My mom recently went to a Mediterranean grocer in Queens, N.Y., to buy some Kalamata olives and some feta cheese when she noticed a tired and sweaty mailwoman delivering some letters to the owner of the store.

Obviously exhausted and thirsty, the postal worker took a bottle of water out of a refrigerator and asked the storeowner how much it was. The owner said, $2.

While she was putting her hand in her pocket to get the money, my mom said, "Can I buy the water for you?"

The postal worker said, "I have the money." My mom insisted, and the mailwoman thanked her profusely, clearly touched by my mother's gesture.

When the mailwoman left, the storeowner turned to my mother and berated her, saying, "why are you paying for her water? Those postal workers make a lot of money."

Was this a business faux pas?

Toby Bloomberg, the author of the Diva Marketing Blog, gives the storeowner's behavior a "minus 10" on the customer-service scale.

"That's just plain rude," she stresses. "And if I were the patron I'd never darken the door of that establishment again."

The whole scenario got me thinking about when it's a right and wrong time to give out free goods. I come from a family of serial entrepreneurs, and there definitely were situations when you gave out free items to individuals that came to your store, especially civil servants.

My mom and dad owned a restaurant and they also owned several boutiques and stationary stores over the years. When my mom ran a boutique she would often give the mailwoman a free shirt or scarf; and patrons who were short on cash when they got to the cash register of my family's stationary store often got a pass.

Is this just a thing of the past?

"I would think that free donuts to the cop on the beat, or holiday gifts to mail men, or women would be given to maintain and build relationships as much as for a 'thank you' for services not so much as for customer loyalty," says Bloomberg.

The Internet is filled with small business advice about giving out freebies and discounts to customers as a way to garner customer loyalty. This is from small business resource MoreBusiness.com:

"Even if you have a small business and are on a limited budget, you can always give out freebies like pens, calculators, leather-bound diaries and coffee mugs. Your company name, telephone number and e-mail address should be prominently displayed on anything you give away.

Give out items that people are likely to keep in a prominent place such as on a table, on their refrigerators, or in their pockets."

But what about just being plain old nice?

My mom was dumbfounded by the storeowner's response to her kind gesture.

She told him: "What's your problem? I'm paying for it. You don't have to worry."

What do all of you think he was worried about?

What did you all do during the holiday weekend?

Our last-minute plan was to go to my father-in-laws summerhouse and leave my laptop at home.

The drive is about 90 miles and my husband and I promised each other we wouldn't go out to eat because money was a bit tight these days. The plan was to ride our bikes and catch up on some reading.

Even going on this mini vacation with the kids was sort of a luxury because of gas prices. But to heck with common sense, I needed a break from my hectic schedule.

Seems like many of you small business owners out there are feeling the way I am. But should we be waiting until the breaking point when we say goodbye to work?

Roy Morsch / Corbis file

Most entrepreneurs, nearly 60 percent, are throwing caution to the wind and planning a summer vacation, according to the American Express OPEN Small Business Monitor semi-annual survey. That number stayed steady with last year's findings.

High gas prices and the generally tough economy doesn't appear to be dampening your plans to relax.

But too often the driving motivation to take a vacation, according to the survey, is stress.

Nearly 35 percent of those polled said they "take a break when they're stressed or have had enough, up 10 percent from spring 2007."

Bad idea, says Kathleen Hall,? the founder of The Stress Institute.

"Taking time for vacation is not a luxury it's a physical necessity," she maintains.

Waiting until you're stressed to pack your valise, she adds, is plain old dumb because stress can lead to physical diseases, depression, and obesity.

So, she advises entrepreneurs to plan a vacation just like they do quarterly reports and meet with their accountants. Do an assessment of your schedule and include time off, a long weekend will do, she suggests.

"The most successful people don't live in a workaholic mode. Very successful people take time away from their work so they can reflect on it and be able to look at their work in a deeper, more creative way," she says.

I know. Money is tight to be jetting off every three months. But paring down the vacation fun will help with financial stress.

Some of you are already doing that. The American Express survey found 20 percent of small business owners plan to take a less expensive vacation this year. And it seems women are even more cautious -- 27 percent of female entrepreneurs said they planned to reduce what they spend on vacation, compared to 18 percent among males.

OK, I'll admit it, I'm the penny pincher at home, but man I miss eating out.

It doesn't look good for college graduates this year as they prepare to go out and hit the job-searching pavement.

Turns out, students are worried about finding a job. A new survey by career site Vault.com of graduating seniors, found that "44% say they're very worried about finding employment after graduation, while 42% say they are somewhat worried about getting jobs.  Only 14% say they are not worried at all."

Erik Sorenson, Vault's CEO, says: "It is a tough market out there for new grads right now, especially in the professional services industries such as banking and consulting.  The best thing any job seeker can do is to be as well informed as possible about the industry, the company they're applying to, and the specific skill set required for the job."

There's another options. They could just say, "to heck with it all" and become entrepreneurs.

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That's what twenty-something, brother-and-sister entrepreneurs Guy ad Galia Ben-Artzi did.

Guy was working a typical corporate job, and Galia had recently graduated from college when they decided to start a gaming company in 2006.

Today they run a $700,000 online gaming company called Mytopia  that provides games such as Bingo and Sudoku for use on social networks like Facebook and MySpace. The industry they operate it is known as the "casual gaming" space, and it allows consumers to play games with other people over the Internet.

"As I watched my peers go through corporate recruiting, put on suits, create resumes and get really stressed out, I started thinking, 'that's not what I want to do at all,'" says Galia, about her experience after graduation.

And Guy, who worked for an international tech company for four years, realized, "I stopped being excited by work. I'd come home every day and wouldn't care what happened at work."

So the siblings, who had a life-long love of games, decided to start there own venture, and lived off their savings until the company started making money, which surprisingly for the two young entrepreneurs, happened in the first year with sales of $200,000.

The company started out providing mobile games for PDAs and smart phones, but have since migrated to the Internet.

Guy says Mytopia has secured undisclosed funds from Silicon Valley-based angle investors and he expects revenues to increase by 50 percent this year.

As for taking a different road after college, both siblings believe it's the best decision they ever made.

"This post college time is a fantastic time to take a risk because you have a lack of responsibility," Galia maintains.

For the first time in more than 90 years, a family -un bakery in Atlantic City, N.J., is trying to keep it's profit margins above water, and that includes the years during the depression.

Frank D. Formica, owner of Formica Brothers Bakery, testified late last week before the House Committee on Small Business and he painted a grim picture for legislators.

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The bakery uses 50,000 pounds of flour a week, and over the past 30 years or so the prices have averaged between 11 cents and 17 cents a pound. But as of September 2007, prices began to escalate rapidly reaching a peak of 60 cents a pound.

He was paying $7,000 a week for flour and $364,000 annually. But today, he pays out $20,000 a week, or $1,040,000 a year.

Who pays for the premium?

Formica says he passed on some of the costs to customers but has had to absorb the majority of the increase.

Because of the price hikes, he says, a family tradition is "at risk of becoming extinct."

"Today," he adds, "we are facing more challenges than we did during the lean times of the Great Depression."

Congress keeps holding meetings with small business owners about escalating food prices, fuel prices, etc., but what do entrepreneurs have to show for it? Not much.
Small business owners want action but it seems legislators don't even know how to begin tackling the problem.

"Like other Americans, entrepreneurs are facing record oil prices, tightening credit markets, and a lagging economy," says Chairwoman Nydia M. Velázquez of the Committee on Small Business. "The situation presents serious challenges, so we shouldn't waste time despairing or pointing fingers. Instead, we should focus on understanding the dynamics of the problem and the how the pieces of this puzzle come together."

Formica, who spoke on behalf of himself and the American Bakers Association, doesn't seem as puzzled.

"High commodity and food prices have been caused in part by many factors, including increased worldwide demand, a weakened dollar and adverse weather events such as last year's drought in Australia," he explained in his testimony. "But the ethanol program, which continues to subsidize food for fuel, and other government programs that pay farmers not to farm their land but let acres sit idle, have also led to the current food crisis."

And he even had an action plan for lawmakers that included waiving ethanol mandates and increasing wheat plantings.

"I believe that implementing the changes to our current energy and agricultural policies as outlined in this statement will not only allow the market to correct itself, but more importantly, will ease concerns regarding the threat of food shortages," he stresses.

Whether you agree with Formica or not, at least he has a plan.

There I was, in my yoga class trying to get rid of stress and help my bad back, when the instructor decides to share a personal story.

She does this periodically as a way to make us think of things beside the things that got us coming to yoga in the first place.

Her daughter's friend from college was working on an assignment, she told us, and decided to e-mail my instructor Nancy McConnell to ask her "what motivates you in your career other than a paycheck?"

Nancy told us it was a hard e-mail to get at that particular moment because she was having some trouble in her chosen profession, running a daycare and school for about 100 kids.

Turns out she's not only my yoga instructor but a small business owner as well, and when she got the e-mail she was in the midst of a challenging employee issue. She's got about 30 employees.

The e-mail also included one line that really turned up the pressure on Nancy: "please inspire me. I need it."

How do you let down a wide-eyed college kid?

Jim McKnight / AP

Nancy decided to put the e-mail aside and take some time before she replied to get her head together.

Why the heck was she doing what she was doing? At that moment, she couldn't just convey her motivations clearly because she was wrapped up in the day-to-day stuff all business owners have to deal with. "I'm the supervisor trying to keep peace. I find myself in that role a lot. It's part of my nature. I want to fix things," she explains.

Once things got resolved she turned back to the e-mail.

"It took some slowing down on my part," Nancy says, "to sit down and look at that question."

Nancy started the Educational Enrichment Center in Wilmington, Del., with a partner in 1979. She graduated with a degree in early childhood education and a minor in business, and embarked on a career helping children.

And after all these years a college student was asking her the big question, "why do you do what you do?"

She sat down and started writing. "First I wrote about working with children and families, and being able to hopefully have a positive impact on their lives and have an opportunity to be able to make a difference -- giving a mom peace of mind so she's able to continue her career."

She also wrote about how much she loved working with her staff, helping them grow; and how her job challenged her every day in different ways.

"And I love the opportunity to hear laughter. I work in an environment where there's constant laughter. And I get to walk into classrooms and play. I love hanging out with children."

Before she knew it she had written down about 10 to 12 things she loved about her job.

Of the process, she says, "I found it uplifting and rewarding to contemplate that question."

OK, everyone's task today, whether you work for yourself or someone else, is to: Ask yourself why you do your job other than the paycheck?

If you don't like your answers, or can't come up with any answers, it may be time to rethink what you do.

But first, sit on the floor and breath deeply.

Namaste!

Savvy consumers and small firms owners are increasingly checking the Better Business Bureau's list of businesses before they make a purchase or decide to partner with a company.

That's bad news for small businesses that some how end up on the BBB's bad-boy list.

OK, it's not actually called a bad boy list, but if your company ends up in the BBB's data base with an unsatisfactory rating you can bet you'll probably lose at least a few sales as a result.

The BBB has reliability reports on about 4 million businesses and of those about 24 percent have an unsatisfactory rating, says Alison Preszler, a spokeswoman for the organization.

So how do you keep from ending up with a "F" on your BBB report card?

I've talked to many a small business owner that complained to me that they should never have gotten an unsatisfactory rating in the first place; that the customer who complained just wanted more than they paid for.

If this happens, Preszler says, "I'd encourage them to take the time to sit down with their local BBB and discuss why they have an unsatisfactory record and what the company can do to change that status.  In some cases, it would mean taking a look at complaints and making an effort to resolve the issues with complainants. In other cases, it might mean making a change in company practices; for example, if we received a lot of complaints from consumers regarding contract disputes, we might ask the company to take further steps to ensure the consumer fully understands the terms of the contract they are signing."

For the rest of you who want to make sure you never get on bad rating, she offered a list of tips to stay on the right side of the BBB:

Respond to complaints.
Companies need to promptly respond to complaints filed with BBB, and make a good faith effort to resolve all such complaints in accordance with generally accepted good business practices. Typically, if a company doesn't respond to two or more complaints, it will have an impact on their rating with BBB.
 
Fix any underlying causes of a pattern of complaints.
Sometimes, a company will say, "But we responded to all of the complaints, why do we still have an unsatisfactory rating?"  That's when we explain that it's not enough to respond to complaints if there is an underlying cause for a large number of grievances.  If a company is continually misleading consumers, it isn't enough to keep saying "Sorry!" The company needs to take steps to stop the practice that is leading to so many angry customers.
 
Adhere to standards of advertising and selling.
Here is our code of advertising at the national level.
It's a bit lengthy but the basic gist is BE HONEST!
 
Consistently Do Good Work.
BBB Reliability Reports are a reflection of the company's quality of service as well as their customer service. A company that does shoddy work or provides a poor product will likely have more complaints filed against them with BBB.
 
Sounds logical, no?

The ice cream king and entrepreneur Irvine Robbins died earlier this week and I couldn't help but be sad a bit. I have fond memories of making trips to the Baskin-Robbins  ice cream shop in Queens, N.Y., with my dad and ordering Pink Bubblegum ice cream.

Oh man, was that delicious. Well, delicious to a kid I suppose, among the many other flavors that ended up in that frosty ice cream case. Endless flavors were part of my reality as a kid. I couldn't imagine how boring my parents' childhoods must have been with just vanilla and chocolate.

Indeed, Robbins took some credit for opening up our horizons to wild flavors. He said as much in a New York Times article from 1976: "I think we've had a little bit to do with making it more acceptable."

Which brings me to bacon ice cream.

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I colleague of mine, Patricia Talorico, who writes a food blog tipped me off about this culinary insanity when she came across it in a Delaware resort town Rehoboth Beach.

I thought, "is this just a small business owner with a gimmick trying to get people in the door, or are they serious?"

It's a little bit of both, says Chip Hearn, the guy that owns The Ice Cream Store  in Rehoboth that makes the pig-inspired ice cream.

"I'm in a beach resort town and there are 57 million other ice creams stores here so I have to differentiate myself," he explains.

The concept behind the store, he says, is to allow customers to taste all the different strange flavors they offer.  "People who come in say, "I brought my friend to taste your bacon ice cream" and they try the bacon ice cream but end up buying African vanilla. Do I sell a lot of bacon cones? No. Do I have people that taste a ton of bacon? Yes."

He's brilliant. I would bring my friends in to try the bacon.

So are gimmicks always a good idea?

"It's a great question," says David Vinjamuri, author of "Accidental Branding: How Ordinary People Build Extraordinary Brands"  and an adjunct instructor of marketing at New York University.

"When an entrepreneur uses stunts to draw attention to the brand, it's fine as long as it fits the essence of the brand," he says. "Baskin-Robbins was always experimental, always pushing the envelope."

It's fine to attract attention, he adds, but the gimmicks should seem natural to the brand.

"A good example is Wal-Mart's attempted entry into fashion.  When Wal-Mart held a runway show and began advertising in fashion magazines a couple of years ago, it got attention but it also just felt wrong for the brand," he notes.

I suppose it feels right for Hearn's ice cream shop that has always tried to push the flavor envelope like Irvine Robbins did.

Hearn's latest popular creation is actually inspired by an old Baskin-Robbins stand by, Rocky Road.

It's called Rocky Peppermint Road and has the basic Rocky Road ingredients including nuts and marshmallows, but it also includes smashed up green and red candy.

"People went wild," he adds proudly.

There are lots of small business owners out there that are living life on the edge: They have little to no health insurance.

They figure they're pretty healthy, so they can save money by paying doctors for routine visits out of pocket. But what if they get a serious illness?

Most of you out there figure you'll go to the hospital, get the treatment you need to get nursed back to health and then deal with the bills as they come in. Hospitals, especially nonprofits, have to treat people, right?

Think again.

Richard Drew / AP

There's a disturbing trend where hospitals are now asking for patients for money upfront before they give them expensive treatments.

A story in the Wall Street Journal last month chronicled a woman with leukemia who had a limited health care policy that would cover only a fraction of the urgent care she needed to survive.

So what did the hospital, M.D Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, do? They demanded cash upfront before they'd give her the care she desperately needed. We're talking $105,000 upfront people.

I know few small business owners that can pony up that kind of cash in a hurry, if ever.

According to the Journal story, hospitals have decided to take this draconian approach because they claim they're getting stuck holding the bag when patients don't pay their bills.

The patient involved, Lisa Kelly, was able to come up with $45,000 but the hospital demanded another $60,000. They eventually admitted her without the additional funds after she was crying and her husband "lost his cool."

But Kelly was lucky to even come up with the $45,000.

Small business owners like Danielle Gibbs, who runs a marketing and public relations firm in Minneapolis, couldn't come up with the big bucks.

Gibbs, 35, doesn't have any health insurance and she does not insure her one employee.

"If I went to a doctor, or hospital and they said, "Give us $30,000 upfront" I would be at a loss," she admits.

Gibbs says she decided not to get insurance because, "I consider myself to be pretty healthy, eating right and exercising. And I am a lot more careful than I used to be in terms of extreme sports and activities like four-wheeling. And I don't ski nearly as much as I used to."

The cost of $150 a month or so is just too much money for her to justify right now as she tries to weather tough economic times.

She's like many other small business owners and it's getting worse.

The Discover Small Business Watch poll of 1,000 small business found that "25 percent of small business owners said they are currently uninsured, compared to 18 percent who said the same last year. 77 percent of small business owners said that they do not offer health insurance to their employees.  Of those who do, 40 percent have considered discontinuing the health benefits because the cost is too high."

There has been a growing health-care crisis in this country, and small business owners are on the front lines. This latest chapter that the Journal article reveals is among the most sickening development.

Here's a quote from an executive at the hospital, John Tietjen, that made my stomach turn:

The practice of asking patients to pay for their care after they've received it, he says in the article, is "like asking someone to pay for the car after they've driven off the lot. The time that the patient is most receptive is before the care is delivered."

I hope all you entrepreneurs out there with little to no insurance stay well.

If you don't, you probably won't be getting much sympathy from medical providers that exist not just because of fees patients pay, but also because of tax breaks and donations they receive because of their "charitable missions."

Maybe they need to be reminded of that.

It may sound crazy, but one entrepreneurial experts thinks a recession is a great time to launch a new business.

"The one predictable way to achieving financial success is to own a business," claims Bill Bartmann, the author of "Billionaire Secrets to Success." "The current economic landscape is a most opportune time to start a new business. It is all about applying basic common sense."

Is this man just a nutcase or does he know of what he speaks?

Bartmann actually saw the company he started in 1986, Commercial Financial Services, take off during the recession of the early 1990s. The now defunct debt-collection company grew to a $3.5 billion company with 3,900 employees.

Now I know what you guys are thinking: "What if I take this billionaire's advice and fail?"

Bartmann went through a major failure of his own. In 1998, the Commercial Financial crashed and burned after a former business partner committed fraud. Bartmann ended up indicted on 57 counts but was eventually acquitted.

"During the four-year criminal investigation and subsequent 89-day trial, all of our personal financial assets were frozen by the federal government," Bartmann explains.  "Our inability to use our own funds to defend the civil litigation while the criminal charges were pending resulted in the filing of personal bankruptcy."

Eventually, a Federal jury acquitted him of all charges.

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The company was eventually liquidated, but he looks at the failure as a lesson.

"My wife and I paid a $3.5 billion tuition for the education.  That tuition is way too steep for only two people to get the benefit of the education. As a result we now share the lessons learned in growing a billion dollar company from a kitchen table with a $13,000 start-up loan, as well as those learned in dealing with a personal and business catastrophe of this magnitude."
 
Here are his tips from the trenches on starting a new venture, or boosting profits at your existing company during bad economic times:

Consider a home office or a virtual office – Who said you can't start a business right out of your own backyard? There is no reason to purchase property. And if your furniture, fixtures and equipment doesn't directly produce revenue, postpone purchasing it. And if you can't postpone it, lease or rent it. Don't buy it!

Take advantage of great opportunities – Now's the time to obtain cheap credit, as rates drop. You can also get great bargains on equipment and grab market share from weakened competition.

Cut operating costs - Contract services. Everything from your payroll and your book-keeping, to your personnel can come from third-party companies.

Hire temps rather than full-time workers - Every announced "lay-off" should be viewed as an opportunity. Great way to obtain "top notch" employees looking for work.

Beef up marketing - Narrow your target customer (i.e. those who still have money to spend) and then produce products or services to target these new customers…then market directly to them.

Trim inventory – Keep tighter control over merchandise. Order only what is moving and order in small volume.

Quit extending credit – Instead offer discounts for cash. If they cannot pay you now, they definitely won't be able to pay you when times get tougher.

Expand your financing capacity and draw it down now – If you have a lending relationship, increase it. If you don't have one, then get one.

Sell receivables – Yes, you get less money, but during a recession cash flow is more important than "profits."