I work for a law firm, and I originally became a notary simply to provide notary services for the firm. At some point, I had the idea of allowing walk-ins to come in for notary services. My thinking was simple: people would come into the office, see the firm, meet the staff, and become familiar with who we are. Essentially, the notary service became a form of free marketing.

I created a Google Maps listing for the notary service, and, lo and behold, people started showing up. A lot of people.

As the volume increased, keeping up with the required notary logbook and recordkeeping became difficult. Since I have a hard time doing anything halfway, and I also happen to be a software engineer, I decided to build my own solution.

The first version was very simple. I created an electronic sign-in system and placed a QR code in the office. Walk-in clients could scan the code, enter their information, and the data would automatically be uploaded and stored in Dropbox. That became my first digital notary logbook.

Then another idea hit me: why stop at a digital logbook? Why not build an entire CRM around it and use the information to improve client communication and marketing?

I personally hate spam, so I did not want to bombard people with constant promotional emails. Instead, I created a Birthday and Holiday Registry. Clients could receive a simple birthday greeting and occasional holiday message. The purpose was not aggressive advertising. It was simply a friendly reminder that we exist and that they had used our services before. I also added an OpenAI layer that sent each holiday and birthday email custom made. Based on their name and date. Example... The email would say something relating to history or notary on that day.

That worked surprisingly well.

As the business continued to grow, I started receiving more and more walk-ins. Other notaries also became interested in joining the platform and operating under my business name in something similar to a franchise or affiliated network.

That pushed me to expand the software even further.

I began adding more advanced functionality, including additional security layers, enhanced electronic recordkeeping, multilingual support, notary training and quizzes for multiple states, administrative tools, client management features, and more sophisticated compliance functions.

I also developed an advanced remote notary session tracking and request submission system, allowing remote notarization requests to be submitted, assigned, tracked, and managed through the same platform.

What originally started as a simple QR-code sign-in sheet for walk-in notary clients gradually evolved into a complete notary CRM's, recordkeeping, marketing, training, and remote session management platform.

I also built an iOS app that's linked to the CRM (was a nightmare to do). Had to figure out how PHP / Firebase bridge works. So now my iOS app is directly linked to the CRM.