Covers a wide variety of topics. Make sure you read them all to get all the information.
by Victoria Ring---Bio
Dear Victoria: I purchased your books and I just want to thank you for making everything so easy to read and understand. I have read a lot of legal-related books and could never quite understand what they were talking about since they were written for people with a college level of understanding. But your book takes the same information I learned in paralegal class and made it so easy that my 10-year old son could understand it. Thank you for that!
My question is: I have been practicing doing bankruptcy petitions like you suggested in the book. Do I need to record a tax refund check even though the money has been spent? -- Doris
Dear Doris: A bankruptcy petition is a complete overview of the entire financial picture of the person filing bankruptcy. Even if your grandmother gave you $1,000.00 for your birthday last month, this money must be recorded on the bankruptcy petition. Therefore, even though a person spends their tax refund check, it doesn't erase the fact that they received the money. Any asset of personal property needs to be recorded on Schedule B of the bankruptcy petition. Please see Chapter 4, Page 76 in my book for information about recording a tax refund on petitions.
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Dear Victoria: Do you think a notary needs to have a separate phone line for their fax machine? I have my fax connected to my phone line and when people want to send me a fax, they call first. My friend said this is not professional. Am I doing something wrong? -- Lisa
Dear Lisa: If you are going to run a business, you should run it like a "real" business. The main trouble with fax machines hooked up to the telephone line is that they often malfunction and do not accept a fax signal automatically. And even if the switch-over works properly, the fax machine sending the transmission may "time out" if the telephone continues to ring too many times before switching over to the fax.
Personally, I have never had a fax machine hooked up to my phone line because I found this method to be a great pain. I agree with your friend. It is NOT a professional way to run a business. My suggestion is to go to another fax machine and fax something to yourself. This way you can find out exactly what your customers go through when they are trying to send you a fax transmission. If you cannot afford to have a separate fax line, at least make life easier on your customers and get an efax. With efax service, your faxes will have a dedicated telephone number and will be delivered to you through the internet. Then you can print the fax on your laser printer when you return to the office. Asking companies to call you before sending a fax is going to greatly reduce your chances of getting notary loan assignments. Companies who know you do not have a dedicated fax line often will think of you as a beginner with no experience in business and many of them will pass you by simply over this reason.
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Dear Victoria: I am just a simple business person but I believe I have the easy way of becoming successful in this home business. I'd like to help Violet to get going on being a Notary Signing Agent. I've been full time since August 2004 and I bring in $2000.00 to $2500.00 a month and perfectly happy with it. Please forward this email to her or send me her information so I can contact her. Thanks -- Roxie
Dear Roxie: Thank you for sharing your notary income with others. I will pass your information on to Violet and also thank you for letting others know there is "real" money to be made in this industry. With an average notary income of about $625 per week, you are making more than the majority of people working full-time jobs. However, I do know that to make an income like this on your own, you are working very hard. I tip my hat to you! --Victoria
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Dear Victoria: The notary mentioned that they leave a survey document with the borrowers after the signing appointment. I thought that was a great idea and didn't know if there are any suggestions as to what should be included in the survey. Also where should the survey be mailed? Just to the signing company that hires you, (or title) or directly to anyone else? Perhaps if the notary that wrote this wants to supply a sample of the survey they use, that'd be great. Thanks --Sheryl
Dear Sheryl: I personally never used this form of marketing as a notary signing agent but if I were to develop a survey I would include things like: (1) Were you happy with the service you received? (2) Do you have any suggestions for improvement? (3) Would you recommend this service to others? (4) On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate your service overall? As to "who" to mail the survey to -- that would depend on who you wanted to gather information from. Just making a survey without knowing what information you need for your marketing purposes would be like "putting the cart before the horse."
The best way to get ideas for marketing materials like a survey is to look at your daily mail and other printed materials from large companies. Companies issue surveys in a variety of different ways. Look them over and choose the survey questions that best fit your specific customer market or go online and type in "take a survey" and review the questions they ask consumers. Also, daily mail and other printed advertisements are excellent resources for marketing other ideas. So instead of throwing your junk mail away, read it and study it for marketing tips and suggestions to apply to your own business.
As I have stated many times before. There are probably one TRILLION (or more) different ways to market a business. And if you got 1,000 entrepreneurs in a room and asked them what they did to market their company you would get 1,000 different answers. You need to keep your eyes and ears open to pick-up on these marketing suggestions and then choose the ones you think will work best for you. Not all of them will work and some will fail. But this is the way you learn how to build a company. Failures are nothing more than learning experiences. I know because I had to make a bunch of mistakes myself before I learned how to build a successful company -- and so did many others like me.
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Dear Victoria: What would be the most effective way for a notary to market his or herself, who works full-time? Have you ever heard of a bankruptcy attorney meeting a notary on a weekend? Because I am only working part-time I need to make sure that my marketing efforts are really good because I am at work during day. Thank you. --Lori
Dear Lori: Your question is very "open ended" and it would be impossible for me to make specific suggestions since I am unfamiliar with your specific lifestyle, family responsibilities and the type of work you do. If you work all day driving a semi-truck making deliveries, have 4 children that need picked up at daycare and a husband to make dinner for at 6:00pm -- I don't know how you are going to work all of this into a part-time income working outside the home.
However, to answer your question about attorneys -- Yes, most attorneys I worked for in the past always interviewed me during the evening and weekends because they are busy with clients during the day and had more time "after hours" to discuss office-related matters. Besides, most all successful businesses are started by people working a full-time job. For example: My computer technician works full-time during the day while building his computer repair service during the evening. Once he has enough income from repairing computers, he will quit his full-time job. Almost everyone I have met that owns their own business started it while working full-time until they had enough income from their company to quit. Unless a rich uncle died and left you money to live on, you still need to eat and pay the bills.