Long, Strange Trip
Long, Strange Trip
Unpacking the Pandemic
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On August 20, 2020, I read an article in the New York Times called “Out of Office: A Survey of Our New Work Lives.” And I just read it again. Pretty good. Take a look.
The article is based on a survey of 1,123 remote workers by the NYT and Morning Consult about their experiences working remotely. 86 percent of participants said they were satisfied working remotely. “They reported feeling less stressed, more able to take breaks and that they were spending more time outdoors.” That part didn’t really surprise me. It felt like we were having a similar experience at The Starr Conspiracy. And I personally was having a similar experience.
But some results from the survey did surprise me. “1 in 5 said they wanted to go back to the office full-time. 1 in 3 said they would move to a new city or state if remote work continued indefinitely.”
In the summer of 2020, I was of the mind that things might, one day, get back to normal. And I imagined that many (if not most) people would want to come back to the office. And I certainly didn’t feel like all of my colleagues were champing at the bit to change cities, states, or even countries. 1 in 3? No way.
So I did some Internet research and found the survey. I created a version to send out to everyone at The Starr Conspiracy. By September 10, 2020, the results were in. And I was shocked:
I ran the survey again in April of 2021, and people were even more inclined to keep working from home, stay out of the office and move. As I look back over the survey results this morning, I am still surprised by how closely the results track to reality. The office is open, but most people don’t come in (and that’s okay). A lot of people have moved. And what makes these results so significant to me is that the people who took this survey (including myself) are still here! We have only lost a couple of colleagues during the pandemic (one took a dream job and the other went to a dream school). While turnover across industries was more than 50% in 2020 and 2021, ours was about 2%.? And we’ve more than doubled in size (knocking on the door of 100 people) during the same period; we have nearly a 100% acceptance rate for our job offers. What Great Resignation, say I? In a period characterized by the most transformative changes in work since the industrial revolution, people didn’t go somewhere else to get the work experience they wanted; they created the work experience they wanted here! Pretty amazing.
People ask me all the time how we did it. How we transformed our work experience from the ground up to not only keep all of our great people throughout the pandemic, but also grow at an unprecedented rate.?
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And the truth is, I have no idea.
Working from my back deck in the winter of 2021 (you can do that some winter days in Texas), I had a crushing realization. We had been so focused on getting through the pandemic that I didn’t really understand how or why we were succeeding. Everything was a blur. I know that I, as a leader, had done many things wrong and right; but I couldn’t tell you what those things were or what impact they had. If I had tried to tell people how to avoid the mistakes that we made and how to replicate our successes, I wouldn’t even know where to start. I was tired (more than tired) and completely living in the moment. I had no perspective at all.
That’s when I made the decision to create the podcast series, Long, Strange Trip. With the help of my producer, Dana Karpinski, I created a plan for interviewing as many of my colleagues, clients and shareholders as I could to gain insight into what we have done right and wrong at The Starr Conspiracy during the pandemic.?
It has been an amazing, if humbling experience.
We have now released two episodes (we release them weekly on Mondays). And I expect we’ll end up releasing dozens of episodes (many of them have already been recorded). The series starts with my own story about the moment I realized the pandemic was going to change everything (March, 2020). The second episode features Erin Sanders and her story about living out of her car for months each year (because she can). And soon-to-be-released episodes feature a married couple (both of whom are my colleagues at The Starr Conspiracy) who served as a surrogate parents for another couple during the pandemic (as if life wasn’t unpredictable enough), one of my business partners who maintained a decisively optimistic posture in the face of overwhelming uncertainty and chaos, and a Pulitzer Prize nominated Yogi who waxes philosophical about the impact of the pandemic on his life and society.
These are all real stories. They are not propaganda for The Starr Conspiracy. And I decided to share them publicly because I think a lot of people are trying to do what we’re doing right now—trying to make sense of the pandemic and what the hell just happened to us. We’ve been living in strange times these last two years and I think most of us have not come to terms with the changes we’ve experienced and codified what we’ve learned from it all.?
These stories are brutally honest. And speaking for me, personally, they share a lot of details about my life that I’m not necessarily comfortable sharing. I went a little crazy during the pandemic (still am a little crazy) … I did things that I wouldn’t normally do (like stock a deep freeze with vacuum-sealed meat and buy a shotgun). But I bet a lot of people out there did some crazy shit; and I hope they take comfort in knowing they are not alone!
I hope you can take a moment to watch these first two episodes. And if they’re not for you, that’s fine. But if they are for you, please subscribe so you’ll be notified when new episodes are released. They aren’t just on YouTube, by the way. You can find Long, Strange Trip wherever you listen to your podcasts (we’re on all the platforms). And if you have a favorite platform that we’re not on, please let me know.
Thanks for listening,
Bret Starr??