It's getting ugly out there for small business owners that have been struggling to keep on paying high health insurance premiums for themselves and their workers. So ugly, in fact, that more and more are just dropping coverage.

Because of ever-escalating premiums and falling sales, Craig Sumsky, director of Philadelphia-based DJ company Cutting Edge Entertainment, had to put the kibosh on health insurance for his office manager this year.

In response, Sumsky's office manager handed in her two-week notice. She needed a job that could get her benefits, he said.

Sumsky is not alone. One recent poll put out by credit card company Discover uncovered a disturbing trend:

"Eighty-five percent of small business owners say they do not offer health insurance to their employees, up significantly from 77 percent a year ago and 74 percent in January 2007. Among small business owners who do offer health insurance, 36 percent say they have considered discontinuing coverage because of high costs."

These statistics are not so shocking. Faced with the ridiculous cost of health insurance and a lousy economy, small firms are looking at what else they can cut to make ends meet, and too often they turn to cutting health insurance.

"Over the last two years, the number of small business owners who offer health insurance to their employees has fallen significantly," said Ryan Scully, director of Discover's business credit card unit. "While small business owners are finding ways to stay afloat in this tough economy, eliminating healthcare benefits could be another measure of the cost of that resiliency."

Not all small firms are getting rid of coverage. Some are trying creative ways to hang on, notes Donald Mazzella, editor of Small Business Digest.

He said some firms are asking their employees to take on more of the burden of the premium. And they're cutting back on coverage and increasing deductibles. (Of the 1,024 employers that responded to a recent Small Business Digest survey, 55 percent said they had increased the deductible, while 34 percent said they had made family coverage more expensive.)

Mazzella offers some words of advice to entrepreneurs who are struggling to keep up with insurance premium payments:

1. Look at health savings accounts, or HSAs, as a way to reduce costs. In many states the overall costs to employers and employees are greatly reduced, and employees can use the funds for retirement. (This could be useful because many companies are cutting back on their 401(k) contributions.)

2. Some smaller employers are providing stipends to employees to purchase their own insurance. (One caveat is that some employees may not qualify for individual plans.)

3. Shop around diligently and look at alternative offerings as some less well-known insurers -- some are offering bargains.

When it comes to healthcare costs, Cutting Edge Entertainment's Sumsky seems to be at his wits end.

"We have been quite successful, which is why it kills me," he said, referring to his company's inability to afford healthcare for his office manager. "Health insurance seems to have become more of a luxury than a necessity."

Sumsky is even considering dropping his own health coverage, and that would be quite a dicey proposition since he's an amputee and needs insurance for maintenance of his prosthetic, without which he wouldn't be able to work.

The cost of health care is one of the most frustrating things I have written about. Paying for health insurance shouldn't be stomping on the entrepreneurial spirit in this country.

What do you all think? Do we need to start knocking some heads together in Washington?

Hope ain't going to fix this!

On Super Sunday, find out the how the NFL is helping small business owners grow their business by getting involved with the big game. We'll also catch up with Tony Siragusa, former star defensive tackle and championship winner, and see how he's used the skills he learned on the football field to manage his successful New Jersey restaurant and growing offshoot businesses.

Panelists

--Michael Port, creator of Book Yourself Solid, a consulting firm, and author of "The Contrarian Effect: Why It Pays (Big) to Take Typical Sales Advice and Do the Opposite."

--Phil Town, author of "Rule #1: The Simple Strategy for Successful Investing in Only 15 Minutes a Week!" and partner in the private equity firm Oracle Equity.

Dollars & Sense: Preventing ID Theft

Eduard Goodman, Chief Privacy Officer of Identity Theft 911, an identity theft resolution company, provides some tips on how you can protect your customers' identities and personal information.

Elevator Pitch

Linda Balentine, President of Crowning Touch Senior Moving Services, a moving company that focuses on the senior demographics, is looking for capital to hire additional people, develop sales and promotional materials, and increase marketing efforts.

Top 5
Required Reading

1. "Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies" by Charlene Li

2. "The 7 Triggers to Yes: The New Science Behind Influencing People's Decisions" by Russell H. Granger

3. "The Complexity Crisis: Why Too Many Products, Markets, and Customers are Crippling Your Company -- and What To Do About it Now" by John L. Mariotti

4. "The Illusions of Entrepreneurship: The Costly Myths That Entrepreneurs, Investors, and Policy Makers Live By" by Scott A. Shane

5. "Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy" by Martin Lindstrom

Source: Smallbiztrends.com

The Better Business Bureau is giving letter grades to small businesses around the country. The grades are assigned by a number of criteria including the type of business, number of customer complaints, and dealings with the government. You can search by zip code of business type to find out about accredited companies in your area.

John Peterman has gone bankrupt and come all the way back. The J. Peterman Company, a mail order catalogue that was made famous in the hit show "Seinfeld," went bankrupt in large part due to the enormous attention it received from the show. J. Peterman went from being a small brand to a mass market retailer. Demand for the product shot up, prestige plummeted, and John Peterman was left with enormous demands and no resources meet them. He lost the business, his money and even his brand name. Starting in 2000, he's been working quietly to rebuild. Peterman bought back his name, partnered with John O'Hurley, the actor who portrayed him on "Seinfeld," and is rebuilding his client base. 

Panelists

--David Vinjamuri, founder and President of ThirdWay Brand Trainers, a brand marketing training company, and author of "Accidental Branding: How Ordinary People Build Extraordinary Brands"

--Jeffrey A. Carr, Executive Director of the NYU Stern Berkley Center for Entrepreneurial Studies

--Bob Phibbs, retail consultant and author of "You Can Compete: Double Sales Without Discounting"

Profit Margin: Employee Perks

Alexander Watts, associate professor and chairman of the banking, finance and entrepreneurship departments at Northwood University discusses some benefits a business owner can provide to his or her staff.

Elevator Pitch

Laurie Suzuki, founder of Yumi & Laurie, Inc. pitches the blanQuette, a blanket made from organic materials in the style of Japanese futon covers.

WMWifirouter.com turns your mobile phone into a wireless hot spot. The software feeds an Internet signal through your cell phone, so you can keep working wherever you have cell service.

Many years ago, my mom and dad took us to see the circus at Madison Square Garden in Manhattan, and much to their disappointment all my two sisters and I did was beg for souvenirs. It drove my father Yani crazy.

He'd yell at us in a Turkish accent: "I brought you to da cirkis and all you want is dis junk?"

Yesterday, I realized why he was so mad. As my husband and I dragged our six- and nine-year-old kids to the nation's Capitol to watch history unfold, all they wanted was an Obama bobble head.

I was frustrated that my kids didn't quite grasp the importance of the day, and I was pretty upset -- until I met Roderik Williams from Gary, Ind.

He was selling Obama buttons (two for $5) and Obama fans for $8 on the street near the Washington Monument. I asked him what his day job was and he said "entrepreneur."

Roderik made the 14 hour drive from Gary to Washington, D.C., for the inauguration of Barack Obama as our 44th president because he figured he'd make a killing on his Obama merchandise, and by Monday he was feeling pretty good about his decision.

There was a long line waiting to buy his whole Obama inventory, and he was well on his way to making up the $740 he says he paid for a permit to sell his merchandise during the inauguration.

"I got my gas money," he joked.

This was his life, driving from town to town selling political and sports merchandise to hungry consumers.

While he expected to make a windfall from Obamamania, nothing would top the profit he made during the back to back Bulls' championships, when he unloaded a bunch of fan merchandise to sports-a-holics.

There's something about wanting to be part of history, I suppose; wanting a piece of something that made you feel happy.

This week, entrepreneurs like Williams were cashing in on that sentiment all over Washington, D.C., as history-hungry Americans (and a boat load of foreigners) scrambled to take a piece of history home with them.

I guess it didn't matter that much that the bobble head Obama was made in China. Come to think of it, most of the junk we ended up schlepping home was from China.

But hey, it's still about the moment. It's about hope, right?

As my kids played with their Obama "junk" (as my dad would have called it), I kept thinking that the bobble head, the Obama playing cards, the Obama mints, etc., were indeed a great memory of an significant event, but would there really be something significant to this day?

Williams seemed to think so.

"Was it worth it?" I asked him. "I met you didn't I?" he retorted.

Indeed, we met an endless array of people from all different walks of life on the Mall in Washington, D.C., this week. There was a strange feeling in the air, a feeling that we are all pretty much the same -- trying to live our lives, make a living, and accumulate memories we could talk about when we grow old. And take out the junk we've collected and share them with each other.

Someone will be laughing at that bobble head twenty years from now.

So it finally happened. I read a "tweet" this week about someone having a bowel movement.

It was just like any other day. I was perusing social networking site Twitter when I came across this clear example of too much information.

A lot of people think Twitter is all about inane stuff like this, but in reality bowel-movement notifications are a rarity among the great comments you find on this Web site. Basically, Twitter is a place where people share a sentence or two about something great they read, or an interesting blog post they wrote.

It's also an ideal place to get the word out about your service or product -- for free.

At a time when the economy seems to be squeezing almost every small business, Twitter is increasingly making economic sense for entrepreneurs who don't have money to burn on marketing.

Take Stephanie E. Estrin, president and founder of CurlyQ Cuties, a company that makes handmade monster dolls.

Her company, based in Cedar Park, Texas, is about a year old and she's been on Twitter since October. She already has about 2,800 followers. (You can find them at: http://twitter.com/CurlyQCuties.)

Basically, Twitter is a service that allows individuals to post comments of 140 characters or less on any topic imaginable. The idea is to write interesting short comments, called "tweets," and get people (friends or strangers) to follow you.

"We use it to get the word out about who we are; to get people to notice us," Estrin says about Twitter. "It has generated several sales for sure."

The key for a small business is not hitting people over the head when you advertise on Twitter -- that's a sure way to get followers to stop following you. There's nothing I hate more than being constantly barraged by a company hawking their product. Subtle hawking, even funny hawking, is fine though.

Estrin seems to have it down when it comes to promoting her business.

"I don't bombard people with tweet after tweet saying: 'Come look at my site.'" she explained.

Here's one of her recent tweets:

We're still here pumping out Monsters ... just very busy and haven't had a spare moment to tweet. Have you hugged your Monster today?

Twitter can also be used as a research tool. Estrin recently asked her large pool of Twitter followers if they'd be willing to pay more for shipping if she switched to a different carrier. The answer was a unanimous no.

She also got some feedback from the Twitter community regarding where she could buy certain labels for her printer.

"We use it a lot," she admits.

So what do you have to lose? Head over to Twitter and give it a whirl. You can even follow me: http://twitter.com/careerdiva. I promise I'll follow you back.

If you do decide to advertise on Twitter, just don't use it like a press release. You'll get a lot of twitt-a-holics like me tweeting about how much that bugs us … it's almost as bad as potty humor.

Upcoming Show
Sunday, January 18

Consumer Electronics Show 2009
In this special edition of Your Business, we travel to the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas to find out what technology trends you should be keeping an eye on, and see some of the best new tech tools to help you grow your business.

In this age of new computers, iPods, and smart phones hitting the market every few months, many of us wonder what to do with our old gadgets when we upgrade. Jennifer Canty launched Dyscern, an eBay business selling refurbished devices, with a plan to tap in to this market. In just a few years she has grown Dyscern into a $10 million dollar business. The tricky part has been sourcing the product, called "reverse logistics," where stores look for the most profitable way to liquidate returned merchandise. When the economy took a turn for the worse in 2008, sales of their best seller -- the iPod, suddenly dropped.  The company quickly adapted by switching focus from iPods to cell phones using a new greener source for the products they refurbish -- the recycler. This dramatically reduced the costs for the company and their customers, and has helped them survive in a down economy.

Panelists

--Brian Cooley, Editor at Large for CNET Networks, following the consumer technology trends that power digital living.

--Ahmet Ozalp, Partner with Atlas Venture, focusing on investments in broadband, digital media, and wireless markets.

Small Biz Tech: Office Tools & Mobile Technology Devices

--Lance Ulanoff, Vice President of Content and Editor in Chief of PC Magazine, shows off some of the most innovative office tools and mobile technology devices at CES. Find out how these gadgets can help you manage your business more efficiently.

Learning from the Pros: Bobby Flay

--Bobby Flay opened his first Mesa Grill location in New York in 1991 and now has restaurants in major cities across the country, and a brand name that has become in ingrained in popular culture. Find out his recipes for success.

1. Wireless Technology
2. Green Computing
3. Web and Video Collaboration
4. Cloud Computing
5. Web 2.0

Source: Baselinemag.com

Whoson.com provides a number of helpful web traffic tracking services. Real-time updates can show you where your customers are coming from, which pages are holding their interest, and how many people are on your site at any given time.

Why does everyone insist on making my life more difficult?

I can't just pop a DVD into the player and have it start playing a movie without watching the previews. People don't respond to my e-mails with a message history anymore. And lately, Twitter keeps saying it's "over capacity" and won't let me tweet.

Now the Better Business Bureau (BBB) is getting in on the make-my-life-more-difficult act.

The agency that tracks the behavior of businesses nationally is sending us all back to school with its decision to give out letter grades.

It used to be so simple -- "unsatisfactory" or "satisfactory" were the only ratings firms got.

But nooo, that was too simple. Now we have to have grades from A+ to F.

Before, if you were a business owner all you had to do was get yourself off the unsatisfactory list and you'd be okay with customers. These days you could get a "D" and then make a good case for yourself with the business bureau and get upgraded to a "C" -- but that doesn't sound that good either, right?

And for consumers, too, it was so clear-cut before. Either a firm was satisfactory or not. If it was unsatisfactory, you didn't deal with the company. Now you have to decide if a "C" grade is bad, or not so bad.

In a press release put out this week, the BBB said it was adopting the new system "to help consumers more easily and quickly identify and compare the reliability of businesses."

I don't know about you, but all this seems way more complicated to me.

The BBB will base the letter grades on a 16-point formula:

1. The type of business and its business model
2. How long the business has been operating
3. Whether the business has appropriate competency licensing
4. Total volume of complaints filed against the business
5. The number of unanswered complaints
6. The number of unresolved complaints
7. The number of serious complaints
8. An overall complaint analysis
9. The number of complaints with delayed resolution
10. Government actions against the business
11. Any advertising issues found by BBB
12. The extent of background information available to BBB for evaluation
13. The extent to which BBB is able to develop a clear understanding of the business
14. Whether the business has honored any mediation/arbitration commitments
15. Whether the business has attained BBB Accredited Business status
16. Whether the business has had its BBB Accreditation revoked

Then the agency's number crunchers take all this information and come up with a grade.

If an entrepreneur doesn't like his or her grade, BBB spokesman Steve Cox stresses the bureau is "more than happy to talk to any business that has any issue with the grading."

"Maybe it's a matter of you fix one thing and improve your grade, but it may not be," he said.

The key thing for consumers, he added, is to look for whether a company has BBB accreditation. To get that, the firm needs a "B" or higher.

I asked Cox if a consumer should do business with a "C" graded firm. His answer: "Maybe."

Jeez, that doesn't help.

What the heck does it mean to get a "C"?

"That's an average grade, just like it was in elementary school," he explained.

I don't know about you, but the last place I want to go back to is elementary school.

What do you all think? Is this a good move for the BBB, or should we be giving the agency an FFF?

Sales Tax Holidays in '09?

As Barack Obama's administration prepares to take office in two weeks, business owners are anticipating a change in economic policy. Rachelle Bernstein, Vice President of Tax Counsel for the National Retail Federation, discusses the state of tax legislation and possible sales tax holidays for business owners. 

Making Customers Work For You

Chicago based t-shirt company Threadless churns out dozens of new items a month -- with no advertising, no professional designers, no sales force and no retail distribution. And it's never produced a flop. Jake Nickell, the founder of Threadless, set out to create a community where artists create new designs and he would print them on t-shirts. Nickell's company is now part of an emerging business model where the customers and producers are one in the same. Find out how you can make customers work for your business.

Panelists

--Rod Kurtz, Senior Editor for Inc. Magazine.

--Larry Winget, workplace expert and author of "People Are Idiots and I Can Prove It!: The 10 Ways You Are Sabotaging Yourself and How You Can Overcome Them."

Dollars and Sense: Cutting Costs

Robert Martichenko, President of LeanCor LLC., a firm that delivers lean training, consulting, third party logistics and supply chain services to organizations, provides some tips on how small business owners can costs without hurting the quality of their product or service. 

How To Succeed in Small Business: Starting a New Business After a Layoff

As the economy continues to worsen, people all over the country are falling victim to layoffs. Rich Sloan of StartupNation provides some tips on how people can get back on their feet and start their own business after losing their job.

HP Mini 1000
HP.com

Acer Aspire One
Acer.com

Lenovo Ideapad S10
Lenovo.com

Dell Inspiron Mini 9
Dell.com

Asus EEE PC 901
Asus.com

Source: ZDNet.com

Salesconx.com brings businesses and salespeople together. You can post a listing with your company information, target market, and the fee you are willing to pay for new contacts, and the site will connect you with pre-qualified sellers who can help you reach new customers.