What Industries Are Small Businesses In?

The largest areas of the goods-producing sector are construction and manufacturing. Construction businesses are often started by skilled workers, such as electricians, painters, plumbers, and home builders. They tend to be small and generally work on local projects. Though manufacturing is primarily the domain of large businesses, there are exceptions. BTIO/Realityworks, for example, is a manufacturing enterprise (components come from Ohio and China, and assembly is done in Wisconsin).

Another small manufacturer is Reveal Entertainment, which was founded in 1996 to make and distribute board games. Founder Jeffrey Berndt started with a single award-winning game - a three-dimensional finance and real estate game called "Tripoly" - and now boasts a product line of dozens of board games. There are strategy games, like "Squad Seven," which uses a CD soundtrack to guide players through a jungle in search of treasure; children's games, like "Portfolio Junior," which teaches kids the rudiments of personal finances; and party games, like "So Sue Me," in which players get to experience the fun side of suing their neighbors and taking their possessions.

How about making something out of trash? Daniel Blake never followed his mother's advice at dinner when she told him to eat everything on his plate. When he served as a missionary in Puerto Rico, Aruba, Bonaire, and Curacao after his first year in college, he noticed that the families he stayed with didn't follow her advice either. But they didn't throw their uneaten food into the trash. Instead they put it on a compost pile and used the mulch to nourish their vegetable gardens and fruit trees. While eating at an all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet back home at Brigham Young University, Blake was amazed to see volumes of uneaten food in the trash. This triggered an idea: why not turn the trash into money. Two years later, he was running his company - EcoScraps - that collects 40 tons of food scraps a day from 75 grocers (including Costco) and turns it into high-quality potting soil that he sells online and to nurseries and garden supply stores. What's his profit from this venture? Almost half a million dollars on sales of $1.5 million. Beats cleaning your plate. One person's trash is another person's treasure.