Ah, smartphones . . . what would business be like without them? Can anyone remember what it was like before the Blackberry came along? These days, you can't get onto a commuter train without seeing hundreds of them – in the hands of people who are checking the news, getting updates on the tube, or simply getting a head start with their emails. The smartphone has become cemented in the world of fast-paced business, largely due to its Internet capabilities.

So much for the smartphone of business, but what about the business of smartphones? When the first Apple iPhone came out in 2007, it was revolutionary, and caused rival companies such as Samsung and Nokia to start seriously challenging a corner of the market which had been dominated by Blackberry. But legal problems arose as early as 2009, with Apple and Nokia suing and countersuing one another over a variety of technologies, but primarily the way that the 3G and Wifi were implemented into the iPhone. This sparked an enormous chain of legal events which eventually embroiled practically every single major mobile phone company with a smartphone. You could probably take any random two smartphones from two different companies, and they'd probably be engaged in a lawsuit over patent rights.

Although some lawsuits have been resolved – Microsoft are now paying royalties to Samsung for use of certain Android products, for example – the majority are still being contested. It is the physical design lawsuits which are the most controversial, however. How can one trademark a product which is less defined by how it physically looks, and more defined by what actually happens on the screen? There isn't much physical difference between the Galaxy Tab and the Apple iPad, but equally, there isn't much you could fundamentally make different, which is where the problem lies.

Starting up a small business is an incredible undertaking, and not one which should be taken lightly. A lot of preparation is required before you even go into marketing your product, and it's very important that the financial side is sorted out straight away. Whether you've just started up a little high street vegetable shop or a massive online international business, it's important not to get the financial side wrong. Quite apart from the need to keep the business afloat, you'll run into problems with the law unless everything is properly ordered. This article is written with the basics in mind.

Firstly, you must ensure that you apply to pay the correct amount of tax. This is largely done automatically these days, as long as you inform the government exactly how much money your business is earning. It can be helpful to hire an accountant who is able to competently keep track of the flow of money. Then all you have to worry about is keeping receipts for everything.

Ah yes, receipts . . . even if you don't get an accountant, you'll still need to keep them. Postage and packaging, new products, even the tea and milk money – it all needs to be kept track of. File them sensibly, by criteria and timeframe, and make sure you don't lose them. And don't just leave them to stew in a cabinet somewhere – get them out weekly and add them up, or ask your accountant to do so.

Replacing the world's oldest and most-used technology was never going to happen overnight, and nor was it going to be simple. Sales in regular books have been declining rapidly since the release of the Amazon Kindle in 2007, bringing the business of eBooks and eBook readers sharply into the limelight. And it hasn't all been good limelight.

For a start, there is an inconsistency between the price of eBooks and the price of regular books. Publishers find it is significantly cheaper to produce eBooks, as there is no requirement for printing – the most expensive part of the process. Retailers also find it cheaper, as there is no need to store an eBook on physical shelves. In fact, the actual production costs are miniscule once the rights and contacts have been settled with the author. This fact has led to people questioning as to why some eBooks are available for only slightly cheaper than their paper counterparts. The extra profit can be channelled to the retailer, the author, or the publisher, but this is made more complicated by the fact that eBook prices are usually decided by the retailer or the publisher.

For example, the Apple iBookstore, one of the UK's leading retailers, allows anyone to sell their books and decide how much to charge for them. Waterstones meanwhile, set their own prices, and have been severely criticised for the high prices of eBooks. Amazon also set their own prices, but they have instead been complimented for relatively cheap eBooks.

A shrewd business eye might be able to see what's going on here – that Waterstones are attempting to make up lost profits in paper books by raking in more profit from their eBooks. Amazon, who do not have to rent high street shops or rely solely on profit from books, are able to sell eBooks for cutthroat prices – sustainable as they have little in the way of production cost.

Nobody has gone unaffected by the recession. This economic slowdown has been the hardest in living memory, and with recent talk of a double dip recession, it may be that the ‘light at the end of the tunnel' for retailers is, in fact, a flamethrower. Shoppers prefer to find bargains online, and it's now easier than ever to do so. The Amazon Smartphone Application, for example, carries a feature which allows you to scan a barcode in a high street shop, and find the item online and for a cheaper price.

So how does the high street fight something like this? Believe it or not, some have managed to continue trading without calling in Mary Portas and a team of cameras for Channel 4. WH Smith, for example, increased its pre-tax profit to £66m in the six months leading up to February 2012. Although sales have slumped, the profits have been achieved due largely to the highly aggressive savings plan employed by the company, which has included fitting all high street stores with energy efficient light bulbs. The resilience that WH Smith has shown is something that high street shops should be trying to emulate, as cutting down on waste such as this can help the planet as well as profits.

Things are a little more difficult for the average small business owner, though. They don't usually have vast reserves of money to implement emergency changes according to an unpredictable economy. Instead, they fall back on selling tried and tested products, or go bust. The average sheet music shop, for example, may stop stocking the Beetoven and Chopin, in favour of whatever is raging in the pop charts, coupled with old favourites such as Disney. It's a reliable way of staying afloat, especially at a time where people might not want to pay for a piece of music that they can legally print off themselves from the classical era.

These trends can also be seen in the big high street shops as well. Marks and Spencer knew exactly what they were doing when they came up with their ‘Dine In For £10' promotion at the start of the recession. People wanted a restaurant-standard meal, without the effort and without the price tag. Indeed, the strategy became so successful that other brands began to copy it, including Waitrose, Tesco and Sainsbury's.

The Internet is one of the most powerful tools in a business' arsenal these days, but maintaining an online presence isn't always straightforward. There is a lot to take in. Whether you're an old company advancing tenuously into the digital age or a fresh new company looking to stake your claim on your very own patch of the Internet. It's a jungle out there – almost literally.

So with all those other websites out there, how are you going to get yours noticed? Well, even if you're brand new to the Internet, you'll probably have heard of Google. Despite having the simplest site on the Internet, they've taken over the web because they're good at one thing – searching for things. Google Search is where most people go when they want to find other websites. Whether it's to purchase products and holidays or find information, it's the starting point for many an Internet related quest.

There are a couple of methods you'll want to use in order to stand out. After all, the average Google Search produces millions of results, so you'll want to make sure you're on the first page. But how to achieve that? The easy way is to pay Google AdWords a lot of money, and they'll display your advert at the top of the search results in a coloured box in order to make it stand out. But advertising with Google is extremely expensive and only those who can afford to pay top dollar should apply.

Luckily, there is a cheaper way of getting to the top of the search results. But although you won't shell out as much in cash, it requires time and effort and an understanding of how Google works. Google scouts out new websites with the use of agents or ‘googlebots' or ‘spiderlings'. In order to attract these, you need a fully-functioning website with plenty of content and a lot of keywords. Linking to other high-ranking sites is also a good idea. Keep your site active and full of plenty of news, as this will keep visitors and googlebots coming back. Spread the word – use social networking and tell your friends and family every time something new goes up.

There are a number of other tricks that aren't necessarily focused on gaining traffic, but are important to attain a top ranking site. The page size should be kept as small as possible, and the site should be designed with simplicity in mind. Surfers prefer smaller and simpler websites – look at Google itself.

Cheap labour from abroad has been a controversial topic in Britain. It's the reason we don't manufacture much in this country anymore, after all. The vast majority of objects that you'll find in your local high street store will be made abroad, and for a long time now, many have been made in China. Indeed, the country has become synonymous with the phrase ‘cheap labour', to the extent that it is cheaper to get many objects made in China and then shipped over to Britain rather than making them in Britain in the first place.

Times are changing, however. With rising press coverage on the suicide rates of factory workers in the country, and trade unions beginning to take shape and make demands, the cheap labour is looking to become a lot more expensive in the future. In 2008, a law was passed in China which forced employers to take responsibility for their workers and punishing them harshly if they do not. In 2010, 500 workers from a factory plant in Southern China participated in a strike. Events such as these are rare, but on the increase. And as the Chinese workforce starts demanding better wages and working conditions, the cheap labour is already starting to spread further north into Mongolia. It is a sign of how much of an effect cheap labour has on industry and business.

It is difficult to comprehend how much manufacturing takes place in China, and how much of an impact the current changes could have on business all over the world. Although China is likely to remain competitive for a while yet – largely because their work ethic is also excellent – the smarter businesses are already making necessary changes, perhaps even researching the shipping costs from Mongolia.

Ever come up with a business idea and then dismissed it instantly? Or worse – you've shared it with someone else and they've laughed in your face, dismissed it, and said that nobody would ever buy it? Well, you're not the only one. As long as there have been original ideas, there have been people to laugh at them.

If you ever doubt that you could prove those people wrong by making your business idea successful and popular, just take a look at some of the quotes below. They give a fascinating insight on how quick humans can be to denounce a really good idea.

“Rail travel at high speed is not possible because passengers, unable to breathe, would die of asphyxia.” With work on the second high-speed rail route in Britain starting this year, Dr Dionysus Lardner (Professor of Natural Philosophy and Astronomy) looks really rather hilarious with this quote. You're more likely to die from a bacon sandwich on East Midlands Railway than asphyxiation.

IBM Chairman Thomas J. Watson famously said ‘I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.' He's probably feeling rather embarrassed right now – for many people, computers are where they work and play these days.

Darryl F. Zanuck, head of 20th Century Fox in 1946, claimed that television “won't be able to hold on to any market it captures after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box.” Instead, you'll be hard-pushed to find a house without a television in these days, even if they're not made of plywood anymore. Practically any device, from the laptop to the mobile phone also doubles as a television.

And speaking of the phone, an 1865 editorial in popular newspaper The Boston Post stated that ‘Well-informed people know it is impossible to transmit the voice over wires, and that were it possible to do so, the thing would be of no practical value.' Fast-forward to today, and the telephone is a device that we still can't see ourselves doing without, despite communication now happening over email and instant messaging.

Forbes – the world-famous magazine – publishes their lists of the richest people in various industries regularly. Be it property owners, technology kings or even rap artists, Forbes ranks them all individually. But there is one list that you'll find yourself irresistibly drawn towards, and that's the top 100 richest people in the world; the world's billionaires. Ranked by fortune, and Forbes also supplies some other information, such as country of origin and the company or industry which made their millions. Looking down the list, it's hard not to wonder, What sets these people apart? (Except from the fact that they're all millionaires, of course). What is different about them that has allowed them to amass such a fortune? Your guess is as good as ours.

You would have thought that, looking at the list, that everyone with an enormous fortune would have been instantly recognisable. That they would be regulars on the front page of every newspaper. Not so – you won't find the likes of Simon Cowell here. This is an exclusive club, and the vast majority of members aren't celebrities, but businessmen and women. Only Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg come close to the celebrity nametag, and they both look so ordinary that you wouldn't look at them twice if you saw them in the street.

If there's one thing that Forbes proves, it's that business is the way to become a billionaire, and by examining the top 100, one can see that one method has been used above all, by the world's richest. Mark Zuckerberg, for example, created a fantastic product which he was then able to sell, to everyone with a computer and an Internet connection it would seem. Carlos Slim Helu created his wealth from selling communication with his telecoms company. Forrest Mars Jr sells sweets, Michael Dell – computers, Liliane Bettencourt – hair shampoo; the list is endless.

Often in the world of business, you'll find yourself stuck up against all the odds and out of luck when it comes to dealing with them. And you'll need something to inspire you to pick yourself up and start afresh if you're to have any chance of succeeding in the big wide world of business. Bearing that in mind, here are some quotations from wise people who have looked success in the eye. From inventors to politicians to artists to scientists, these people have achieved their dreams. And now, their words can help you achieve the same thing.

‘Desire is the key to motivation, but it's the determination and commitment to an unrelenting pursuit of your goal - a commitment to excellence - that will enable you to attain the success you seek.' Mario Andretti

‘I've come to embrace the notion that I haven't done enough in my life. I've come to confirm that one's title, even a title like president of the United States, says very little about how well one's life has been led. No matter how much you've done or how successful you've been, there's always more to do, always more to learn, and always more to achieve.' Barak Obama

‘Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.' Winston Churchill

‘Try not to become a man of success, but a man of value.' Albert Einstein

‘Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out.” Robert Collier

‘The greatest barrier to success is the fear of failure.' Sven Goren Erikson

‘Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you're doing, you will be successful.' Herman Cain

If your business is doing its job properly, then hopefully you'll never need this guide. Unfortunately, no matter how well you and your employees do their jobs, there will likely come a time when you'll need to deal with an angry customer. So you might want to bookmark this page for that dreaded day.

Of course, you're better off avoiding making customers angry in the first place. As the client, they are entitled to be upset with your service, so listen to what they have to say, even if you don't think that they are right. Do not interrupt, but do indicate that you are listening closely whilst they are making a complaint. There may be a very good reason as to why your business has failed the customer in some way. If so, wait until the customer is finished, and tell them clearly and simply what the problem is. But never make excuses – if it is your business' fault, then apologise immediately and offer incentives to keep the customer. You don't want them going to a rival business.

Be detached. It is not always easy to be professional in emotional situations such as these, but you have to be. If you remain entirely objective, then you are far more likely to be able to look at the problem objectively. You never know – you may be able to sort out a long-running problem in your company, so treat every complaint as an opportunity to improve.

After you have received the complaint, you have to act on it promptly. If the complaint is in letter-form, for example, don't send a standard mail-merged letter back saying ‘We have received your letter and we are investigating'. These are only infuriating. Your time is better spent solving the issue as soon as possible. Once you have resolved the issue, don't hesitate in informing the customer – by phone, if possible.