By Cheryline Lawson

I thought that I was doing the right thing and making the right choices for my family when I accepted the new job. I was leaving behind familiar people and surroundings to go into the unknown. It was a scary feeling but I had goals and aspirations that were not being accomplished where I was.

This new job presented and promised to be goal-directed and growth oriented. Well, so I thought. I was excited to get started but I had a week to think about it. The more I thought, the more I got an unsettling feeling but I concluded that it was just a fear of the unknown.

September fifth rolled around, my first day on the job. I am sure that you can identify with me that the first day is one of the most difficult days on a new job; adjustments to be made, new personalities to get acquainted with and new task to accomplish.

I was lucky that one of the employees, Scott, was quite an outgoing guy who made me feel at home from the very start and who became my friend right away. I became his sounding board and he made me laugh. He had been with the company for six years and I learned quite a few things from him, one of which, is that the company needed improvement and lots of it.

One thing that was quite disconcerting when I accepted the position was that I was moving from a larger, more professional company to a smaller, more informal company, but I didn't want to discriminate.

During the interview, I felt that I had a good rapport with the two sisters who interviewed me. They wanted to give me the opportunity to improve the productivity of the company. That first day on the job, however, those two sisters had a completely different persona than the same two women who interviewed me that day. It was like night and day.

That was when I had a gut feeling that I was in for something but I didn't know exactly what it was. It took me two weeks to find out. Over the course of two weeks, their unprofessional attitude became very apparent. I will not go into the details.

I tried so hard to please them and to do my work as best as I knew how, to prove to them they had made the right choice.

Part of my agreement was that I would be given three months and then after a performance evaluation that I would get an increase in salary. That was one of the incentives that made me work even harder.

No matter how hard I tried, though, it did not seem to be enough.

Since it was a small Internet company, I used my knowledge and expertise to make great suggestions on improving the productivity of the company. Some of the suggestions that I made and actually started doing were:

• Write and submit articles and press releases
• Participate in targeted discussion forums and leaving the company's signature file
• Make joint venture proposals with selected competitors
• Changing, editing and proofreading their Web Content
• Repositioning the business to increase the selling power of the services that so many other businesses are offering and giving away for free.
• Exchange links with some of their top competitors
• Give away tangible free gifts to visitors to the web site.
• Create a message board or discussion forum for their members and visitors.
• Find five good ezines to advertise in.
• Start their own affiliate program or get involved with two or three good affiliate programs that compliment their business.
• Start their own newsletter that would provide additional resources and services to their members
• Research the market to find out the continuing needs of individuals in their target market.
• Use WebTrends software program to find out where visitors to the site were coming from so we could do targeted advertising.
• Use electronic books to write about your industry and give some of your e-books away for free but be sure to include the other product and services that you have for sale in those e-books.

These were only a few suggestions and I felt that I had even more to bring to the company.

UNTIL that day in October. It was October 7th - one month into the job, when I was called into their office and from the look on their faces I knew it wasn't going to be good.

I was told that even though I was given a three month probationary period, they felt that after a month, I was not the right person for the job. I was given two choices: either sign a letter of resignation or a letter of termination. I was asked if I had any questions. I had many but I was too shaken to find the words. I remember mumbling something and then I quickly signed the resignation letter and made my exit.

I wanted to run away as far as I could but I got my bearings and went to my desk, collected all my belongings and exited with pride.

I knew that I had done my best but my aggressiveness was a bit intimidating for them. I was upset at first but I was not in the failing business. I refused to be.

I consoled myself by thinking positively. How others see me does not determine who I am and with the knowledge and motivation that I had, it was time to start my own business. I was tired of thinking about what I thought. I knew now that I needed to put my thoughts and desires into action. I also knew that there were many companies that would appreciate my aggressiveness toward business and that is when "Startbiz" was born. It didn't happen overnight but it took that experience to get me moving towards a goal that seemed farther away. I thank those two women today for giving me the "boot" to make my dream a reality. I use all of those aggressive tactics to enhance the productivity of my business today.

-- Cheryline Lawson is the webmaster of Startbiz at http://startbiz.hypermart.net and Internet Home Employment at http://internet-home-employment.net, newsletter publisher of Homebiz4U and Freejobs4U. To subscribe to the newsletters and receive six free gifts, send a blank email to mailto:homebiz4u-subscribe@topica.com and mailto:freejobs4u-subscribe@topica.com.