(MONEY Magazine) – To cash in on the global economy, you don't have to work for a big international bank or assemble pickup trucks at a Japanese-owned factory in the Midwest. As the following profiles show, the increasing flow of money across international frontiers is creating opportunities for Americans in practically every industry and region of the country. Some sell uniquely American products overseas. Others bring foreign products and services to U.S. consumers. Still others are putting foreign cash -- and, yes, know-how -- to work in this country. One thing all six have in common: a belief that going global is a great way to make money. Their stories:

Coopering for the Japanese

American corporate executives eyeing the Japanese market might learn a thing or two from barrelmaker Dale Kirby of Higbee, Mo. (pop. 817). Two years ago, Kirby, 37, and his father-in-law D.L. Andrews, 59, proprietors of A&K Cooperage, which supplies barrels to U.S. wineries, negotiated their first foreign contract. They agreed to supply Tokyo's Nikka Whisky Distilling Co. with 1,300 barrels a year in which to age Scotch. Last year the 15-year-old cooperage, which has 10 employees, raked in $100,000, or 20% of its revenues, from Japan, and Kirby thinks overseas sales could double by the end of 1988. Says he: ''We hope that will let us create five new jobs.'' A&K's big break came in 1985, when a New York City business broker introduced Kirby and Andrews to Nikka executives. The executives were looking for used bourbon barrels, which produce more flavorful Scotch than the barrels the distillery imports from Europe. But Japanese whisky-makers use 66-gallon barrels, while bourbon is aged in 55-gallon ones. Solution: A&K buys empty barrels from Kentucky distilleries and enlarges them by adding new staves. Dealing with Japan has been something of a culture -- and culinary -- shock to the Missouri-born Kirby, who favors Pepsi and country ham. Says he of a 10- day tour of Nikka facilities in Tokyo and Tochigi last fall: ''I didn't get along with the raw fish. So I found a Wendy's and went there every chance I had.''

Satisfying a yen for island models

In just eight years, former model Kathy Muller, 46, has built the biggest modeling agency in Hawaii primarily by supplying teenage hapa-haole -- the Hawaiian word for half-Oriental, half-Caucasian -- models and actresses for Japanese ads. Last year the Kathy Muller Talent & Modeling Agency, which has 13 employees and represents 1,000 models, took in $930,000 in revenues, more than half from Japanese clients like Sony and Shiseido cosmetics. The rest came from advertisers in other parts of the Far East and in Australia, Europe and the U.S. Muller started modeling during her high school years in Honolulu. After graduating from the University of the Pacific in Stockton, Calif. in 1961, she took up the career again part time while working as a casting director for ad agencies and booking agent for modeling agencies, mainly in San Francisco and Honolulu. Observing a growing Japanese fondness for the part-Caucasian look, she recruited local models and started her agency out of her home in 1979. Muller attributes her company's success partly to her ability to get along well with the Japanese, who tend to conduct business on a more personal level than do U.S. executives. Most clients insist on chatting over cups of tea before talking shop, and practice omiyage, the traditional exchange of small gifts at business meetings. Muller, meanwhile, has taught the Japanese about an American custom: overtime pay, which she insists her models receive except when they are actually on assignment in Japan. When that happens, the models must bow to local practice and work long hours for a flat daily rate. Says she: ''In Tokyo they have no concept of an eight-hour day. ''

Raising British ducks in Dixie

While many Americans are worrying about a Japanese takeover of the semiconductor industry, Arkansas-bred James Christopher, 60, has been helping the British ruffle feathers in the sleepy U.S. duck-farming business. Since becoming president and chief executive officer in 1984 of British-owned Concord Farms in Concord, N.C., Christopher has more than doubled sales of the nine-year-old company. Concord sold 6 million birds for $30 million last year, garnering 27% of the U.S. duck market. Christopher, who earns a six-figure salary, proudly points out that Concord is now the country's second biggest duck producer behind U.S.-owned Maple Leaf Farms in Milford, Ind. Before joining Concord, Christopher, the son of a dairy farmer, managed poultry farms in 28 countries from Peru to France for Ralston Purina Co., was president of a Wisconsin duck farm and, most recently, a consultant with the U.S. State Department on foreign farm aid. Is he defensive about abetting a foreign move into U.S. agriculture? Not at all, he says, pointing out that British breeding methods produce a bird with up to 19% less fat than the native Yankee variety. Concord's superior product and aggressive marketing, Christopher asserts, has been the primary reason for the 10% growth in the once languid U.S. duck market since 1984. Says Christopher: ''This is a successful marriage of British technology and capital and American management.''

Capitalizing on glasnost

It sounds like a Michael J. Fox fantasy: A rock-music buff and electronics hobbyist parlays his two passions into a lucrative career as a kind of unofficial cultural envoy to the Soviet Union. But it is the real-life story of Ken Schaffer, 39, of New York City, who, with the help of Marina Albee, 26, a Columbia University graduate student, has created a thriving business bringing Soviet TV shows, movies and rock groups to the U.S. and Japan. After dropping out of the City University of New York in 1969, Schaffer worked as a publicist for several entertainers, including the rock guitarist Jimi Hendrix. On the side he tinkered in electronics, inventing the wireless guitar, which uses a tiny radio transmitter to send signals to a nearby amplifier. In 1984, Schaffer developed a satellite dish that is able to pick up Soviet signals in the U.S. His company, Orbita Technologies, has sold seven of them to individuals and universities for up to $55,000 each. In Mikhail Gorbachev's era of openness, Schaffer became convinced that cultural exchanges between the Soviet Union and democratic countries would pick up. So in January 1986 he formed his venture with Albee, who speaks Russian. Their plan: to match Soviet entertainment that they find through Soviet government officials with U.S. promoters and producers. Schaffer and Albee collect either a flat fee or percentage of the performers' fees from promoters and producers. Last December Schaffer and Albee arranged for the Soviet band Stas Namin to appear at a rock concert in Japan. In February they persuaded a U.S. cable-TV network, the Discovery Channel, to telecast 66 hours of live Soviet news, documentary and variety programs to 14 million U.S. homes. Now they are trying to set up a U.S. recording session for a Leningrad rock group. Says Schaffer, who claims he would never have found his new career had not the satellite dish brought him into contact with Russian culture: ''The invention is changing the inventor.''

Ushering in foreign investment

Cecil Phillips' first unglamorous venture into international business gave no hint of the success that would come years later. As an undergraduate majoring in diplomatic history at the University of Missouri, Phillips journeyed to Spain for the summer of 1967, where he supported himself by translating Sears catalogues into Spanish. Today Phillips, 40, is an Atlanta-based adviser to 30 or so European, Middle Eastern and Asian investors in U.S. real estate. Last year his clients sank $20 million into six real estate projects, principally new condominiums, office buildings and shopping centers in the Southeast. Phillips founded his business in 1983. An attorney, he had worked at the prestigious Atlanta law firm Alston & Bird and had served as an executive assistant to former Governor George Busbee. With the backing of mainly local investors, he is now in the process of forming a bank catering to foreigners -- mostly Chinese, Japanese, Koreans and Indochinese -- in the Atlanta area; he will be chairman of the board. The bank, which Phillips expects to open early next year with a capitalization of about $7 million, will hire multilingual employees and emphasize such services as foreign currency exchange and international fund transfers. As Asian companies increasingly move into the Southeast, Phillips expects the bank to have assets of $110 million by 1993.