6 strategies to grow your business today

Rhett Power and partner Peter Gasca, former business development consultants with the U.S. Agency for International Development, couldn't get a bank loan to grow Wild Creations, their Myrtle Beach, S.C. toy company, founded in late 2007. So they each sold their second homes, borrowed against their home equity and cashed out their 401ks to raise $350,000 -- a substantial risk. "We had very small kids at the time," says Power.

Learning the toy business from the ground up, they looked for undiscovered toy inventors who needed help in getting their ideas to market, eventually releasing products such as the award-winning EcoAquarium, a self-contained ecosystem complete with its own dwarf frogs. Sales at the profitable company grew from $850,000 in 2009 to $5.3 million in 2010. The duo have managed to get their toys on the shelves of Toys `R Us and Barnes & Noble while running the business on cash flow.

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