April – 2010 – The Gritty Virtual Assistant Blog

Monthly Archives: April 2010

April 30, 2010 – 10:00 am

Why Aren’t You Involved in Other Organizations?

There are a few particular people I don’t care for in this industry because of their ethics. To be clear, I’m not talking about personal differences. Just because you dislike someone does not make that someone unethical. I’m talking specifically about people who have a history and ongoing pattern of telling bald-faced lies and engaging in unethical conduct.

Why on earth would I (or you) want to have anything to do people like that or their organizations? If you knew the truth about someone like that, how do you ignore it? How do you reconcile it? How do you make yourself un-know what you know? And knowing what I know and how I felt about it/them, wouldn’t it make me an inauthentic, two-faced phony to smile in their face just so I could have access to their group?

Live and let live, I always say. Whatever those folks’ life lessons are to learn, it’s not my problem. The world is big enough that we can go about our separate ways and not be bothered with each other. I don’t have to be concerned with them or deal with them in any way. And so I don’t.

My feeling is that if you don’t like someone or you find them to be dishonest and unethical, you should own it. That doesn’t mean you have to go out of your way to shout it from the rooftops at every turn, but jeez louise, stop trying to play both sides of the fence and talk out of both sides of your mouth.

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By Danielle Keister | Posted in Personal Musings | Comments (0)

April 28, 2010 – 10:00 am

Dear Gritty VA: Do I Have Enough Experience to Be a Virtual Assistant?

Dear Gritty VA:

I only have 2 years experience as an Executive Assistant and 6 years as a Receptionist/Data Entry Clerk. Could I still be a Virtual Assistant? Any suggestions are helpful. –BT

Well, it’s not really for me to say. It’s what the marketplace has to say.

What I mean is, yes, the Virtual Assistant/Administrative Support Consultant profession definitely has ideas, opinions and expectations about what the qualifications should be of those who want to enter its ranks. The Virtual Assistant community generally wants to protect the reputation and credibility of the profession in the interests of clients and VAs alike. But ultimately, this is an unregulated industry so no one can tell you that you can’t open a Virtual Assistant business if that’s what you want to do.

That said, clients have very demanding expectations. So the better question might be, do you have enough experience that you will be professionally qualified enough to meet those demands? Business savvy also plays a critical role here because if you don’t know how to run and manage business well, that also will directly impact your service to clients and their satisfaction. If you don’t have a sufficient level of these things, are you prepared to deal with the extra difficulty and rejection you might face? Do you have the stamina, perseverance and tenacity to keep working on whatever you need to work on to get to a level that is marketable? The less skill and experience you have, the much more difficult a path you face. It will be much harder for you to command the kind of fees that will earn you a real living and it may take you much longer to get established. You can be the most likable person on the planet and have no problem developing rapport with prospective clients, but when it comes right down to it, the proof is in the pudding. Clients get frustrated (and do not work long) with VAs who don’t have a business level of skill and ability.

What I might personally recommend is that it might be a good idea to stay in the workforce a few more years. Grab every opportunity to grow in your administrative and support skills and at the same time become a student of business (and I don’t mean enrolling in an MBA program–simply start reading business books). Use this time now to start thinking about a target market and studying what kind of administrative needs and challenges that market has and how you can support those needs and solve those challenges. Lay the foundation of your business now so that when the time is right and you’ve got enough business knowledge and marketable expertise under your belt, you will be more prepared for success.

Then again, maybe you feel you’ve already got what it takes. If so, go for it.

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By Danielle Keister | Posted in Cool Stuff, Dear Gritty VA, Virtual Assistant/Virtual Assistance | Tagged Danielle Keister, Gritty VA, Virtual Assistant, Virtual Assistants | Comments (4)

April 26, 2010 – 10:00 am

There’s No Such Thing as Social Networking

Ha! That got your attention, didn’t it. Let me explain…

Social networking is nothing new. It’s simply the latest catch phrase for something that has always existed and will continue to exist in business: networking and relationship marketing. The only thing that’s different is that we have new technology tools available for nurturing and facilitating those things.

Now, I’m not saying social networking is bad or not to use social networking tools. Not at all. Just be smart about it. Use your head. Know your target market. It makes little sense to expend days and months twittering away if that’s not where your serious clients are spending their time and all you have to show for your effort are a few nickel and dime project customers.

So here are some questions that might help you gain some productive direction in your social networking efforts:

1. Is your target market there? If not, you might as well be blowing smoke in the wind. If your target market has its own, more concentrated industry forums and groups, your time and energy might be more productively spent in those places.

2. Are the interactions meaningful? If you and your prospective clients aren’t able to really engage, might there be quicker or more effective means to get in front of them and really connect?

3. What’s the ROI (return on investment)? You want to engage in networking activities that yield the highest, greatest return for your marketing/networking time, energy and budget.

4. Is your effectiveness being diluted by spreading yourself too thin trying to everywhere? You can do a lot of things not very well or you can do one or two things super duper well. Don’t be afraid to buck the bangwagons and stick to your favorite platform for better results.

5. Are you being interesting? Remember what you’re there for. Prospective clients are interested in how you can help them. Tie your conversations to that interest whenever possible. Provide good info and also ask questions to learn more about them. Clients are also people: don’t bore them. They don’t care what you had for breakfast or that you are now taking the garbage out, but sharing a funny anecdote or the day’s pet peeves can be great conversation starters that also let them see you as a real person.

Social networking can be a great leveraging tool for finding and getting to know new prospects and drawing them into your own pipelines. Done without any thought or intention, it can also be a complete waste of time. Do your homework so the former is the case for you.

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By Danielle Keister | Posted in Marketing | Tagged Marketing, social networking | Comments (2)

April 23, 2010 – 10:00 am

Sorry! Apparently My Comments Posting was Broken

So apparently the comments posting here on my blog has been broken for awhile!

I hadn’t gotten any comments since March 19 or so. Which was sort of unusual. Normally, I hear from at least someone once a week. But I’ve been busy and traveling myself, plus figured folks were preoccupied with taxes and whatnot so I didn’t even think about it.

Then the lovely Ms. Franni Ferrero of Very Virtual emailed me and her message ended up alerting me to the problem. Who knew?! LOL

At any rate, turns out that out of the blue, all comments were being marked as spam and sent to the spam folder! Plus, while I normally get an email notification of any and all comments, spam included, I wasn’t getting any whatsoever. So everything was going into the spam section–a whole month’s worth basically–and I wasn’t aware of any of it.

To make matters worse, as I was sorting through the spam section to find and approve the real comments mixed in there, I accidentally hit on the “Delete All Spam” button. Oy vey! Before that brilliant little moron move, LOL, I was at least able to get the comments from April 21-23 approved before I had my moron moment.

It’s all fixed now, but we still have no clue whatsoever why any of this stopped working properly in the first place. Fun!

If you posted any comments between March 19 and April 21, I’m so sorry! I LOVE getting your comments and hearing your thoughts and having you add to the conversation. I wasn’t censoring you–I just didn’t know! If you care to resubmit any of your missing comments, please do. They’ll definitely get posted this time.

I heart ya!

PS: Moral of the story, if you use WordPress and things are unusually quiet or just feel off, double check to see if your plugins, etc., are working correctly and that you have all the latest updates.

PPS: Also, WordPress is great and all, but there are definitely some drawbacks to it. It is constantly the focus of hacks and exploits so you have to be ever vigilant about checking for and installing updates. Plugins can be a pain in ass. Some don’t play nice with others, and if you don’t know what you’re doing, you can very easily make a mess (or worse) of everything. Plus, since it’s open source and not a paid service, there is no real/responsive support you can turn to for answers or fixes when things go wrong. Luckily, I have a utterly fantabuloso tech guy, but I shudder to think what I’d do without him.

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By Danielle Keister | Posted in Great News, Personal Musings | Comments (0)

April 22, 2010 – 10:00 am

If You’re Sitting on the Sidelines, Whose Fault is That?

There was a bit of kvetching going on last week on one of the listservs I belong to. I don’t really consider myself a member of that particular list as I’m only an observer there on behalf of one of my clients, but the group dynamic is common to many of the networks I belong to and a constant source of business musing for me.

You see, someone asked a question and as usual, out of thousands of members, only a handful offered up any answers and advice. This handful is comprised of the few folks who regularly participate by answering and contributing questions, adding to conversations and just all around going out of their way to give thorough, detailed information that the rest of the list (who sit like bumps on a log and never bother to open their mouths) gets to learn from and take advantage of. The super-participators make up the 20% who are actively engaged in 80% of the conversations and interactions.

Yet every so often, as was the case last week, there will be someone who pipes up to complain that basically the participators are participating too much. And then a few others will chime in with their agreement.

They’ll say things like they are scared to post or reply for fear of ridicule. They’ll point out that the regular participants aren’t the only ones with good advice and expertise to share. They’ll complain that conversations get “hogged” by the regular contributors. They say they feel like anything they might contribute would be quickly overshadowed.

Seriously?

How does an online conversation get hogged by anyone? If you aren’t speaking up, whose fault is that? Unless someone has physically hog-tied you and duct-taped your mouth shut, no one is “making” you be silent; that’s your choice. If you aren’t asking questions or adding your own two cents, don’t complain that others are dominating the conversation. You have the same option as everyone else to type words on your keyboard and hit the “post” button. And definitely don’t complain if the list is quiet and no conversations are even getting started–what have YOU done to start any yourself?

Give the floor to those same people who complain they “can’t get a word in edgewise” and ask for their feedback and input, and guess what you’ll still get nine times out of 10? Crickets. Because the problem isn’t really other people “hogging” the conversation. That’s just an excuse.

It’s not everyone else’s job to entertain and inform you. How about giving back a little yourself? It’s also not anyone else’s job to hide or dim their own light so that you don’t feel insecure.

There are no “turns” in business. If you want others to see and know how wonderful you are, show yourself. Take a risk. Put yourself out there the same way the active participators do. Ask for what you need. Dive in. Speak up. Exercise your curiosity and share what you know. Don’t hold back. But do own your own fears, jealousies and insecurities. No one else is responsible for them but you. You get to choose to get in the game or sit on the sidelines. But make no mistake–that’s your choice. Just stop whining about it if you choose the latter.

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By Danielle Keister | Posted in Business Savvy, Rant & Raves | Comments (4)

April 21, 2010 – 10:00 am

Dear Gritty VA: Should I Point Out Errors on Other Virtual Assistant Sites?

Dear Gritty VA:

I can’t tell you the number of times that I have looked at another Virtual Assistant’s website, taken a deep breath, sighed, and just continued reading. But 5, 10, even 15 minutes later I will still be struggling with whether or not I should have emailed the VA and told them about the error. You see, I am an administrative professional who has been in the business for 20 years and am now starting my VA business. One of my special talents is proofreading. So I think…this person is NOT going to appreciate me, the newbie in town, emailing them to point out the spelling error, grammatical error or formatting problem on their VA website. Yet…it bothers me. This is our profession and our website represents who we are and the work that we do. I learned the hard way to review, review, and once again review. I worked in the actuarial field for the last 5 years and let me tell you…those folks are very difficult to communicate with and they demand perfection the first time that you return a document to them. I refused to make mistakes and be caught. So I walk away wondering if I should contact the VA and take a chance that they think that I am being rude by pointing out the errors or do I disregard it? I know that my work is NOT always perfect but if these websites had been reviewed these errors would have been caught because they are obvious errors. I prefer to do what I think is the right thing, take screen shots and send the VA the info. I have found three websites with errors in the last two weeks and the Virtual Assistants all appear to be well spoken and high level (some of these websites were created by Virtual Assistants who are members listed in the VACOC Directory – I found some of these errors while doing research for my own company). Personally, I think that these Virtual Assistants should hire me to proofread their websites (totally tongue in cheek there but I just had to say it). So…what do you think? Do I contact them, or not? By the way…I proofread this email several times before sending it (and pasted it in Word and performed a spellcheck on it). Yes, I am a perfectionist but my name is on this email after all. –KG

The first question that pops into my head is why are you spending so much time on other Virtual Assistant sites? The people and sites and businesses you should be studying and getting to know are those of your core target market.

What will be helpful in this situation is getting really honest and clear about the underlying intention. The danger here, as you suspect, is that your approach may engender resentment, rather than appreciation. And the reason it could is because there’s a different feeling and tone between a) randomly reading someone’s site, finding a typo and shooting off a quick, friendly email to let them know, and b) going out of your way to find every error, spending an inexplicable amount of time and energy taking screenshots, and doing what really amounts to free work for people who aren’t even your clients. All that effort and energy would be more productively focused on developing your own business and clients.

As you mention, no one is perfect. One of my mentors is a multi-millionaire consultant renowned the world over who takes great pride in his vocabulary and command of the language. He can be quite pedantic when it comes to grammar and even he has typos and misspellings on his websites and blog posts now and then. It doesn’t bother me. It’s certainly always the goal to “dress the part” as much as possible, but a few occasional typos here and there do not diminish his standing and wisdom nor detract from the message. Those are cosmetic things that are quickly and easily corrected.

Personally, I always appreciate someone who takes a moment of their valuable time to let me know of little innocuous errors (which can happen even when you have your own proofreaders) as long as it is done in the spirit of helpfulness. Yes, it is true that there are always a few people calling themselves Virtual Assistants who have very poor grammar and communication skills. But it’s probably safe to say that the last thing you’d want is to be viewed as a busy-body. There can be a very fine line between being helpful and being presumptuous. It’s one thing to discuss standards and expectations in an industry, entirely another to barge into someone’s house, so to speak, via an email pointing out their personal gaffs and shortcomings (which is what that might feel like to the recipient). Ultimately, their business is their responsibility.

If you have impeccable grammar and proofreading skills, emphasize those attributes to your own prospective clients. If you come across a typo on someone’s site, let them know about it as a friendly favor if you are so inclined. Beyond that? Let it go. It’s not your kettle of fish to fry. Save your energy and focus for your own business.

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By Danielle Keister | Posted in Business Savvy, Dear Gritty VA, Virtual Assistant/Virtual Assistance | Tagged Administrative Consultant, Danielle Keister, Gritty VA, Virtual Assistance, Virtual Assistant, Virtual Assistants | Comments (4)

April 14, 2010 – 10:00 am

Dear Gritty VA: Have You Ever Thought About Franchising?

Dear Gritty VA:

I was wondering why you have not considered franchising a Virtual Assistant business? With everything you have in place it seems like something you may have considered. I ask because one of my clients is a franchise person and asked me why I had not considered it. Then I thought.. well, if Danielle hasn’t done it, there must be a reason why. Just curious about your thoughts on the subject. –CL

Thanks for such an interesting question! I really appreciate those.

This topic actually has come up before in conversations with other Virtual Assistants, but I haven’t ever posted my thoughts about it here on the blog. To get to the quick of it, I’m against franchising. It’s hard to put into words and explain all the reasons why, but I’ll give it a try.

Fundamentally, I don’t believe buying into a franchise is good for Virtual Assistants. It might be good for the seller because they make money from it, but I don’t think it’s good for the VAs. Sure, I could package up my branding and sell it as a franchise and make money regardless. But if my core belief is that it only really and truly benefits me, I would not feel that I was living in truth and integrity. It would not sit well with my conscience to sell people something that I didn’t believe was actually any good for them.

Here’s why I don’t think it serves VAs. First, you have to understand that providing a professional service is not the same as making and selling sandwiches for a living. You can’t franchise personality, chemistry, critical thinking, unique experience, and higher level skill and expertise. These are exactly the things that make what we do a craft and that differentiate one VA from another and makes each unique to his or her own ideal clients. You simply can’t bottle that.

Second, when you apply a cookie cutter approach (which is what franchising does), you turn what is a craft into a commodity. And when something becomes a commodity, it loses its specialness and uniqueness. It becomes just another identical product the customer could buy from a million other places. When everything is the same, when it’s made to look like there isn’t any particular skill or expertise required and it’s not magical and unique, the natural inclination is to look for the cheapest provider. When that’s the case, you will be stuck competing on price and that’s a death knell for any business. If you expect to command professional fees and be perceived as an expert with valuable expertise and unique delivery, then you can not allow yourself to become just another commodity.

Third, when you buy a franchise, you are only building and strengthening the value of the franchise’s brand, not your own. For all the reasons that people buy franchises (they think it will be easier to get started, market and make money), the opposite happens. You are not special and different and unique when you are just another bottle on the shelf. If you want to skip the hard parts in business, then you should resign yourself to earning poorly because it is going to be that much harder for you to differentiate yourself from the rest of the clones and command professional fees–the very things you thought buying someone’s brand franchise was going to do for you.

Plus, if I were to ever franchise my brand, in order to maintain the quality and integrity of the brand and earning power of the franchise, I would have to be really picky about who bought into it. I’d also have to put resources and mechanisms in place to monitor franchisees to make sure they were observing the terms of the franchise. All of which would require a lot of time and energy and yet more details and work I have absolutely zero interest in. There’s just not anything in any of that I would derive any positive energy from.

My personal values affect everything I do in life and in business. I can’t divorce them from my work or relationships. It’s why I’m simply incapable of doing business with anyone I think is unethical or associating with people or groups I’ve come to learn are dishonest and unscrupulous. I can’t wrap my brain around how that works for other people. I mean, I think people are often fooled by false veneers and seduced by pretty words, especially when they are looking for an excuse anyway. But a wolf in sheep’s clothing is still a wolf. And I think when it comes to self-interest, denial is very handy and makes it easier to rationalize and justify. But denial requires a level of unconsciousness and I am too highly conscious and uber-aware as a person. Of course, being highly conscious often doesn’t make it easy to get along in this world. But no one ever said choosing the right thing over self-interest was always the easy thing to do. (Just musing out loud here.)

At any rate, for me, values and principles aren’t things you can conveniently tuck away in a drawer just because you have an opportunity to make money or someone unethical has something you’d like to take advantage of. For that reason, I couldn’t ever be in the franchise business when in my heart, I honestly don’t believe it would really and truly serve the VAs who bought into it.

Sure, I could maybe make more money. But it’s not the kind of money I would feel good making. For me, making money is pretty much the last consideration. Not that I have money issues and don’t like making it. Far from it! It’s just that what energizes and motivates me primarily is the beauty and purpose of the work and engaging in my craft… practicing, honing and mastering it and doing good work for clients that really helps them move forward. I also value and respect myself and what I do and hold it in high esteem (and charge well for it) and expect clients to as well–or they don’t become clients. The money part takes care of itself after that.

What I truly think and believe is that Virtual Assistants are much better served creating and nurturing their own strong, unique brand and identity. Buying into anyone else’s brand or franchise isn’t going to help them do any better, get ahead any faster or be more successful because skills and the ability to serve clients well and nurture relationships aren’t things that can be purchased or borrowed. They either can do well on their own, or they aren’t going to make it regardless, which brings us back full circle to the pointlessness of buying a franchise. Much better for them to invest their time and money in learning more about business and marketing and increasing their skills and knowledge so they can create and succeed on their own merits.

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By Danielle Keister | Posted in Business Savvy, Virtual Assistant/Virtual Assistance | Comments (1)

April 12, 2010 – 10:00 am

Administrative Support IS a Speciality All Its Own

Guess what, people? Administrative support IS a specialty in and of itself. You CAN specialize in just administrative support and do as well as any other kind of specialized service professional. The problem, the reason why clients don’t get it much of the time and why Virtual Assistants as an industry are not earning well, is because they continue to call anything and everything Virtual Assistance and lump everything under the sun under the Virtual Assistant umbrella. When something doesn’t have any definition, then it isn’t anything at all, least of all a profession. And clients don’t pay well for something that is nothing. They view it as merely gopher work.

If VAs would simply stop trying to call everything Virtual Assistance and learn to identify, define and separate business categories for themselves (and not let clients define that for them), they could begin to earn better. They could charge one retainer for administrative support and then charge separately for work and projects that fall under different business categories entirely.

A good example of this is the argument I hear new Virtual Assistants put forth constantly. “Well, when I was an executive assistant, I also did bookkeeping and web design and copyrighting and this and that and the other.”

So, you’re saying that because employers piled a load of other work onto the shoulders of administrative staff because they were trying to save a buck at your expense, that means as a business owner you should lump everything you know how to do under one banner and offer it as all one and the same? As an employee, you had no say in the matter and trooped along like a good soldier. And hey, learning new skills and tinkering with new programs can be just plain fun. But it is neither smart nor profitable to carry that kind of employee mindset over into your business. If you do, I guarantee sooner or later you will realize the consequences of this and the wisdom of the advice I give you today.

Just as a doctor is different from an attorney, there are different classifications of work and business. For example, Web design, a separate profession in its own right, is inherently project-oriented work. So, it immediately differs from administrative support in that respect. More importantly, it is something that requires entirely different skills, processes, knowledge and talents from administrative support. For this reason, it is a completely separate category of business and expertise for which you can charge separately as an additional income stream.

No one is saying that you can’t be a VA if you also do Web design (or bookkeeping or copyrighting or marketing or social media or whatever). You can be a VA and also a web designer (or bookkeeper or ghost writer, etc.) if that’s what you want to do. It’s just that they are not all one and the same thing. Once you start grasping this, you’ll begin to gain more clarity about which business you intend to be in and what to more appropriately call yourself. This will start you on the path to better earning because you’ll be able to see and think more clearly about what should fall under your administrative support umbrella and what falls under another business category altogether (you can call these “divisions”) and should be charged for separately.

YOU have to make these distinctions and classifications in your business. Don’t let clients dictate these things. Because that’s the other part of the problem–VAs doing (and giving away) all this other work beyond administrative support because clients keep trying to pile everything on without paying extra for it. And it’s keeping you in the poor house.

Of course, this is happening with your consent if you refuse to get conscious about these things. It’s not a partnership if you are being taken advantage of. By the same token, you aren’t being taken advantage if you are allowing it. If you keep lumping everything under the Virtual Assistance/administrative support umbrella, you will continue to deprive yourself of opportunities to earn better and grow your business in profitable, sustainable ways.

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By Danielle Keister | Posted in Business Savvy, Marketing, Virtual Assistant/Virtual Assistance | Tagged Administrative Support, Defining Categories of Business, Virtual Assistance, Virtual Assistant, Virtual Assistants | Comments (1)

April 8, 2010 – 11:17 am

Do You Want to Be Right or Rich?

You may have heard this little saying somewhere online, particularly in Internet marketing circles.

What this really translates to is, “Do you want to be truthful or rich?”

Because the implicit message is that you can’t be honest, really and truly authentic and tell the truth if you want to also be rich.

Frankly, I much prefer to be a truth teller rather than someone who tells people just what they want to hear or manipulates them into paying attention. I have absolutely zero interest in selling my soul for the sake of earning money.

But what I also find interesting is that it implies that being truthful and getting rich are mutually exclusive. Really?

I don’t believe this for a minute. What do you think?

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By Danielle Keister | Posted in Marketing, Personal Musings, Rant & Raves | Tagged do you want to be right or rich | Comments (0)

April 6, 2010 – 12:58 pm

Net Neutrality: Save the Internet Once and for All

I’m reprinting a message I received from MoveOn.org today about Net Neutrality. If you want to help keep Internet control out of the hands of private corporations, all you have to do is follow the link and “sign” the letter by adding your details to the fields provided. They do all the work for you and YOU get to lend your voice to this very important issue! Here’s the message:

Since 2006, MoveOn members have been working to save the free and open Internet. And now, for the first time, we’re on the verge of making an open Internet the law of the land. The Federal Communications Commission is getting ready to rule on net neutrality—the key principle that keeps the internet open to all. But Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon know it, so they’re fighting in court and claiming the FCC doesn’t have the authority to do its job.It’s a smokescreen. The FCC still has all the authority it needs to make net neutrality the law. The only question is whether it’ll have the political will to take on these corporate giants. That’s where the SavetheInternet.com Coalition comes in. We already have 1.75 million voices telling Washington that we must make net neutrality the law, but we’re aiming for two million.

The FCC is only taking public comments until this Thursday before making a final ruling, so we need 250,000 signatures today and tomorrow to send a resounding message that the FCC won’t be able to ignore. Can you add your name below, and then tell your friends to sign so we reach two million?

http://www.moveon.org/r?r=87793&id=19723-7690029-X3qvWdx&t=3

The Internet is the future of communications, and we need to keep it open, available and affordable to all Americans so it can continue to drive free speech, democratic participation, and economic growth. Net neutrality ensures that you can go anywhere and access whatever you want on the Internet, without having to pay corporate gatekeepers for the privilege. Without net neutrality, AT&T could charge its subscribers more to visit the website of their local bookstore than Amazon.com.Or, as one DSL provider was caught doing just yesterday, they could start forcing you to use their own search engine instead of Google.And they’d love that extra profit, so they’ve sent armies of lobbyists to Washington to in one final push to control the internet.

When MoveOn members joined with hundreds of other organizations to form the SavetheInternet.com coalition in 2006, we could only dream of having a president who would fight to make net neutrality the law. But with President Obama’s support, and his appointee Julius Genachowski chairing the FCC, we’re on the verge of winning a huge victory for a free and open Internet. Can you add your name and tell your friends to help us reach our goal of 2 million signatures by this Thursday?

http://www.moveon.org/r?r=87793&id=19723-7690029-X3qvWdx&t=4

Thanks for all you do.

–Daniel, Marika, Anna, Eli, and the rest of the team

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