"Just sign up everywhere."
A platform profile can create a lead source. It is not a customer-acquisition strategy by itself, and it does not teach compliance or differentiation.
Coaching-scams and side-hustle theater
Selling hope is not the same thing as building a compliant business.
Coaching-scams is Notary Geek shorthand for the grift pattern where someone sells confidence, scripts, certificates, platform lists, or easy-income mythology while skipping the hard parts: customer acquisition, compliance, liability, records, and whether the work actually exists.
The pattern
Coaching-scams sell the feeling of a business.
Coaching-scams is Greg Lirette's name for a broad grift pattern. It is not limited to notaries. It is what happens when someone sells confidence, scripts, platform lists, certificates, private groups, and easy-income mythology while skipping the hard parts: customer acquisition, compliance, liability, records, pricing, refunds, support, and whether the work actually exists.
The notary version often sounds like this: sign up for a pile of platforms, buy the certificate, copy the script, post the profile, and wait for work. Sure, signing up for 100 to 300 platforms may eventually produce some assignments. But true customer volume usually comes from building trust, direct demand, referral paths, reputation, workflow, and a reason for people to choose you.
The loop reinforces confirmation bias. The coach sells the dream, the trade article gives it institutional flavor, and the notary network repeats anecdotes until people mistake repetition for law, authority, or reliable market demand.
Notary Geek rule
Training can be useful. Coaching can be useful. The red flag is selling hopium while avoiding the evidence: where the customers come from, who carries the liability, what law applies, what record proves compliance, and what happens when the assignment goes sideways.
When authorities, recipients, employers, or customers come calling over a document issue, sales confidence is not an answer. The person involved has to explain the actual legal basis, record, role, and workflow.
Common forms
The grift changes costumes.
"This badge makes you legit."
A private certificate may show course completion. It does not create state authority, lender approval, title approval, immigration authority, or employer compliance authority.
"We handle the legal part."
If the coach, platform, or assignment company cannot say who owns the statutory duty and what record proves compliance, the confidence is decorative.
"Charge high fees instantly."
Real pricing depends on demand, skill, risk, geography, workflow, acquisition cost, support burden, and whether the service is actually lawful for the facts.
I-9 case study
A notary title does not make Form I-9 a notarial act.
Companies often send remote employees to notaries for Form I-9 because a notary sounds official and notaries are used to checking IDs. That is exactly where the confusion starts. Form I-9 is an employer employment-eligibility verification process. It is not a notarial certificate, and the notary seal does not belong on the form.
If a hiring company chooses a notary as its authorized representative, the notary is acting in that employer-representative role for the I-9 task, not as a notary public performing a notarial act. The employer still owns the federal I-9 compliance duty. Sending the employee to a notary does not prove the employer trained the representative, gave correct instructions, reviewed the documents correctly, retained the form correctly, or shifted liability away from itself.
That is the part the industry often fails to center. Notaries are running around thinking that because they are notaries, they can safely be the authorized representative. Companies are often non-compliant too, because they treat "go find a notary" as if it were a complete I-9 compliance process.
Clean answer
I-9 work is not notarization. The employer may choose an authorized representative, but the employer remains responsible for the I-9 result. A notary commission by itself is not I-9 training, employer authorization, immigration-consultant authority, or a liability shield.
NNA tie-in
The NNA is directionally right, but the emphasis matters.
The National Notary Association article on offering I-9 services correctly says I-9 verification is not a notarial act, that companies often instruct remote employees to go to a notary, and that notaries should not notarize or seal Form I-9.
Notary Geek's critique is the framing. The NNA discussion spends energy on the California Secretary of State / immigration-consultant restriction and side-service opportunity. Greg Lirette does not treat that as the center of the issue. The core issue is federal employer I-9 compliance and the employer-liability chain. A state notary office does not turn Form I-9 into a notarial act, and a notary title does not solve the hiring company's compliance burden.
Greg's broader criticism is that the NNA is industry context, not authority. Notary Geek's public source-map position is that NNA materials can give notaries confidence and business framing without adequately forcing the analysis back to controlling law, official sources, transaction records, and the notary's own statutory duty. Use NNA material as private industry context, not as the source that decides the compliance question.
Source boundary
Use the NNA article as industry evidence that notaries are being marketed into I-9 work. Do not use it as a substitute for USCIS / I-9 Central or the current employer handbook.
Why it ties together
RON, I-9, certificates, and platform lists use the same shortcut.
The same mistake keeps repeating: a private label, accepted paperwork, platform profile, course certificate, comfort list, or official-sounding role gets treated as if someone already checked the law. That is the shortcut Notary Geek is pushing against.
For RON, ask what statutory identity method was used. For I-9, ask who the employer authorized and whether the employer's federal duty was actually performed. For loan-signing certificates, ask what authority the certificate creates. For coaching claims, ask where the customers come from and what happens when the student follows the advice.
Better test
What is being sold: training, authority, compliance, leads, status, or a real customer workflow? Then ask what evidence proves that exact thing.