EDITED BY KIMBERLY WEISUL

Friends of Ralph

Could Ralph Nader, one of the architects of the Occupational Safety & Health Administration, be the Presidential candidate that small business has been waiting for? Precisely, says the Association of State Green Parties, which is running Nader for President. The Greens are wooing small business with a single-payer health-care plan--financed partly by a 3.3% payroll tax. ''Health care is the issue small business has said over and over is most important,'' says Greens spokeswoman Nancy Allen.

The Green platform decries ''destructive corporate welfare,'' but the Greens insist they're pro-small business. ''Small businesses are competing against big businesses on an unfair playing field,'' says Allen. ''We need to support them.'' Sounds great--as long as your small business doesn't get too big.

Stubborn as They Wanna Be

Pigheadedness. Defiance. Determination. Dress up those traits as ''adversity quotient,'' or ''AQ,'' assign them numerical values, and you might find you've got the makings of a successful entrepreneur. Gideon Markman, associate professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's Lally School of Management & Technology, measured the AQ of 203 patent holders. High-AQ patent holders earned more than the low-AQ crowd and were more likely to start businesses based on their patents.

CHART: Adversity Quotients

Tax Experts Are Standing By

You've got a friend at the IRS--or at least someone who knows you pretty well. As part of a reorganization, the service is opening a new unit just for small businesses. Is this good news? The IRS says yes: The goal of the restructuring is to strengthen education. The small-business education staff is scheduled to grow to 1,300 workers--up from just 100 now--by 2002.

Mike Mares, a board member of the American Institute of CPAs, says the reorg ignores the underlying problem--a hugely complex tax code. ''There are still going to be a lot of small businesses who may not understand it,'' says Mares. And they'll still spend plenty of time on hold. The new unit will serve about 7 million businesses, or 5,385 per education staffer.

Party Politics

Network, network, network--it's the mantra of the New Economy. And no one schmoozes quite so deftly as Kenneth P. Morse, managing director of Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Entrepreneurship Center and a lecturer on ''cocktail party management.''

How should you prepare for a shindig? Practice, says Morse. Learn to start sentences without using ''I.'' Don't make statements--ask questions. Get there early so you can find out who's coming. Stand under a light so people can see you, and help pass food out to your group; Morse says this makes you a ''facilitator.''

Not even a juggler can shake hands, balance a drink, and pass out cards at the same time. So make sure there's a place to set your drink down nearby. Have cards where you can get to them easily.

If you do get 10 seconds to impress a potential investor, Morse says to make sure that your pitch shows your company solves a problem. Downplay your product and technology.

And don't hog the shrimp.

Worry Lines

If you think ''WWW'' stands for World Wide Worry, join the club. Even CEOs of successful e-business rollouts feel queasy about the future. While 74% of high-growth companies are doing business online, 69% of their top execs have big e-business concerns--even though the Web will generate 12% of this year's sales, says PricewaterhouseCoopers.

TABLE: e-Angst

Even CEOs Whose E-Commerce Projects Are up and Running Are Wracked with Doubt

WHAT THEY WORRY ABOUT:

NOT FULLY EXPLORING OPTIONS                          43%
NOT FULLY EXPLORING RISKS                            34
NOT HAVING A GOOD WAY TO VALUE E-BUSINESS PROJECTS   31
PROJECTS NOT SERVING CUSTOMERS ADEQUATELY            26
FUNDING WRONG E-BUSINESS PROJECTS                    16
INABILITY TO STOP BAD E-BIZ PROJECTS                  8

Workfare Works

Give yourself a pat on the back. The Welfare to Work Partnership says that small businesses have hired 435,000 of its 1.1 million former welfare recipients since 1997. Thanks to better mentoring at small companies, says Partnership CEO Eli Segal, onetime welfare recipients stay longer at small businesses than they do at big companies. Bone up on tax breaks for Welfare to Work partners at www.welfaretowork.org.

CHART: First Shift

Frontier Online

Casualties of War
Small importers are getting crunched in a trade war between the U.S. and the European Union.

For the past 18 months, the U.S. has slapped 100% tariffs on a changing list of so-called luxury goods that now includes canned fruit juices, batteries, linens, bath salts, chicory, some meats and cheeses, and Louis Vuitton handbags. The tariffs, meant to punish the EU for its restrictions on beef and banana imports, are walloping small companies that import items on the list.

Last spring, the tariffs forced Rick Reinert to close his Reha Enterprises Ltd., an importer of European bath salts. He says he paid $52,000 in levies before giving up. Andi Christian, an importer of Kneipp Herbal Bath products, says the trade battle has cost her ''$137,000, minimum.''

Not-So-Easy Money
If your friendly banker doesn't seem quite so friendly these days, it's not your imagination. Over the past three months, banks have tightened the screws.

The Federal Reserve's third-quarter survey of senior loan officers at 56 domestic and 22 foreign banks found that more than a third had made loan requirements ''somewhat'' more stringent. About 24% had tightened their standards on loans to small companies, and for the third quarter in a row, not a single bank reported that it had eased its standards. In fact, fully a third of U.S. banks said they hiked premiums on loans to small companies that they considered risky. One-third of the banks surveyed said they were increasing the spread, or the difference between the loan rates they charge and what they pay for funds. Forty-one percent of the banks also said they were raising the cost of credit lines.

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One Iota

PETIT BUREAUCRACY
Decline in staffing at the Small Business Administration over the past decade: 24%