Here's how you can live, work and make money under one roof.

Every ten seconds, somebody starts a new home-based business in the United States. As if this statistic - courtesy of BIS Strategy Decisions - wasn't striking enough, the trend is accelerating: In the past 14 years alone, the number of home-based workers has grown from six million to 32 million - with no slowdown in sight.

With home-based workers earning roughly double the average salaried worker's annual wages of $25,000, it's no wonder that more and more folks are joining the ranks of the self-employed.

In fact, an estimated 8,493 new home shops open up every day. Roughly three out of four will still be in business five years from now, according to Paul and Sarah Edwards, authors of Working From Home: Everything You Need To Know About Living And Working Under The Same Roof (Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam, New York, $15.95). If you're seriously considering starting your own home-based business, various indicators suggest that you may be riding the wave of the future.

Once based on an industrial economy, the United States is now driven by an information-and-service economy. Over the past decade, Fortune 500 companies have laid off 4.4 million workers, and smaller companies have steadily reduced their workforces.

As corporations continue to downsize, reorganize, merge and purge, many professionals will search for ways to take control of their careers. At the same time, technological wonders - namely personal computers, modems, fax machines, laser printers and desktop copy machines - make working from home as productive, efficient, competitive, and certainly as convenient as working from an office.

Every November BLACK ENTERPRISE profiles individuals who have forsworn traditional nine-to-five office jobs and are making their homes pay off in more ways than one.

TRADE SECRETS: WORKS OF ART

FOR DISPLAY AND WEAR

Realizing that a home-based business would give her the creative and financial freedom she desired, Marcia Duvall took the concept of a "home salon" - popular in Europe in the early 20s and 30s - and established Trade Secrets in 1992. The former manager for Circles Salon Boutique in Washington, D.C., and 20-year retail industry veteran aspired to go beyond designing a home-based clothing boutique that was the equivalent of just a rack in someone's living room.

Rather, Trade Secrets is a fascinating showplace where merchandise is displayed on the walls like fine works of art on exhibition. The difference is that everything is for sale, with prices ranging anywhere from $10 for a necklace to $150 for a Gabardine wool coat.

Trade Secrets offers an array of clothing, accessories and collectibles. Peruse Duvall's one-bedroom apartment and you'll see how she has weaved textiles, mud cloth, sculptures and fashions into a unique design of colors and textures.

As the sole entity of Trade Secrets, the 40-year-old Duvall is buyer, fashion coordinator, systems administrator, customer relations and public relations expert. Working on a by invitation or appointment only basis, the savvy entrepreneur has a stable clientele of 75 to 100 buyers. Her four seasonal salon shows, plus at least two holiday events per year, draw a crowd of about 300.

Duvall believes in marketing a total package. Past shows have had provocative themes, for instance, the theme for last February's extravaganza was "black women and empowerment." The previous year she displayed various African sculpture from the Benin Kingdom. Duvall hopes the themed shows set a positive tone for her customers.

Her handiwork doesn't end there. Duvall has brought the salon to potential buyers outside the capital. Traveling several times during the year, she recreates her concept in other homes, breaking down dining rooms and turning them into clothing boutiques for the day. "This is a good way for me to establish markets outside of the area," she explains, "without having to operate store-fronts in those places."

Starting out, Duvall had a hard time getting a wholesale license. The idea of a home clothing salon may have had backing across the seas, but it had no real model in the United States. After filing tons of paperwork and submitting cost projections, the licensing bureau could not envision the nature of the operation and rejected Duvall's request.

"Without a wholesale license, I was unable to attend major boutique shows those first couple of months," she says. After dipping into her personal savings - taking out $7,500 for operating capital - the resourceful entrepreneur beat the streets or stores of New York to obtain the stylish merchandise for her first show.

Eventually, Duvall had to recruit someone to troubleshoot the license for her. "It wasn't time-effective for me to spend two to three hours a day sitting in an office, waiting just to talk to someone," she explains. It took more than 60 days and half a dozen visits before Duvall was officially licensed.

Brazil's information technology industry faces a quandary: Its world-class skills aren't known in most of the world. Despite boasting state-of-the-art systems and software providers, the country has not been able to export, its know-bow or products to many markets beyond its vast borders.

Instead, it's playing catch-up as the bulk of the world's information technology outsourcing goes to rivals in India and other developing nations. "Brazil is a hidden gem in the world of information technology," says Rodrigo Leite, business director for Eccelera Gestao de Participacoes Societarias, a Sao Paulo venture-capital company that invests in technology companies throughout Latin America. "There are companies here with a lot of potential but, historically, they have not been able to export."

Brazilian companies by necessity have developed some of the most advanced software in the world in recent decades. An unstable economy and runaway inflation meant Brazilian banks needed sophisticated software merely to keep up with the value of their assets. Local developers arose to supply them and in the process have garnered enough skills to create complex systems ranging from security and encryption applications to telecommunications and e-government platforms. The country, for instance, boasts one of the most widely used online income-tax programs on the planet.

But what has traditionally been a plus for Brazil's info-tech sector--the size and potential of its home market--has also hindered its ability to expand on a global scale. Sales growth fueled by domestic demand has kept Brazilian technology groups from learning how to sell their wares in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere.

The Brazilian tech sector last year generated revenues of nearly US$8 billion, according to the Society for the Promotion of Excellence in Brazilian Software, a Sao Paulo industry group. But only about $100 million of that came from exports.

"It's peanuts given the size of the market," says Antonio Carlos Gil, chief executive of CPM, a software and systems developer in Sao Paulo and president of the Brazilian Association of Software and Service Exporting Companies, a recently formed industry group that is working on ways to better promote the sector abroad.

"Companies didn't learn to export in Brazil because of the size of demand here," says Gil. "You didn't look for growth abroad because you had it in your own backyard."

But domestic growth can only go so far. As they began to look toward other markets in recent years, Brazilian companies realized they had lost valuable time.

So far efforts to export Brazilian software have been piecemeal forays into other markets by individual companies, largely without success. Small software developers, when trying to sell their products in the United States and western Europe, found they were no match for the distribution and marketing might of established tech multinationals.

As they sought to establish a presence abroad, many companies missed a major trend fueling the tech industries in other developing countries: outsourcing. While Brazilians were busy trying to sell software packages in unfamiliar markets, developers in India were building one of the world's fastest-growing technology sectors by staying home and suiting the needs of clients half a world away.

A recent study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and four other universities compared the information technology industries of China, India. and Brazil. "Brazil has an internal market that is at least half a decade ahead of India," the report's authors wrote. "But in terms of its export sector, it is now where India was probably about a decade ago."

It's not too late to gain lost ground. The missed opportunity, in fact, has served as something of a wakeup call to the country's tech sector. Over the past year, for example, various industry groups have come together to begin promoting Brazil as an alternative to India and other countries that have thus far attracted the most outsourcing business. With many of the same attributes as those competitors--specialized labor at a price much cheaper than that available in the United States or Europe-Brazilian software companies are rushing to get on the outsourcing band wagon.

"The industry wants to show that Brazilian know-how can also be applied on demand for companies looking for good and affordable solutions," says Claudio Seixas, executive director of partnerships at WebSoftware, a Rio de Janeiro developer of Internet software programs. Like the effort headed by CPM, WebSoftware recently joined seven other Rio companies to form an industry group seeking to drum up business outside of Brazil.

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WHEN THE DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY DECIDED TO offload its entire IT infrastructure to a third-party vendor, William Ted jumped at the chance to prove himself worthy of the project. And though he was a former software writer for the DOE, this 41-year-old chairman and CEO of Washington, D.C.-based 1 Source Consulting Inc. didn't have an easy time snagging the contract.

"I'm a believer in risk and reward, so I stepped out of my comfort zone and went for it," recalls Ted. For several months in 2003, his firm was among 100 that were interviewed for the task. Working in his favor was a DOE initiative to include more small businesses in its vendor base and a joint venture formed with Washington-based RS Information Systems Inc. (No. 13 on the BE INDUSTRIAL/SERVICES 100 list with $360 million in sales), which was already successfully fulfilling other contracts for the agency.

Together, 1 Source Consulting and RSIS formed Energy Enterprise Solutions. Its first charge was raising the millions of dollars it would take to fulfill the seven-year contract, which involves providing cyber security, telecommunications, application development, helpdesk support, and network services to the DOE.

NEW YORK -- Top-tier executives from among the nation's fastest growth retail companies will address industry trends and practices at the upcoming Retail Business Symposium in New York on May 19. This one-day event, hosted by DSN Retailing Today, is among the industry's premier retailer/vendor networking opportunities, and will cover all five merchandising pillars: Apparel, Home, CE, Food and Hardlines. In addition to top merchants and marketers, speakers will include respected financial analysts and trend consultants.

In conjunction with this year's Symposium will be the ceremony for the second annual FIRE awards (Finest in REtailing). Recipients of this year's crystal FIRE award include (by category): Mexx/Apparel; Anna's Linens/Home; CompUSA/CE; Whole Foods/Food; Office Depot/Office Supplies; Toysrus.com/Toys; Wal-Mart Stores/Automotives; Galyan's Trading Company/Sporting Goods; Home Depot/Hardware/DIY; and Target/HBC.

The School and Home Office Supplies Association is asking business leaders to get involved promoting arts education programs in schools during Music in Our Schools Month in March.

The SHOPA Kids in Need Foundation provides school supplies to teachers and students in low-income schools free of charge through the donation of businesses. Teacher's Treasures, a Kids in Need affiliate in Indianapolis, recently received 63 full-sized keyboards from Wal-Mart, which in the past has provided myriad music equipment. Arts education has been shown to boost grades and reduce use of alcohol, tobacco and illicit drugs. Skills learned from the discipline of music can also be transferred to study skills, communication skills and cognitive skills used in every part of the curriculum.

The SHOPA Discount Shopping program can save members an average of $2,400 a year on shipping costs. Enrollment is free and there are never shipping minimums or obligations. The SHOPA freight management company PartnerSHip will provide a free cost comparison to members who fax a current invoice.