By Sam Walker

What started from a small loan to print 10,000 recipe books has grown into a multi-million dollar award winning enterprise and one of the nation’s most successful home-based businesses.

Annette Sym’s Symply Too Good empire began with a passion to help others lose weight while still eating great food. Her first book sold out in two weeks. The queen of low-fat cooking now has five number one bestsellers under her belt and is gearing up to launch the series in America later this year. And it’s all run from the comfort of her Sunshine Coast home.

When she launched the business more than a decade ago, Sym was a mum with a young family and didn’t have the funds to rent office space and buy all the furnishings that go with a commercial establishment. So she set up in a small space off the family room – with no door.

Today Sym, who often speaks about successful home businesses for government and corporate organisations, recommends having a dedicated office space with a door, or at the least, a partition.

She says the flexibility of being able to pick the kids up from school and not have to take a day off if they were home sick were clear advantages. But her children, family, friends and neighbours also needed to learn that she couldn’t be interrupted while at work.

The business has grown from a partnership to a company but she still operates from home – now with a dedicated office – and she loves that it takes her one minute to get to work and she can dress casually.

But Sym is not alone. The Australian Bureau of Statistics 2004 figures cite nearly 770,000 home-based businesses across Australia.

Robert Gerrish, business coach, author and founder of Flying Solo (www.flyingsolo.com.au) says the overwhelming motivation for running a home-based business is lifestyle.