Fast Lane Entrepreneur and Dun & Bradstreet's fourth annual Hot 100 -- the fastest-growing new small businesses in America.

It's an Ed-Mcmahon-at-the-door kind of moment for us. Thisis the time, every year-the fourth in a row, for those keepingtrack-when we announce the 100 hottest new small businesses in thecountry. With help from Dun & Bradstreet (D&B), theworld's leading research-based business information provider,we comb the national commercial landscape to determine theentrepreneurial equivalents of sweepstakes winners.
Or maybe not, on second thought. For while sweepstakes winnersdepend on pure, unadulterated luck, successful entrepreneursrealize that luck is only a byproduct of pure, unadulterated hardwork. Factor in pure, unadulterated passion, and you've got asnear a formula as exists for running a thriving business.

"Small-business owners really have a passion for what theydo," says William F. Doescher, senior vice president and chiefcommunications officer for D&B. "Every one of these hot100 [companies' owners] have this type of attitude-or theywouldn't be successful."

Not that we measure attitude in this listing. What we domeasure-based on D&B's mammoth database-is company salesgrowth from the year of inception. The criteria we use includes thefollowing:

• The founder must be actively involved in daily operations andmust control at least 51 percent of the business.
  
  
• The business must have been founded no earlier than 1995.
  
  
• Annual sales must have exceeded $1 million in 1997.
  
  
• Companies must meet the SBA's definition of a smallbusiness, based on the number of employees and sales figures.(These numbers vary according to industry.)
  
  Of special interest this year is the presence of Internet firms inour ranking. "This is the first year our list has includedsmall businesses making a living off the In-ternet," observesDoescher. "It's just further evidence that smallbusinesses [and consumers] are migrating to the Internet. [Infact,] 47 percent of small-business owners now have access to theInternet."
  
  Access to a booming economy is obviously another plus for ourentrepreneurial sweepstakes winners. Consumer confidence is high;small-business confidence is even higher. Ironically, however, thelatter situation may be more a reflection of the participantsthemselves than of any economic indicators. "I'm not sure[entrepreneurs] pay an awful lot of attention to whether the stockmarket continues to grow or whether the economy is in goodshape," Doescher says. "They just want to start their ownbusinesses. They want to be owners of their owndestiny."
  
  On that note, prepare to meet a few of these owners of their owndestinies in the profiles included on the following pages. Theseare people for whom pure, unadulterated hard work and luckaren't just concepts-they're a way of life. These arepeople whose entrepreneurial dreams were not only realized, butwere realized at a speed that probably even took them bysurprise.
  
  But such is the nature of dreams, we suppose. They can-and oftendo-come true. "The great American dream today is [to launch]your own business," says Doescher. "And the wide varietyof companies in the Hot 100 underscores the fact that anyone canpursue this dream."
  
  And that just reaffirms our initial feelings: This is anEd-McMahon-at-the-door kind of moment.
  
  

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