It is truly hard to believe that the end of the first Quarter of 2021 is just 2 weeks away. Everyone I work with internally and externally simply can’t believe it. From a business perspective, these next two weeks are going to be very different than most ends-of-a-quarter because we are going to start dealing with the comparisons between 2021 and the pandemic year of 2020.

Most quarterly earning calls and reports follow a cadence of providing insights into the quarter that just closed and then comparing that quarter to the same quarter last year. Sometimes they will also compare the quarter that just closed to the previous quarter if it is not a seasonal type of business. A year ago, the realities and confusion of the pandemic were just starting to hit. Only essential workers were in their workplace and more that 70% of the working population was working remotely. Even though it seemed catastrophic at the time, those first few weeks of the pandemic were at the end of March, 2020 when about 85% of the first quarter results were already in the books. It wasn’t until the second quarter when the financial numbers for some businesses started to dive and for others started to accelerate.