Work man

The recession was especially painful for Baxter Troutman.

When it hit in 2008, he had to close seven branches of his employee recruitment company, Labor Solutions. He let go of 41 employees — more than 80% of the company's payroll. “It was an economic drive-by shooting,” he says. “There were a lot of victims of the recession.”

But his company was not a casualty of the recession. It took four years to make a full recovery, says Troutman, 50, but the Winter Haven-based company survived, and is now 20 years old. How did Troutman do it? He went back to the fundamentals of business, from being more nimble to eyeing expenses more closely to diversifying revenue streams.