Suzi's Notary Service

09/03/2026

09/03/2026

This morning I will go to a very early signing at a nearby hotel for a company that I have only done a handful of signings for. The documents will go straight back to Fidelity National Title.

This industry is so weird sometimes. There doesn't seem to be any real way for a notary who came on board after 2020 to know whether they are Fidelity-approved. One company says yes. But another company says no. I can not count how many packages that I have done with Fidelity paperwork inside. I usually work through signing services or direct title companies. I am not directly affiliated with Fidelity because they stopped taking direct applications from us around the time I became a notary. In fact, we were warned repeatedly that calling them or approaching one of their agents to ask to onboard us would be the quickest way to get blacklisted from ever being a Fidelity agent.

Every single year I get packages to sign via DocuSign from Fidelity, and I get emails whenever they have anything to tell us. When they had their big security breach, I received the emails directly from them like anyone else who has worked with them in any way.

And yet, unscrupulous signing services will decide they want to take us off a signing because they have another favorite notary who wants it. They will email us saying they are removing us because we are not Fidelity-approved. I have a memory like an elephant. When a company lies to me, I likely won't work with them again, or if I do, they will meet my new, much higher fee.

I think it's high time we stop treating Fidelity like it's the grand gatekeeper of them all. I am not sure how they rose to such mythical status. They are just another title company and have to follow the same laws and regulations everyone else does. I recently saw a headline saying they're at the stage where they have to start paying millions of dollars to people affected by the security breach they suffered. I say this to point out that they are not perfect, and the industry needs to drop the pretense. Stop using unscrupulous, made-up fairytales to hide a lack of integrity. If you assign a notary for a signing, you need to honor it and stop lying about why you are taking it back.

It's probably happened to me less than 10 times in 6 years. But that's just how deeply being lied to bothers me. I never forget.

I still don't know if I am "fidelity approved". But I don't go a single month that I don't see their paperwork on my desk.

08/29/2026

Well, the as the month draws to a close, I have five remaining signings to see if they manage to close or if any of them cancel. This is a pretty typical month for me. The thing about this business is my months always look like this. And I always work as much as I can. But the final numbers depend on the mood the schedulers are in and their generosity If you will. Last year, their collective generosity felt that I was worth clearing twenty seven thousand dollars at the end of the year. No they didn't know where that would land. But they know it's not much. It is a lot of work for that no doubt about it. My point here is just to say that when times are a little bit busier, they will pay the more experienced people like myself more. When things slow down just a little bit, it doesn't matter how experienced we are. It seems to be about an average two thousand dollars between the low months and the high months. But the effort is exactly the same, regardless of how much i'm able to earn in any month. And this is what business ownership looks like. There are no guarantees other than the fact that we will work ourselves silly.

A lot of people look at this type of thing when I write it. And put it up as proof that I should not have wrote a book, because well I can't tell anybody how to make six digits a year. But that's because they've been bamboozled into thinking that six digits, a year is doable by anybody who's smart enough to do it. It is my contention that you cannot trust what's being said by the gurus that swear that you can.

Some people will say that I must not be that good because if I was really good, they'd pay me more. Always, they say that I'm choosing to work for the wrong companies as if very generous companies just grow on trees. But here's what I want people to know. There's no way I would ever be trusted with this many signings, if I were not good at what I do. I carry people's financial data with me everywhere I go. I help them refinance or purchase or sell one of the biggest assets they will ever have. If they did not trust me to do this correctly, my schedules wouldn't look like this month after month.

08/27/2026

I'm really tired of seeing everybody's psychological babble online, and hearing who isn't talking to this person and who misses their grandkids because they've been ignored. And on and on and on, all the people calling everyone else, toxic and narcissistic. Can we talk about how pretty the sun is or how good your cucumbers are doing in your garden? Can we go back to talking about some normal things like, what in the world are we doing to lose weight right now? And what's actually working? Can we go back to talking about puppies and kittens? And flowers and happy things?

I was at a signer's house yesterday and they were just the nicest people and they lived out in the middle of nowhere. And I mean, you couldn't even see another property from their house. Nowhere...corn and green beans on all sides of them. You want to know why it was so peaceful there? No people. No drama. This guy was excited about his sourdough brownies in the oven, and that place smelled like heaven.

08/27/2026

This morning I found myself doing the math on one of my signings, and I didn't particularly like the answer.

The package is 179 pages, printed twice. My printing cost alone is roughly $13. The drive will be about 40 minutes each way. Once I factor in printing and mileage—but not even all the smaller costs of doing business—I'm left making roughly **$9 an hour.

But here's where it gets complicated.

This particular company has consistently provided somewhere around **25–35% of my monthly income for six years**. They send me several different types of assignments, and some pay better than others.

For example, their RON assignments pay $65 when successfully completed. Sometimes that really can be $65 for 15 minutes of work. Other times I can spend an hour or more trying to get one completed, only to receive $32 because it couldn't be completed—or potentially receive nothing.

So I decided to look at the relationship as a whole.

This month, I've had 28 assignments from this company. Thirteen were successful $65 RON closings. There were also two failed closings. Then there are the various other assignments.

When I roughly average everything together, I'm making somewhere around **$35 an hour from this company overall**.

And that raises an interesting question:

**Should I judge the $9-an-hour signing by itself, or should I judge the entire relationship?**

There is another complication. These assignments come through quickly. We may have only seconds to look at the location, determine whether we can fit it into our schedule, and accept it before another notary does.

We often don't know exactly what type of assignment we've accepted—or what the final fee will be—until afterward. We can set our fee within the company's allowed range, but their maximum on some of these full-paper closings simply isn't high enough to make them profitable individually.

So what is the right way to look at this?

Do I accept the occasional $8- or $9-an-hour "stinker" because this company provides a large, reliable portion of my income and sends other assignments that pay very well?

Or should I approach the company and say that the maximum fees for these large, long-distance paper closings simply need to be increased?

And perhaps the biggest question:

**At what point does averaging everything together become dangerous?**

This month the average may be $35 an hour. Next month it could be $45. But what happens if the mix changes and suddenly it's $25—or $15?

For those of you who work regularly with companies that provide a substantial portion of your business, **how do you evaluate this?**

Do you judge every assignment on its own profitability?

Do you accept some losers because the overall relationship is profitable?

Or is there a point where even a valuable client needs to hear, *"This particular type of assignment simply doesn't pay enough anymore"*?

I'm genuinely interested in how other notaries handle this.