Sometimes when you're running your own business, you forget to make time for the most important people in your life. It happens to the best of us. You live among towering stacks of bills, you have to increase sales by 10% before the end of next month or your rent is going to be late again, you work until midnight on a good night and you can't for the life of you understand why there's a gaping discrepancy on your profit and loss sheet. And in between all that, you have to be on top form every time you see a customer.

It's no huge surprise that when you finally get home or eventually get to the pub to meet an old friend for a drink, you're stressed, exhausted, and incapable of normal conversation for any sustained period of time.

Which is why the Christmas break is such a welcome relief. It's time dedicated purely to family and friends. Time for relaxing. Time for reminiscing and being silly. Time for fun and love.

You no doubt deserve it, and we suggest you make the absolute most of it. Turn off your BlackBerry and don't check emails. But can we make one more suggestion? If it feels like ages since you've done this, thank the people who've been there for you, through it all. They're the ones who have to absorb your bad moods and hypertension and soothe you at the end of the day. They're the ones who have sacrificed time with you because you had to throw yourself into the business. They're the ones who were there telling you everything would be okay and encouraging you on.

Make sure they know you appreciate it. And perhaps make a little promise to yourself to put aside an extra hour or so a week to spend time with them. After all, if it wasn't for the support of friends and family, your life would be a lot tougher, and your business might not even exist.

Business plans are a crucial step towards making your business a reality, solidifying ideas and creating structure. They also help established businesses firm things up, and they're an absolute must if you want to get bank finance, private investment or a small business grant.

We often get asked for advice on putting together a business plan. It may be one of the most important steps, but it's also often the most unfamiliar and daunting. Fear not - we've pulled together the 15 best resources out there that won't break the bank. In fact, loads of them are completely free.

On Smarta

1.    More than 500 free business plan templates
2.    Our guide on how to write a business plan
3.    Our section on business plans

Free online courses

4.     Online business planning course from Crampuppy.com
5.    Free 16-session online business course (go for section two of the course, detailed on the homepage, for content specifically on business plans)
6.     Free online seven-day planning course sent to your email address
7.    This free course comes in five daily emails, from Business Plan Academy

Workshops

8.    Hotcourses.co.uk directory of business plan courses
9.    A business planning workshop from Palo Alto, on January 21 2010, in London (costs £99.99 but you may get a training grant if you're a small business with more than five employees)
10.    Listings of 250 free day-long business planning workshops all across the UK in the coming month
11.    Free day-long course for anyone who hasn't yet written down their ideas formally into a plan, from Roehampton University, on January 4 2010
12.    Free five-day course in Ilford from the Business Training Centre, in January 2010
13.    More than 90 business planning courses across the UK, with some around the £100 mark (though many are more expensive)
14.    Business Plan Bootcamp (about a third of the way down that page), costing £50 for five hours
15.    A course from the British Library Business & IP Centre on business planning, costing £99 on January 21 2010

We really like this BBC video and feature on what businesses can learn from comedy improvisation. The crux is that saying 'yes and' rather than 'yes but' encourages creativity and keeps up conversational momentum.

The concept touches on neuro-linguistic programming (NLP). Saying 'but' negates everything that comes before it. (It's like the old 'I'm sorry, but' syndrome. As soon as someone hears the 'but', they feel like it's a false apology.) 'But' signals disagreement and closes things off.

Saying 'and', though, is a term of agreement. Use 'and' rather than 'but' in negotiations and when you're dealing with disputes and the other person will feel you're on their side, that you're building on what they're saying rather than point blank denying it. It builds rapport and keeps things open and amiable. And it makes them feel like you're really listening to them.

'Yes and' also promotes creative thinking. Rather than squishing ideas as soon as they pop up, 'yes and' pushes people to inflate them, to build upon them. Try it in a brainstorm: forbid 'but' and just work in a continuous chain of 'yes and's. We promise you'll come up with at least one or two nubs of very strong ideas. Just make sure someone is jotting down everything that's said!

Entrepreneur Rob Loch has actually created a whole members club for business thinkers based on the power of saying 'yes and'. It's actually called The YesAnd Club. Its website describes its reasoning thus: "It's easy to explain why an idea won't work. It's far more fun and rewarding to say yes and… develop the idea. We love enthusiasm and energy. Magic happens when people say yes and bounce ideas back and forth, improving on them each time."

We couldn't have put it better ourselves. So maybe it's time for a new year's resolution: try 'yes and'. Try it in negotiations. Yes and try it in brainstorms. Yes and try it when resolving conflict. Yes and - well you get the idea.

Yes and now over to you.

A report out last week said businesses are increasingly using Twitter as a forum for feedback after customers began to air their grievances when all other lines of communication had run out.

We like this creative way to elicit customer feedback - and, just for you, we have four more:

1.    Freebies

With freesheets dropping like flies and Rupert Murdoch threatening to place a big fat paywall between us and the news, you could be forgiven for thinking the era of free is well and truly over - which means your customers will be doubly delighted when you promise them freebies in return for feedback. If you can offer discounts or vouchers, do - but if all you can afford is a cheeky chocolate bar, your customers will still be grateful.

2.    Facebook

With all the hype surrounding Twitter, some businesses have forgotten about Facebook as a powerful social tool. Although Facebook is less immediate in terms of response time - people tend to give more time to writing Facebook messages than 140-character tweets, particularly if it's on a public wall - the lack of character limit allows you to be more detailed with your replies. As long as you ensure your responses are as quick as possible, keeping them public will give other clients the chance to see how great your customer service is. A word of caution, though: watch out for those who are just out to get you. Some people are never satisfied.

3.    Blog

Having a blog is great for SEO because it keeps your website active and helps you to build links - but the commenting option gives your customers a place to provide feedback. If you're unsure about a new product or service you're offering, blog about it, and see how your customers react.

4.    Host feedback parties

Not hearing enough from your customers? Invite them to a party, and see what they say.

Lots of businesses host informal get-togethers for their best customers - but if you extend the invitation to all your customers, ply them with free booze, then get talking, you may discover some interesting facts.

If that's a bit less, err, formal, than you like, have an open day or even invite customers to discuss their grievances with you directly. Encourage them to start the dialogue by making sure your business' address and phone number are easy to find on your website.

Our guest blogger James Bradley is a final year ordinand at St Stephen's House, Oxford.  He hopes to be ordained in September 2010 to serve as assistant curate at St John the Baptist, Sevenoaks.

Actions have consequences. From going to war to choosing whether to have a curry the night before an important meeting or if your wife or husband gets the gadget they want at Christmas - actions have consequences.

And while we all know that to be true, many of us are less-than-great at doing very much about it. How often do we reach a decision based on little more than a mere five minute conference call or, even, gut feeling?

How many times do we work late (or, indeed, early) and compromise our ability to make right judgements through our own tiredness or exhaustion?

It doesn't seem right that the consequences of our actions-which often affect others far more than ourselves - should depend on such insubstantial methods of decision-making.

We would be appalled if a high-impact decision relating to us or our family was made in such a way, and yet, more often than we might care to admit, we do the same.

The thirteenth century Dominican, St Thomas Aquinas, tells us that the best way to deal with an impossible situation - the sort where neither option seems right or desirable-is to give ourselves time.

Making a decision based on poor information, or merely because of the limits of time, can rarely be moral - some things, especially in the world of finance and business, are too important to deal with in such a slap-dash way.

Instead, St Thomas suggests, we should give ourselves room to breathe; to allow the situation to unfold in front of us - often making the choice a much clearer one to make.

It's not always possible to do this but sometimes simply taking a step back, getting an early night, or delaying a difficult phone call or decision for another day, is actually the right thing to do. And right actions, eventually at least, have good consequences.

Yesterday's Pre-Budget Report has received a distinctly tepid reaction from much of the press. With the exception of The Mirror, which ran the enthusiastic headline 'Bank You Darling', other papers were less impressed: The Guardian sort of half-shrugged and muttered something about middle-income families, while The Times mustered just enough emotion to accuse the Chancellor of not being serious about reducing the deficit.

But what of those who matter? Business reactions were, on the whole, similar: half-hearted, fractious, irritable. Here's our round-up of comment from across the industry:

David Frost, director general of the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC)

"The Pre-Budget Report sets out some good schemes to support businesses - like the extension to the Enterprise Finance Guarantee - but these have been undermined by the announcement of an additional hike to National Insurance Contributions in 2011.

"It's clear that NIC rises mean a brake on employment growth. While everyone understands the importance of restoring the public finances to a sustainable path, a tax on jobs is not the way to do it."

"Businesses across the country still want to see the detail of how the Chancellor intends to cut the public sector deficit, and ensure more sustainable levels of public spending. Investor confidence depends on it."

Phil Orford, chief executive of the Forum for Private Business (FPB)

"This year's PBR wasn't a terrible one for small businesses, but it was fairly uninspiring.

"It was essentially a list of recycled schemes. There were no new ideas in there of how to help small businesses, just extensions to the existing ones. Of course, we're glad that corporation tax for small firms wasn't increased, and extensions to the EFG scheme, the Time to Pay scheme and empty property rates relief can only be a good thing for our members.

"We were hoping this PBR would lay the foundations of a bold new tax and regulatory environment which would help small businesses prosper and grow. Sadly, we don't seem to have seen that - it's a case of business as usual and it's not enough."

John Wright, national chairman of the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB)

"Extending the Enterprise Finance Guarantee scheme, is a welcome move, although we wanted to see the scheme extended indefinitely and promoted further to help small firms get much-needed access to finance.

"The Government has missed a chance to really tackle a difficult credit market by failing to create more options for access to finance, and more competition among high street banks. The Government should have addressed this challenge and looked at options such as a regional stock exchange to help small and fast growing businesses capture finance."

Richard Lambert, director-general of the CBI

"There are a number of measures which will give small and medium-sized firms breathing space at a critical time.

"Delaying the planned rise in smaller companies' corporation tax is welcome. Extending the Time to Pay scheme will give small and medium-sized firms longer to spread tax payments, while the extension of the Enterprise Finance Guarantee Scheme will help smaller firms obtain the credit they need to operate. We had also been calling for empty property relief to be extended."

On the whole, then, not an overtly negative reaction - but not an overtly positive one either. Smarta was disappointed the EFG scheme has only been given half the budget it had last year, and suspects that many of the measures proposed will not be introduced until after the election - when it's very likely finding the money to pay for them will no longer be Darling's problem.

It was one of the most politically self-conscious pre-Budget reports we've seen for years: dubbed a 'pre-election report' by shadow chancellor George Osborne, Alistair Darling's delivery certainly marked the beginning of a fierce election campaign.

But what will it mean for small businesses? Experts had predicted the pre-Budget report would contain a raft of measures which, given the likelihood of the Conservatives coming into power halfway through next year, were unlikely to come to fruition. Here's our round-up of the measures announced today:

VAT

• Darling announced he would bring an end to the extension of the 15% VAT rate announced during this year's Budget, taking it back up to its original level of 17.5% on January 1. Speculators had warned he might try to raise it to 19%, but it seems their fears amounted to nothing. Expect a groans from retailers, though, who will once again have to scramble to change their pricing in accordance with the new rate.

Time to pay scheme

• Darling said the government's Time to Pay scheme, which allows business owners to spread their tax payments out, has helped over 160,000 businesses since it was launched in February. He recognised the need to continue this scheme, saying it would be 'extended for as long as it is needed'. Good news for those struggling to pay their tax bills.

Empty properties

• Empty property rate relief, which caused controversy last year when it was scrapped for exactly 12 months and then resurrected with a higher threshold, has been further extended so commercial properties with a value of less than £18,000 will be exempt from empty property rates - which, according to Darling, will be a saving grace for 70% of businesses. Hmm.

Corporation tax

• The chancellor chose to delay the rise in corporation tax for smaller companies, due to take place in April, for a second time. The rise, from 21%-22%, was first announced in October 2008, but was put off earlier this year. Darling says the delay will help 850,000 businesses - but according to the Daily Mail, it will also cost the government £500m.

Employment

• Darling was very proud of the UK's employment record, saying there were just 1.6m claimants - but given that 10% of the workforce are predicted to be out of work during 2010, he still has work to do. Nevertheless, the chancellor promised starting next month, 18-24-year-olds will have guaranteed work or training after 12 months out of work, while over-50s will receive 'specialist and tailored support'.
• A half-percent hike on National Insurance contributions for those earning more than £20,000 was also put forward. This has outraged small business owners. Bulldog's Rhodri Ferrier called it a 'real blow'. "This will be a major tax on jobs just as the economy is predicted to grow," he said.

Investments

• Darling announced a variety of investment funds, including £30m to help industrial businesses in Teeside, a £500m Growth Capital fund to 'invest specifically in small business' and the extension of the Enterprise Finance Guarantee (EFG), which will guarantee £500m worth of loans to businesses on top of the £1bn already offered this year.
• Plans to fund clean technology were also announced: £160m towards the innovation investment fund and the Carbon Trust's VC scheme, as well as £90m towards the European Investment Bank's 2020 fund, which finances green infrastructure projects.

So there we go, mixed news from Westminster. The battle lines, though, have just been drawn. Expect things to hot up over the next few months.

We all know recycling and turning off the air conditioning at the end of the day will help reduce energy consumption, but what of the little things? With the Copenhagen conference now declared open, we list tips and tricks to help businesses save the world.

1. Turn off electrical equipment - obvious, but easy to forget.
2. Buy a duplex printer - printing double-sided reduces paper usage.
3. Displace toilet water - fill plastic containers with stones to displace up to four litres in toilet cisterns.
4. Fix leaky taps - if one drop of water is wasted per second, it equates to 10,000 litres' worth of wastage per year.
5. Get clued up on WEEE - Make sure you're complying with the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) directive, which imposes the responisbility for disposing old or broken electrical and electronic equipment on the manufacturer.
6. Reuse - got left over stock or slightly out-of-date food? Give it away, rather than sending it to landfill.
7. Buy recycled - recycling isn't just about putting your waste paper in a separate bin. Buying recycled paper and other products helps save trees too. Try thegreenoffice for eco-friendly office supplies.
8. Switch suppliers - source your products from more eco-friendly suppliers, or give your current suppliers an incentive to go green.
9. Refurbish - instead of buying new furniture to refit your office, see if you can refurbish or recondition your current furniture.
10. Use non-chemical alternatives - look for non-toxic toners or batteries. Xerox produces a non-toxic printer ink.
11. Switch energy tarrifs - British Gas, E.On and Npower all offer green energy tarriffs; or, if you're more committed, switch to Good Energy, which takes 100% of its electricity from renewable sources.
12. Incentivise - without the cooperation of your employees, your hopes of eco-harmony will be dashed, so create an incentive scheme to encourage them.
13. Look at low-energy PCs - computers are one of the biggest sources of energy consumption in businesses, so look at buying lower-energy ones. VeryPC manufactures sustainable PCs  which can be used by up to five separate users - meaning five times less energy is consumed.
14. Lower the temperature in unused spaces - corridors and meeting rooms that aren't frequenty used won't need to be as well heated, so turn down the radiators.
15. Think about your haulage - sea and rail freight produce fewer emissions than transporting products by air and road, and generally work out cheaper.
16. Turn down the heating - for every one degree you turn up your central heating, you add an average of 8% to your energy bill.
17. Monitor your energy usage - if you have an idea of exactly how much you are using, you will have a better idea of how much you need to save. DIY Kyoto think their gorgeously designed electricity meter, Wattson, can help you save up to 20% of your electricity per year.
18. Switch off monitors - it goes without saying that everyone should turn their computer off at the end of the day. But more often than not, monitors are left on, merrily guzzling energy throughout the night.
19. Plug gaps - a draughty office will make your employees turn up the thermostat, so plug those gaps in door- and window-frames to keep the temperature up.
20. Force shutdown - if some of your employees are a bit cheeky when it comes to turning off their computers at night, change your computers' settings to shut down if it has not been used for a certain period of time. See this guide for information on setting PCs to automatically shut down.
21. Keep radiators clear - make sure radiators are free of furniture or other obstacles that limit the supply of heat to the room.
22. Get rid of screensavers - screensavers don't save energy. Set your monitors to switch off after five minutes instead.
23. Travel only when necessary - does that meeting really need to take place in San Francisco? Skype and other VoIP software allows you to have long-distance meetings over the phone.
24. Offset - carbon offsetting works by undertaking projects such as tree planting or installing solar panels in developing countries to make up for carbon emitted by a business or individual. If your business has emitted five tons of carbon this year, an offsetter will plant enough trees to neutralise that. Carbon offsetting should not be seen as an easy way to make excuses for your gas-guzzling behaviour, though - only turn to it once you've done as much as possible to reduce, reuse and recycle.
25. Car share - start a scheme to encourage employees to buddy up and share transport to work.

Smarta has been polishing up its crystal ball of late, in preparation for a piece looking at what businesses can expect next year. As a result, it's been coming across quite a few surprising statistics. Here are 10 of the best:

1. During the past few years, the importance of action against climate change has filtered from activists business level. And yet in 2008, just one-third of consumers said they feel businesses behave ethically - compared to 2006, when almost twice that number agreed.
2. The fact we're still struggling our way out of a recession is something online consumers don't seem to realise: online retail spend is predicted to rise £5bn this month - up a whopping 14% from last year.
3. The total average online spend per UK internet user was £416 in 2003 - but by 2007, it had almost tripled to £1,475.
4. Perhaps that's got something to do with how much time we spend online: on average, Brits spend around 34 days a year trawling the internet.
5. This year, the number of people across the globe owning mobile phones surpassed four billion. Worldwide mobile phone access has now hit a staggering 90%, and in the UK, it will be 'truly ubiquitous' by 2015.
6. Despite well-publicised fears about the ageing workforce, the number of over-40s in work won't surpass under-40s until 2023. And let's look on the bright side - the effects of climate change might be such that half the old codgers are wiped out by the cold. You never know.
7. 113bn internet searches were conducted in July 2008 - 4% up on the year before. That's quite a few cups of tea.
8. Bank lending has been rising since August. In fact, it's been up £300m since October alone.
9. We may be worried about unemployment figures, but with a predicted unemployment rate of 10% in 2010, Britain is actually only the eighth worst in Europe - trailing countries such as Spain, with 20.5%, Ireland, with 15.1% and even Sweden, which is predicted to have 10.7% of its population out of work.
10. Finally, this may come as less of a surprise and more of an inevitability, but while the Eurozone is likely to languish in negative figures when it comes to investment, in China, investment is expected to rise by more than 11%. So if you're looking to invest - or seeking investment - it might be a good idea to head east.

Sources: The CBI, The Economist, Times Online, BBC, Webuser, ITPro

Right. Basically, the world may or may not be doomed. We might well be on the brink of a second even deeper recession that would see the global economic ecosystem collapse and harbour what can only be described fairly as Armageddon.

Smarta went to a panel discussion at City University last night on the recession and its causes. We got this news in from the BBC's chief economics correspondent, The Guardian's economics editor, Channel 4 News's top economics correspondent, LSE's professor emeritus of banking and finance and other breathtakingly-titled economics geniuses.

Turns out even these clever bunnies didn't really have an inkling the crash was coming. As the Beeb's Hugh Pym shrugged: "We were all deluded."

You may well have read, as we have, that certain journalists did in fact know the crash was coming - even that they provoked runs on the bank with their scare-mongering. You may also have heard that bank insiders knew, which is why stock markets nose-dived (in reaction to internal rumours, so the story goes).

But then you may also have heard the journalists and economists murmuring there was about to be a crash in 2003 - one or two of Channel  4's Faisal Islam's respected colleagues. You may have read Tony Dye or Gillian Tett desperately trying to warn people of the crash in the intervening years, long before it actually happened.

Problem was, as Islam put it, 'it sounded a bit like crying wolf then'.

So the even bigger problem, actually, is that no one knows how to tell if there's about to be a colossal crash. No one. Not even these people, whose life it is to understand and interrogate the economy, whose careers depend on finding out what's really happening.

Trying to accurately forecast a crash on this scale is, as Tett has neatly put it before, 'like trying to predict an earthquake'. Sure, there are warning signs. But they come too late for you to be able to stop the world crashing in over your head.

Is this the most disconcerting insight you have ever received? The real possibility that a completely collapsed world, that could quite easily lead to human destruction on a scale never before experienced, might happen tomorrow - and no one could even give you a heads up?

Possibly. But is there any point worrying about it? Not really. What it does mean, for entrepreneurs and small business owners, is that there is absolutely no way you can accurately predict what is going to happen next and what might affect your business. There will always be a multitude of forces entirely out of your control that have the potential to unravel everything you've done.

But there is a way to safeguard yourself.

It is more crucial now than arguably ever before to have a contingency fund. And a big one at that.

You might think you should be ploughing everything into the business to keep things ticking over - but don't. Put aside a small amount a month. Always, always have some money tucked away somewhere that you absolutely do not touch, unless your business is absolutely at death's door.

If nothing else, then even in the good times this gives you a subconscious safety net that inadvertently encourages risk-taking.

But if the four horses of the apocalypse are about to trample on your front lawn, it also means that, unlike a good number of the world's most established companies, your business has an infinitely better shot at pulling through.

(Oh and by the by, here's our guide on how to save a contingency fund. We wouldn't leave you on that cliff-hanger without a helping hand!)