My flight home got cancelled at the end of the holiday break earlier this month.
 
An airline staff shortage caused by COVID-19 was the culprit.
 
I saw it as a sign that going back to Toronto wasn’t it.
 
With my work laptop in hand, I decided to set up remotely across the American Southwest.
 
For a week, I lived and worked out of a historic adobe home in Tucson.
 
After work, I’d drive to the Sonoran Desert for hikes and to view the pastel-coloured sunsets.
 
That alone has done more for my mental health than any company-wide initiative to support employees amid the pandemic.
 
Remote work gives employees autonomy. And autonomy breeds creativity, which is a leading ingredient for growth—both at the personal and organization-wide level.
 
There’s still a lot more research to be done around the value of remote work, but I can already see its benefits working at a company that remains remote first.

​If you need an example of why content remains king, look no further than Glossier.

Glossier is a beauty company that grew out of a blog.

You read that right—a simple blog.

The company is now worth nearly $2 billion.

Glossier Founder and CEO, Emily Weiss, was working as a fashion assistant at Vogue magazine when she launched Into The Gloss—a beauty blog—in 2010.

The blog had one aim: to create conversations around an array of beauty products.

I dropped by the Glossier store with my niece while visiting Seattle over the holidays.

The store is one of the most Instagram-friendly spots around. It’s inspired by the natural beauty of Seattle—a city surrounded by towering evergreens and glittering inlets.

The 6,200 square-foot store contains faux boulders covered in moss and mushrooms.

My niece took out her phone to snap a few Instagram stories and TikTok videos—as did many other customers—giving the brand ample earned media opportunities.

Like its social media strategy, Glossier centres customers in its stories—as all great content marketing should.

But how did Weiss use content to turn Glossier into a brand worth nearly $2 billion?

Into The Gloss tells the stories of customers, not the brand. One example of this is when Weiss published a blog post asking readers what a perfect face wash would look like.

The post got hundreds of comments.

And it led to Glossier producing the Milk Jelly Cleanser, which remains one of the brand’s most successful product to date.

Would Glossier have reached this level of success without its use of content?
​
I’d say no.