Embark on a fascinating journey with Herb Willis, the innovative mind behind Sunshine Signing Connection, as he peels back the curtain on the dynamic world of notary services within real estate. Discover how this flourishing enterprise supports the backbone of property transactions, ensuring that whether you're a title company, a realtor, or just someone in need of a document notarized, your needs are met with precision and care. Herb provides a compelling narrative, highlighting his company's embrace of both traditional in-person and cutting-edge remote notarization in response to the ever-evolving market needs.
Engage with the stories that shape the man behind the business; Herb doesn't just talk shop—his life is a tapestry of travel escapades, culinary adventures, and personal reflections. Delight in his tales from exploring Florida's less-traveled paths to savoring the Asian culinary delights at Zen in Newport Ritchie. But it's not all sunshine; Herb bravely shares the trials faced during the 2008 housing crisis and the fortitude required to steer his company through rough waters. This episode isn't just a business lesson, it's a heartfelt narrative of resilience, innovation, and the human spirit's capacity to find joy in both work and play.
Sunshine Signing Connection specializes in providing comprehensive notary services across the United States, with a focus on serving Title Insurance Companies. Their mobile notary services offer the convenience of having a notary public come to your location, whether it’s a home, office, or any other site. This nationwide service is available even on short notice to meet clients wherever they are.
Additionally, they offer online notarization services, catering to the growing demand for digital and remote notarizations. This allows clients to get documents notarized virtually from anywhere.
The company also provides expedited document courier services for urgent deliveries or recordings. With nearly two decades of experience, Sunshine Signing Connection prides itself on offering white-glove service, ensuring each notarization is handled with utmost professionalism and efficiency. Their extensive network of notaries and traveling attorneys can manage assignments of any size, demonstrating their commitment to flexibility and reliability for their clients.
Embark on a fascinating journey with Herb Willis, the innovative mind behind Sunshine Signing Connection, as he peels back the curtain on the dynamic world of notary services within real estate. Discover how this flourishing enterprise supports the backbone of property transactions, ensuring that whether you're a title company, a realtor, or just someone in need of a document notarized, your needs are met with precision and care. Herb provides a compelling narrative, highlighting his company's embrace of both traditional in-person and cutting-edge remote notarization in response to the ever-evolving market needs.
Engage with the stories that shape the man behind the business; Herb doesn't just talk shop—his life is a tapestry of travel escapades, culinary adventures, and personal reflections. Delight in his tales from exploring Florida's less-traveled paths to savoring the Asian culinary delights at Zen in Newport Ritchie. But it's not all sunshine; Herb bravely shares the trials faced during the 2008 housing crisis and the fortitude required to steer his company through rough waters. This episode isn't just a business lesson, it's a heartfelt narrative of resilience, innovation, and the human spirit's capacity to find joy in both work and play.
Sunshine Signing Connection specializes in providing comprehensive notary services across the United States, with a focus on serving Title Insurance Companies. Their mobile notary services offer the convenience of having a notary public come to your location, whether it’s a home, office, or any other site. This nationwide service is available even on short notice to meet clients wherever they are.
Additionally, they offer online notarization services, catering to the growing demand for digital and remote notarizations. This allows clients to get documents notarized virtually from anywhere.
The company also provides expedited document courier services for urgent deliveries or recordings. With nearly two decades of experience, Sunshine Signing Connection prides itself on offering white-glove service, ensuring each notarization is handled with utmost professionalism and efficiency. Their extensive network of notaries and traveling attorneys can manage assignments of any size, demonstrating their commitment to flexibility and reliability for their clients.
This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Mike Sedita.
Speaker 2:
Hello and welcome to this episode of the Good Neighbor Podcast. I am your host, mike Sedita, and today we are joined by Herb Willis. He's the president of Sunshine Signing Connection. Herb, how are you doing today? Fantastic, mike, thanks for having me. Thank you so much for being on the Good Neighbor podcast with us. If you're not aware of what the Good Neighbor podcast is, just to fill you in we started the Good Neighbor podcast back in 2020 during COVID, as a way for business owners like you to get your message out into the community, so people would know what you're doing, how you're doing it and just basically make that connection to the community. And over the last four years the Good Neighbor podcast has evolved into a national brand. We have Good Neighbor podcasts in Denver and Philadelphia and Atlanta, all over the US. I'm lucky enough to be the person here in Tampa who gets to speak to business owners and entrepreneurs like you.
Speaker 3:
So, with that said, tell us a little bit about Sunshine Signing Connection. Well, sunshine Signing Connection is a notary service that helps people and businesses sign important documents. We work with both like locally and across the country, assisting realtors, investors, title companies and, of course, the general public and notarizations title companies and, of course, the general public and notarizations. Our goal is to make the process of notarizing documents quick and easy. It's that simple.
Speaker 2:
So who would you say, is your garden variety, like the main person that you're speaking, like, that you're working with? Is it realtors? Is it title companies, like who's your bread and butter?
Speaker 3:
That's a great question. Our bread and butter is pretty much title companies. Who's your bread and butter? That's a great question. Our bread and butter is pretty much title companies, investor types, attorneys, but I would say overall title companies. They would be our audience.
Speaker 2:
Okay. So let me ask you this question. Over the past I don't know three years or so when the real estate market really got crazy in Florida, a lot of out of state people were buying properties here. Are those people you can really help? Because don't you necessarily have this as a notary? And again, I don't know the specifics of it, Aren't you supposed to be in front of them while they're signing or witnessing to it? So do you deal with a lot of out-of-state people, or is it all people pretty much local here?
Speaker 3:
That's a great question. We actually deal with anybody nationwide. We have like a large network, but we have about 35,000 independent contractors nationwide that work on our behalf and we're able to facilitate those types of transactions. We can pretty much put someone in someone's kitchen within an hour or of transactions. We could pretty much put someone in someone's kitchen within an hour or, more importantly, we can do it remotely online, so we're able to help anybody pretty much.
Speaker 2:
So if somebody from New Jersey is looking to buy a house in Tampa, they find the house here, the title companies here, the real estate agents here. They say, hey look, we need to these these documents signed. They come to you as their partner and you say, ok, the person's in I don't know, ridgewood, new Jersey, you have a team that within an hour can be there to have them sign it, or you can do it remotely and make sure all the documents are buttoned up.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, absolutely, man, pretty much, that's exactly, pretty much described, exactly how it pretty much happens. A lot of realtors who aren't, you know, technology driven or understand the process will think, oh well, we can't make that happen. But when they're hooked up with the right title company, those that's why I said title companies are our audience and they will typically know hey, we know, we can go over to her over at Sunshine Signing and his team have people in place to make it happen, right?
Speaker 2:
So when you're making connections with people in the community, I mean, are you basically going to like going around and reaching out to all the different title companies? Well, I guess I should back up. Where are you physically located? Like what area of Tampa?
Speaker 3:
We're physically located in Hudson. We have like a brick and mortar where you can walk in and get a notarization. If you were, you know, if you're part of the general public and you need a notarization, you could walk right into our office. We do notarizations. We also do fingerprinting on the local level for nurses and teachers and dispensaries. They use our services for that and we partner with another vendor to handle that. But we are, we do have a brick and mortar where our staff that's where our local headquarters is and our national agency resides in Hudson, right off of 5A, over by Bayonet Hospital.
Speaker 2:
Okay, yeah, I'm sure you get a lot of documents notarized being right by a hospital. People have to get all sorts of stuff, you know power of attorneys or things like that, if you don't buy, they can use the services right there.
Speaker 2:
So from your standpoint, I mean, how do you get into this line of work? I mean, have you always been very you know? Uh, I don't want to say you know like logistic, like are you, have you always been that guy that was always making sure everything's buttoned up? Or did you have a previous life in another career and sort of fell into? Is this a franchise? I mean, how does that all work?
Speaker 3:
No, I think those are all great questions and they're questions that we get a lot. My wife is funny. My wife and I, we actually both work in the real estate business and at the time we noticed that there was a problem that needed a solution and, seeing the opportunity, we decided to focus on the specific need and we built our business around basically catering and providing white glove notary services to title companies and it was something that was missing and we just basically said, okay, well, we can do this. Like I said, we started locally and then we went statewide and then, all of a sudden, we became this national brand in a niche. They always say the riches are in the niches and we found our niche.
Speaker 2:
So do you still do real estate or has this gotten so lucrative, having your corporate headquarters here and dealing with this network all across the United States? Are you just like kind of real estate piffed I don't want to do it anymore, or do you guys still live in that world?
Speaker 3:
We still, I mean as as far as like, yes, we're business owners, we own sunshine signing and we operated as an agency, and then we're also real estate investors as well, and so we, you know, we do very well as there as well, you know.
Speaker 2:
But you're not. You're not humping a family of four around Hudson or Newport Ritchie to try to find them their house anymore.
Speaker 3:
You're kind of out of that. No, we weren't even realtors in our before life. We, my wife. My wife was converting condos, I was working in a title company and we both ended up actually helping and doing notary services. We saw the need and that's kind of where we came together and created what we now know as Sunshine Sani.
Speaker 2:
You know it's funny. A lot of those great inventions are. You know, like I always go back to this. It's kind of a joke because I do marketing, but like those old Reese's peanut butter commercials, you know, like my chocolate and your peanut butter and they bump into each other and they come together and it makes this great thing. You're living in a world, in the title world, and she's living in this real estate adjacent world and you know, you're navigating the things that you do in the day to day and it's like a light bulb goes off and says you know, man, this is really something we're not, we don't have that we could use, and it turns into this, this large scale brand that's. That's really cool.
Speaker 2:
So what would you say? I mean, you made a comment and I kind of chuckled when you said like realtors I forget how you worded it realtors who aren't exactly technically savvy In my experience that's probably 97% of realtors I mean, it's just not. There's always some hiccup. The ones that are really good understand it. The ones that are kind of just muddling around usually struggle with it. But what's the biggest misconception that you run into when you are talking to, I mean, title companies know what they need. But what is the thing you generally have to educate folks on when they're coming to you as a notary?
Speaker 3:
I would say, you know, whenever they come to us as a notary, a lot of realtors don't even know that this type of service exists. So when we're like, well, we can make it happen, you know, they're very apprehensive at first because they've never heard of anything like it, and when we're able to make it happen for them it becomes a seamless thing. And we've galvanized our industry with, you know, with that approach and it's really helped us, and then again with the general public, real quick. You know, for the most part most people think that they can go to their bank and get things notarized and a lot of times banks won't. Just they won't, they will only notarize their documents, they won't notarize another company's documents. So they end up defaulting to Sunshine signing and our brick and mortar locally were able to take advantage of that and both on a state and national level we're able to really hit.
Speaker 2:
So it's kind of funny. You say the way you presented it. It's people who are listening to this aren't going to get this reference, but you have a poster of the Matrix in the background. It's almost like realtors now take the red pill and realize, hey, this is a whole world that exists and now they can't, they can't turn it off. So I'm assuming once you, once you get that realtor in, that they kind of know now that you're go, you're their go-to.
Speaker 3:
Pretty much, pretty much. I'll be like you know, just let they'll just be they'll hand it off to us.
Speaker 2:
That's where and we take it from there. So it's very funny. One of the biggest things I run into hosting the good neighbor podcast is people always think like it, it's there's no charge to do this, like we don't charge people for it. So the thing I always get like that misconception is well, is it free, is it? You know, if people think I'm gonna have like a timeshare presentation here and be like you can't leave the studio until you sign up for this, whatever it is, and it's just not like that. So it's funny when you say that people didn't know, don't know what exists. People, what they don't know.
Speaker 2:
When you like shine a light on something that gives them an opportunity to do something, it makes their life a lot easier or it gives them access to something they didn't have before, which is which is really cool. Do so for you. I mean, a lot of the stuff you're dealing with is legal documents and like, very like, if you mess up a notary and it's not notarized the right way or something's going on, it could be catastrophe for the person you're doing it for. So it's it's very high Now, it's a high risk, but it's very high intensity stuff to make sure documents are checked Right. Do you look when you're not doing this? What do you and your wife do for fun? Do you guys have kids? Do you travel? What do you do?
Speaker 3:
We do have kids and, yes, we do travel. We love to travel, hike and wherever we go, we like different dining experiences. That's real important to us. We spend a lot of our time on the experience of dining and we actually do some reviewing, if you will, on the side for okay hobby so all right.
Speaker 2:
So that's. That brings me to a few. A few questions, first and foremost, like how many kids do you guys have, boys or girls?
Speaker 3:
we have two boys, one's 23 and the other 16, and both phenomenal kids.
Speaker 2:
Man I, we were blessed in that area, so okay, 16 you're 16 year olds, a junior or gonna be a senior next year, is that?
Speaker 3:
gonna be a junior gonna be a junior.
Speaker 2:
So, uh, so you're still kind of embedded in the high school experience. Um, and your older son, is he in college? Is he working? What's he doing?
Speaker 3:
he just wrapped up, uh, his aa and uh, he just finished up an electrical program. He's apprenticed. He's an apprentice at a local electric electrician place. He's killing it, man. He's doing what he loves, I mean it's a really good field.
Speaker 2:
You know, over the past 20 years or so like when I was in high school, which is more than 20 years ago, but there was actually a vocational track you could go on a vocational track and it seemed like for a long time we were so focused on sending kids to college to put them into debt for the next 50 years that some of those trades have really struggled to find people that are good and want to do that. So that's great If he enjoys it. My dad used to say, not his line, somebody else's line. If you do something you love for work, you never work a day in your life. If you find that thing that you like, that's great. My next real serious this is like the most serious question is you said hiking. I don't consider that traveling. I consider that like extracurricular, like sweat shop in Florida hiking. But what's the last trip you guys have been on? Where was it and what was the experience like?
Speaker 3:
I would say the last place we went, we went to the Florida Caverns. They have a huge park out there and we absolutely enjoyed ourselves. We got to go into all the caves and you're hiking up. You would think in Florida there's not a place where you could hike uphill man going up and into those caves great experience.
Speaker 2:
So where is that? Where are those caves? What part?
Speaker 3:
Those caves. Now you're really putting me on the spot. I didn't expect you to hit me with that. It's like north.
Speaker 2:
It's like north of gainesville. Is that because? I know a place called like the devil's den, which is like a cave but it's water, like all these little spots in florida are there's a bunch in florida, man.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, there's a bunch of like, like hidden gems in gems in Florida that you can go to and check stuff out. I will tell you I'm kind of freaked out. I really want to go to one of these springs. But they just pulled a 10-foot gator out of the pond in front of my neighborhood and I'm like, oh, do I really want to go in that spring? I mean I know everybody says it's fresh water or whatever. I'm too big of an. I'm more than an appetizer for an alligator. I'm like a full-on 240-pound meal for that guy. I try to avoid that, but it looks really cool to do that stuff. I'm into doing that.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, man, we totally enjoy it.
Speaker 2:
The last question is the food thing. I wouldn't consider myself a foodie. I do like the experience of going somewhere and checking out the scene and trying some stuff, but where? Like what's the last place you went to let's let's keep it good.
Speaker 3:
Like what's the last good review you gave to a restaurant I would say the last good review we gave to a restaurant actually was last night. We went to a place called Zen and it's in downtown Newport, ritchie. They had phenomenal. They had a display of like. They had Thai food on the menu, they had Chinese food on the menu, they had Vietnamese food, a whole array of different ethnic types of food, and that's the type of thing we go for is we're looking for things that we haven't tried and we just try different things, and you know it. You know, um, it's nice, nicely decorated, yeah zen and newport richie was really good.
Speaker 2:
Um. Have you ever tried rossi restaurante italian place? It's out near newport richie. It's out that way on 54 yeah, man, it's phenomenal yeah, it's really good they were.
Speaker 2:
I work with them. Uh, they're in one of my publications out there. They're really good food. So this is the fun stuff you're doing when you're not doing. You know the work stuff. And then what I usually like to ask entrepreneurs because it really goes it does two things. Number one it shows people you work with that you've you know you've been through some stuff, and it shows other entrepreneurs how to get to the other side of it. So one of the things I always like to find out is has there been a time in your career professionally or personally, you can share whatever you? You know you want to share, but where you've run into a hardship, where or a challenge, where you're like you know what? I don't know if we're going to get through this. You know a lot of people I talk to it's either COVID or it's 9-11 or the real estate bubble and all those different things but what was your experience where you had it that you've come out the other side making lemonade out of lemons?
Speaker 3:
Well, being an entrepreneur has a lot of struggles, but if I had to think about it, I would say the 2008 housing crisis. I mean, it pretty much crushed everyone, you know. But fortunately we were able to persevere and make it through that period and the rest is pretty much history, man. But it was a really hard time at that point in our life, you know, mortgage payments weren't getting made, Things were getting put on credit cards and you know I was hitting the phone just looking for all types of work and actually we actually found other ways to do to do notarizations. We we hit, like other other industries, and we found we found hidden gems, you know.
Speaker 2:
So it actually helped our business grow, you know it's funny stuff like that, like I think about, like I think about something like like this what we're doing here, like a podcast from two different locations or a company like Zoom or Google Meet, like before COVID hit, nobody knew what I mean. I'm sure some people knew what Zoom was, but Zoom really wasn't a thing was, but Zoom really wasn't a thing. Covid hits out of that tragic time in our existence when we were all kind of hunkering down. This platform develops and people use it now and it's a part of our everyday life. Life it's like you, a problem presents itself and you are almost forced to figure out a solution so that you can get past it and offer better services, which is great. So, um, in your particular case, if, if I mean, there's a lot of competition in your business, right, like there's a bunch of different.
Speaker 2:
I interviewed, I think, two or three different companies that do notary. Uh, I think every B and I group I've ever visited in my two or three different companies that do notary. I think every B&I group I've ever visited in my life has a notary in that group. So what would be the one thing if people listening to this? You know, why do they? Why are you Sunshine Signing? What's the one thing I would say, sunshine Signing?
Speaker 3:
I mean, we've been in the business going on 19 years I would say Sunshine Signing. I mean, we've been in the business going on 19 years. We're not just a notary, we're more of a concierge type notary service. Again, I mean, if you need a notary in Noonan, north Dakota this afternoon, we can make that happen. There's not a lot of people that can do that. Our folks are vetted, they're trusted and you know we make it happen. Um, when we're presented with a problem, you know most there's going to be a reaction and then we create the solution and that's basically separated us from our competitors.
Speaker 2:
All right, so I got to ask this as a follow-up to that is have you done business in Noonan North Dakota? Because you pulled that out really quickly, like you went right to that what is? Do you have some connection to Noonan North Dakota?
Speaker 3:
That's, that's, that's absolutely. We have connections everywhere. In 19 years we've created a network in every single locality across the country. Like I said, there's not a state that we don't sign documents in every single month, man, we've signed everywhere. I mean, we've hired people in Alaska to take documents on a sled across an area, to take a ferry to get documents signed. So we've really made it happen and problem reaction solution that's what we do, man.
Speaker 2:
That's great. So what is the way, the best way for people to get ahold of you? And we'll include this if you have socials and websites and all that stuff, but what is the best ways for people to get a hold of you?
Speaker 3:
The best way to get a hold of us is you can call our office 727-817-0000, or hit us up on the web at sunshinesigningcom, or email us at ssc at sunshinesigningcom, at sunshinesigningcom.
Speaker 2:
So, folks, if you're listening to this and you know you need that document signed and you live in Juneau, alaska, or Anchorage, Alaska, and you want someone to sled some huskies across the terrain to get you your document signed, you need to contact Sunshine Signing. You know, it's almost like the name. I'm thinking of Alaska and cloudy and cold. And then it's Sunshine S, sunshine signing and the person shows up at your igloo and it's like, hey, I need you to sign. I'm here from sunshine signing sign these documents. But yeah, you're going to get white glove concierge service. You're going to get your documents taken care of and we're going to the team is going to make sure everything is handled for you to give you that peace of mind. Very cool phone number, easy to remember 727-817-0000.
Speaker 2:
Sunshinesigningcom it's a tongue twister, Herb, I don't know if you're thinking about that when you put it together, but it is a tongue twister and I talk all day, every day. So, herb, thank you for being a good neighbor. Thank you for being on the Good Neighbor Podcast. We appreciate your time. Have a great day.
Speaker 1:
You as well, thank you. Thanks for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast PASCO. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to gnppascocom. That's gnppascocom, or call 813-922-3610.
