Entrepreneurs who make it work -- at home

Outsourcing also looms large as a business practice used by the best financial performers in our ranking. It seems like almost anything can be contracted out these days, making a home-based enterprise a more sane and elegant operation that can be run effectively from an extra bedroom. Accounting services, manufacturing, telephone answering, Web site design and maintenance -- even lunch, outsourced to the local pizza parlor and provided to you by express delivery, are all candidates.

Surprises, surprises

Besides these common threads, the 2007 submissions offered plenty share of surprises and exposed vast differences within the individual Top Ten categories.

If there were a word wackier than "wacky," it very well might have described some of the outrageous contenders in this category, which proved the most difficult for our judges to pick a winner in.

At StartupNation, we labored over whether the world's largest water bottle or a service that lets you enjoy happy hour with your dog should win. Of course, a "tech-gear" entrepreneur, with a whole new level of pocket-protector geek fashion, was also worthy, pitted against an accessories line inspired by an evil-eye talisman (don't ask). And then there was the home-based entrepreneur who sells 10-foot-long drill bits made for routing wires from an attic to a crawl space, and the one who converted a disabled-student school bus into a mobile workout gym that pulls up in front of your house.

• Talk back: Would you chuck your job to create your own business at home?

If you've ever questioned whether American innovation is alive and kicking, you'll take heart in the finalists of the Wackiest category. Eventually we selected Nashville Lappy Hour, a Nashville, Tenn., event company that allows folks to share cocktails with their canines.

Greens, grungies and guardians

That's not to say that it was easy to choose winners in the other Top Ten categories. Submissions for the greenest were aplenty. We selected a company called Sweet Onion Creations of Bozeman, Mont., which makes environmentally friendly building models for architectural firms.

Our Grungiest selection also qualified as a green business, but since Northwest Redworms of Camas, Wash., deals with worms and compost, we had to place it in the former category. The Most-Slacker Friendly was a little easier. We picked Snoloha, a Traverse City, Mich., clothing company inspired by Jimmy Buffett.

For the Most Innovative, our challenge was making a clear case for one company over another -- the vast majority of entries were innovative to their core. To overcome this challenge, we awarded a company that was not only innovative but important to families. Our judges selected Child Shield, U.S.A., of Tucson, Ariz., which offers a service aiming to educate people and protect children and families from child predators.

Basking in the spotlight

Perhaps the most surprising takeaway from the submissions was that almost no one wanted to boast about how much money his or her company makes. Getting those stats was next to impossible. As with the bragging-right revenue stats you find in other rankings, we figured that giving home-based entrepreneurs the opportunity to flaunt their success would be a huge hit.

However, that was the last thing they wanted published. Releasing that information publicly is often OK, even encouraged, in traditional business circles. But for home-based entrepreneurs, this treads on the personal and private. There are limits to what they're comfortable allowing the public to know about them financially. Respecting the finalists' privacy, we publicly released the financial performance of only the winner and runner-up in the Best Financial Performer category.

So why did these businesses enter the Home-Based 100 competition in the first place? Because they want a piece of the spotlight. In any way other than financially, home-based entrepreneurs flooded us with their attributes and tales of their exploits -- things they were thrilled to brag about, such as their achievements, their breakthroughs, their environmentally sustainable practices or the screaming needs they address.

Finally, on a promising note for entrepreneurs based at home, we were surprised by the amount of support this first ranking of home-based businesses received from major corporations. For years, the big companies made other big companies their sole priority. But no longer. They've woken up to the fact that huge growth potential exists in serving the relatively untapped market of small business and the millions of home-based businesses within that sector.

Nameplate brands such as Microsoft Office Live Small Business, Dell and Southwest Airlines all jumped on board to encourage participation and support the ranking (Microsoft publishes MSN Money). It shows that these corporations now see home-based entrepreneurs as a priority. That means more solutions, more products and more services are being made available to home-based businesses today -- and even more options will be available in the future.

Rich Sloan is one of America's leading entrepreneurial experts. He is co-host of StartupNation Radio, co-author of "StartupNation: Open for Business" (Doubleday) and co-founder of StartupNation, a leading online community and content site for entrepreneurs.

Published Nov. 5, 2007

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