A YouTube Q&A by LaTonya Johnson covering practical aspects of running a mobile notary business: seasonality of work (slow August–October), financial planning for going full-time (save during busy months, consider healthcare), printing preferences (printing on legal size paper acceptable), business card recommendation (include notary commission number), and considerations on DBA vs LLC. The video is conversational and advisory.
Hello.
How is everyone?
I've had a lot of people ask me questions about going full time. You know, DBA versus llc, also using letterhead versus letter size, paper versus legal. Hey, C. Hunter. Hey Tiffany. Good evening everyone.
And so I wanted to go over that with you all today. It's important because, you know, I know that I said notaries notary business is a constant business whether the economy is good or whether the economy is bad. So the first thing that I'm going to talk about is the notary business and the cyclical nature of the notary business. Right there is not cyclical, but seasonal. Okay. So notary business can be seasonal, meaning through the months of, I would say August to October. It slows down our business, the elite mobile notary business, I've seen that dramatically decrease over the last month. It is seasonal. It does have a slow season and that slow season is between August and October and around October it starts picking up and it goes full speed again until August. Until August hits again. So. Hey Ty.
You are very welcome. So yeah, so those are a couple of things that I wanted to let you guys know so you know, if you are thinking about going full time or want this to be a full time gig. My cousin was saying, you know, she made $7,000 per month on an average. So you gotta think, okay, if I'm making 7,000amonth, can I live off of five and put two back for the few months that are slow? Because you have to still pay your bills when stuff gets slow. So make sure that you're putting money aside. Also, if you're going full time, consider what you'll do about health care, healthcare insurance and stuff like that. So yeah, that's big. I don't know if a lot. Did y' all know that, that, that there's a season when the notary business gets slower than normal? I don't know if y' all already knew that, but it happens every single year around the same time. So it's interesting. I also had another question about legal paper versus letterhead. So letter size paper is optional. Most title companies and notary companies do not mind if you print all of your documents on legal size paper if you don't want to. If you don't have a dual tray printer because some of the docs are when they put them in the packet, some are letterhead, some are legal size and some are letter sized. I personally print everything on legal size because it's such a hassle. I don't have a dual tray printer either, but it's such a hassle to have to change that paper out and nobody cares. Like if you send your packet back with all legal size paper they're good with it so don't worry about it. Business cards I wanted to mention to you all to make sure that you put your commission number on the front of your business card. So a lot of people are getting business cards made and you know your, your notary commission number going on front is a really good thing to have in case someone wants to look you up quickly. Some people pull up by name, but everybody pulls up by their their commission number. My name is Latonya Johnson. There are a lot of Latonya Johnson's so it may be best just to put your notary commission number. They type that in the signingagent.com and you pull up immediately. Oh, I wanted to talk about the LLC versus dba. So I had a couple of thoughts about this.
And you know, for a lot of people who are just starting off you it can be costly. Just getting started with becoming a notary. I mean you have to take the training and become a notary public loan signing agent. And that whole packet through the NNA is about I'd say 300 to $400, right? You have to buy a printer. If you want a mentor, you have to pay for that. You have to pay for just, you know, the paper, the ink for the printer, just all kinds of stuff. So when you first start out, do you have to have an llc? I didn't. Nobody in my family did. So I tell people you don't have to have it. You can have a dba. And right now most of those offices are closed, but you can, you know, name your business. If you want to set it up as a dba, get an EIN number through the IRS and set your business up that way. Then as you grow and start getting, start making money as a notary, you can then set up your llc. Now why is it good to have an LLC from a liability standpoint? You have ENO insurance, you have the bond so that that covers you. You have a hundred thousand dollars, 50 to $100,000 worth of insurance is what I recommend to most notaries. If somebody wanted to sue you, they would sue you both professionally, meaning your company and individually. So will an LLC protect you from that? No, they're still going to sue you both ways. I have never heard of anybody being sued though. Not to say that it doesn't happen, just it hadn't happened to any of us. So praise God. Right? The major part of the llc, in my opinion, is building business credit credit. So I don't know how your personal credit is, but building business credit just can help you, you know, with a whole bunch of things so that you don't have to use your personal credit. And I'm gonna probably do a whole video on that because there are some steps to it. But I will do a video on how to set up your llc. You can go through legal zoom to do that. It's pretty inexpensive. I think it costs like at least In Texas, about $225 and it's pretty easy. But I do recommend that business credit because there's, there are supplies, ongoing supplies. As a notary, you have to buy paper. Right. Ink is another supply. So these are ongoing supplies that you can set up. And certain vendors will take you on immediately, like Quill and PayPal Business. So if you are accepting payments via PayPal, please, please, please sign up for PayPal, a PayPal Business account. Also, not just, not just a regular account. Yeah, make sure that you sign up for a PayPal business account. So PayPal offers business credit. Square offers business credit. If you use Square. And I think a few other Quill Uline and you might think I don't need Quill and Quill is just for like office supplies. But I, I get hand sanitizer, I get the Lysol wipes. I buy toilet paper and spoons and just household stuff sometimes because I have a home office. So I buy that stuff through, through quilt. But I'm going to do a whole video on that. So.
