The couple agreed that Janet would be the breadwinner and Doug Keene, a furniture craftsman with a degree in mechanical engineering, would be the stay-at-home parent.

Through four babies, Doug, 34, handled the diaper-changing at their Woodstock home near Lake Allatoona. Janet, 38, brought home a paycheck, doing office work, typing, occasionally finding part-time jobs through temp labor agencies.

All the while, she was straining her brain to find "something I could do to sustain myself without the turmoil of a 40-hour workweek."

The clues to success came slowly.

There was the woman who talked to Doug when he was dropping the kids off at a day care program.

"A woman came up and asked him how he was able to make enough money that he could stay home all the time," Keene recalls. "She thought we both worked at home. It struck me that there are lots of people who want to work at home."

Keene got a master's degree in public administration at Georgia State University and attended law school until she became pregnant with their fourth child. Another piece of the puzzle slid into place when she was working at home, doing billings for a lawyer's office via computer. It occurred to her that plenty of businesses might have this kind of work available.

Another clue, but not enough to crystallize the concept of how to get out from under a 40-hour week.

She tried a couple of ideas: reading trade magazines and newspapers for executives and briefing them weekly by phone, and managing warehouses full of boxes of files stored by business offices.

She would get up at dawn to attend networking sessions before going to work or school.

She pitched her ideas --- the networking groups call it "giving your one-minute" --- but she heard things like, "No, the people I know need help with bookkeeping." Or they needed an extra secretary, or somebody to handle a computer problem.

The marketplace had spoken, and Keene launched "America's Virtual Office Staff" --- the people who now work for KeeneTeam.

Keene has assembled about 400 people of various skills in the United States, Canada and Great Britain. She has about 40 companies who use Keene's team for accounting, graphic design, word processing, spreadsheet maintenance and other tasks.

Keene keeps a database of employees' skills, available hours and the type of software and hardware they have in their home offices. Business requests range from typing to computer programming. A good virtual secretary can make $18 an hour; an online accountant may make $35; a Web master, $25; a catalog order taker, $18.

She says it's not a temp agency because she makes permanent matches.

"It's all telecommuting," she said. "Bad morale, office politics --- all that's gone."

The arrangement suits employers --- companies don't have to pay for office space, vacation or sick time --- and employees.

"What I like is the wide variety of associates she has," said Andy Bowen, president of Clearview Communications, a public and media relations company in Smyrna. "If I need someone to put together a print media database, she gives me exactly the right person. When I needed to provide television interview opportunities in markets other than Atlanta, she has somebody who has been in television and helped me do that."

"It gives stay-at-home mothers an opportunity to work," said Lisa Hartley of Woodstock, a computer programmer who wanted to be home to raise her daughter and has worked with KeeneTeam for about three years.

KeeneTeam employees have done "a bit of a mix" for WebTransit, said Gary Troutman, president of the Atlanta Internet consulting firm. He said he is "100 percent convinced that what she's doing is the future of the way our work force is going to behave. I think she's got a great concept."

Donald Ketchum of San Diego was hurt in a fall and could no longer work in an office.

"This offers me an opportunity to still work, not give up and become a vegetable," said Ketchum, who does Web maintenance, programming, word processing and preparation of brochures and newsletters.

Clay Willis of Woodstock has a full-time job as tax manager for a high-tech medical equipment company in Kennesaw. He works for Keene after hours.

"I can go home after this job, have a nice relaxing dinner, then go work for four hours," said Willis, who has helped companies fix accounting software problems and set up some business Web sites. "It has allowed me to make a substantial sum of money on the side."

Looking to the future, Willis said, "After retirement, I will stay on Janet's list and do as much work as I can. That is the ultimate freedom. She can send me a job and I can decide to take it or not."

Two years ago, having brought KeeneTeam to a point where it was doing well enough that she could make the big leap, Keene quit her day job to devote her full attention to her home business.