When The Town Closes At Five, The Notary Doesn’t

Closing on a home shouldn’t require a two-hour drive and a hope that someone’s still open after 5pm. We’re joined by Taylor Floyd, owner of Willow & Crown Signing Co. in Durant, Oklahoma, to unpack how she built a community-centered notary business that solves a real rural problem: limited access to loan signings and reliable document notarization when local offices can’t help. 

We talk through what it looks like to become a “hub” for signing services in a small town, from partnering with realtor associations to doing local Facebook marketing and showing up through community service. Taylor also explains the day-to-day reality of helping people who are overwhelmed by paperwork, including acknowledgements and DMV-related forms, and why staying current on changing state requirements is part of the job if you want to deliver consistent, on-time results. 

Trust is the thread running through everything. Notaries handle sensitive documents and personally identifiable information, so Taylor breaks down how white-glove service works, how documents move securely to lenders and law offices, and why BBB Accreditation aligns with the standards she wants her company known for. We also cover her plans to expand mobile notary coverage across Oklahoma, hire reliable notaries, and keep growth rooted in small communities that are often overlooked. 

Connect with Willow & Crown on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61578783209132

Follow BBB Serving Central Oklahoma on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn @BBBCentralOK

Transcript

Welcome And Origin Story

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hey everybody, and welcome back to the Build with BBB Podcast. I'm your host, Casey Farmer, here with Taylor Floyd, owner of Willow and Crown Signing Co. all the way from Durant, Oklahoma. We're going to be talking about her business, how she got started, and her origin story. Welcome to the podcast, Taylor. Nice to be here. First things first, I always like to kick off with tell our listeners a little bit about why Willow and Crown, how you founded your company, what motivated you to start it, all the things.

SPEAKER_00 0:28

Okay. Um, why Willow and Crown? Well, it it's something that is very friendly and open and very strong for my community. There's a lot that comes to Willow and Crown. We are a signing company, general notary work. So the reason for it was to give our community a bigger platform for notaries for if you have, like say, our primary is home loan closings. So we only have two title companies in our town. Our county is a little bit bigger, but it's very rural. So there's not a whole lot of places to go for those home buyers to close. It became, it was a fill the need. So it was an idea and a need that came with a, hey, let's just do this full force. Let's give our community something, a real company that can open its doors where people can come and get their documents signed, can get things notarized, can ask questions. Hey, do you know? And it it really became kind of a hub for all things document signing.

Meeting A Rural Closing Need

SPEAKER_01 1:36

And how how has this impacted your community since opening up this business?

SPEAKER_00 1:39

It's impacted quite a bit. We're open when others aren't. So it's the ease and convenience that, you know, we have mobile notaries. We're open past five o'clock, which is very helpful. But it's also given others, you know, it's given us a couple of jobs that I can open up and give other people a job where they were looking for one. So it's it's starting to grow in our community a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 2:05

How does this work with sharing within your small community that this resource is available?

SPEAKER_00 2:10

Um, we do a lot of local marketing. You know, I partner with our local uh realtor association. I do a lot of Facebook marketing, a lot of local um like community service just with our name behind it. Hey, this is from Willow and Crown, a lot of, you know, donations, charitable giving, just to get our name out there. Uh, and then letting people know heck, we are partnered with lenders. If you have a loan closing, if you need a document, jurats, acknowledgements, things like that, we know about these and we can help you. We can explain where to send them, what they're needed for, anything like that.

SPEAKER_01 2:50

So it sounds to me like being a part of the local community is so important to you. And sometimes I hear new business owners, you know, they have these big dreams about taking over and doing these large things nationwide. And that's not really your focus. No.

Client Education And White Glove Service

SPEAKER_00 3:03

Tell me a little bit about that and why. I'm an Oklahoma girl. I was born and raised in Durant, Oklahoma. And giving back to that community that raised me is very, very important. I still have my entire family there. My kids are being raised in that community, my cousin's kids. You know, we we've got a big family in that county. And so just being able to give back to, you know, again, the people that raised me and the community and open up jobs where there weren't before, or, you know, letting people have access to information that, you know, they could only get either online or nine to five when the office was open. So it it really just gives our small community and Oklahoma another partner that understands our state and community.

SPEAKER_01 3:49

So tell me a little bit about the continuing education that you're providing. You're not, you know, teaching classes per se, but educating your clients on what they need to know.

SPEAKER_00 4:00

Tell me about that. Okay, so there are some times where, you know, people are needing out-of-state driver's license that they need to sign an acknowledgement to then give to the DMV or the state. Sometimes they don't know where to get them or why they even need them. And having that experience really kind of gives me the expertise to say, okay, you can go to this website and print this form, bring it here, and then we can go over it together and I can tell you where to sign it and then where you would need to send it to after. It really gives people who don't have that, you know, quick information or hey, I looked on Google, but I'm not really sure. It gives them a firm, hey, this is what you need to do with that.

SPEAKER_01 4:45

Tell me a little bit about how you stay on top of the changing paperwork and different things that are happening in our state to make sure that you know when people are coming to you, like this is actually the form that you need.

SPEAKER_00 4:55

Yeah, you really just have to look on all of our state websites and just stay informed with any changes. And that's on me as a business owner. That's my job to make sure that our company stays informed that if anything changes, say an acknowledgement, it is different now than it used to be. We need to know that because it could be very important to our clients when they need that acknowledgement in a timely manner. And that's also very important to us. We offer white glove service. So anything that we will print your documents, we will have you sign them and we will send them, you know, where they need to go for you. Lenders, law offices, hospitals, auto dealerships, things like that is really where our catering has become at this point. So yeah. But staying on top of those and just really, you know, staying on our websites is has been the Yeah, super helpful.

SPEAKER_01 5:51

So it's it's very apparent in how you talk about your business and how you serve people that trust is really important to you, obviously. Being here today, being a BBB accredited business, satisfying all of our standards for trust, meaning all those things. Let's talk about why that's important for a notary.

SPEAKER_00 6:06

Yeah. Um, as a notary, first and foremost, the word notary, what we do, just exudes that we have to be trustworthy. We are handling very sensitive documents all of the time. We are handling PII. We are handling information that most people don't have access to. So we need to be able to be a person that can be trusted with these documents to make sure that the information doesn't get out or that the documents go from client to, you know, depending on where they need to go. If it's, you know, a client needing to send it to an attorney's office, it goes straight from me to that attorney's office handed personally, or one of our notaries that do that service as well. So it's it means the world to us because that's how this business started and that's how we're continuing to grow as being trustworthy.

Growth Plans And Small Business Advice

SPEAKER_01 6:57

I love to hear that. Where do you see your business take off in the next five years? Where where do you see it headed? Because you love small communities.

SPEAKER_00 7:05

So serving more small communities across Yeah. Um, that's that's my main focus right now is just serving Oklahoma and the small communities, maybe opening up a couple of brick and mortar locations in this state and see, you know, how, especially in rural areas where there's not, you know, a lot of law offices or title companies or banks or things like that that have the availability or the stamp to do what we do. So it's just really giving back to Oklahoma.

SPEAKER_01 7:32

For our listeners today, we have we have a lot of small business owners like yourself who are listening. What advice would you give to them in and even aspiring small business owners? What advice would you give to them to get started?

SPEAKER_00 7:45

Definitely make sure that you think about everything from every angle. Curveballs get thrown at you left and right, and you have to be able to pivot. Your business plan is a living document. It's kind of like a person to me because it changes all the time. Our business plan, where our uh growth happens, our marketing, all of that is fluid and it it can change. So being adaptable, you know, and making sure that your documents are actually uh notarized and and sent back into the state in a timely manner, is is very important. You know, that's a big deal when you're starting a business and then, you know, making sure that you're trustworthy and that you do what you say you're gonna do and that you offer the you know services that you can back those things up. Though those are all just very important to getting started and making a name for yourself.

Business Services, Hiring, And How To Reach Them

SPEAKER_01 8:37

Absolutely, I agree. Do what you say you're say you're gonna do. That's the number one thing we always talk about at BBB. Yeah, absolutely. On your promises. Tell me for businesses who are listening today, what services you offer.

SPEAKER_00 8:50

Yeah, so um for businesses as far as you know paperwork and that is concerned, anything that would need to be notarized, uh, applications. If you have a large company, for instance, uh you've got a large construction company and you've got 500 hires that you need to get hired today, but these applications have to be notarized and sent into the state or sent into a corporate company. We can go to your office and get all 500 of them done like that. That's that's what we do for businesses. Anything that you need uh documented and then sent in, notarized. We've got white glove service tiers for business owners versus just the general public.

SPEAKER_01 9:38

Yeah. Yeah. What other um what other things about your business do you want our listeners to know?

SPEAKER_00 9:44

We're growing. We're about to be hiring, actually. So if you know a notary, send them to Willow and Crown because we're we're about to expand our mobile notary platform. We are connected with like notary cafe and different platforms online where different title companies, signing companies, things like that will actually come to us to help Oklahoma that may not be in this state. So title companies in California, Texas, other states that do business nationwide will actually call notaries or signing companies that are local to do certain things like that. So I'm always expanding my notary, my mobile notary platform, and always, you know, look looking to hire reliable notaries who wanna do this as well. Okay. And for our listeners today, what's the best way to connect with you? The best way to connect with me is on Facebook via our page, Willow and Crown signing co or our phone numbers.

SPEAKER_01 10:49

What about just general questions about what you do? How does that work when a business calls in or or a consumer or customer calls in?

SPEAKER_00 10:57

Yeah, usually it's it's Facebook Messenger. That's our biggest messaging platform, I guess. And it's, you know, hey, do you do this? And it's hey, do you know, can you notarize this type of document? And yes, the answer is generally yes, we can. The only thing I'm not currently doing right now is international internet a learning process. And you really have to know what you're doing when it comes to those because it's mainly citizenship documents and things like that. And you really want to know what you're doing before you just jump it into that. So we're learning everything we can before we expand our service space. Sure.

SPEAKER_01 11:36

That part is really important, I know, because you've touched on it a few times. I love to sorry. No, I love it. I think it's really wonderful. I think I'm a nerd. As a business owner, you have to it's protecting your reputation, it's protecting your brand, and all those things are so important as you're making your way across Oklahoma and representing other businesses.

SPEAKER_00 11:54

You have to Yeah, and and you really have to know, like I said, what you're doing and what you're getting yourself into. Because not all documents read the same as well. So it might be phrased a different way in one document versus another one, but you automatically know just reading the documents. Oh, this means this. This is what you need to do with it. So having just a little general knowledge of documents and what they're used for is very important. I love that.

SPEAKER_01 12:20

Taylor, thank you for joining us on the podcast today. Thank me. Thank you for our listeners. If you want to connect with Willow and Crown Signing Co., we will have all of their information linked down below, including their Facebook page and their phone number. You can also find their listing on bbb.org if you want to connect with them and learn more about services and different things that they offer across Oklahoma. We will see you in the next episode. Make sure to check this podcast out and across all platforms and share with your communities so that we can stay informed about what's happening in the notary world, which is something new we haven't done on the podcast yet. We will see you in the next episode. Bye, friends.