The 37 Best Home-Based Businesses To Start In Tennessee [2024]

I’m Austin L. Church, a writer and brand strategist. My wife and I live with our three professional mistake makers in Knoxville, Tennessee, near the Great Smoky Mountains. After getting laid off during the recession back in 2009, I accidentally started my own freelance writing business, which eventually took me into selling an array of creative services, then developing iOS apps, then co-founding a tech startup, and then starting a branding and marketing studio called Balernum.

AustinLChurch.com where I started sharing what I have learned. My new course, Freelance Cake, is a business growth course for freelancers and consultants who want to make more money and enjoy more freedom at the same time. The launch in December went well, and this year, I plan to focus on scaling up sales from around $1,000 per month to $3,000.

I’m Sam Davidson, a four-time entrepreneur and the co-founder and CEO of Batch. We are a regional gift and retail company specializing in offering Southern, handmade, small-batch gifts that are perfect for corporate events, meetings, weddings, and everyday use. We are based in Nashville, TN with our flagship retail store inside the historic Nashville Farmers Market.

To date, we have worked with over 300 small businesses to curate their products and sell to our customers in our store, online, and via our corporate gift program. We have shipped our gifts to all 50 states and a dozen countries, selling over 75,000 gift batches earning annual revenue now nearing $1,800,000.

My name is Christopher Thomas. I am the managing partner and co-owner of a cocktail mixer brand called Eli Mason. We make premium cocktail mixers and syrups using real ingredients like cane sugar and premium bitters in Nashville, Tennessee.

Our flagship product is The Old Fashioned Cocktail Mixer. Just mix it with your favorite whiskey and you have a delicious Old Fashioned in less than 30 seconds. We have two main customers. Our first customer is someone who enjoys a delicious cocktail, but they don’t want the hassle of figuring out the right ratios of sugar to bitters, should they muddle fruit or not, we make it super easy for them to make a consistent and delicious Old Fashioned in less than 30 seconds. Our second customer is the cocktail enthusiast who loves making cocktails from scratch in their home, but sometimes they just want EASY. We give them that EASY option for a solid drink made with real ingredients.

I’m Adam Tanaka and I own a screen printing and merch company, Life and Limb Printing. We specialize in apparel and headwear decoration.

Life and Limb Printing is down quite a bit from last year but I have been head down creating several revenue streams covering various industries that have been great and allow me to maintain focus and more freedom.

My name is Mark Johnson. In 2017, I launched Hobnail Trekking Co., an adventure travel company that specializes in treks to Mt. Everest Base Camp and other epic locales in the Himalayas, as perhaps the least qualified person on the planet to do so. By the end of 2019, we will have sent 23 Americans on this life-changing journey.

As a business, Hobnail is still a “side-hustle” and will probably require another 2-3 years to become self-sustaining, but that’s what we signed up for. If the company closed tomorrow, it would’ve been the adventure of a lifetime.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkr8ljyzfEU

I am Tom Boyd, Founder, and President of Boyd Hollow Resorts. I have launched 17 businesses in my lifetime. I am presently 82 years old. I have written 3 books, one on the business life of my son who built a billion-dollar company, ran for governor of the state of Tennessee, and now is the President of the University of Tennessee.

My last book, Bokee’s Trek, was a work of joy and hope to create a better vision of how people should live. The book has lent itself to many commercial opportunities, namely building a Village called Ancient Lore that emphasizes ancient underground houses and Villagers.

This Village, which is unique in every detail, is envisioned to be a 5-star boutique resort and event center specializing in executive retreats, group celebrations, and high-end weddings. This property will be the first of many Villages built around the World based on the high demand that we have seen before opening. Each Village will be designed featuring a character from the book, Bokee’s Trek.

My name is Duffy Betterton and I am the co-owner of Dance Dress Couture. My mother, Debi Camp, is my business partner. We sell ballroom dance dresses and dancewear to the ballroom competitive industry.

We recently launched a new service called The Ballroom Box. It is a quarterly subscription box targeted to the same audience.

I’m Jessica Bishop, and I founded the top wedding planning resource and support community for couples who want to plan a beautiful wedding on a budget they can actually afford! I started The Budget Savvy Bride in 2008 while planning my own wedding as a way to share ideas and resources with other brides who were experiencing similar challenges. In the 12 years since, the site has grown to be the top online destination for budget wedding advice, ideas, and inspiration. Our advice and tips have been featured in national media outlets like Good Morning America, COSMOPOLITAN, Glamour, and BRIDES magazine, just to name a few.

Our goal is to help make the wedding planning process simple, savvy, and stress-free by sharing resources and helpful tools to save couples time and money in their planning process. The heart of our mission is to encourage couples to plan a wedding they can be proud of without taking on debt, so they can start their marriage off on the right financial footing.

My name is Ben Elizer, and I am the Founder and President of Velocity International Group, a full-scale logistics company, offering SameDay delivery, Expediting, Distribution, Fulfillment, andmany Warehousing Services. We offer to consult and some other services as well to help our customers succeed in an ultra-competitive environment. Velocity started with 2 vans and many faces to face conversations. We now have 10+ vehicles, including trucks, and have grown to 25k+ square feet of warehouse space as well to best serve our customers.

Over the past 2 years, our revenue has grown over 300%, which has completely contributed to the great people and culture we have at Velocity. After having to move out of my apartment (because I put everything financially I had into this company), and move back into my mom’s house in my mid 20’s, it was difficult, but just 6 months later we had our first small office and warehouse space. I’m fortunate I had a support system to move back into, or else Velocity might not be here today. The business has grown ever since because of hard work, trust, and relationships. We focus on what is important.

Hi, I’m Tippy Tippens, Chief Eternal Optimist at Goods that Matter. I started with a soap that gives to oil spill cleanup in 2010, BirdProject Soap. This was my way as a designer to help after the BP Oil Spill Disaster in 2010. I got my start on Kickstarter with that product and then was inspired to start the company, Goods that Matter. We design and make a variety of eco-goods from candles to custom first aid kits to cards - each product raises funds for a unique cause.

Goods that Matter creates everyday design goods, with extraordinary impact. Each Matter product is handmade in the U.S., of eco-friendly materials, & gives back to unique social and environmental causes. 10% of all proceeds flow to causes that impact the health, happiness, and sustainability of our communities both locally and for our neighbors around the world.

We are proud to be the first Benefit Corporation in the state of Louisiana and to have donated $43,632 to date to our partner causes! Goods that Matter works to make the world a better place by creating products and collaborations that matter.

My name is Karl, and I’m the founder of Draft. After almost a decade leading engineering teams at venture-funded startups, I decided it was time to leap into entrepreneurship. Draft is a productized service that provides technical content to software engineering blogs on a subscription basis.

August is my third month running the business and first month full-time, and I’m on track to bring in $10,000 in (mostly) recurring revenue this month. The business isn’t going to replace my salary as a CTO right away, but the freedom of running my own business has given me a lot of freedom to stretch my creative muscles and spend time with my family.

My son Joe and dog Chili. We get to hang out together every day now!

My full-time job is in advertising. (Think Don Draper with less Brylcreem,) And from 2005 to 2012, I worked at JWT, the United States Marine Corps’ longtime ad agency. As the Creative Director, I was in charge of recruitment advertising - writing the television commercials, print ads, billboards, etc - for the Marines during two of the most unpopular wars in our nation’s history.

Every time I’d go to a Marine base to film a commercial, I’d bring my then 5-year-old daughter back a small gift from the Marine Exchange. At the time, she was having trouble sleeping - bad dreams, fear of the dark, monsters under the bed - the usual fears of a young kid.

So I bought her a teddy bear and told her a story.

My name is Sam Evans. I am 23 years old and a recent graduate from Penn State Altoona. I am the founder of You Call We Haul Junk Removal, a junk removal company that removes anything from single items to hoarder home cleanouts. We’re located in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and have been in business (part-time) since May of 2016.

We service any and everyone who may have unneeded items they are looking to get rid of. People often ask what items we consider junk, to us junk is anything you no longer need or want.

Our main customers are middle-aged and up adults, typically with a higher income that do not want to or are unable to do the work themselves. We complete over 75 jobs per month, bring in about $20,000 in revenue per month profiting about 65% per job.

I’m Nick Bey and I run Bey Moss, an e-commerce platform that sells products infused with Chondrus Crispus or, better known as, sea moss. Our flagship product started with sea moss gel, which was used as a food additive. Our customers are men and women concerned about their health and using beauty products that are safe for your skin.

Bey Moss started on January 1, 2020, and has made over $800,000 to-date with less than $10,000 overall in ads. Our customers realize that they are investing in their health when they consume our products.

Hey, I’m Jordyn and I’m the owner of Jordyn Alison Designs. My intentions with my products are to bring joy to your daily life as well as help connect you with others.

For a couple of years, the only thing I sold in my shop was greeting cards. But in March of 2018, I started selling vinyl stickers, which proved to be successful. I now have greeting cards, stickers, notepads, apparel and more in my shop.

Part of what I think makes my business unique is that I have a pretty strong digital side to my business as well. For that side, I work on making SVG cut files and hand-lettered fonts. As someone who can’t sit still and do the same thing every day, it’s really nice to have two distinct sides to my business that I can switch back and forth from.

My name is Suzann Kaltbaum, I am a fine art photographer.

“I just snap and go”. Intuition is an entrepreneur’s secret weapon. What started as a passion project, travel photography has turned into a lucrative business.

I’m Stacey, founder and President of Liberated Specialty Foods, based in the quiet town of Madison, Alabama. We run a food manufacturing business making a full line of baked food (made mainly from nut flours) like almond flour pizza crust, cashew bread, and coconut flour donuts, along with additive-free sauces like ketchup and pizza sauce; with the specific mission to help those suffering from autoimmune diseases like Crohn’s and Colitis, that ALSO fill the niche of Keto, Paleo, Atkins, and other trending diets.

We sell online and to retailers. We went from about 100 retailers with our products in 2016 to over 1,000 today, including major chains from Whole Foods and Sprouts to Wal-Mart -- and we hope to keep adding more!

Hello! My name is D’Shawn Russell and I am the founder and CEO of Southern Elegance Candle Company. I started the company 4 years ago as a side hustle to make some extra money on the weekends and to get me out of the house. But it quickly grew to much more than I expected.

Southern Elegance Candle Company is all about loving and living in the South. We created home fragrance products that all have a southern theme to them and all of our fragrances are based on Southern agriculture. Apple? Check! Pine? Check! Cotton (or course) Check! Missing the Southern Sunshine? We got a fragrance for you. Our core group of customers are women that live in the South or people that appreciate Southern culture.

Our flagship products at the moment are our candles. We offer three different sizes; travel tin, mason jar and large tumbler. We also have wax melts and room spray. But, we will be slowly rolling out new products over the next year to include an apparel line.

Hi, my name is Todd and I’m a serial entrepreneur. After a long history of building various businesses, I created ByteStand, a friendly software development company run by ecommerce nerds who get excited about weird things like “cross-platform integrations” and “fulfillment networks” and “coffee”.

We design Shopify apps, with three apps currently in the app store and over 2,000 shops using our software. Our two main apps are ByteStand and FBA Shipping, which were designed to help Amazon sellers diversify and generate more revenue by importing their Amazon inventory to Shopify and exporting their Shopify orders to Amazon for fulfillment.

We also created FreshCredit, Shopify's first true store credit app. Between all three apps, we generate about $17,000/month in revenue.

My name is Paul Sciortino, I am the founder of Ayo Supplements and we sell Matcha Boost, the best matcha tea supplement you will find on the market. It’s a simple

product; organic, ceremonial grade Japanese matcha powder combined with vitamin B-12 to support natural energy.

Matcha’s renowned health benefits are widely recognized and it is one of the healthiest substances in the world. It’s an acquired taste, however, and prep time can make it difficult to fit into a daily routine. I thought that if I created a quality product in a convenient “take with you anywhere” capsule, people couldn’t afford not to take it.

My name is Ethan Holmes. I’m from Shaker Heights, Ohio and I am the 25-year-old founder and CEO of Holmes Mouthwatering Applesauce.

Holmes is an all natural applesauce product I created at the age of 15 and have since grown to hundreds of grocery stores throughout the Midwest.

I’m Doug Geiger, founder of Can You Handlebar, a men’s grooming product company. We’re one of those low-key-high-quality brands.

We are best known for beard oils and balms, moustache wax and inventing the first application brush for beard products, the Can You Handlebar Beard Oil Brush®. We are carefully and consistently extending our product line and distribution.

In our first three years our production grew from a kitchen countertop with a crockpot I stole from my wife to “making a million bucks” and a 10,000 square foot building with a whole fleet of crockpots. Meanwhile, our retail presence -- which began on the counter of a gracious proprietor of the corner gas station -- has grown to our own network of barbers and salons across the US, international distribution and most visibly, the shelves of every Art of Shaving.

Hi everyone, my name is Mitchell and I’m one of the three founders of Patriot Chimney. We sweep, repair, and build chimneys and also service and repair dryer vents around the Roanoke Valley in Virginia.

We created the company in order to provide really, really awesome, transparent, and trustworthy chimney and dryer vent services in our region. You see, chimney companies don’t typically receive a positive reputation and we’re out to change that. In fact, we’ve been fortunate enough to provide our services to more than 350 homes in an area that spans from Lynchburg, VA all the way down to Blacksburg, VA. What’s more is that we’ve also been able to generate more than $212,000 in revenue during our first year, with 8% of that being net profit.

I studied marketing in college, but my experience in the past few years has been a mix between marketing and sales, so my focus is primarily around building the sales and marketing strategy for us. My brother (Matt) and a friend of his (Billy) focus on the operations, actually getting on the roof and doing some real dirty work.

My name is David Dewane and I’m the co-founder and president of the Mouse Book Club. We make phone-sized physical books you carry around with you so that you have a decent alternative to reading your phone.

I’m an architect, professor, journalist, hustler, and the lowest form of tech junkie. I’m the kind of creep you’d see checking their phone at the dinner table when the baby is crying. That’s one of the reasons I started Mouse and am aligning our company with the movement towards digital minimalism, that is, a more limited and thoughtful integration of technology into our lives.

So far, we have mailed over 40,000 books to 60+ countries and all 50 states. We’ve done about $170,000 in sales in the first two years.

Hi! My name is Natalie, and I help people build conscious wardrobes through my blog Sustainably Chic. It’s the ultimate destination for everything in a sustainable fashion. From learning what it is to brands who produce it, you can find all of that information on my blog. Sustainably Chic is here to show you fashion can exist responsibly.

While I mainly write about women’s fashion, I also speak about men’s fashion, children’s fashion, fashion in the home, and green beauty. I find fashion to be everywhere in life, so it’s important to touch on every little aspect I can. Most importantly, almost anything you use has a sustainable option, and Sustainably Chic is here to showcase it.

My name is Michael, and I’m the owner of Breathe Healthy.

As a kid, I ran a lawn and field mowing business. Unfortunately, I also had allergies. There were times when I would be in the fields all day, but then had to come home with my eyes swelled shut because of my allergies. I tried masks, but they were uncomfortable, and not very easy for a kid to keep on his face.

A more urban lifestyle and career kept me away from the worst of my allergies until I entered the military. Once again, time “out in the field” brought back my allergies with a vengeance. While serving in a desert environment, we often had to operate in sandstorms and high dust and dirt environments. Often, a shirt or rag wrapped around the face was what we used to protect ourselves.

My name is Michael Chou, and I am an aerospace engineer by trade.

It’s always bothered me how difficult it was to scoop hard ice cream. I hated trying to melt the ice cream using heated spoons, or the microwave. I just knew there was a better way. It took me years to develop the most perfect ice cream scoop.

There is definitely blood sweat and tears in the product. Heck, we call it the Midnight Scoop because I spent so many nights obsessing about it and losing so much sleep.

I’m Clifton Muckenfuss, I am Co-Founder of Carolina Exteriors, a Specialty Replacement Contractor based in Apex, NC, serving the Raleigh Metro Area. Carolina Exteriors offers residential home improvement services including Roofing, Siding, Windows, Doors, and Gutters. We believe that if we “build people, we build a winning team and combined, we Build Exceptional Customer Experiences. Our dedication to our people and customers and execution on our mission has led to us receiving numerous industry awards for customer service.

Carolina Exteriors was founded in 2010 amidst the last housing crisis and recession. We realized and understood that most contractors were great carpenters or “tradesmen” but not savvy business owners, and many found themselves overleveraged and without a sustainable business model. We [founders] drew from our previous business experience in Sales, Management, Customer Service and Operations Management to create a “customer first” company backed by systems and processes.

We bootstrapped the business on $3,500 and now 9 years later generate $4,000,000 in revenue.

My name is Nick Fortosis and I am the founder of GEO 101 Design, a company that specializes in creating one of a kind cork maps with modern minimalist aesthetics. Our goal is to turn your love of travel into your own personalized home décor.

Founded in late 2017, I run the business by myself and manufacture everything in my garage workshop in West Michigan. We have been steadily growing and are currently doing roughly $2000 a month in sales through our website and our Etsy shop.

My name is Russell Michelson and I’m the founder of Paper Box SEO. We’re a boutique SEO agency based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Unlike most SEO agencies, we focus 100% of our efforts on SEO and don’t work in other types of online marketing like PPC or social media.

Most of our clients are small to medium-sized businesses who want to grow their organic traffic and get more customers. We almost exclusively work long term contracts for a fixed monthly fee. Our packages are all-inclusive, meaning they include on-page optimization, content creation, link building, and monthly reporting. At the moment, we’re doing $20k/month in revenue and our team consists of me, a full-time employee, and a part-time contractor who is our dedicated writer. We also have an accountant and web developer who we use on an as-needed basis.

My name is Mike Luongo and I am the Managing Member of Total Home Supply in Fairfield, NJ. Total Home Supply was founded in 2010 by a group of disgruntled people working for other Internet companies. We were not happy with the direction of these companies so we got together under a common concept of creating a company that would treat our customers the way we would like to be treated.

Since we sell heating and cooling products that can be purchased elsewhere, we knew we needed to find a compelling reason for customers to choose us. We also knew that just selling cheap was not the answer so we became the leader in customer service, both before and after the sale.

The above is why we have double-digit growth while our competitors struggle to maintain the volume from previous years.

Hello, my name is Steve Sanders and I’m the creator of a website called Episode Ninja. The primary goal of the site is to rank the “best” episodes of a given TV show.

In my day job, I work as a web and app developer at a company in the smart home space. Episode Ninja is still firmly a side project for me, currently making around $1000 a month in revenue. It is monetized through display advertising and TV streaming affiliate programs.

Traffic to the website has been steadily growing since launch and is currently at more than 200,000 unique visitors per month.

Why hello there, my name is Sam and I am the owner and head developer over at Sam Munoz Consulting, LLC! We are a WordPress development company, specializing in upscale websites for high-performing businesses as well as affordable website templates called the Effortless Website Kits for new business owners & entrepreneurs.

Our purpose is to EMPOWER business owners & entrepreneurs to harness their website to work for their biz as the #1 MVP. We strive to make the tech side of the business overall less scary and overwhelming through bite-sized education, our digital products, and speaking in human terms.

We are a dynamite team of 3 tech-savvy ladies. The team includes Sam (me!) owner & lead developer, Laura Kåmark - business and project manager & Karyn Paige - head tech wizard.

Hi, I’m Jeremy Simon, founder of 3D Universe, LLC. We are an e-commerce value-added reseller, providing digital fabrication solutions, such as 3D printers, laser cutters, and vacuum forming machines, as well as related supplies and accessories. We represent several different brands, but the Ultimaker line of 3D printers is our strongest product line.

Our customers include educational organizations, government entities, commercial organizations across a wide variety of vertical markets, and individual consumers.

We have developed a business model that leverages online technologies to minimize operational overhead, allowing us to conduct a profitable business with significant revenues using a very small team of employees.

Hello! My name is Savitra and I am the owner of the influential online boutique New Era of Style, LLC. New Era of Style is a mid-priced online boutique that is dedicated to catering to the fashion needs of working professional men and women.

New Era of Style is a Career and Lifestyle brand. Our selections are versatile and transition with the busy schedules of our customers. Our best-selling items include our selection of tops, vegan-leather bags, and wardrobe accessories. We work with several unique wholesalers and designers to bring the best in fashion. To create exclusivity with our merchandise, we offer a limited inventory of selected items.

Hey there! So excited to be going over everything that’s happened this last year. My name is Anslea and I run Forgotten Mermaids, a brand of temporary tattoos inspired by mermaids, designed by humans. Our tattoos give the illusion of mermaid scales so even if you’re not ready to commit to the mermaid lifestyle, you can still add a little mermaid magic to your every-day outfit. Currently, we have two tattoo styles available in six colors, alongside a variety of clothing items such as leggings and swimsuits that share this same scale pattern.

We started the year with big plans for expanding our sales channels and product line, but due to COVID-19 our timeline was pushed way back and ultimately we had to change our vision quite drastically. Thankfully, since the business was built on the premise of being adaptable, adjusting to our new reality was relatively painless and has since opened up opportunities we otherwise wouldn't have explored.

Currently, we’ve seen a 40% increase in sales compared to this time last year and hope to keep that trending upwards with new products and expanded marketing tactics.

My name is Nick and I am the founder of Romans Tide. My business started out selling on eBay in early 2015, by November we moved to Amazon. Our method of selling was 100% arbitrage back then.

By 2017 we did over $1,000,000 in revenue on the Amazon platform. I had no idea what I had gotten into. I had no business experience and had no idea how to manage all this money flowing through the business.

Now we have our own Private Label Products, a couple of wholesale accounts (pursuing more), and a full-scale countrywide Retail Arbitrage operation that generates six figures a month in revenue with 20-25% profit margins.

A lot of people say “you can’t scale Retail Arbitrage”. We prove them wrong on a daily basis.

Nowadays, Romans Tide is becoming more of a distributor for my other product creations and brands. My journey in E-Commerce has had me sell everything from toys and clothes to trampolines and patio sets. We sell to all types of customers so that led me to develop my own brands.

Right now we have:

Java Advisor - Sells coffee, tea, and related products @JavaAdvisor

Mind Your Grind - Started out as my personal blog but is being turned into a sales channel for customers focused on health, fitness, and mindset. @Mind_Your_Grind

RTX (in development) - This is my Sports and Outdoor Brand focused on serving the customers involved in extreme sports. My love for riding waves is what fuels this project