Step off the train in London during rush hour and you will see a swarm of be-suited business people mounting odd little fold-up bicycles.

While the average person may not have considered it, a folding bicycle is an impressive feat of engineering. It needs to be easily collapsible yet maintain alignment to offer a comfortable and speedy ride – it’s a daunting task for any entrepreneur. Such was the conundrum that Andrew Ritchie wrestled with in the mid-70s. Ritchie, trained as an engineer, but working as a landscape gardener, was intrigued by the idea of designing a bike so small “it could fit in your pocket”. He began working on his own prototypes and by 1976 had formed a company, Brompton, named after the Brompton Oratory church opposite his home. Despite the bicycle’s ingenuity and Ritchie’s enthusiasm, bike manufacturers showed little interest, forcing him to go into production for himself. He had no problems selling his bikes, but between Ritchie and his single employee, he couldn’t build more than 300 a year from his little workshop in London. Now the company has a turnover of £10million and is growing about 25% a year. About 70% of the bikes are sold abroad, particularly to the Netherlands, Germany, the USA and Japan. Amazingly, manufacturing still takes place in London.

Nearly half a million journeys are made by bicycle in London each day, and the number of cyclists has nearly doubled since 2000. The Mayor of London wants growth to quadruple by 2025, creating more demand for Brompton bikes.

The existing factory has the capacity for Brompton to double its output, and with another 15 years on its lease, there is no reason to doubt that Brompton will remain the best of British, made in the heart of London.

It’s the start of a new poll! This month we are asking “What is your favorite WordPress Theme and why?”

To be in with a chance of winning our $25 Amazon Gift Voucher offer, please simply enter our poll and this voucher could be on it’s way to you!

WordPress is dominating the blogging scene more than ever, and there are some great themes out there which are helping newbies and non techies create some excellent looking sites. With sites like StudioPress.com and WooThemes.com we have a choice of some amazing themes. So we want to know “what is your favorite WordPress theme and why?”

We can’t wait to hear all of your opinions on WordPress themes in this month’s Young Entrepreneur Poll!

If you would like to take part in our poll and tell us what your favorite WordPress theme is, enter at http://contests.youngentrepreneur.com/

Adam Toren

Recent word out of Google tells us that they are considering the establishment of a “micro-payment” option, enabling a new payment structure to download individual pieces of information, such as an article, newsletter, feature or video. This news should give you additional cause to think about your own membership site. Online content is in constant and heavy demand as people seek answers to their problems and solutions to their issues, right here and right now.

If you have something of considerable value, especially if it is in digital format, then you should consider setting up your own membership site. This can represent a lucrative income and a wide variety of websites, software solutions and plug-ins exist to help you get going. Advances in the technology used within these various platforms allow us to choose whether to create our own or to buy into someone else’s design. WordPress has become so advanced these days that you can use it as the perfect content management system and take advantage of specific plug-ins to help you structure and organize your theme and content.

You will notice when you research the options available to you, that some offer a one-time purchase price while others indicate a monthly charge. Generally speaking, the one-time fees allow you to download the software and operate on your own server, while the monthly fee option includes an element of support as well as remote hosting. This is a matter of personal choice. You may also notice different price points according to whether you are using the software on a single site or on a multitude and this latter option may be of interest to those who are considering setting up some kind of membership site template and “franchising” out to others.

You will normally have a tremendous degree of flexibility, especially among the better choices. You can opt to receive payment via a number of gateways and product or service resellers, such as Clickbank, PayPal, 2checkout or your own payment processor. You can also establish an affiliate program allowing you to gain additional members in return for a commission fee to be paid to new affiliates.

Amember is the top script available, supporting plug-ins that allow you to link your database through your Joomla or Wordpress platforms, for example. These scripts are very sophisticated, user flexible, and feature an unlimited number of product or service subscription types, each with its own parameters, such as automated account sign-up, expirations and terminations.

Have you set up membership website?

Adam Toren

The marriage of convenience between MSN and Yahoo gave us Bing. The birth of this child should have been celebrated with more verve by the online marketing community as we might finally have something to stand up against the omnipresence of the great Google. Not that we have particular reasons to be displeased with Google, as it provides a fantastic service and has spawned a number of mostly free tools that webmasters are very pleased to have received. However, a monopolistic situation is never good from an overall perspective and the fact that Yahoo seemed to be floundering around in the waters was not very palatable.

In the world of online marketing, we basically rely on results retrieved through search engines more than we would wish to admit. Our websites are always optimized to make them crawlable and readable at the same time and we put great emphasis on achieving a high ranking in the eyes of Google, primarily. It remains to be seen whether the creatively promoted Bing will make any inroads into what is still a monopoly for Google, but it’s advance should be heralded by everyone in this field.

Bing markets itself as more of a “decision engine,” obviously seeking to set itself apart from Google. It suggests that it is intuitive and can really understand “what we mean” when we try and enter those all important keywords. As such, they will often return a very different set of results as compared to Google and this may in turn provide us Internet marketers with additional ideas and information for our campaigns. We can now turn to a variety of upstart sites to enable us to view interpretations of both Google and Bing (and others) at the same time.

One of our favorites is Bingle, which can be easily added to your browser bar, as can Bing and Google and Stringy. Furia is a very basic option for quick access.

If you want to take this a step further, you can choose to compare results from Google, Yahoo, Bing, Ask, InfoSpace, AltaVista, Lycos and Dogpile using the creative tools provided by Googawho. Search3 also includes a three-way selection tool, choosing from Twitter, Yahoo and eBay.

Make your selection and try analyzing certain results from both sides of the fence, as it were. There’s no such thing as too much information.

What’s your search engine of choice?

Adam Toren

“Never not do something because you don’t have the money. If you want to do it enough and you’re focused enough, the money will find you” – Julie Meyer*

She may be American by birth and exhibit all the outward signs of being a fully focused, goal orientated, “winner take all” native, but she prefers the culture and the people of her main base in London and is seen as one of the 50 most powerful women in Europe, according to the Wall Street Journal. Julie Meyer has risen to become one of Britain’s most successful entrepreneurs, yet at age 42 is still searching for the next “aha!” moment, even as she strives to help somebody follow in her footsteps.

Meyer is well-known for being fast on her feet and making quick decisions, some of which come back to haunt her. However, she is known for her work in bringing capital to the table for hungry entrepreneurs, and for a business accumen which found its roots when she started First Tuesday back in 2000. The underlying concept was, in fact, created in the fall of 1998 and was designed to be simply a networking event series, focused on the first Tuesday of each month. However. the concept snowballed and by the time the company was sold in July 2000 it was responsible for networking 500,000 people each month and the company’s sale duly netted her $11 million.

With funds from the sale of First Tuesday, Meyer set up her next creation, Ariadne Capital, a company that is involved at the core advisory level with digital media and communication ventures. She is currently raising a significant sum to form a venture capital fund going forward and is shrewd enough to seek out equity stakes in key startups in exchange for the provision of services and advice. She is no doubt motivated by her original investment of $35,000 in First Tuesday, which realized a more than 30,000% return.

Julie sees the current economic environment as the best time to move forward. “One of the fundamentals of investing is to buy low and sell high, it doesn’t get much lower than where we are now.” She is always a champion of free enterprise noting that “government cannot make revenue, companies do that” and calling for a relaxation of Britain’s typically restrictive higher income tax band rates.

Meyer is an acknowledged workaholic, committing seven days a week and spends little time on her personal fetish, which is to enjoy some spa relaxation time with friends. She has something of a golden touch and has helped famous startups such as Skype, Emap and Spinvox to gain their considerable footings.

Living in Europe for most of her adult life, she has a degree in English literacy, an MBA and strong business and emotional ties to her adopted London. She is still single and has no plans for motherhood, but is however setting up a foundation for teenage girls to help them focus on what they could become and in turn bridge what is still an imbalance between successful men and women in the higher echelons of business and commerce.

Meyer is well respected and has an impeccable track record. She may not consider herself to be ambitious, but her achievements precede her.

Matthew Toren

* source: timesonline.co.uk

In a complex work environment, daily activities require an interaction between all members of the organization. While each employee from the most senior level to the most junior has his or her specific job description and requirements to uphold, each contributes toward the overall goal and should one element be out of place then the overall cohesiveness of the business operation is likely to suffer.

We do not of course live in a fully automated world, where robots control every element or complete every facet of the operation and thus many additional human factors come into play, including personalities, experience, ability, objective, ambition and there are many influences from the outside world including personal issues and agendas. Management can face a dilemma trying to correlate all this information together to enable them to direct the corporate ship as best as possible. In recent times a format known as a 360 degree evaluation has found favor when trying to analyze individual performance and to put together a common direction.

The concept of a 360 degree evaluation is to provide input from everyone who has an involvement in the work environment where the reviewed employee is stationed. This means that an input will be sought from peers as well as supervisors and management and each person will be asked to honestly review according to a given set of criteria. Reviews received in this way are anonymous, as they are all grouped together into a final summary of sorts, which will be analyzed by management before the “summit” meeting with the “reviewee.”

To initiate a 360 degree evaluation, the employee in question will be given a self-evaluation form requiring them to answer a number of honest questions, including their acceptance of the procedure and whether they have adopted any of the goals set by the previous evaluation. They must “call themselves out” if there is room for improvement and advise whether they need additional training. This is their chance to inform management about every improvable area, including company policies.

The concept of 360 degrees refers to the interaction of all those individuals who are effectively in “a circle” around the employee being reviewed. This will generally include coworkers, subordinates and management and everyone will be asked to submit an evaluation form. During this stage, a score of between one and five should be allocated according to the employee’s ability to interact, communicate, exhibit flexibility, give feedback, meet deadlines and work on initiatives. In addition, comment areas will allow input and direct specific details.

When management is in possession of all completed questionnaires and forms, they must be analyzed and their findings brought together to create a summary document. This will now be, by definition, a comprehensive review of the chosen employee from a personal perspective, including the views of all the figures important to the employee’s daily operation and an accurate rendition of the worker’s contribution to the organization.

Have you ever faced a 360 degree evaluation yourself?

Matthew Toren

Combine the current recession, the government’s attempt to spur recovery, and the potential onslaught of new laws and the result is a changing landscape for small business.

Learn the Top 5 things you need to know about these changes including how to protect your business and how to take advantage of short term opportunities… some may end as soon as Oct 31.

1) Securing a Government Subsidized Loan
If you need capital, now may be the perfect time to get funding backed by the government. The Recovery Act, signed earlier this year, reduced (or eliminated) fees for getting an SBA Loan as well as increased the guarantee up to 90%. These changes make an SBA loan a very attractive option for small businesses seeking capital.

In addition, the SBA created a loan program called “America`s Recovery Capital” (ARC Loans) that makes zero interest short term loans.

These attractive options won’t last forever. Combine that with a potential upcoming inflationary period that may increase rates on any loans and now may be a great time to secure additional financing for your business.

2) Health Care
With so much uncertainty revolving around this topic it is hard to predict the outcome, but significant changes for small businesses are likely to occur.

A hot topic for entrepreneurs is the proposed legislation that requires small business owners to provide health insurance for their workers. This may place an additional burden on small businesses with either added expenses or penalties.

The bill could benefit small businesses in some ways such as forcing insurers to accept all applicants, which is often an issue for companies who do not have a large workforce. Also, some claim the proposed legislation could save small businesses “$855 billion nationwide over the next decade.”

3) Government Grants
Some grants, such as the NIH’s SBIR and STTR grants are only on short term extensions. Right now they are extended until Oct 31 and there is no word yet on whether they will renew or in what form.

There is no long term assurance that any grants or programs, such as many SBA programs, will continue once there is a push for budget cuts.

4) New Requirements for Small Businesses
A big result of the financial meltdown was that companies were going out of business and investors, customers, vendors, and eventually the US government got stuck with losses or debt.

Now, many states are requiring businesses, from hair salons to travel agents to mortgage brokers, to have surety bonds to do business in that state. You should find out if your state requires a surety bond for you to do business. Even if it was not the case before, new regulations may change that.

Also, companies with federal contracts over $100,000 must comply with the new E-Verify system. More companies may be required to comply in the near future. Even if you are not required to comply it may be beneficial to voluntarily implement the system to protect your company against fines.

5) Patent Law
The Patent Reform Act of 2009 plans to convert the US patent system from a first-to-invest structure to one that is based on first-to-file. Several large companies including IBM and Microsoft are backing this proposal. This is not applicable to all companies, but in to some it may be a significant change.

This is a Guest Post by Brant Bukowsky from AngelInvestmentJournal.com

Over the last few weeks we have been asking you “When did you first realize you had become an entrepreneur?”

Thanks to everyone who entered, the overall joint winners were:

“When i read Rich Dad Poor Dad by Kiyosaki, an uncle gave me that book and changed my way of think …”

“In the pond gathering shanked golf balls. sold them back 2 the golfers at a premium”

So onto the remainder of the results:

• I was at school and I was selling lollipops to kids for $1 and $2 which I was buying for 5cents. LOL
• When I bought my first car at 16 with online profits…”I was like..this is for me”!
• Around age 7 when I was selling baseball cards every weekend down at the corner of my street.
• I’ve always been one. Entrepreneurship is a state of mind, and a fire burning deep within you.
• When I got tired of working for dumbasses and decided to go out on my own…
• When I spent more time reading the busiess classifieds than the sunday comics.
• When my idea had actually been realized by some company, few months later.
• When I bought my 1st car cash from my first fireworks business. Started at age 12 & saved diligently.
• Don’t remember whether it was the summer neighborhood shows or renting comics first.

If you would still like to add your comments, we are leaving the contest open for 1 more week – enter at http://contests.youngentrepreneur.com/ or tweet your answer below.

Next week we will be starting a brand new entrepreneur Poll!

Adam Toren

When we are designing a website we often pay particular attention to the quality of the written word. We need to craft our message very carefully so that we portray all the more important elements in as short a space of time as possible. We know that surfers are very busy people and tend to flit around from site to site with only a few seconds available for each page.

Psychologists tell us that the first impression is very important and that a few second reaction can often mean the difference between persuading someone to stay and further investigate or continue on their journey. This tells us that while we should always focus on the quality of our written content, the very design and appearance of the site is most important. Choosing the correct colors for your website can be more than just an arbitrary decision, or the use of a particular shade because it happens to be “your favorite color.”

Sometimes you will find that you are steered in a certain direction due to the very nature of your site, the product or service that you may be offering, or the very reason for its construction in the first place. While this may mean that you are leaning toward primary colors, pastel colors, stark blacks or whites, you nevertheless need to ensure that you have a balance between your colors and shades – in other words focus on a color scheme.

While fundamentally a color scheme must always be pleasing on the eye, unless the very reason for your website is to provoke and annoy, there are nevertheless many different ways to achieve a desired result. If you’re working with a client who has certain principle colors, you can suggest different tones and complementary shades with other colors that blend in nicely.

If you have a clean sheet of paper and are looking for some inspiration, there are numerous resources on the Web available to you. Several sites allow you to select different palettes or to view those that others have created before you. The power and creativity of these programs allow us to instantly see whether something looks pleasing to us or could “work” for a particular environment or site. Design programs work with a mixture of Pantone colors or hex codes and there are really an almost infinite number of variations available.

If you find that you need to turn to other sources for inspiration and discover a particularly interesting scheme through a random photograph, there are several different online tools that can help you to determine the actual code of the color that you like, also known as its hex value. In addition, design programs such as Adobe Photoshop or Corel Photo Paint can “sample” the color from a photograph or a scan and replicate it perfectly.

When you are surfing the web yourself, you may come across a website that you particularly like. The color scheme may be very attractive to you and you might be wondering what colors are represented. You guessed it – you can turn to a website that allows you to enter a particular URL and return the color value that is used.

Here are some resources:

Adobe PhotoShop

Corel Photo Paint

Color Wheel Pro – See Color Theory in Action

Pictaculous – Color Palate Generator

Color Schemer – Instant Color Schemes

I Like Your Colors – URL Analyser

How did you choose your website colors?

Adam Toren

This week I have had the privilege of interviewing Hooman Radfar. Hooman is the CEO and founder of Clearspring, which he started in 2004. Clearspring is the leading provider of online widget syndication services. When he is not busy building a better web, you can find him writing his blog Widgify.

Adam: Is Clearspring your first entrepreneurial endeavour?

Hooman: Yes. As an aside, it was not only my first start-up, but also my first job.

Adam: What was it that inspired you to chose widgets as your main focus?

Hooman: We saw two trends. First, the web was shifting from a publishing mechanism, into a platform for delivering online services. Widgets are an easy way for users to consume online services. Second, we saw that a next generation of ‘portals’ was rising that enabled users to aggregate third party content and applications – start pages and social networks. Widgets were a key way for publishers and advertisers to reach audiences that, increasingly, spent their time on places like MySpace.

Adam: How have things evolved since you first researched social networking theory?

Hooman: When I was conducting research, social-graph based applications were just starting to take off. Friendster and Orkut had less than 1MM users. The idea of social applications has gone from concept to reality in just a few short-years. It amazes me to see how the world is now shifting from social networks, to all web applications leveraging a common social graph.

Adam: How do you think that social networking will evolve further on the internet over the next 2 years?

Hooman: Well, if you take the idea that all applications will start to leverage the social graph, then it is just subject to your imagination.

Adam: What business model does Clearspring follow?

Hooman: Our primary model is targeted, performance-based advertising. We leverage our platform, data and relationships with publishers to deliver efficient distribution of content (widgets, apps, or video) to brand advertisers.

Adam: You have interests in other ventures, how do you manage your time between them all?

Hooman: Sleep less.

Adam: What are your favourite social media sites and why do they stand out for you?

Hooman: The social services that I leverage most are currently Facebook, Wordpress, and – increasingly – iGoogle. All of those have one thing in common – utility. Every new consumer technology, or trend goes through a hype cycle. At the end of the day, however, a service needs to have lasting utility to a large enough audience to be meaningful.

Adam: What do you think of sites such as Threadless and Kluster that encourage on-line collaboration for a positive business oriented outcomes?

Hooman: I love Threadless and Kluster. I think that they are absolutely fantastic as they leverage best-of-breed collaboration mechanisms to deliver a real result – better decisions. At the end of the day, collaborative filtering and other such techniques are useful only insofar as they solve the a valuable problem. Sometimes, technical entrepreneurs get enamored with a concept to a point where they lose sight of their true aim, to solve a problem better/faster/cheaper than anyone else.

Adam: Kiva and TOMS and two sites that are geared towards social enterprise is this a side of the internet that you would like to see expand?

Hooman: I actually know founder’s of both efforts. Jessica and Blake are exceptional people that have leveraged the Internet to solve problems that are – at their very heart – intrinsically social. In Kiva’s case, they are doing an excellent job enabling entrepreneurial growth in areas that would otherwise be missed via a micropayments ecosystem. In the case of TOMS, they are enabling the collective group of shoe buyers to help a disadvantaged group have shoes. Both are amazing.

Adam: What do you see yourself doing in 5 years time?

Hooman: Projects that I love, with people that I love to work with. Life is an incredible thing. We have all the opportunity in the world if we simply open our eyes and seize it. Clearspring has been a fantastic project and it has given me a lot of perspective that has shaped my view on other projects I want to work on. Thanks!

Adam Toren