With venerable business secretary's long-awaited small business rescue package finally unveiled today, the press has been full of speculation as to whether or not putting an extra £20bn behind small businesses is going to make the blindest bit of difference.

With venerable business secretary's long-awaited small business rescue package finally unveiled today, the press has been full of speculation as to whether or not putting an extra £20bn behind small businesses is going to make the blindest bit of difference.

David 'the bandwagon' Cameron has made an uncharacteristically enthusiastic u-turn, veering in spectacular style from his unwavering commitment to criticising Brown for investing too much in the economy and instead slamming him for not spending enough to prevent small businesses from going under.

Whether or not it helps save the 20% of small businesses expected to slip into insolvency this year remains to be seen, but one thing is bugging us - who exactly will the money go to? On this morning's Today programme, Mandelson said the cash will go to 'credit-worthy small businesses with a turnover of up to £25m'.

Eh? Last time we checked, 'small businesses' weren't turning over £25m. Far from it. In fact, according to The Companies Act, a small business needs to satisfy two of three criteria: a turnover below £5m, a balance sheet total below £2.8m, or fewer than 50 employees.

There seems to be a lot of confusion surrounding the matter. In the US, a small business is defined as under 100 employees, while in Australia, it's under 19 employees, and the British Bankers' Association says it's a business with a turnover of less than £1m.

Twitter was equally unhelpful. "I would say less than 30 employees," suggested @beatpoll, while @Goodadvice thought 'a solopreneur' (sole trader, we can only assume) best fits the definition.

It seems Mandelson may have to reconsider his criteria before he starts dishing out the cash - Smarta suggests he works it out using measures such as loo to employee ratio, the number of people who feel responsible when the kitchen gets dirty or perhaps how loudly you need to shout to get the attention of the person on the other side of the office. On the other hand, he could adopt a more zen-like approach: perhaps being a small business is merely a state of mind.

Hooray! Smarta is HERE! We’ve been born, we’re alive and we are HERE FOR YOU.
Now, enough self congratulation. It’s time for business.

So, first things first. We are not the only big new news, not the only applauded, altruistic and eagerly-anticipated new arrival on the scene. There is the small matter of Mr B Obama, of course.

And the fact that pretty much everyone except the KKK expects the new President of the United States to single-handedly end the global recession, stop the world from melting, and instigate peace in every nation of the Earth.

Yup, we have realised. This is a pretty tall order. But for more than 38m Americans – not to mention the rest of the world - who tuned in to see his electoral speech, tall orders are just the beginning of a mountain of expectations. (Just as a taster, the results of a BBC World Service poll of 17,000 people in 17 countries revealed that more than two thirds of those questioned think that he will strengthen US relations abroad.)

How do you manage such high expectations?

The first key lesson is the old business adage that it’s always best to under-promise and over-deliver. This leaves you, of course, looking like you’ve massively over-delivered thanks to the handy margin of productiveness you’ve created for yourself by under-promising.

But if a client – or a country, or even an entire planet – has already set expectations so high that any hopes of under-promising are far, far behind you, the best next step is to restore the natural order and pull their feet back down to the ground.

If you’re a business owner, this means assessing their expectations quickly and thoroughly and working out exactly how much time and man-power their targets would take to achieve. Then hold a polite but firm meeting with them at the absolute earliest available opportunity to explain that their aims or just not feasible within the budget or time constraints they’ve given you.

Now, such meetings may go well – but they may not. To avoid trouble, make sure you can explain every detail of plans to the client, and why it isn’t feasible. Definitely, definitely come up with alternative plans, make compromises and offer new ways forward.

Finally, if they are really after something you can’t deliver, it may be worth your while and theirs referring them elsewhere. You certainly don’t want to fail them, and the goodwill and honesty can go a long way towards your reputation and future custom from them.

On the other hand, if it’s you reading this, Mr President – I think your focus on hard work made the point nicely. Even the lowest of expectations in business can’t be reached without that.
 

Doing the round of news blogs everywhere is the most genious complaint letter ever written, addresses to one Mr Richard Branson. This is how good the letter is, how filled with pleasing punditry and phrasing finesse – it got a personal response from the man himself.

If you need to write a letter of complaint, this is the way to do it. And get noticed.

You can read the full text here.

For a shortcut to happiness, take a look at my personal favourite sections below (we’re talking about plane food here, by the by):

“You don't get to a position like yours Richard with anything less than a generous sprinkling of observational power so I KNOW you will have spotted the tomato next to the two yellow shafts of sponge on the left. Yes, it's next to the sponge shaft without the green paste. That's got to be the clue hasn't it. No sane person would serve a desert with a tomato would they. Well answer me this Richard, what sort of animal would serve a desert with peas in?”

“Now I know what you're thinking. You're thinking it's more of that Baaji custard. I admit I thought the same too, but no. It's mustard Richard. MUSTARD. More mustard than any man could consume in a month.”

“I'll try and explain how this felt. Imagine being a twelve year old boy Richard. Now imagine it's Christmas morning and you're sat their [sic] with your final present to open. It's a big one, and you know what it is. It's that Goodmans stereo you picked out the catalogue and wrote to Santa about.

“Only you open the present and it's not in there. It's your hamster Richard. It's your hamster in the box and it's not breathing. That's how I felt when I peeled back the foil.”
 

Beep beep beep beep beep beep. If you’ve ever been woken up by the sound of your mobile phone running out of battery, you’ll realise that the aforementioned sound is not only the most irritating noise in the world at 3:30 am, but also representative of the number of expletives you’re likely to emit as you curse your phone from across the room.

But fear not sleep-loving friends – the power of technology has come to save us. Wi-Tricity is here. Like its forefather (as far as name goes) Wi-Fi, Wi-Tricity is electricity without wires. Which means you can charge up your electrical devices without wires. Without plugging in. By power of magic.

Well, almost magic... Wi-Tricity works by picking up very specific resonances of power from a nearby Wi-Tricity power emitter.

Wi-Tricity devices are expected to become the stars of this year’s upcoming Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the biggest electronics expo in the world. At the moment, the technology has only got as far as mobile-phone sized devices being charged up when placed on or near Wi-Tricity boards, but hopes are high that sometime in the future entire rooms and buildings will have Wi-Tricity – much in the same way as Wi-Fi works now – so that you could simply walk into a building clutching your laptop and it would recharge automatically.Pretty amazing stuff!

Well well well, 2008 saw the advent of some great new businesses, and we’re hopeful that 2009 will welcome even more. You see, recessions, my friends, whilst the bane of almost everyone else’s lives, tend to foster lots of lovely little new business babies. So we entrepreneurs love them. Well, not love them, exactly – but we see the silver lining.

Both the previous two recessions saw an increase in the number of small businesses, the government is pumping a cool £1 billion into encouraging SMEs and good old Mandelson and Brown are by no means the only politicians banging on about how important small businesses are for the economy (making up 90% of it, don’cha know).

And the reasons for the pick-up at times like these is that with so many people newly unemployed but laden with skills, those great business ideas that you’ve been holding in the back of your mind but just haven’t quite yet been started on are now given a massive expanse of your time and attention to expand into. With no job on the line to detract from, people take the plunge. (And with the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development predicting a whopping 600,000 more jobs going across the UK this year, that’s really just as well, otherwise God knows what they’d all do.)

And good for them that they do. It’s business starters that get the economy going again, and the necessity of boot-strapping means that these will be some of the most financially robust companies once things get going again. It’s always invaluable for your start-as-you-mean-to-go-on ethic to be keeping overheads and costs as absolutely low as possible.

So – here’s to 2009, here’s to you, here’s to us, and here’s to all the entrepreneurs that make the world go round. Hurrah!