20/20 Research Nashville Jim Bryson Founder Bryson is not getting to run the Volunteer State, but he sure knows how to run a company. The recent Republican gubernatorial candidate runs one of the top-rated qualitative research firms, according to the Impulse Survey of Research Facilities. Founded in 1986 as a one-room focus group facility and consultancy, 20/20 Research now employs over 80 employees in three offices (Nashville, Charlotte, N.C., and Miami).

Access America Transport Chattanooga Ted Alling Co-founder This flatbed trucking, brokering and logistics company started by Alling and fellow Samford University graduate Barry Large in 2002 began as an outgrowth of Key James Brick, one of Tennessee's largest brick suppliers (owned by Large's father Jim). Today a nearly $20 million company, its customer base is so diverse that Key represents a mere 3% of current traffic. The company is developing LTL and next-day small packaging services, which offer a higher rate of return.

Ameri Care Services Murfreesboro Tom Swett Owner & president Started in 1993 with one truck, this termite & pest control company now has a customer client base of over 30,000 homeowners and businesses, making it the largest locally owned and operated pest control provider in Rutherford County (40% market share), which is one of America's fastest-growing counties. The company has diversified into moisture management solutions.

American Contractors Exam Services Nashville Chris Prince Owner & president Each state has its own separate requirements for getting licensed to do construction and development. The 15-year-old ACES, which was founded in West Virginia under different ownership but is now headquartered in Nashville, helps contractors pass state license exams whether they be general commercial and residential building, electrical, HVAC, plumbing or business law state exams—well over 30,000 clients to date. It does so via online training, on-site classes and seminars, including training centers in 18 states stretching from Virginia to Arizona.

Asurion Nashville Bret Comolli CEO The world's largest provider of services (handset insurance, mobile applications, roadside assistance, etc.) to wireless carriers and their subscribers (Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, Alltel, Office Depot, Target, etc.), Asurion relocated to Tennessee in 2003. At that time, it served 10 million subscribers with 1,200 employees (600 in Tennessee). Today, Asurion boasts 60 million subscribers and 5,000 employees, nearly half in Middle Tennessee. Growth over the last decade would place Asurion among the top 1% of fastest-growing public companies.

Auto2auto.com Columbia Ben Freeland CEO Third-generation auto dealer Freeland sold off most of his family's physical auto dealerships to pioneer risk-free virtual car shopping. On his site, consumers can shop, finance and complete a purchase, a trend consumers are increasingly comfortable doing. Freeland recently relocated the business from Florida to Maury County. The entrepreneur, whose idea draws inspiration equally from Michael Dell and Fred Smith, expects to one day move as many as 5,000 used cars per month through his facility.

Bar-B-Cutie Franchise Systems Brentwood Ronnie McFarland CEO The BBQ restaurant segment is ripe for a national leader. Bar-B-Cutie opened in 1950 using $2,500 in private funds and is now a 138-employee company under third generation family ownership. Growth is coming through aggressive franchising and a smaller store footprint, allowing for more locations. Recent announcements include locations in Spain, BBQ Mecca Memphis, and at 55 Dallas area addresses. The McFarlands, including COO Brett McFarland, have grown the company over 300% since 2005.

Bell & Associates Construction Brentwood Keith Pyle President & partner Among Tennessee's most high-profile general contractors, behind such Tennessee landmarks as the "Batman" building in downtown Nashville and the Neyland Stadium expansion in Knoxville, this $274 million revenue company is currently working on the state's two largest contracts, the Morgan County Correctional Facility and SmartFix 40 in Knoxville. Working in a majority of Southeastern states, Bell's growth rate from 2005 to 2006 was 84%, dwarfing the industry average of 6-10%.

Cogent Healthcare Nashville Gene Fleming CEO According to a recent Washington Post article, "despite resistance from primary care physicians and fears that the development could erode continuity of care," the ranks of hospitalist—physicians whose primary professional focus is the general medical care of hospitalized patients—"have exploded" from a few hundred in 1997 to 20,000 today. Cogent, which relocated from California to Nashville earlier this year, provides hospitalist programs in 16 states and has averaged 35% annual growth since 2003.

Crown Laboratories Johnson City Jeff Bedard CEO Who knew one of the most effective sunscreens on the market hails from the hills of Appalachia? Crown, a developer and manufacturer of niche pharmaceutical products, has grown nearly 200% since 2005 (an average 75% annual growth rate since 2004, in an industry where the average is 8%). The company's most well-recognized product, Blue Lizard Australian Suncream, is now the official sunscreen of the Boston Red Sox spring training season and Bristol Motor Speedway.

Cybera Franklin Cliff Duffey Chairman, CEO & president Cybera provides high-speed, private data networks and networking solutions for multi-site enterprises in the retail, restaurant, convenience store/petroleum, health care and financial services industries. Co-founders Duffey and Tom Spear self-funded the company for an extended period with the help of a few angel investors. In 2006, the now 90-employee company welcomed a localand national venture capital investment and relocated to Franklin.

Davidson Hotel Co. Memphis John Belden President & CEO Davidson is the tenth largest independent hotel management company in the U.S. Initial growth was fostered through the ownership and management of small, mid-scale hotels in the Southeast, but it was a shift to upscale hotels and a well-trained eye toward renovating, re-branding and repositioning properties that made Davidson an industry power player. The company now operates hotels nationwide under nearly every major flagship, including Hyatt, Marriott, Hilton and Radisson, among others. Over roughly the last 18 months, Davidson has added 11 new management contracts (the most recent being the University of Florida Conference Center in Gainesville) and 11 renovations valued at $72.3 million.

DBI Beverage La Vergne David Ingram CEO Ingram is rolling up the barrel, so to speak. His beer distributorship business, a sister company to Ingram Entertainment, the mammoth DVD and video game distributor he spun off from his family's holdings in 1997, is gobbling up other distributorships nationally, most recently Sacramento, Calif.'s Mesa Beverage (annual revenues—$75 million). Ingram entered the small fraternity of beer distributors nationally via his 2002 purchase of Crown Distributing in Memphis. In his lifetime, the number of distributorships could easily shrink from 1,500 to 100.

Diversified Trust Co. Memphis Samuel N. Graham President & COO Founded in 1994, the company's initial focus was serving the financial needs of its founders and their immediate circle of close acquaintances. Today, DTC is a $17.2 million revenue comprehensive wealth management company with over $2.7 billion in client assets and offices in Memphis, Nashville and Atlanta. Based on state documents, DTC is the largest privately owned independent trust company in Tennessee. Co-founder Bill Spitz is the long-time Vice Chancellor for Investments at Vanderbilt University who presided over a ten-fold increase in the university's endowment from $300 million to almost $3 billion. Recent legislation in Tennessee has made it even more favorable to use a Tennessee trust company for estate planning.

echomusic Nashville Mark Montgomery CEO Using the Web as a central hub, echomusic builds relationships between fans and the creators of the things they love. Stars like Keith Urban, Kelly Clarkson and Dierks Bentley utilize echo's interactive brand-building services to expand their Web presence and foster connections with fans. The company's patent-pending echotools technology mines consumer data and manages consumer relationships. echo generated revenues of $4 million in 2006 and projected more than twice that in 2007.

Educational Outfitters Chattanooga Jamey Elrod Founder & CEO A growing number of school districts are adopting dress codes and implementing school uniform policies. All the better for EO. The nation's first school uniform franchise, EO also has a savvy relationship with industry giant Office Depot to house stores within stores. Growth is also coming through complementary divisions including customized corporate apparel, sports-related gear and branded apparel for fundraising groups.

Educational Services of America Nashville Mark Claypool President & CEO In a day and age of rampant drop-out and failure rates and rising cases of autism, ESA offers cost-effective educational programming to cash-strapped school districts that have cut in-house special ed programs from their budgets in recent years. Fast expanding and profitable, ESA operates private and charter schools, hiring teachers and setting curriculum for its thousands of learning disabled students and students with developmental and behavioral problems in 17 states.

eMids Technologies Nashville Saurabh Sinha President Founded in the Silicon Valley in 1999 and relocated to Nashville in 2004, eMids (with support offices in Bangalore, India) offers IT and business process outsourcing services—including application development/maintenance, quality assurance and health care claims adjudication—to Fortune 2000 companies. As health care companies in Nashville and elsewhere increasingly seek new strategies for IT and business process outsourcing, more growth seems likely.

EMJ Corp. Chattanooga Jim Sattler CEO One of Tennessee's largest general contractors (mainly shopping centers), EMJ was established in 1968, is licensed in 45 states, has over 400 employees, $776 million in annual revenues (headed for over $1 billion) and maintains satellite offices in Boston, Dallas and Sacramento. Growth is coming through specialty fields in addition to retail, like subsidiary Signal Wind Energy, a designer and builder of wind farms, a clean, renewable energy source and growing sector.

Emma Nashville Will Weaver Co-founder This Web-based service co-founded by Clint Smith helps organizations manage e-mail marketing and communications. Originally called Cold Feet Creative, Emma had 25 customers in 2002. Today, it boasts 3,500 customers and about 7,000 accounts across the United States, U.K., Canada and Australia. Organizations using Emma include Gibson Guitar and NPR's Car Talk radio show. The company adds about 200 new accounts a month, and that's without an aggressive outbound sales strategy, which it's now kicking into high gear.

EnerNex Corp. Knoxville Jeffrey Lamoree President Founded in 2003 by Lamoree, Erich Gunther and Robert Zavadil, EnerNex provides electric power research, engineering and consulting services to government, utilities, industry and private institutions. Enernex is also involved in the increased application of renewable energy resources. Considering the desperate need to modernize America's aging electric power grid, EnerNex is poised for more growth. And with energy issues at an all-time high, the market looks good for the company for the foreseeable future.

EnSafe Memphis Phillip G. Coop President & CEO Became one of the largest providers of health and safety consulting services in the Southeast after acquiring Knoxville-based PSC Safety And Health Services—a former BusinessTN Fast 50 company—earlier this year. Founded in 1980, EnSafe also specializes in engineering, environmental and technology consulting services worldwide. The firm's remediation of a Cold War-legacy site in Baku, Azerbaijan, earned the grand award of the statewide engineering professional organization. In less than two years, EnSafe cleaned up massive, decades-old oil contamination in the former Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan, the first major cleanup effort of this legacy oil contamination using state-of-the-art bioremediation and soil-washing technologies, recycling contaminated soil into asphaltic concrete for use as pavement.

EOD Technology Lenoir City Matt Kaye President & CEO Founded in 1987 as a munitions (bombs and bullets) response company, EOD expanded services to include security and mission support services, growing from a $10 million company to a $200 million company due to its work in Iraq. An employee-owned firm and one of Loudon County's largest employers, EOD was one of several companies tabbed to go to Iraq to blow up Saddam Hussein's weapons stockpile following the toppling of his regime. Recently was ranked as the 11th fastest growing small business in the government IT arena by Washington Technology.

Ernst Construction Hendersonville Steve Ernst President Co-founders Steve Ernst, J.R. Ernst and Mark Flick are currently building Indian Lake Village, a mixed-use project bordered by nearby Old Hickory Lake. The company's expansion into Williamson County is projected to contribute a significant percentage of growth to the company over the next year. In addition, business relocations to Nashville bode well for this home builder/remodeler.