More Good Guys!

http://mental_floss.com/

mental_floss is a U.S.-based media company that takes the chore out of learning and creates content that blurs the lines between education and entertainment. They cover everything from black holes to the Dead Sea Scrolls.

And they haven't laid anyone off!

Here's a quick interview to see how they did it. (By the way, if you want to be on www.wehaventlaidanyoneoff.com I am more than happy to interview you and spread the word about your business.

What does Mental Floss do?

Whether it’s our magazine, our web site or our books, we teach people the things they should have learned in school, but didn’t. As one reviewer said so well – “Got a cocktail party coming up? Read mental_floss first.”

What is your attitude towards the recession?

We wish it would end today. Surprisingly, despite the very challenging economy our business continues to show significant growth. We continue to work as hard as we can to introduce more people to mental_floss, to manage our costs and grow our business.

Do you have a recession plan?

We’re always trying to improve our business by taking care of the basics: Grow the top revenue line, control expenses and give our customers value for their hard-earned dollars. By making an extra effort to work with our business partners, we’ve been able to significantly reduce our expenses and improve our margins.

How do you keep staff happy/uplifted?

We choose our employees very carefully and feel we have an absolutely first-class team. We also try to create an environment that mirrors the nature of the magazine –freewheeling, creative and flexible.

What's the biggest challenge you feel your company faces, and how do you inspire your employees to meet it head on?

There’s never enough time to do everything we want to do. There are so many great opportunities, the real challenge is focusing on the most important ones. One big challenge at the moment is managing growth as we continue to develop our brand. We share financial information and how we’re doing with our employees and welcome ideas from everyone on staff on how we can do better. We don’t spend a lot of time worrying about organization charts or hierarchy.