irrelevant details: Your hobbies, your hometown, your alma mater, none of it belongs unless it's directly connected to why someone should trust you professionally. If you went to law school and now you're a notary who specializes in legal documents, mention it. If you just love hiking on weekends, leave it for the first coffee meeting. Trying to sound "impressive": This one is the most common and the most damaging. The more you try to sound impressive, the less trustworthy you sound. Big words don't build confidence; clarity does. Titles don't build connection; honesty does. The person who writes like a real human will out-convert the person who writes like a press release every single time. Writing in third person when it doesn't fit: Some platforms call for third person (speaker bios, press pages). Most don't. First person feels like a conversation. Third person — "Sarah is a dedicated professional who..." often feels cold and distant on a social profile or website. Know your platform and match the voice accordingly. Final Word Clear beats clever every time. The goal of your bio isn't to sound impressive. It's to make the right person feel seen, understood, and confident enough to reach out. That happens through specificity, not vocabulary. Through clarity, not complexity. Write like a human. Not a résumé. Read it out loud when you're done. If it sounds like something you'd actually say to another person, you're close. If it sounds like something you'd read at a corporate awards banquet, start over. Your ideal client is out there right now, reading bios and trying to figure out who to trust. Give them a reason to stop scrolling and choose you. Five steps. One clear bio. Endless better first impressions. Go write it. Interested in more training like this? Visit skool.com/marketing4notaries

If Your Content Could Be Posted Anywhere, It's Too Generic Read that again. Slowly. If your content works in every city, it connects in none. Generic content is the marketing equivalent of a handshake with no eye contact. Technically, it happened, but nobody felt it. The hard truth? Most business owners are out here posting stock-photo inspiration quotes and "tips for success" that could belong to literally anyone in any industry in any town in America. And they wonder why their engagement is flat and their DMs are empty. Your market doesn't want more content. They want your content. Hyper-Local Social Media Wins. Every Time. Your audience is not "everyone." It's your zip code. Think about how people actually hire. They hire the mortgage broker who sponsored their kid's soccer team. They hire the real estate agent they keep seeing at the farmer's market. They hire the accountant who posted about the new restaurant that opened on Main Street before anyone else did. Proximity builds trust. And trust builds business. When you post generic content, you're competing with every voice on the internet. When you post local content (hyper-local social media), you're competing with the three other people in your town who are actually paying attention, and most of them aren't. That's your window. Step 4 of The 5 Point Marketing System is social media The 5 Point Marketing System Connection Here's why this matters beyond just "getting likes." Local social media content isn't a standalone tactic, it's fuel for your entire marketing engine. Done right, it supports every layer: Brand clarity: When you show up consistently in a specific place, talking to specific people, your brand stops being vague and starts being recognizable. You become the person for your thing in your area. Networking visibility: Tagging local businesses, showing up at community events, and engaging with nearby professionals puts your name in front of people who can refer you, not just follow you. Follow-up reinforcement: Ever met someone at a networking event and then seen their content pop up in your feed? That's not a coincidence, that's strategy. Local content keeps you top of mind between in-person touchpoints. Monthly touchpoints: Consistency matters more than virality. If someone sees your face and your name attached to their community once a week, you become familiar. Familiarity becomes trust. Trust becomes a phone call. 6 Plug-and-Play Ideas (Use These This Week) You don't need to reinvent the wheel. You need to show up where your people already are. Here are six ways to do it: 1. Highlight a local business: pick a spot you genuinely love, a coffee shop, a boutique, a gym and post about it. "Grabbed my morning coffee at [Name] and honestly, their cold brew is worth the detour." You get goodwill from the business owner, relatability from your audience, and local SEO love all in one post. 2. Share a local event: a community festival, a charity 5K, a downtown market, share it even if you're not personally attending. Positioning yourself as someone who's plugged into what's happening locally signals that you're present, not just broadcasting. 3. Tag nearby professionals: Collaboration over competition. Tag the CPA you refer clients to. Shout out to the attorney who sent you a lead last month. This does double duty: it strengthens your referral relationships and gets your name in front of their audience. 4. Post "behind the scenes" in your area A photo from your office window. A quick video walking from the parking garage. A story at the local spot where you take clients to lunch. These micro-glimpses make you real. People don't connect with logos, they connect with humans in places they recognize. 5. Celebrate local wins: did a local sports team make the playoffs? Did your town get recognized for something? Did a client in your area hit a major milestone? Celebrate it. These posts get shared by people who care about the same community, and every share puts you in front of a warm audience. 6. Use location-specific hashtags #[YourCityName]Business, #[YourNeighborhood], #[YourCity]RealEstate, whatever fits your industry. These hashtags aren't massive, and that's the point. The people searching them are your people. What This Does for Your Business When you commit to local content, something shifts. You stop being another voice in the feed and start being a presence in the community. It positions you as: Present: You're not just online. You're here, in this specific place, paying attention to what matters to the people around you. Active:m You're not a ghost who posts once a month when you remember. You're engaged, consistent, and alive in their scroll. Connected: You know the players, the places, and the pulse of your local market. That's not just likable, it's credible. And here's the kicker: people hire who they recognize. Not who has the most followers. Not who has the best graphics. Not who went viral once six months ago. They hire the person who feels familiar. The person who feels like part of their world. That person can be you, if you stop trying to appeal to everyone and start showing up for someone. Final Word Stop trying to go viral. Start trying to be visible in your own backyard. The internet is infinite. Your market is not. You don't need a million impressions. You need the right 200 people to see you, recognize you, and remember you when they're ready to buy. Post like the neighbors are watching. Because they are. And someday soon, one of them will reach out. Not because your content was perfect, but because it felt like home. Interested in more? Visit skool.com/marketing4notaries today!

You Don't Need to Show Up Every Month. Good news. You do not need to physically walk into every office every 30 days. Your gas tank and your sanity can relax. Dropping in on every contact every month is not the goal, and it is not realistic. What matters is that when someone in your network has a signing need, a referral to give, or a recommendation to make, your name is the first one that comes to mind. That only happens if you have stayed present in some form, and presence does not always require a parking spot. But You Do Need to Stay Visible. Out of sight is out of mind. And in business, that means out of money. The notaries who stay booked are not always the most talented or the most experienced. They are the most remembered. Visibility is not vanity. It is a business strategy, and neglecting it is one of the most expensive mistakes you can make without ever seeing the bill. The 5 Point Marketing System Breakdown Brand Clarity: They remember what you do. Not just "something with notary stuff" but exactly who you serve, what you specialize in, and why you are the one to call. When your brand is clear, your contacts become your sales force without even realizing it. Networking: They know who you are. Not just a face they half-remember from a mixer six months ago. They know your name, your energy, and what it feels like to talk to you. People refer people they like, and people they trust, and trust starts with familiarity. Follow Up: They trust you. Because you did what you said you would. You sent the email. You checked back in. You proved that working with you feels organized and intentional. That reliability is rare, and people notice it. Monthly Touchpoints: They don't forget you. This is the glue that holds everything else together. One simple message a month is enough to keep a warm relationship warm. Skip it for three or four months, and you are essentially starting over. Stay consistent, and you never have to. Social Media: They see you everywhere. Or at least it feels that way. A few strategic posts a month create the impression that you are constantly active and constantly adding value. That perception is powerful, and it works while you sleep. 5 Easy Monthly Touchpoint Ideas A quick "thinking of you" email that references something specific to them Sharing a helpful article relevant to their industry or current challenges A short video update showcasing something you learned or experienced recently A holiday or seasonal message that feels personal, not copy-pasted A business milestone or win that reminds them your business is growing and thriving None of these take more than fifteen minutes. All of them keep you in the conversation. What This Actually Does: It builds familiarity. And familiarity builds referrals. People do not refer to strangers. They refer to the person they just thought of, the name that popped up in their inbox last week, the face they saw on LinkedIn yesterday. You are engineering those moments every time you reach out, every time you post, and every time you show up in someone's world in a way that is helpful and genuine. Final Word: You don't need to chase business. You need to stay present long enough for it to come to you. The notaries who struggle are usually the ones who market in bursts, go quiet, and then wonder why referrals dried up. The ones who thrive treat visibility like a utility bill. It gets paid every month without debate, because the cost of going dark is always higher than the cost of showing up. If this resonates with you, I invite you to check out Marketing4Notaries on the Skool Platform.

Let's Say the Quiet Part Out Loud. Most notaries don't have a marketing problem. They have a follow-up problem. You met the attorney. You had the conversation. You said you'd "stay in touch." And then… nothing. That silence is costing you business. Not because you're not good at what you do, but because out of sight is out of mind, and someone else stayed in touch when you didn't. Follow-up is not a mood. You don't follow up when you feel inspired. You don't follow up when you have something perfect to say. You follow up because it's your job. Waiting until the timing feels right is just procrastination with better branding. Build the habit, set the reminders, and show up even when it feels awkward or unnecessary. That consistency is exactly what most of your competition refuses to do. Following up is business critical The 5 Point Marketing System Perspective Brand Clarity: You know what you offer. Good. But clarity isn't just about you knowing it. It's about the people you meet being able to repeat it back to someone else. If they can't describe what you do and who you serve in one sentence, your brand isn't as clear as you think. Tighten it up. Networking: You made the connection. Great. But walking out of a room with a business card and a good feeling means nothing without what comes next. Networking without follow-up is just socializing. It only becomes valuable when you do something with it. Follow Up: Now prove you're reliable. This is where most notaries drop the ball, and honestly, this is where the real opportunity lives. Following up promptly tells people you are organized, professional, and serious. It signals that working with you will feel the same way. Monthly Touchpoints Consistency builds trust. One message a month is not a lot to ask of yourself, but it is rare enough that people notice when you do it. Share a resource, acknowledge something they posted, check in on a project they mentioned. Small gestures compound over time into a reputation for showing up. Social Media Reinforces your visibility between messages. Your posts do the work when you're not in the room. Every time you share something valuable, document where you've been, or spotlight someone you've met, you remind your network that you are active, engaged, and worth referring. What Real Follow-Up as a Business Foundation Looks Like 24 to 48 hours after meeting: A short, personal message referencing something specific from your conversation A second touchpoint within 7 days: Send something useful, a resource, an article, a simple check-in Monthly communication ongoing: Not a pitch. Just a presence. Not complicated. Just consistent. The bar is genuinely low because most people never clear it. Why This Works: Because most people don't do it. That's it. That's the secret. There is no algorithm to crack, no expensive tool to buy, and no perfect script to memorize. The notaries building real relationships with attorneys, title companies, and signing services are simply the ones who keep showing up after everyone else has gone quiet. Final Word Follow-up is where professionals separate themselves from hobbyists. It is not glamorous. It is not complicated. But it is the single habit that will do more for your business than any conference, any course, or any business card ever will. Decide which one you are, and act accordingly. Remember, follow up is a business foundational task.

Stop Showing Up Unprepared Let’s be honest. Walking into the National Notary Association Conference without reviewing your networking skills is like showing up to a signing without your stamp. Technically, you’re there. Practically, you’re useless. If you want real ROI (return on investment) from this event, you need a strategy, not vibes. The Marketing4Notaries Team at the 2025 NNA Conference in Henderson, NV The 5 Point Marketing System in Action 1. Brand Clarity If someone asks, “What do you do?” and you ramble, you’ve already lost. Get clear: Who you serve What you specialize in Why it matters No fluff. No life story. Spend time crafting a 30-second elevator pitch that clearly explains your business model because a strong pitch isn't about selling, it's about clarity. Here's an example: "I'm Jen, a mobile notary public. I work with estate planning attorneys to ensure their clients' documents are executed with precision, privacy, and professionalism, giving families total peace of mind." 2. Networking (Yes, this is your moment) Your job is not to collect business cards like Pokémon. Your job is to: Start real conversations Ask better questions Listen more than you talk The best networkers aren't the loudest in the room. They're the most interested. Find someone who looks as uncomfortable as you feel and ask them one good question. Then actually listen to the answer. Here are some example questions: "What are you working on right now that you're actually excited about?" "What's something you wish more people in the notary industry understood?" "How did you end up in this space? Was it intentional, or did you kind of fall into it?" 3. Follow Up Spoiler alert: The money is not made at the conference. It ’s made after. You spent time, money, and energy to be in that room, so don't leave the ROI on the table. A two-line email or a LinkedIn message sent within 48 hours can turn a handshake into a client, a collaborator, or your next big opportunity. This is not optional. This is the job. 4. Monthly Touchpoints Every connection you make should turn into a long-term relationship. Not a one-hit wonder. A monthly touchpoint isn't a big ask; it's the minimum. One message, one article, one "hey, I thought of you when I saw this" keeps the relationship alive. The people who feel like they know you are the ones who refer you, hire you, and open doors for you. Think of your network like a garden; it needs regular attention, not just water when you're thirsty. A simple monthly check-in shows people they're more than a transaction to you. That consistency is what turns a conference acquaintance into someone who genuinely goes to bat for you. 5. Social Media Document your experience: Who you meet What you learn Where you show up Visibility builds credibility. Every conference, every conversation, every room you walk into is content waiting to be posted. A quick LinkedIn update or a short recap video isn't self-promotion; it's proof that you're active, engaged, and worth paying attention to. You are your own best marketing department, and social media is the only billboard that's completely free. 5 Networking Skills to Practice Before You Go Your 10-second intro Asking, “Who’s your ideal client?” Remembering names Ending conversations gracefully Taking quick notes after each interaction Final Word If you go to Orlando and come back with nothing, that’s not on the conference. That’s on your preparation. Go in like a pro. Leave with partnerships. Do your homework before you ever set foot in that room. Know who's attending, know what you want to walk away with, and know what you're offering in return. Professionals don't show up and wing it; they show up with intention and a plan. The conference is just the venue. You are the variable. See you in Orlando!