How to Start a Fingerprinting Business in ANY State

Are you ready to learn how to start a fingerprinting business AND start making money at it? Daniel Jurkowitsch is the CEO of FingerprinitngClasses.com and current Nassau County Detective, and he shares unfiltered possibilities about being a fingerprint technician in ANY state. Fingerprinting services are in extra high demand right now, and no matter what state you are in, there are two clear pathways to build a side hustle OR an empire. The choice is yours on this episode of the Sign & Thrive Podcast for Notaries.

Guest Information:

Daniel Jurkowitsch is currently a Nassau county detective in New York, as well as the CEO of FingerprintingClasses.com

Start your fingerprinting business by completing a 30-second survey here 

Episode Highlights:

39:23 Laser FOCUS is my mantra.

41:44 You need three things: the equipment, the knowledge and the eyeballs.

50:01 Word of mouth is still the best marketing strategy, which means customer service is paramount.

--- Full Raw Transcription Below ---

Bill Soroka (01:04):
All right. Hi, everyone. Welcome to the Sign And Thrive podcast for notaries. I am exceptionally excited to introduce you to Daniel Jurkowitsch today, our special guest and I'm grateful for this network of notaries that brought Daniel into my orbit as I have been seeking next level conversation and strategies around fingerprinting. I know so many of us hear a lot about the opportunity that's involved with the finger, being a fingerprint technician. We hear that it's available in all 50 states, but there's some weird stipulations. And how do you build a business or better yet? How do you build an empire around that? And that's what we get to talk about today with Dan Daniel. Thank you so much for being here.

Daniel Jurkowitsch (01:54):
Thank you, Bill. My pleasure. Thank you for the for the gracious introduction.

Bill Soroka (01:59):
It's totally my pleasure, Dan, and one thing I left out already is that you are the CEO of fingerprintingclasses.com. You've built a course because of your experience in the business. Plus you are a Nassau County, New York detective as well. So you have a really interesting perspective that you bring to the table on this.

Daniel Jurkowitsch (02:20):
Yeah, I, I juggle a lot of hats but they all kind of are like the same style of hat, if that makes sense. So one, one compliments the other,

Bill Soroka (02:32):
I would say it definitely works in alignment and that's one of the, the tricks I found in this business. That's why I say, that's why I try to put everything under a notary umbrella, because as long as it's under that umbrella, it Doesn't pull my energy too far away. Right. And it sounds like as I look at your list of credentials and the projects you're working on, I can tell we're of like mind, but you, they're all strung together under your own umbrella that way. So, Dan, I'm just going to jump right in. I know there's confusion around what the fingerprint opor, fingerprint technician opportunity really is. Can you just give us an overview of what we're talking about here?

Daniel Jurkowitsch (03:12):
Yeah. And that's a, that's a great way to sum it up. After doing approximately, I mean, probably a thousand sales calls, webinars, you know, guest spots and things like that. The, the information that's out there sometimes is just wrong. And, and it's nobody's fault, but there's just not a lot of people giving out great information. And that's like part of the mission of fingerprinting classes to teach people about it. So from a high level view fingerprinting, we kind of have to take it back to why people get fingerprinted in the first place. I like to explain that first so that this way people can wrap their head around the industry and what the reasoning behind the service even exists for. And then I'll get into like how you can make money with this and how this is an extremely lucrative opportunity to go after right now, because there's very, very high demand and very low supply. So we'll get into that right after, but fingerprinting from a criminal perspective.

Daniel Jurkowitsch (04:13):
People, when they are arrested, they get fingerprinted for the most part 95% of the time. If John or Jane Doe gets a DWI on the 4th of July, they're getting fingerprinted. If somebody beats somebody up on the street, they get arrested, they're getting fingerprinted. Those records are held in two places. They're held at the state level. And then they're held at the federal level with the FBI. Now with background checks in particular, this is, could be shocking, but when people get arrested, they lie to the police. They lie about their name. They lie about their data.

Bill Soroka (04:50):
No,

Daniel Jurkowitsch (04:51):
It's, it's incredible. Right? it's amazing. So if you don't know, well, here you are, I'm telling it to you right now. People lie all the time to the government, to the police, especially when they get arrested. What you can't lie about is your fingerprints. Even identical twins have different fingerprints. They can have the same, like, and I'm, I'm getting crazy now. They can have like the same DNA structure. I believe I'm not a scientist. Don't quote me on that. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong, but fingerprints totally unique to the individual, to the human level. That's why they're required when people get arrested. So we have that kind of set in stone first. People get arrested, they get in trouble, they get fingerprinted so that their identity is captured by the government at the state level or the federal level. Now, the reason why people get background checks in the civilian population is for really hundreds of different reasons, but it's really to do two things; it's to verify their identity, so is this person really the person who they say they are and has this person been arrested anywhere in the state or anywhere in the world and that's at the federal level.

Daniel Jurkowitsch (06:00):
So to give an example, let's say we have somebody named Jane Doe. She would like to be a daycare worker in Arkansas. The state of Arkansas is going to want to make sure that Jane Doe was not arrested for any violent or heinous crimes, not just in Arkansas, but at the federal level as well. So if Jane Doe just moved from Oregon to Arkansas, they want to know both the record in Arkansas and Oregon. And that's where they check both the state level background checks and the federal level background checks. And the only way you could do that is by looking at a fingerprint record. So the reason this service even exists is to do two things, verify identity, and check a person's background history.

Daniel Jurkowitsch (06:48):
People do this for hundreds of reasons. People do this, cause they want a job. They want a license. They want to start a business. They want to work in a daycare. If they want to have a telehealth job, a remote position where they work with money, if they want just their own background checks so that they can look at it and review it personally for adoption, court orders, name change. Like the list goes on and on. Now the one thing that you can't get around in the fingerprinting industry is you cannot physically chop off your hand and send it to somebody to get fingerprint. Like somebody always needs to be present to capture those prints. So this is forever a service based industry. It, it will never change. There's no way unless we somehow come up with a Ray gun that materializes your prints and sends it to the federal government, which I don't think anybody would ever do anytime soon, this industry is not going to, change's going to get more popular.

Daniel Jurkowitsch (07:40):
And that's the reason why the service exists. And that's the reason why it's so popular right now is because as we get into, especially post pandemic, people are working remote. People are working remote where companies are established in different states. So that company only knows this person because they show up on Zoom in New York. They don't know what they've done in New York. So they require them, Hey, go get fingerprinted at someplace. They're going to send us the record or get fingerprinted on a card and mail it to us so that we can check it on our end. Get an FBI background, check, get, you know, tons of different things. So post pandemic, very popular and a lot of fingerprinting brick and mortar businesses closed during the pandemic. So the demand is higher than it's ever been before. And the supply is lower than it's ever been before, which is why you have such a gold rush for fingerprinting.

Bill Soroka (08:33):
That makes, that makes total sense. And then it does, the brick and mortar. Is that a requirement or is this something that's done mobile as well?

Daniel Jurkowitsch (08:41):
No brick and mortar or mobile. What's crazy is sometimes in certain areas, mobile is actually more profitable. But you can do both. Absolutely.

Bill Soroka (08:51):
Yeah. Wow. All right. That makes total sense. But you mentioned, you just brought this up and you tell me if this is the right time to talk about that or not. You've got the, the ink card, style card that you mentioned, but then we also know that there's this live scan or the digital technology too. What's the difference there?

Daniel Jurkowitsch (09:12):
Probably the most popular question in, in the notary industry that I've seen just in the industry in general actually, but notary industry, very heavy. So ink and live scan, I'll start with live scan first, cause that's like the bigger, bigger thing to tackle. Live scan, contrary to popular belief is not a company. No company exists that is just live scan. Live scan is a technology. What it is it's, it is a prism that reflects light onto a glass surface that captures the digital prints of your fingertips. That's what live scan is. So for anybody that hears the term live scan and thinks that it's a company or that I have to contact live, it's just a technology. It's just, it's just a word. Now it's synonymous with electronic fingerprinting. Live scan and electronic fingerprinting are the exact same thing. So you can use them hand in hand.

Daniel Jurkowitsch (10:08):
So I like to call it electronic fingerprinting and then ink fingerprinting, because that's the real difference between the two is electronic is just taken on a device. And then all of the information is sent in an image in an encrypted, you know, in an encrypted file. Whereas a card is just sent with your actual fingerprints, rolled on a card, using ink with your signature, their signature and your information. One is 75 years in the past. One is at the present. And the reason why both are done right now is because, especially if anybody's ever worked in the government it's hurry up in. Wait, the government is not always up with times, which is why ink fingerprinting is still very popular. Now, the reason why people request to get a live scan service done, or an electronic fingerprinting service done is because that's just what the state has available.

Daniel Jurkowitsch (11:01):
They just, they have live scan devices. They have companies that have devices that connect to the state. They say, go get a live scan done. If you live in California, listening to this right now, that's the only term you use. If you live in New York, that's probably the only term you use for the most part. If you live in Louisiana all they do is ink. They don't even have a live scan system. They don't have that technology yet. So that's the difference between live scan and ink is live scan is capturing fingerprints electronically and sending it electronically. Ink fingerprinting is capturing fingerprints on a physical card and doing it the old fashioned way and sending it over through the mail, receiving it. And then when they receive it, guess what they do, they scan it into a computer and then they create an electronic file. And that's, that's the difference between the two different services.

Bill Soroka (11:51):
And what about the state requirements for that too? Cause is, I had heard that ink fingerprints are available in all 50 states. All 50 states do that or at least on the federal level. Can you explain that difference?

Daniel Jurkowitsch (12:05):
Yes. Yeah. So to explain that you have to kind of get into a little bit of the reasons why people are getting fingerprinted in the first place. There is there's hundreds of different reasons. Every single reason enrollment type that somebody's getting fingerprinted for is available to be serviced with a fingerprint card. All 50 states, no matter what rules and regulations you read online, you can get a fingerprint card done, send it to the state, send it to the FBI, send it to whomever, whomever they can scan it in and they can process your background check that way. It's actually technically illegal for them not to accept cards because you have the Americans with disabilities act. So if you are wheelchair bound, if you are an elderly person, you can't get out of bed, which you need to be fingerprinted to keep your citizenship. We've had that happen before with some of our clients where they do have an elderly person at home and they have to take their fingerprints with a card and send it in. So ink, fingerprinting, fingerprint cards, that business model available in all 50 states, it's actually available in every country as well. And no regulations behind it. So anybody can literally do this like a 14 year old, depending on your state's labor laws could operate this business.

Bill Soroka (13:19):
Wow. Wow. That's interesting. Yep. And then what about the live scan side or the electronic fingerprinting?

Daniel Jurkowitsch (13:27):
Yes. Well, both of both that's a little bit more complex and the reason it's a little bit more complex is because there's two sides of it. So there is your, what I like to call state fingerprinting, which is fingerprinting that's connected to the state that you are currently operating in. So if you live in, let's say Texas, right? You can process electronic fingerprints to the state, but right now Texas has a contract with another big company. So if you live in Texas, you've probably seen them before. I won't get into that just yet. So the state side is where the regulations are with live scan technology. However, there's a whole other subset of fingerprinting services that are available on live scan technology with electronic fingerprinting. And that's what I call commercial fingerprinting services. So the things right now that are not bound by any state regulation.

Daniel Jurkowitsch (14:25):
So you could do this anywhere in the world right now are the commercial fingerprinting services. And those are your things called FBI background checks, financial or what people like to call FINRA background checks. So FINRA is the Fnancial Industry, Regulatory Authority. If anybody works in a job that is monitored by FINRA and they have a position that manages wealth, manages money, you know, it works in any type of, you know, wealth management industry or something like that and they have to get fingerprinted by FINRA. They actually have to get that done every year. That is a commercial service. There's no regulations behind that cause they run their FB, their checks through the FBI. FBI background checks, no regulations behind it. All you need is hardware and software that can send electronically to the FBI. You don't have to be bound by state regulations to do those things.

Daniel Jurkowitsch (15:16):
And there's certain services within FBI background checks that you can even get deeper into. So an FBI background check has like three different levels. You can get an FBI apostille, you can get an FBI authentication, you can get an FBI apostille with seven pages that are translated into a different language. There's tons of things that you can do. So there is plenty of business with live scan technology, regardless of what state you live in. You just have to get past the initial hurdle of your state regulation and you just need to learn what are the regulations in your state and navigate your business and carve out your niche in your area.

Bill Soroka (15:56):
And it's what it sounds like you're saying is figure out what your state guidelines are so you can know what you can do and what you cannot do. But it sounds like even with, like you used Texas as a reference where they have that contracted company, and I know there's a few states like that, but even with those types of barriers in place, it sounds like you're saying that there's still a way to build a business on the federal level or global level.

Daniel Jurkowitsch (16:24):
Yeah. Thousand percent. We have somebody in, we have a client, oh my goodness. Where are they? Somewhere in the, somewhere in the islands, somewhere like the Caribbean somewhere, they are they are about to purchase the system and they're about to start fingerprinting people live scans straight to their police department at like a hundred dollars a pop. And they have like, they have like a line of people waiting every day and the police department just says, no, we're not doing it right now. So they're like itching for assistance. But yeah, you can it do it anywhere. Yep.

Bill Soroka (16:55):
Okay. Well now you got my wheels turning , but, but what I want to do is just take a quick pause here for a second, because I've talked to a lot of people about fingerprinting over the years, interview style, or even just one on one conversation trying to figure this business out. And I've never had somebody articulate the business in such a way as you are right now. How did you stumble into this business or get intentional into this? How did this happen?

Daniel Jurkowitsch (17:23):
Funny story. Glad you asked. No, but, so I was to bring it on a personal level. I was I was a New York city police officer for just under five years, from 2014 to the end of 2018. Didn't really know anything about fingerprinting other than the criminal booking side of things, like when people get arrested. Now, when I moved and transferred from New York city to the suburbs, the county that I'm currently employed by, I took a massive pay cut, like an 80% pay cut. Cause you got to start from scratch. They don't count your previous time, which is crazy. But I had a house we were planning a wedding, me and my wife. We had our first child pretty much directly after the wedding and the bills were piling up. So I needed to create a side hustle.

Daniel Jurkowitsch (18:18):
Now, contrary to popular belief. Fingerprinting was not my first side hustle. It was actually marketing. So I started a digital marketing agency. People are probably hearing this in their head right now and they're like, oh, he started a fingerprint. No, still did not have no idea about this. So I started a digital marketing agency and I had one very big client here in New York, National Live Scan Company, as one of like my beginning clients. They were my biggest client at the time and I cut my teeth on fingerprinting with that company. They were very gracious to me. They taught me everything. The CEO, good friend of mine taught me everything I pretty much needed to know and know about the industry right now. The rest of what I learned was trial and error with clients. So my first few clients with my digital marketing agency were fingerprinting businesses.

Daniel Jurkowitsch (19:11):
I, I pretty much just learned from their business from the ground up. So I would tell them, Hey, listen, we're going to get you great results. I would take my marketing knowledge. I would apply it to their business. And then I would navigate all of that with their business and learn fingerprinting from the ground up. Then we birthed fingerprintingclasses.com. It's two o'clock in the morning one night I was on Go Daddy, looking up domains. I saw a fingerprintingclasses.com available for $2,000 and I put it on my credit card immediately. And that's, that's how that started. Nice. And that's where I really leveled up my knowledge cause I took the position as a marketer and then parlayed it into a coach, a consultant, an educator. And that's, you know, anybody who has like educated others before. I'm sure you've seen the same thing in yourself is once you start teaching, like you get you gain like a totally different perspective on it. You can't teach unless you know it, but once you start teaching it, you know it so more, so much more intimately. And that's where my knowledge really came from from the start.

Bill Soroka (20:14):
I, I totally agree. I think you learn so much, not even just about your industry, but about people about yourself whenever you teach it that way too. And, but I love the per, perspective that you're bringing into this because and that's what was real attractive about your, your classes in your overall business model too, is this, isn't just teaching people how to be a fingerprint technician, but you actually teach them how to build a business with it tying in that digital marketing business. And I think it sounded to me like when we first connected that you're invested in your student success in helping them tap into this opportunity. So I'm real excited and I didn't, I had no idea that you had the digital agency there. So when did fingerprint classes or when did this all come to a head and really launch?

Daniel Jurkowitsch (21:10):
So after I bought the domain, I took the marketing clients that I had at the time and kind of pitched them this service where I said, Hey, listen, you can pay a retainer every month like you're paying my company or we could just teach you how to do this. And a lot of people took. I started direct messaging people on LinkedIn. Actually started with notaries believe it or not. I started direct messaging people, cold emailing saying, Hey, do you want to get into fingerprinting? They said, yes, yes, yes, yes. It was like, it was like the stars aligned. I was like, why are all these people so interested in this? I don't understand. Like I just picked them at random. This is great. But it ended up working out very well. So the first like 10 clients that I had, I ran them under the marketing agency and fingerprinting classes just kind of took a backseat once they started getting results though, like massive results, I was like, all right, we need to kind of, we need to brand this. We need to make a new company. We need to switch folks a little bit because who is a marketing agency doing finger? It's just weird. You got to brand it the correct way.

Daniel Jurkowitsch (22:15):
So we launched fingerprinting classes. We started selling courses. We started selling coaching. It took off in the beginning as just a regular course. And then people were like, well, what about marketing? And I was like, well funny, you should ask, cause I know about marketing. We should make a marketing course. And then people took the marketing course and they were like, ah, we have no time. And I was like, we'll just edit into another program. We'll just do the marketing for you. And then people were like, what about a live scan machine? Like I've reached out to a few companies that and were like, well, we have a connection.

Daniel Jurkowitsch (22:48):
We'll just purchase that and give it to you. So we'll make another program. So we're kind of leveled up from like a base level course to, and I have to be very careful here to not get sued by the FTC. But it's not a franchise. You own all of it, but pretty much we just build the whole thing for you like that. That's one of the things we do now is like, Hey, listen, if you just like want to build a side business, we could even get you an office space and all that crazy stuff. One of our programs is we could literally just build the whole thing for you. Like just you invest, we build you make money. That's one of many programs that we have, but that's where it started. It started from the ground up. And then as people were needing more, we just added more to the program more and more and more and more until we had to switch up and make like a whole suite of products that really help anybody at any step in the journey at any investment range. And then we have a free course too, for anybody who just wants to learn more. So we, we try our best.

Bill Soroka (23:44):
Yeah. That sounds like it fills every gap. You've got the, do it yourself option and then the done for you option with all the guidance that they need. Yep. You mentioned earlier that when you were reaching out to notaries, they were getting massive results. Can we talk about the pricing strategy and the income levels and how the money works in this business?

Daniel Jurkowitsch (24:08):
Yeah, for sure. So fingerprinting in general has very high margins depending on what service you're offering. If it's electronic, you have some fees that are incurred there, but ink fingerprinting, those cards, you can purchase them on Amazon for like 10 cents. You can get an ink pad for like 20 bucks. So your entire cost of starting this business could literally be $20 and 10 cents. You can go and take a fingerprint that day. If you're a mobile technician you're, and you're charging, traveling and stuff like that, you can capture $125 sale for the day with like minimal work, like nothing. It's very, very simple. Now the thing that is the difficult portion of it is the, the education, you know, that's, that's where everybody invests their time, money and energy into is the education because it's one thing to practice fingerprinting on yourself, family member or spouse, get good at it.

Daniel Jurkowitsch (25:04):
It's another thing to answer the phone and be confident and say like, yeah, I can fingerprint you for that real estate license that you needed for the past six months for four different states. Sure. you got to be confident and you, you get confident with knowledge and education, but the profit margins and the money that you can make is limited by your region because this is a service based business. So it will depend heavily on the population. If you're in a big city, you can, I mean, the sky's the limit. You can have four different locations, five contractors, all mobile technicians working. It's just like any other service based business. The business model stays the same, but fingerprint cards, the physical act of taking somebody's prints on a card, regardless of mobile fees, traveling and you know, whatever other attacks and stuff like that. National average is about like 45 bucks.

Daniel Jurkowitsch (25:58):
Typically it takes about 10, 15 minutes, depending on how good you are. Same thing with electronic fingerprinting, the only upside to electronic fingerprinting is just faster and easier and it's less messy. You just slap the hands on a machine and the actual physical service fee is around national average of $45. Now all your profit is made in upsells made in traveling made in just volume. If you live in a state where you have a high population and you're just pushing out mobile appointments like crazy, that's your volume right there. You need some sales chops. You need some charisma, you need some customer service, just like any other business. But the wonderful thing is the competition is just so low. Even in states where the competition is quote, unquote high for fingerprinting, it's still really low. Like you really don't need to compete that much.

Daniel Jurkowitsch (26:49):
If you wanted to build an Amazon automation business right now, good luck cause every other person in their basement with a wifi connection is doing that. So good luck. Like the competition is fierce. With fingerprinting, you just need a little bit of education, a little bit of charisma not, not much, like you'd be surprised you call some companies around you right now and hear how they answer the phone and, and then look up what, who their competition is. And you'll be like, well, crap, I kind of have to go here. Like you have no choice. Right? so that's it. You just need the, you need the materials, you need your business model, you need your niche, you need your education and you just need to go out there and do it and you can make tons of money.

Bill Soroka (27:29):
It's it's, you know, I know at, from the notary perspective, we're so used to having to abide by state, state specific notary fee laws and regulations. When it comes to fingerprinting, do we have those ties or those bounds? Or is it just what the market bears,

Daniel Jurkowitsch (27:54):
Whatever the market bears, if you ha, if you're the only game in town and somebody calls you and they want to be printed that night, if you want to do it well, supply and demand, that means your price goes up just regular economics. There's no regulations behind how much you can and can charge. Now, obviously there's maybe ethical regulations behind it. Don't charge a thousand bucks for a 15 minute point, but maybe you do, maybe you wake up at three o'clock in the morning for a big executive. Who's about to get on a plane. And if he Doesn't get prints now, he's, he's never going to get him. And he's going to lose his position as CEO. Is that worth a thousand bucks? Yeah, I would say so. We've had people, stories of people who have flown planes from their house to go capture fingerprints for somebody in another state, because they're the only ones that advertised for it. And the only ones that know how to do it, or they just, their assistant was Googling. They're like we found this company, they're like hire, 'em just pay whatever, just get them here now. That's super rare. Don't think that that's going to happen all the time, but right. But yeah, no regulations behind it. You can charge whatever you want, especially for traveling fees, $2, $6, $7 mile a mile by the hour, whatever you want, if you could sell it, you can do it.

Bill Soroka (29:06):
It's pretty…..

Bill Soroka (29:07):
So yeah, that's yeah, you've definitely got my wheels turning for sure. I, I, I love that. I love being able to build a business that's based on my ability to deliver on my promises or deliver a good service and not be bound by regulation. But you, you brought up something interesting too, because you mentioned education. And I know there's the education around running a business, which is super important. I love that they get that kind of support with you, but also, you know, what's the importance of rolling these fingerprints correctly. Like what are the implications when you make a mistake?

Daniel Jurkowitsch (29:48):
So I always look at it as worst case scenario. Worst case scenario, you capture fingerprints for a client on a card and the state scans them in and they say these prints are not of quality. We cannot read them. We're going to reject them. All right. Well, the worst thing that happens is that person contacts you back and says, Hey, my prints were rejected. So sorry, give you a refund. No worries. If you'd like, we could do it again. If not, we'll just give you a refund, totally sorry for the inconvenience. Like it happens, you're not going to be a hundred percent all the time. The biggest thing, the mistake that you can make is not taking quality prints. It's easier to make a mistake on an ink card doing it, you know, the manual way. It's much more difficult to make a mistake on a live scan device, cause that's why the technology exists to make your life easier. With live scan technology with electronic fingerprinting. One of the things that you can also do is let's say somebody calls you and they're like, oh, I need to get fingerprinted on a card.

Daniel Jurkowitsch (30:46):
You don't have to do it. The manual method, you can buy an electronic fingerprinting system, hook it up to a printer and pop a card in the printer and print out a card that way, as long as your printer has like certain settings and it's of quality, you know like a laser jet printer or something like that. I know the notary industry uses a lot of like brother machines or something like that. Something like that, a laser jet. See, I know I it's coming back to me. you know, a laser jet printer or something like that. You print out a card. Where this gets crazy is let's say you have a person who works in the telehealth industry.

Daniel Jurkowitsch (31:18):
They are a telehealth pediatrician and they work in the city of Houston and they are doing telehealth conferences for all 50 states. Guess what they need? They need 50 fingerprint cards. So you're literally printing money cause you click print, print, print print 50 times every time you click print, give 'em a little discount on the first 10 cards. I mean don't, don't crush 'em but 10, 15 bucks a car, some people choose $20 a car, just print, print, print, print, print, print. Now those services are more rare, but that's where you get into, you know, we said $45 to actually roll the physical hands for the prints. But then people who need multiple cards, businesses who need 30, 70 people printed and they all need three cards, a piece like that, stuff happens. I can give you testimonials for days in our group of people who are like, this is the craziest thing ever. I'm doing four cards for four people. I've been here for three days, but I've made X amount of thousands of dollars already. More rare, but it happens.

Bill Soroka (32:18):
So I'm glad you brought that up. How, I, what's really standing out from the conversation is there's even within this industry, the fingerprinting industry, the riches are in the niches. Yes. So when you can find those avenues or niches within this industry you can tailor your marketing or your advertising to that. So in general and maybe even super specific, how do, how Does a fingerprint technician get more of these appointments?

Daniel Jurkowitsch (32:49):
So the most powerful marketing method that I've found that exists, and this is, it's not going to be search engine optimization. It's not all that stuff is important. Don't get me wrong. Like you need that, right? You need to Google My Business, all, all that, that that's like bare bone stuff. In order to, you know, bury down into that niche and you know, create that avenue for yourself. All what I've seen, word of mouth. You can advertise for it. You can do paid advertising for it. You can call email companies. That's going to work to an extent. What really works is the first client that you get. Give a perfect example, client of ours few weeks ago. Actually probably about two weeks ago, they get a phone call from a company in a state where medical marijuana just became legal. There's one company that's doing cannabis cultivation in the entire state.

Daniel Jurkowitsch (33:44):
They just so happen to be three hours away from her Google My Business profile. She's the only one. No competition. They call her and she says, holy crap. I have to fingerprint 100, 200, 300 people, three hours away, twice a week for the next three months, four months, whatever it is what a crazy lead and phone call to get. First of all, that's always a good lesson. Make sure I answer your phone. That's number one. But number two is, yeah, that connection is so important because what do you think the people who you're fingerprinting have in their network? They have other companies. Now this is where you get into scaling a business side of things. This is like the stuff that we teach you don't need to be physically located in an area. You just need to create a relationship. If you teach somebody else what you know, and you compensate them for that, they just became one of your contractors.

Daniel Jurkowitsch (34:37):
So you can become the cannabis, medical, marijuana fingerprinting company for the entire us, build yourself a national network. The only thing you have to be good at doing is teaching, educating, hiring, recruiting, totally different, you know, set of skills. That's the stuff that I'm learning right now, personally, as the CEO, very difficult. But if you carve out your niche for that, oh my goodness. You are the company that Does cannabis cultivation, fingerprinting. That is ridiculous. That's crazy. Who, who has that? Like who has a company like that? It's just you. It actually Doesn't exist right now. So if anybody's listening to this there, there's your there's your golden nugget, I Guess.

Bill Soroka (35:14):
Oh my God. Well, I…..

Daniel Jurkowitsch (35:16):
,

Bill Soroka (35:16):
There's the perfect. I know the perfect notary and you know who you are. If you're listening to this on this exact topic, we've been talking about that in a, in a, another train of conversation. But this is kind of mind blowing the opportunity that we have here completely unrestricted this way. Now let's I want to go back to the, the money conversation cause I know that's top of mind for so many people in our community, they want an opportunity, Dan, they want an opportunity. That's real. They want an opportunity that they can pivot to. If it requires an investment, they make the investment and they know they're going to get a return. Is this that opportunity for them

Daniel Jurkowitsch (35:57):
Thousand percent? Yeah, we, we pride ourselves as a company, as fingerprinting class, we pride ourselves on results. You're, people are going to hear this when you invest in, let, let me bring it back to this actually. Let me make an analogy. And I stole this from somebody else on YouTube. So it's not mine, so I'm not, I'm not this smart. Trust me. But think of this analogy. If you have a person walk up to you and say, Hey, I have this Ferrari here it's a $275,000 Ferrari brand new zero miles on it. I want to give it to you for $5,000 in cash within the next 24 hours. I don't care if you have an overcharge draft in your checking account of $700, you're going to find $5,000. Like you're going to, you're going to come up with it. You're going to find it. And that's because you're getting a $275,000 Ferrari.

Daniel Jurkowitsch (36:49):
I look at the business opportunity space, the building, a business space, the education space, the same way. We have such great results that if you're willing to invest in yourself, you're going to make the return on your investment. So if I could tell you that within the next 24 months, you can be guaranteed to make $175,000 without breaking your back without having a boss without doing this without doing that, it's going to take work, don't get me wrong. It's going to take business chops. And it's, it's going to be at some points, high points and low points, but you're going to get there. Would that be worth 20, 30, 40, 50 bucks, would say, yeah, that's not how much we charge for this stuff, depending on the level of the program that you want to get into. But it all depends on the person. However much you want to invest is what you're going to get back.

Daniel Jurkowitsch (37:39):
Is what, like the way I look at it. You get what you pay for, right? Now, we try and kind of flip that model sometimes where like I'm giving all this information for free. We have the free course and all that stuff, cause we want this industry to grow. We want people to take advantage of this opportunity cause there's nobody doing it right now. But if you really want to, for the people who are like go getters, who really want to do this, that's the stuff where I say the investment is very important because if you want to do this without all the mistakes that I've made, without all the mistakes that I've seen our clients make and you want to do it faster, then the way you do that is by paying for it. If you want to put in the hard work, the sweat equity, then take the free course. You know, all the information we give it away for free. But those are like the two different things from like an investment levels. We don't put a pay wall behind our information, but if you want to do it faster and you don't want to go through all the headache of learning it, you know, the hard way well then yeah, then we're going to charge it for it. It's just, we got to be a business too, you know, but we try to be ethical with it as much as possible.

Bill Soroka (38:38):
Yeah. Well, and I think that's the beautiful thing about I mean, anytime you are reading a book or you're taking a class you're, you're getting, when, when it's done correctly, you're getting the perspective, you're getting the little red flags that Hey, watch out for that pitfall, watch out for that pothole. Yeah, look out for that thing to trip up that I tripped up on. And that kind of leads me to my next question is in your experience as you're teaching these, these entrepreneurs to build a business across the country, what have you found or who have you found that stumbles the most or just plain fails at this business?

Daniel Jurkowitsch (39:19):
It's definitely people who don't focus. Laser focus is like my mantra. I believe I may be taking this from an interview and I'm going to get it a little bit wrong. So don't quote me a hundred percent on this, but I believe it was Bill Gates and it was either Charlie Munger or one of the other high level investors from like Berkshire Hathaway. They were asked the same question. They said, if you can give somebody advice on, you know, what you would give yourself advice from 30 years ago, what would you say? And they would say laser focus, just, just focus. That's it. And don't when I say focus, I'll drill down a little bit more on that. The people who don't focus are the ones that don't get results that don't do well, but sometimes you can focus also on the wrong thing.

Daniel Jurkowitsch (40:07):
This is going to be contrary to popular belief, but things like we see this all the time with our clients, we try to coach this through; things like your logo, your color scheme, even sometimes like your name. That stuff. Once you get like 30 years into a plan and like a building, a brand and stuff. Yeah, then it matters. But starting from the ground up that stuff Doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is cash in cash out. You got to survive. Business has to eat. It's a, it's a living, breathing entity. It has to eat. So the people who don't focus on treating that business, like a living, breathing thing in the beginning and focusing on just making money, those are the ones that have trouble. And that's what most of our program goes over is we teach people how to get the quick wins, how to make the money first. Get that money and then you can make a decision. You can try to build an empire or you can just be very happy working for yourself. You can carve out your own niche. It's just having laser focus on what matters most in the beginning, which is having the business make money. That's the most important. And the way you do that is by providing a great service. And that's really what it boils down to.

Bill Soroka (41:15):
One of the on YouTube. I have a video about how to make six figures as a mobile notary and loan signing agent. And I reverse engineered the math on that. So it comes out to $400 a day, five days a week, 50 weeks a year, you make a hundred grand a year. How well, how simple? I won't say easy cause I know business isn't easy, but how simple is it to make 400 bucks a day as a fingerprint technician?

Daniel Jurkowitsch (41:44):
Very simple, very, very simple. You need three things. You need the equipment, you need the knowledge and you need the, I don't want to say advertising because that's mixed in with like you have to pay for advertising. You need the customers, you need the eyeballs. However you get them. You could do those for free. You could do that with sweat equity. You could do that by just going out there, word of mouth, paid advertising, whatever you want. But you need the equipment, you need the education and you just need people to know where to get the service done. They need to know about you. And there's several different ways to do that. But 400 bucks a day, very simple, very, very simple. You can absolutely, a thousand percent. Now with fingerprinting and a mutual friend of ours, I think said that you, you say this sometimes is that one client can change your whole business. Yeah. Right. Is that true?

Bill Soroka (42:34):
Yeah. That's absolutely true

Daniel Jurkowitsch (42:34):
With fingerprinting. It is so true because that one client, that cannabis cultivation company just changed somebody's entire business. Yeah. From overnight. Just, at one point they have no money, whatever they were doing before. Now all of a sudden they were like, oh my God, I have all this money. You have a lot of work to do. Don't get me wrong. But you could also hire somebody do it. It's hard of being a business owner. But in the beginning, maybe just like, I want to take this money. This is my money. I want, you know, maybe work a little hard for it, but one client can change a whole business, but the backbone of the business just fingerprinting people. Yes. 400 bucks a day thousand percent anybody can do in any state, any part of the world, anywhere.

Bill Soroka (43:14):
What I think from, you know, I often look at this from the notary perspective and I can clearly see the benefit of the fingerprinting blending into the notary business for a number of reasons, right? I call it the notary funnel, right? One of the challenges to any other side business that you have, whether it's insurance, fingerprinting, wedding officiant, whatever it is, you, you kind of run out of people to talk to. And as a notary or mobile notary and loan signing, agent, you get introduced to new people all day to cultivate relationships with so you get introduced to potential customers for whatever you're doing. I get like, I can see that. My question for you is from your perspective, somebody who has a fingerprinting business, how do you see the notary business dovetailing well into that business?

Daniel Jurkowitsch (44:04):
So a lot of people that are getting these fingerprint based background checks, they and the customer Doesn't always tell you this, but they have an application that sometimes requires a signature shocker. . So like you can parlay the service instead and say, Hey, listen, I do both. However, how they kind of work together and how they parlay together is it's kind of like if you were to go to a barbershop or a hair salon and in the corner you have maybe this is just New York. Maybe this is like the worst scenario to go over. But I, whenever I go to my barbershop, I see a Botox person in the back and I'm like, I'm like, all right, that kind of like makes sense a little bit. But maybe you see like a person that's doing, you know, some other type of service that's related to your physical appearance, a vanity service, you know, getting a haircut is a vanity service.

Daniel Jurkowitsch (44:57):
You're upkeeping with, you know, your look. I guess Botox is the same, just a little bit more in, in detail with the, you know, put needles in your face. To each his own. But I, I look at like the notary industry and fingerprinting kind of the same way, cause it's like on one side of the business, you are verifying documents, you have training, you have expertise, you have knowledge, people trust you to do this fingerprinting very similar. You have training, you have expertise, you have knowledge, you are trained, you're certified to do this. Even though it's technically no certifications that exist federally your state level, like you could still say like, listen, I've been doing this for 10 years. Like kind of like, you know, self certified, whatever which you can do. Yeah. But people are putting their trust in you in performing the service because it holds very, very important value to them.

Daniel Jurkowitsch (45:48):
That background check for that person is going to get them a job that could have their family change their entire life. That person could be working 12 hours a day at an office as a pediatrician. She is now transitioning. He or she's now transitioning to working in their office where their kids don't have to be watched by a babysitter. Don't have to go to the in-laws and they hop on 15 minute consultations with new parents like myself who are freaked out, cause they're baby burped twice in two minutes, you know? And that's their job now. They need to get fingerprinted for that stuff. And so that's the service that you're providing people put their trust in you as being an expert. I look at it as the same way is those two different industries, although they're a little bit different. It's it's the same thing. The customers putting their trust in you because you know what you're doing, you have the education, the knowledge you're certified and they trust you and perform in that service.

Bill Soroka (46:41):
Yeah. I think this is it falls under the the definition of, my friend Todd Asherman, he calls the credentialed professional, you know, because of the credentials we hold because of the background check we hold because of the skills and training and expertise that we have. It has a, it holds a place of trust in the community and there are companies and individuals that will hire us for that expertise and those skills,

Daniel Jurkowitsch (47:08):
A hundred percent. And there's people who will pay big money for the ones who do it the best. And those are like your executives who don't even have five minutes in their schedule and their assistant calls you and says, Hey, Tuesday, two 15. When you get a phone call and you say, do you have a slot open at Tuesday, 2:05 PM? Oh, you know, you're going to make some money right there. Who is so, who is so specific like that, you know you know, for a, and if they have an email signature with the company, you're golden, like you're, you're going to make some money that day. To give everybody maybe to jazz things up a little bit. Sometimes you get a call from like a, a bodyguard of a of a celebrity. They need to get fingerprinted too. You know, all those people need to get fingerprinted here in I live in long island.

Daniel Jurkowitsch (47:54):
If people couldn't tell from the accent already, so , we have on the north shore of long island, which I do not live in sometimes contrary to popular belief. I'm a south shore person. So we are more modest. But on the north shore, a lot of celebrities, a lot of mansions, a lot of things like that. There is a fingerprinting business out here in long island that has sent mobile technicians to hundreds of celebrities, Manhattan all the time, east Hampton. They, you, you can't get around that. Like, just because they're a celebrity Doesn't mean they're too good to get fingerprinted. Just like, you know, a person who's getting a job. They can't chop their hand off. If they can't send it, they can't have their assistant doing for them. It's their fingerprints they need to show up. So sometimes that's pretty cool not to give everybody a little bit of, you know, gossip and stuff, but it's cool. It happens. It Does happen. It's more rare, but that's like the fun stuff of this industry.

Bill Soroka (48:44):
Yeah. That would be kind of a cool experience to have, well, I, I love it. You've got my wheels, absolutely turning. I can see there's a ton of opportunity here, Daniel, and I also, I love that someone has stepped up and provided not only the training, but the the business expertise and the the support to build a, a business in so many different ways. And guys, we've set up something special for you with Daniel and his [email protected]. You can go to go.fingerprintingclasses.com/Bill and check those out. Of course, I'll have that in the show notes for you too. And if you subscribe to notary coach, of course you can count on seeing some emails about this too, cause this is a legit, true opportunity to build a business here. And Daniel, as we bring this or wrap this show up today, do you have any maybe closing remarks about the mindset for success here? Like what, what do you see in your most successful students that helps them thrive?

Daniel Jurkowitsch (50:01):
Customer service, customer service and laser focus. Be focused on what matters in your business and never forget about the customer because word of mouth is the best market after doing a marketing agency for years, word of mouth beats, all marketing at all times forever. So we're, and you only get word of mouth by offering great customer service. So laser focus, customer service, plug that into any business and you'll figure it out. You know, if you go from like Jeff Bezos back in the day with Amazon, all of his his letters to investors, I think there's like 11 or 12 of them or some or a bunch of them I've read. Not all of them a few of them, but every single letter, he writes through his investors and says this quarter, and you know, this year we're focusing on this for the customer. We're going to make this for the customer better for the customer, all about the customer. You go on Amazon, how many boxes do people get on their front porch a day right now? Like, let's say Amazon, I know I have probably like three or four a day. I don't know, who's ordering them in my house, but but you know, they built that business.

Bill Soroka (51:04):
No comment over here too.

Daniel Jurkowitsch (51:06):
they built that business by focusing on the customer. So folks on the customer have laser focus. That's that's my closing. That's my spiel.

Bill Soroka (51:16):
I love that. But I'm going to ask you to dig a little deeper too on the customer service. I think it's it's a word that gets overused. I think people think they have good customer service and they don't actually have cus, good customer service. So in your experience and what you've seen with your students that have really blown it out and maybe it, maybe it is you, you mentioned charisma a couple of times, and I know that's important and if that's it, I want to dive into what charisma actually means, what you've witnessed or what you've seen or specific strategy that you've seen. Just knock it out of the park with this thing.

Daniel Jurkowitsch (51:52):
So I'm going to bring it back to something I learned in the police world. And I only learned this once. I got promoted to detective. So for, I've been doing this for like, you know, nine years now for, so for been a detective for two years. So for seven of those years, I did not know this. But for the last two years, I've learned this deeply. Human beings at an individual level they want three things when getting a service from somebody else, speaking to somebody else, getting reprimanded, getting praised, they want three things. Always. They want to be right. That's number one. Even if they're wrong, they want to be right. Always they want to be respected and they want to be heard. And you can plug that into any situation. A boss, yelling at an employee, a husband and a spouse, you know, any type of friendship, relationship, customer and employee, customer, and business owner, whatever it is.

Daniel Jurkowitsch (52:47):
As long as you treat that person with respect, you let them know that they're right. Even if you have to redirect them a little bit, they're not wrong. They're not do not tell them they're wrong. Cause people don't like that. I know I get it all the time, cause I'm wrong thousands of times a day, we who knows I'll admit it, but it still stings. It doesn't make me feel great. But if people say like, Hey listen that makes sense. But have you ever thought about this? I'm like, oh yeah, that makes, you know, makes you feel a lot better. Right? so for customers, yeah. With respect, even if they're wrong, they're right. Just redirect them and just hear them out. People love talking about themselves. Just talk to people, let them talk about themselves. If you're fingerprinting somebody don't just sit there and be silent the whole time.

Daniel Jurkowitsch (53:32):
Like, you know, bring some of that charisma, like it's okay to bring your personality into a business. I actually would say that that's the best thing to do is whatever personality you have, bring it into your business. Cause if you have a great personality and you're a good person, it's going to attract that many more people and people, even if you screw their service up, even if their prints get rejected, if they had a good, happy experience, just be honest with them. Say, Hey, listen respect them, say, oh my goodness. I'm so sorry for wasting your time. I respect your time. I want you to know that you're right. We messed this up. We're wrong. Hear me out real quick. I'm going to hear you and hear out your frustrations. We're going to do this again for free. I'm going to come to your house. I'm going to do this.

Daniel Jurkowitsch (54:15):
You know going the extra mile. You don't know who that person knows. They can know 17 executives cause their cousin is works in a private equity firm and they all need FINRA fingerprinting. Who knows? You don't know that. A story about, I believe this was like the initial launch and birth of FedEx. I believe it was FedEx. They were a failing company overnight. They had a, a week's worth of run way of money left some business, executive wife. I'm probably screwing this story up, but it's the analogy is kind of there. Business executive of, you know, a wife was about to get married. She needed a dress flown from one state to another state in two days and no company could do it. Zero found this company called FedEx and was like, oh my God, let me call. And let me see, somebody answered the email at 11 o'clock at night on like a Friday shipped the dress over in two days, saved the whole wedding. And they were able to generate like hundreds of millions of business over the next 10 years for them because they had all these connections, right? Overnight failing company to a huge success. And for anybody who knows that story, I'm definitely getting some things wrong. Cause it's been a while, but stuff like that, like that is customer service. Like you have to go the extra mile. You have to put your heart and soul to your business cause you are your business, whether it fails or the way it succeeds wildly.

Bill Soroka (55:32):
So true. And like Paula Abdul says there is no traffic in the extra mile.

Daniel Jurkowitsch (55:37):
Yep.

Bill Soroka (55:38):
I love that. Dan, what a great way to close out the podcast. This I literally got the chills and the last thing I need, Dan is another idea or another side hustle, but this one is just hitting all the right spots for me. So thank you so much for joining us on the show today. And guys, if you're listening and you're into this and you just want to jump right in Daniel, set up a pathway for that plus free course material, all that good stuff right at go.fingerprintingclasses.com/Bill. Dan, thank you so much.

Bill Soroka (56:14):
Thank you, Bill. My pleasure.

--- End of Transcription ---

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