Are you planning on starting a company?  Maybe you already own a business and are looking to diversify your offerings and increase market share by acquiring a business.  Either way, the information below, culled from Winning Workplaces' employee engagement research, may be helpful to you.

As part of our 2010 Top Small Company Workplace award application, in addition to industry we ask about the prior year's revenue and whether or not the organization was profitable.  The table below shows this information for all 30 industries (excluding "Other") among this year's 497 award applicants:

You may be asking, Why should I use this data as a benchmark versus others that are out there?  You should because to some extent all of our award applicants have figured out how to reap a return from their people practices.  They understand that their ability to better engage employees results in things like greater customer innovation and satisfaction and lower turnover, which are good for the bottom line.  This, in turn, makes these companies much more attractive to banks, VCs, and other investors.

Suggested Additional Reading: On the YoungEntrepreneur website, Matthew Toren has a list of 10 businesses you can start immediately for $100 or less.