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The following editorial on the Rhode Island transportation system was ghost written for one of our clients who is disabled. It is a good example of our versatility in ghost writing.

To Rhode Island
Disabled and Rankled: Rhode Island Transportation Truly Sucks!

So, like me, you’ve got a million and one places to go – things to do. People to see. And if you’re like me and you don’t drive, then you’ve got to depend on more than just a bus route; a pre-scheduled line in blue (or yellow, green, red, magenta) with a set departure, set stops, and set timetable. If you need to be someplace specific at a specific time you can’t afford to juggle those things until they align just right.

Yeah… but there are cabs for that, right? Well, not if you’re like me. See, cabs in Rhode Island don’t cater to the likes of me. No, I’m not a black man standing on the corner in the pouring rain in some Spike Lee movie, flagging down blurs of yellow motorcade as they splash gutter spunk into my socks. I’m a physically challenged man confined to a wheelchair trying to live my life the way I choose… the way in which I feel entitled.

Why should I have to wait until the state of Rhode Island makes mandatory institutionalization of lifts in all taxi cabs? Why should I be confined to bus routes and time tables and a little section in the middle of the bus just for “people like me?” Why should I be confined to the good City of Providence the same way I’m confined to this wheelchair – well, at least my wheelchair has wheels! I’m taking a stand against the cab companies of Rhode Island because I expect – no, I insist – that they have a seat that will accommodate me.

Office of County Clerk Registrar-Recorder
12400 Imperial Highway
Norwalk, Ca 90650
Phone: (800) 815-2666
Website: www.lavote.net

Registration Services:
Registering your business name, after doing a search to make sure that it is not already in
use, protects you from others who might be using the same name. For more information
contact the County Recorder in the county in which your business is based. Your must file a
Fictitious Name Statement with the Office of the County Clerk Registrar-Recorder.

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According to a cute little info graphic produced by Intuit, more and more business owners are going mobile! The average small business owner divides their time between the office and home, spending about 46% of their time in each.

In order to accomplish this mobility, business owners are depending on technology more than ever before. 48% of the business owners surveyed said that being able to run their business with a mobile device was very important to them. Laptops and iPhones were the mobile devices of choice, with owners accessing the latter an average of 21 times a day, not to send text messages or check Facebook, but in order to conduct business over the phone.

All of this plays into the explosive growth of using virtual assistant companies like LongerDays.com. Because business owners are already used to using technology and working remotely, working with a virtual employee or virtual assistant is a small step taken to help increase mobility. Using remote employees provides business owners with a large degree of flexibility. If business owners don’t have anyone coming into their office, they don’t have to be there in order to unlock the door at the beginning of the day, or lock it at the end.

Some of our clients run large businesses with out any in-house staff at all, outsourcing everything to LongerDays.com. This greatly reduces, or even removes the need for office space. Some of our clients travel the world while we run the day-to-day business tasks such as order processing and customer service!

Check out the top 7 Facebook business pages for entrepreneurs and business owners. These are great places to find like-minded business owners in various stages of business. Posting comments and getting involved in the discussion on these pages can be an effective strategy for increasing the followers on your own Facebook page.

The E-Myth

This book is a great read for small business owners, and the Facebook page is a good spot to find all types of business owners.

The New York Times Small Business Page

A good place for news and self promotion.

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From all of us at LongerDays.com!

Here are some interesting facts about Valentine’s day 2012!

An interesting white paper was recently sent to LongerDays.com about virtual teams. At LongerDays.com we all work together in the same office, but we work virtually for our clients. So naturally this white paper was pretty interesting to us, and we’re very happy that UNC brought it to our attention!

According to the report, telecommuting grew by 61 percent between 2005 and 2009, and based on current trends, the organization estimates that the number of telecommuting workers will grow to nearly five million by 2016—a 69 percent increase. Virtual teams are not only attractive to employers, they’re green too. According to the Telework Research Network, the existing 2.9 million U.S. telecommuters save 390 million gallons of gas and prevent the release of 3.6 million tons of greenhouse gases annually!

The white paper explores virtual teams, their benefits and challenges to organizations, and outlines the three key steps that HR and talent management professionals can follow to ensure that virtual team members and leaders in their organizations have the skills, competencies and tools needed to succeed.

Three steps for HR managers to consider before hiring a virtual team:

1. Participate in the selection process of virtual team members and leaders.
2. Ensure for the appropriate selection, training and use of virtual team technologies.
3. Provide training for virtual team members.

Enter your email in the web form below and we will send you a copy of the white paper:

StealthSeminar recently added the capability to send text message reminders to people who register for webinars. According to StealthSeminar the text messages are 10 minute reminders, but we found the reminders to be closer to 5 minutes. The following instructions will help you add the text message reminders to your webinar:

1) Navigate the browser to edit the event in StealthSeminar
2) Select the “Registration Block” as seen below

3) In the “Registration Signup Box” block, add the following code:

<p><label>Mobile Number (For Text Reminder)<br>ex: 555-555-5555</label>
<br> <input type="text" id="sms_number" name="sms_number" size=20 value="" /></p>

The text instructions can be modified to read any way you like, just modify the content between . A hyphen is needed between the numbers for the sms system to recognize the phone number properly, so we have added in the example formatting: 555-555-5555

This Infusionsoft process is a little tricky, involving a total of three separate services:

• InfusionSoft – Webforms, follow up, and CRM.
• Stealth Seminar – Integrates with the Infusionsoft API to run specific action sets.
• InfusionMachines – Integrates with the Infusionsoft API to send text messages.

Our client wanted a text message to be sent as a reminder, 5 minutes before a daily webinar started. InfusionMachines is supposed to be able to send a text message at a specific time, such as 7:55PM EST, but we were never able to get that feature to work correctly. The only thing we could get InfusionMachines to do was send a text message immediately when an HTTP post was made.

To work around this problem, we used Stealth Seminar’s ability to run an InfusionSoft action set, 5 minutes before the webinar started. The action set makes an HTTP post to InfusionMachines to send a text message immediately.

• Upon logging into the webinar, Stealth Seminar triggers an action set that adds the contact to a “webinar replay follow” up sequence. It seems a little early to add contacts to a reply follow up before the webinar even starts, but this was our only real oppertunity to run the action.
• Later in the webinar, Stealth Seminar displays a call to action and runs an InfusionSoft action set that removes the contact from the “webinar replay follow up”, and adds them to the “completed webinar but didn’t purchase” follow up.
• If the customer purchases the product, or if they come back to purchase the product later, Infusionsoft purchase actions pause the “completed webinar but didn’t purchase” follow up sequence.

A basic flow chart of this process can be seen below. Click here to see a higher resolution version of this flow chart.