From the latest news in the UK, the US and Canada to as far afield as India and the Philippines — you name it, Mike Robinson covers it.

For the Bermudian entrepreneur, who runs NewspaperDirect (Bermuda) Ltd., offers paper printed copies of 700 daily and weekly titles from 65 countries across the world ranging from The Financial Times, The Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Daily Mail, The Mirror, The Sun, The News of the World to The New York Times and even the Philippines Daily Inquirer.

A man of many talents, Mr. Robinson also heads up Slip Guard Systems Bermuda, which he set up three months ago, using an anti-slip product that is used on tiles. He has also helped his sister run restaurants Pasta Basta and Locals restaurant and Champions nightclub, all in Hamilton, for the past year, as well as planning to launch a floor cleaning service in January.

But NewspaperDirect is his main business, with the international licensed newspaper distribution company expanding from 300 titles when it first started to almost 800 today, and a customer base of 150 to 160 people, distributing about 180 copies per day.

"It means that people do not have to wait for the papers to come to Bermuda on the plane because the publishers send them to me on a file and I print them out here," said Mr. Robinson.

"It is a seven-day a week operation — I do a lot of residential deliveries and deal with hotels and businesses.

"Most of our customers are expat workers in Bermuda and the majority of our papers are from the US and UK.

"We have papers from places such as the Philippines and India and we keep getting new titles every month.

"But above all, I think this service gives people a feeling they have a piece of home when they are reading the papers."

His Slip Guard System has also proved to be a big hit, with the Swizzle Inn having its floors done with the new product, and which has an application for everything from porcelain tiling to bath tubs.

"In Bermuda a lot of people have tiles and some have accidents from slips because the tiles are old," he said.

"It is really a cost-effective way of making your tiles non-slip — users can either choose the complete service to get it implemented or just get the product, but there is no warranty on the product sold on its own."

Mr. Robinson has been doing the books for Pasta Basta, Locals and Champions, of which his sister is a part owner, forming an entrepreneurial family. His mother helps out on the accounting side of NewspaperDirect as well.

And with his new floor cleaning business in the offing, which includes carpet and hard floor, and mould remediation using a product guaranteed to kill mould for up to 10 years, it looks like the world, or at least Bermuda is his oyster.

Having gone to high school in Indiana, Indianapolis in the US, Mr. Robinson's first job was flipping burgers at fast food chain Hardy's, before enrolling in a two-year course to study electrical technology at ITT Technical Institute, also in Indiana.

He returned to the Island in 1991 and worked as a home carer for Government while bartending part-time to supplement his income for two years — he loved the work, but it did not pay the bills so he joined Elbow Beach Hotel as a bartender full-time and worked his way up the ranks to beverage manager.

A chance conversation with fellow entrepreneurs Raynard Smith, of Filter Queen Bermuda, and Troy Symonds, CEO of Fort Knox, lead him to change his career path and start out on his own.

"They told me as much as you work as hard as you can, you are not going to get the same financial reward and personal satisfaction working for someone else as you can doing it on your own," said Mr. Robinson.

"So I decided I wanted to try to do something for myself and NewspaperDirect came along and I took it up and ran with it and I have had the entrepreneur's bug since then."

Mr. Robinson's day starts at 4 a.m. when he gets up to download, print and deliver newspapers across the Island and then he comes back to his office, at the Fort Knox headquarters in St. David's, to do anywhere between three to four hours research on the Internet, looking for new products and working out if there is a market for them in Bermuda.

"I try to investigate whether the market here in Bermuda can handle the move forward with that," he explained.

"There are a lot of products out there and you have to be sure what you bring in will fit because a lot of the markets here have a monopoly.

"Whatever I do, I tend to head towards service-oriented industries because that is what my background is in." The softly-spoken St. David's Islander has also dabbled in the restaurant trade, teaming up with another entrepreneur Deon Mills as restaurant manager to take over popular Irish pub Flanagan's in Front Street in January 2007. After a year he decided to leave and pursue other businesses opportunities.

He said one of the biggest challenges he has faced during his time in business was convincing people that new and innovative products and services can be a good thing. He added that he was focused on running NewspaperDirect as a green company, eliminating waste by printing on demand and saving on the jet fuel needed to fly in papers from overseas.

"To me, just being able to serve is an accomplishment," he said.

"It is not easy out there and in these hard economic times it is worrying, but I have not lost any customers as a result, so I can only put that down to the type of service I provide.

"I am happy to be providing the service and when my customers call up or e-mail me to say 'Mike, this is the best thing since sliced cheese', that is the most satisfying thing for me."

Mr. Robinson, who has a wife who works as a risk analyst at a local insurance company and a 10-year-old son studying at Saltus Grammar School, said some of the most amusing moments of his working day have been provided by being chased by dogs on delivery, the perennial nightmare of the paperboy.

But he hopes one day to truly be his own man and have time to set up a flag American football league between the Island's high schools and colleges in a bid to get more youngsters off the streets and expand his list of travel destinations, citing Las Vegas as his favourite place, and having visited France last summer and San Diego as well.

"My motto is I serve people how I would like to be served," he said. "It is about treating people how you would like to be treated.

"I am always respectful and understanding of what the customers' needs are."

And many of Bermuda's news-hungry public will be relying on Mr. Robinson to deliver that same level of service which they have enjoyed when sitting back and reading their paper for years to come.