From Vulnerability to Victory: Personal Development in Real Estate Investing

John Harcar (00:01.392)
All right. Hey, guys. Welcome back to our show. I’m here today with David and Kathy Vidal. Hope I said that right. And besides the real estate journey, what we’re going to talk about is the real importance of a notary agent. That all notaries are not signing agents. Remember, guys, at Investor Fuel, we help real estate investors, service providers, really all real estate entrepreneurs, 2 to 5X their business.

And we do that by providing resources that grow the business you want to have and turn lives the life that you want to live. So guys, welcome to our show.

Dave And Kathy Vidal (00:34.934)
Thank you. Thank you for having us.

John Harcar (00:36.772)
Yeah, I’m excited. You’re the first notary’s, signing agents I’ve had on here. So I’m excited to learn more. My wife was a notary at one point back in, I don’t even know how long ago, but anyways, before we talk about all that cool stuff, why don’t you kind of fill our audience a little bit about, you know, where you guys came from, what your background is, how you got into real estate.

Dave And Kathy Vidal (00:56.878)
Absolutely. I know. So, We I was a 20 year medical malpractice personal injury product liability paralegal. It’s a mouthful and gave I guess the big chunk was in banking, primarily lending operations, the document management piece, things like that, that area.

John Harcar (01:07.536)
Okay, it’s a mouthful.

John Harcar (01:19.512)
Okay, okay, okay.

Dave And Cathy Vidal (01:21.198)
Yes, I would say about six, seven years ago, we found out that being a not just a function of the attorney staff or the lender staff. And I think it was January 1st, 2019. dove into this full time. And Dave came in a year and a half later. And this is what we do. Yeah, it was a great opportunity. We just we saw it as just a great transition point for Kathy and I, given our different one given our different

John Harcar (01:32.528)
Hmm?

John Harcar (01:39.502)
Mmm. Okay.

Dave And Kathy Vidal (01:51.105)
past experience and more importantly too, we really wanted something where we could be kind of on our own terms and not be you know under have a boss, be under that corporate guise if you will. So this just turned into a phenomenal opportunity you know it really allowed Cathy to use her detail orientedness as a paralegal and my knowledge of the banking process, lending process, documents kind of merge all that together and create what we are today.

John Harcar (01:53.168)
Sure.

John Harcar (01:59.226)
Yeah.

John Harcar (02:11.6)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (02:21.176)
You were a paralegal and you were a banker. Where does real estate fit in? mean, where did the whole notary part pop into your head? Did you see like an infomercial or how did you know that? I think you said, you know, signing agent, it’s a real thing. How did you know signing? How did you find out it’s a real thing?

Dave And Kathy Vidal (02:35.735)
It’s a lot of fun.

Not going down the rabbit hole of figuring out what else you can do with your notary commission other than you know, just stamping some random document. Yeah Dave did a deep dive and we started seeing all these courses and information on signing services and We actually ended up taking the course on the loan called the Loan Signing System by Mark Wells Nominal course and it it literally has gotten us to where we are today

Okay.

John Harcar (03:09.754)
Where’d the notary part come into play? You said a notary commission. Did you have one by default or did you go out and get one?

Dave And Kathy Vidal (03:13.889)
Yes.

So I actually was a notary public, I’ve commission New Jersey notary public for about 15 years now. Yeah, and that’s the roots. And that happened because I had a boss, the company, again, being in banking, my boss at the time, we needed things notarized. And it was literally at some point I’m like, well, I think there’s a notary down the street, I think there’s this or.

John Harcar (03:19.682)
Okay, all right, now we’re getting to it. Now we’re getting back to the roots.

Dave And Kathy Vidal (03:37.519)
And at one point my boss, um, high level banking executive, goes, Hey, this has to stop. need when I like, if we got to do this and I got a sign and you got it like, it’s gotta happen now. I don’t have time to go down the street. got, goes, figure out how to be a notary public. I’ll pay for it. Just do it. And I’m like, okay. And I went and I figured out how to be, how to get a commission from the state and go through that process and got it. And that’s, so that was getting a, being a notary public, just being, just literally having the state say, okay, you’re a good person with a good background. You can stamp documents.

John Harcar (03:48.132)
Yeah.

John Harcar (03:58.288)
Okay.

Dave And Kathy Vidal (04:07.482)
and say that yes, you witnessed that signature. That’s about as far as the notary commission takes you. And it was in that process though of stamping those documents, going through, that’s where my rabbit hole kind of starts, because I’m like, wait a minute, if I’m doing this for a company.

Why am I not doing this for other companies? how does it, cause then I remember even seeing something like, well, there’s, if notaries are involved in the real estate world, I’m like, well, how do I do that? And that’s how we started deep diving into that whole process of let’s, you know, what a sign-in agent is and the distinction between the two of them. And that’s how all that happened. And with Cathy, was just that. I my commission on purpose to then be a sign-in agent, yeah.

John Harcar (04:44.802)
Okay, and.

John Harcar (04:50.091)
Okay, okay. How much does a commission cost if you go like how does it cost how much does it cost you to get a commission?

Dave And Kathy Vidal (04:55.342)
In New Jersey, it’s not that expensive. It’s like 40 bucks, something like that, for a five-year commission.

John Harcar (04:57.626)
Pretty cheap, okay.

What was the mindset piece, the important function or switch from that W2 coming in every week, every month, whatever it might be, you ever pay to, you don’t work, you don’t eat. How did that, how did that all go? Yeah. Tell me about it.

Dave And Kathy Vidal (05:16.758)
Isn’t it scary? It is very scary. scary. When we started, I started first and I said, we got to give this about a year to see if this is going to go somewhere. And I don’t know, the year wasn’t up and Dave’s like, let me come in. Cause his job was well, you know, he was being paid well and stable and insurance and all that. And we kept holding off on him joining and then COVID actually hit and the world, you know, shut down as they say.

John Harcar (05:33.552)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (05:44.434)
and notary signing agents were a lot more prevalent and needed.

Dave And Kathy Vidal (05:48.633)
They were, but we were still nervous and Dave’s like, my God, he had to give a notice or anything. I gotta go get my job back. His boss did need him to stay on a little longer because you couldn’t really interview people during COVID. So he stayed on a little longer, but then being an entrepreneur, it’s a lot of hard work, but you can’t, I don’t want to ever go back to a W-2. You take for granted what you don’t know.

John Harcar (05:59.386)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (06:10.384)
Yeah, once you’ve worked for yourself, it’s hard to work for somebody. In a sense, you become unemployable. So did you have money put away? Did you have all that taken care of? Or did you literally jump in like, OK, now I’ve got to start making some money today? OK. All right. OK, good.

Dave And Kathy Vidal (06:17.166)
Yeah.

Dave And Kathy Vidal (06:30.37)
No, my OCD kicked in. No, we did have like six months savings in case. Luckily we had, again, our past lives did allow us to accumulate 401k money, have some retirements money set up, have that all in play, keep some savings. And so we had a safety net. We had a safety net that we built ourselves admittedly.

John Harcar (06:50.096)
Yeah. I’m good for you. I think people should not leave their W2s until they have at least that saved up. So tell me about the mindset shift and the challenges of going from W2 to now full-time employee. You know, I’m self-employed.

Dave And Kathy Vidal (07:11.15)
It’s a you you you you have to get it you have to you know, goes back I just had just said you can take for granted what you don’t know and so it comes into Really just educating yourself about okay. What has to happen? You know the first thing that for us that that the first question we have to answer for ourselves is well How do we get insurance? how do we how do do we get medical insurance? Not like an employee anymore, yeah, it’s hard like hunting around what are the different solutions? What are they and and and and so that and that’s the most basic

question that I think a lot of W2 employees looking to go into kind of the self-employed world, they’re like, my god, and so that’s the one that probably was the hardest one for us to kind of, that was the hardest of the puzzle pieces for us to figure out and put together. It was figuring out everything on our own.

John Harcar (07:45.712)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (07:57.87)
The taxes, whole accounting, all that, you know, all those little things, right? It’s new.

Dave And Kathy Vidal (08:02.794)
Yeah. Making, you know, keeping money to the side, making the proper deductions. And so all of that really was the part where that’s that the mind chef’s, the mindset shift wasn’t something like kind of just happened right away. But as we were slowly filling in those pieces of information we needed, was almost like a slow turn, if you will, until finally the faucet was fully on.

John Harcar (08:09.305)
Mm-hmm.

Dave And Kathy Vidal (08:29.099)
And then from there it was just like knowing that full well that look if we don’t work, if we don’t, know, the hunter mentality if you will, if we don’t hunt for business, talk to title companies, engage lenders, engage real…

Dave And Kathy Vidal (08:48.92)
There we go. Sorry about that, John. Okay, looks like we’re back. All right. Sorry about that. Are we good? Okay. So yeah, so just, you know, getting into that, that Hunter mentality, we started going, okay, well now let’s, let’s seek out our business. Who do we have to talk to? How do we gain business? That program we mentioned, the Loan Signing System was actually spectacular because it allowed, it actually filled in a lot of that information for us rather than us having to it out, trying to figure it out ourselves.

John Harcar (08:51.47)
Nah, I’ll say for a minute.

John Harcar (08:56.814)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, we’re good.

John Harcar (09:17.178)
How did you find out about that? How did you come across that?

Dave And Kathy Vidal (09:19.8)
rabbit holes once again, you know, kind of going through a rabbit hole YouTube one day really just being really overly, I don’t want to say bored, but just focused on it and going, going, going, going, trying to figure out and seeing other podcasts, other, not even podcasts, YouTube videos, blurbs about this. And then coming across something from Mark Wills, the creator of the Loan Signing System and, and just seeing that and

finding out there’s tons and hunts, there’s hundreds and hundreds and thousands of people that do this. And I’m like, if they can do it, I think we can at least give it a valiant attempt and see what happens.

John Harcar (09:54.98)
Sure, and I mean, there’s so much information out on YouTube, I’m sure, and on the internet, you know, I mean, why was it more important for you to take a course than just kind of learn at YouTube U?

Dave And Kathy Vidal (10:09.132)
I’m not going to say the market is saturated, but you’re competing with so many others. We wanted something to set us apart from the rest. Many people that have been doing this for years, they don’t have a certification from these courses because they’re more than grandfathered in. They learned on the job. They have years years of experience. But now we were competing with people coming in around the time we were coming in.

John Harcar (10:29.466)
Yeah.

Dave And Kathy Vidal (10:36.138)
I also wanted to make sure I kind of knew what I was doing before I started. Going in blind and messing up somebody’s closing and suddenly their lock-in rate expires. It’s a big thing, this you’re purchasing a home or you’re selling. So we wanted to know as much as we could prior to even saying, hey, this is me, this is what I do. And this way we were able to leverage

John Harcar (10:54.131)
yeah.

Dave And Kathy Vidal (11:05.618)
somebody again, do you learn from scratch and kind of work your way through that or do you leverage somebody else’s teachings and learnings and what they’ve done and then piggyback off of that? And so we just felt that it was a great investment for us to, know, let’s make the investment in a good training program and then, and we can piggyback off of that. Now, yes, six years later, we have learned many things. We’ve put our own policies and principles in place, but at least we had a good, a kind of good, you know, diving board, you will, good foundation to kind of, know, dive.

John Harcar (11:33.154)
Yeah. Well, what they always say is you pay now or you pay later. usually, paying later could be a lot more than paying a little bit now. So what do you guys kind of attribute some of your key things or what are the keys to your success that got you going, got you where you’re at right now?

Dave And Kathy Vidal (11:36.99)
Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Dave And Kathy Vidal (11:51.768)
Relationships. Absolutely. Relationships. Agreed. we have to continuously, I guess, stay top of mind with the lenders, with the realtors, with the title and escrow companies. We have to know that we’re going to do the best we can and that they’re going to continuously want to have us at the closing table representing them.

John Harcar (11:54.544)
Tell me more.

John Harcar (12:18.714)
Okay, how do you do that?

Dave And Kathy Vidal (12:22.666)
Lay on the charm.

John Harcar (12:25.176)
Please back to the theater depending on where you’re at.

Dave And Kathy Vidal (12:28.184)
For us, it’s making the whoever is at that closing table. They’re the rock stars for that hour two hours three hours. They’re the rock stars I I’m I’m the the person that is just there to watch them sign and date That’s how I make them think But they are the Ross rock stars. We are managed. You know, we’re on our phone checking on the emails You know keeping the attorney the lender the title everybody, you know in the loop of what’s going on if they’re

John Harcar (12:43.696)
Mm-hmm.

Dave And Kathy Vidal (12:56.588)
you whatever, if any issues or questions arise that we can’t answer, it’s basically being, it’s being part of the team. That’s what it is. Building the relationship is being part of that team. So when they think, we’ve got this closing, we want Kathy or we want Dave, you know, it’s, it’s being.

top of mind really. Something that we’re always mentioning to real estate pros especially is look you put so much time and effort into guiding someone into the property acquisition or even the property sale because you know the sale is a part of the piece too let’s not forget but the buy is always the one that I always said kind of gets the gets all the know gets all the all the bells and whistles. You as a real estate agent you’ve been guiding your client through this process

John Harcar (13:26.123)
yeah, sure.

Dave And Kathy Vidal (13:40.216)
from the searching and hunting of a home, putting in offers and then getting yourself a lender. then there’s that person. Now there’s another layer, now another professional on top of that. then hell will be complicated. And then all of sudden Title Company comes in and now that’s another piece. then depending on what state you’re in, some states use attorneys, some don’t. New Jersey, for instance, kind of has a half and half thing going. North of the state uses attorneys, bottom half doesn’t use attorneys. But still, an attorney on top of that. And then all these people layered on top of each other to help this process occur.

John Harcar (13:50.276)
Right.

Dave And Kathy Vidal (14:08.968)
We don’t want to come in and botch that up. that’s really it. We don’t want to come in and botch that up. We want to compliment everything that was done so far, everything that all those professionals did. And so that’s where our acquisition occurs is although we do have, go to networking events and we’re talking to title companies and we’re selling ourselves a bit and the hard selling that occurs for us isn’t even a hard sell at all. It’s just really just letting all those other professions that came and brought that to the closing table, really making them shine as well.

John Harcar (14:36.677)
Mm-hmm.

Dave And Kathy Vidal (14:39.094)
you know, so that that so that that buyer leaves that closing table with a big old smile on their on their face that hey, I look at all this thing I signed it’s it’s you know, that’s the signing and dating as we call it is actually that’s the boring piece of this whole thing. You know, that’s that’s just you know, I always I get to I get to that sometimes when I’ll get the closing table say folks look what you see in front of us is our homework for today. There’s only two important documents in this whole thing. The rest of it is semantics. But you know what? When you’re out of here, you’re walking with a set of keys. So

John Harcar (14:39.194)
Got it.

John Harcar (14:46.158)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (15:04.656)
All right, there you go, perfect.

Dave And Kathy Vidal (15:06.516)
And it’s just that and then when we’re done with that, then the feedback from all those pros is like, Hey, we love Cathy. my God, she was great. She had my client smiling the whole time. Title company, can you please send her again? You know, and, and that’s what it’s built on.

John Harcar (15:16.954)
That’s awesome. That’s awesome. And that’s important to build. Yeah, that’s important. Earlier, we touched a little bit on, and I think we talked a bit before we got on the air, that every notary agent is a notary Why don’t you tell our audience a little bit about the distinction between those?

Dave And Kathy Vidal (15:38.456)
So we use that expression a lot because there are folks out there that they very much want to only go through YouTube University. They don’t really want to learn. They don’t take the prior care, if you will, like what I was saying earlier, of making everybody shine. They’re going to get to your closing table, slam the documents, not slam, but documents on the table.

Hands to your client and go, all right, folks, we need you to sign a date. but I have a question. That’s not my job. Sign a date, sign a date. but what am I signing here? It’s not my job. Sign a date, sign a date. And so, what happens is, although that is a signing agent, that’s probably somebody that got their notary commission, figured out a way into this industry and really just wants to, we say they’re more focused on the money than the people. I was just going to say, the basic part is we know how to walk.

Yeah, the signers, the buyers, the borrowers through those documents. We know what the documents are, you know, what the information they contain, what it has, if they have questions, if it’s in the documents, we can point it out to them. Otherwise, we know we’re going to get their attorney on the phone. We got to call their lender right now. We know to stay in our lane. We’re not the financial advisor. We’re not the legal representation. You know, we we’re not going to to say.

John Harcar (16:49.498)
Right.

Dave And Kathy Vidal (16:59.832)
my god, you really bought it in that neighborhood really or your interest rate is way too high like we have Basically the signing and you have to know your role stay in your lane But just get all as pleasant as possible for everybody involved. The signing agent is nothing more than just a good old conductor That’s really what it is the signing agent there And and then so that’s where there’s just folks out there that although they will be using the the the the the label of of signing agent

John Harcar (17:03.248)
Mm!

John Harcar (17:09.656)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yep. Yep.

John Harcar (17:19.824)
True. Yeah.

Dave And Kathy Vidal (17:29.1)
They truly aren’t somebody that took the time and care to learn and position themselves accordingly. And so that’s why we use that expression. We use it a lot that all all signing agents are notary publics. Not all notary publics are signing agents.

John Harcar (17:44.792)
Is that the biggest mistake that you’re seeing with folks? there, you know, people that are getting into this business are going in and not having that full rounded knowledge to better serve their client.

Dave And Kathy Vidal (17:54.616)
I that really adds to it and the mentality that, hey, I’m going to make some money in this hour, half hour, two hours, depending on what state you’re living in and how quickly a closing takes. They’re already thinking about the next closing. And so the next paycheck and the following one and the following one instead of, hey, I’m going to dedicate the necessary time to this closing. If I have something else and this is running late, I’m going to, you know,

Discreetly, you know text my next client and say hey, I know it’s still two hours But I know I’m not gonna be out of here You may need to if you can bump the time back or I may need you to go You know, you may have to get somebody else to cover that one It’s it’s it’s a lot of things but knowing that you need to dedicate a certain amount of time to whomever is in front of you and

John Harcar (18:35.088)
Hmm.

Dave And Kathy Vidal (18:52.498)
not worry so much about I need to be somewhere in 30 minutes. You know, because that’s a disservice to everybody and all the professionals Dave mentioned earlier, you’re doing a complete disservice to all of them and the people in front of you.

John Harcar (18:57.008)
Yeah, being present.

John Harcar (19:06.96)
Yeah, no, I agree 100%. So what is it? what is it? Tell us about your business. You guys are located in New Jersey. Where do you service? What are you nationwide? What’s going on with that?

Dave And Kathy Vidal (19:17.142)
We do cover the entire state of New Jersey, top to bottom, and hopefully you’ll see one of us at the closing table. But we have officially launched as a nationwide signing service. So although we can’t sit in front of you in Texas or California or Iowa, we’re gonna get you the next best thing and somebody who is gonna treat you just as well, if not better than we do at the closing table. So we can help find closing agents nationwide.

I was gonna say, Kathy’s actually subduing little bit her holding back her excitement, because I even told her, I’m like, kind of technically this podcast almost acts as our world premiere. So your podcast is our world premiere of the Vidal Notary’s signing service, nationwide signing service.

John Harcar (20:05.486)
Wow, guys, we’re blessed today. Thank you guys very much. That’s awesome. Okay, congratulations. Okay, well then on that note, if folks want to get ahold of you that are in California, Texas or Iowa or anywhere else, how do they get in touch with you guys? How do they reach out?

Dave And Kathy Vidal (20:13.964)
Thank you.

Dave And Kathy Vidal (20:23.592)
So we’re on we’re on all social media linkedin facebook and instagram at vedal notaries and you can hit us up individually kathy vedal or david al and our email is vedal notaries at gmail.com

John Harcar (20:40.912)
All right. Well, we’ll put that in the show notes. We’ll make sure that everybody can see it and reach out to you guys Thank you so much. I mean like it my first notary people and I’m also being blessed with their launch of their bit our first nationwide thing Advertising or however you want to call it’s so cool That’s a great way to end my day, but I appreciate you guys really coming on. I really do folks I hope you guys enjoyed it. I know I did and we will see you guys on the next one. Cheers

Dave And Kathy Vidal (20:57.632)
Yeah.

Dave And Kathy Vidal (21:07.96)
Yes, sir. Thanks. John, thank you.