Julie Burleson, 44, mom of two, ages 12 and 8, and Suzy Nettles, 43, mom of three, ages 13, 12, and 7; founders of Young Chefs Academy, based in Waco, TX.  '07 Projections: Franchises, 250 in 30 states. Gross income: $5 million.

Our story: Business flops are a big part of our success. In the dozen or so years since our oldest children were born, we'd searched for a business idea to help us avoid going back to teaching (Suzy) and administrative work (Julie). First there was our herb shop—too time-intensive. Then there was our quest to market a hair clip that didn't fall out of our daughters' hair. But it didn't make a dime. Our catering business? It felt too much like housework.

But a funny thing happened while we were cooking other people's dinners: Andrew, Julie's 4-year-old, would materialize and ask to help mix and measure. The proverbial lightbulb finally went on: a cooking school for kids!

To test the waters, we put an ad in a local freebie parenting paper. We didn't list an address because we didn't have one. When the phone began to ring, we convinced a local coffeehouse to let us offer birthday parties during its off-hours on weekends. Judging from the volume of calls, we realized there was a huge appetite for kids' classes that were more Food Network than babysitting. Both parents and kids wanted classes that taught kids to make baked apples and burritos, not just to ice cupcakes. So we rented a store using the money we'd made so far, did the renovation ourselves and offered afternoon classes and camps. All the while we were thinking, If this concept is so popular in Waco, why not franchise it? By selling the rights to other entrepreneur moms, we could expand the business quickly, and moms could reap the benefits of buying a franchise: low investment, low risk and high success rates.

Having been through FastTrac (www.fasttrac.org), a continuing-ed business course, we knew we'd developed a formula that could be duplicated. Even though we had only a year's experience under our belt, we called Waco entrepreneur Gary Findley, whom we discovered through friends. Gary was then the president of the incredibly successful franchise Curves. During a lunch meeting, Gary "got" our idea. He understood that cooking is math, reading, geography