The next time you overhear a friend or coworker chattering excitedly about SOHO, don't assume that they are talking about New York. In today's business world SOHO refers to "Small Office/Home Office," one of today's biggest explosions in the economy. The home-based business (the next frontier) has been born out of necessity. In an era when large corporations can only think of downsizing, what are your options? There is no security in Corporate America any more.

Your choices are usually limited: find a lucrative niche in the small business world, stand in line at Unemployment, or accept a cut in pay and benefits. We were all raised to give 9 hours work for 8 hours pay, and we are not backing away from that. Today's problem is that large companies have no loyalty to the employees, their only loyalty is to the bottom line. And the bottom is exactly where most of us are when it's time to cut back. Your life is turned upside down because you have no control over your future. These decisions are made behind closed doors by someone who has no idea of the quality of your work or the extra time you gave the company without requesting overtime. They don't know about your family's life: they don't understand that you just put braces on your child's teeth and now have to pay for them. This "decision maker's" job is to be impersonal and unbiased in all areas except for the company's "best interests." In other words: TO THEM, YOU REALLY DON'T MATTER.

In J. Paul Getty's book How To Get Rich, his first rule for success is, "You must be in business for yourself, you'll never get rich working for someone else." This partly explains why someone starts a new home-based business in the United States every 10 seconds. In the past 14 years alone, the number of home-based businesses have grown from 6 million to 32 million with no slow down in sight. In fact, an estimated 8,493 new home businesses open every day.