Transcripts
Josh Clemente (00:00:00):
All right, let’s go ahead and jump in. Welcome to December 3rd, last month of 2021 somehow, and the first 90-minute Friday Forum. We’re extending this, because as everybody on the call knows, we’ve been going over our one hour limit, and it’s just helpful to make sure people have the schedule set aside. As the team gets bigger, we’re not going to be able to infinitely expand, but we do want to make sure there’s enough time for personal shares. It’s one of our, and our community’s, favorite parts of what we do. So I’m going to jump in. All right, big news this week, the launch of the Levels Metabolic Health Panel, massive shout out to too many people to name on this one, but particularly JM, thanks for driving us across the finish. Still a lot to do on this. This is like phase one, but subscribers in the initial GEO have started to test this.
(00:00:56):
And so, this is gold standard testing of eight markers, biomarkers, from the comfort of your home, an in-home phlebotomist, and then results in the Levels app. So just really a huge launch for us and we’ve gotten positive feedback. We’ll continue to learn from how people are interacting with this, and we’re going to make a bunch of tweaks that will improve the aesthetics and integration so it feels more like a Levels quality experience, but very, very excited about this.
(00:01:24):
Culture Videos in work, we’re going to continue the campaign of Culture Videos. Many of us have found these very useful. The topics we’re going to focus on are those that align with our principles and help to convey to both new team members and to our team, the nuance of topics like disagree and commit. Why do we go synchronous versus asynchronous for meetings, and when to choose between them. Onboarding and expectations, we’ve got a bio-observability vlog format that Campbell’s going to take on. So a lot of cool stuff in the pipeline there.
(00:01:55):
Chris released a couple early insights. I think he’s going to dig deeper into this from our NPS analysis. Big ones that stood out are women log, 10% more than men and rate 10 points higher on NPS than men, which is very interesting. I would love to learn more about the relationship between those two numbers. And then also, NPS approximately increases with age. I mean, it’s not perfectly linear, but that is also a really good finding to know that the product resonates with people as they get older and are thinking about different things. Clearly, the Levels product is maybe resonating for certain considerations more so than others that might align well with age. So lots more to learn from this.
(00:02:38):
We’ve got four top tier podcasts in the pipeline for Casey and Sam. These are going to be big ones. They’re probably going to move conversions, it’s going to be awesome. And then, we’re also starting the podcast circuit process for Lauren and Maz. So just really cool to be able to get more great people out there, talking about Levels from various perspectives. And then we deprecated the Levels Live sessions. This was part of our podcast strategy, our audio strategy update. But the Levels Live sessions, it was a bit redundant to some of the work that we were doing on a whole new level and the Metabolic insights. And so, we’ve decided to forego that one and instead focus on our two main channels. Then we have three partners. These are content partners who have committed to testing and providing video reviews for the new Metabolic Health Panel.
(00:03:24):
So we’re going to start to generate content on digital and UGC on this new product vertical that we’re building, which is going to be awesome. I can’t wait to see those. And then the, I think Jackie completed the Affiliate Analysis doc this week, and is starting to look at 2022. So yeah, that memo will make the rounds. Let’s see, some high level updates. Funds are starting to roll in from our operator round from Series A. We hit $8 million in all-time revenue. Again, we’re not in growth mode, this is just a fun number to track. We’ve got an apparel collab underway with 10,000, which is a fitness brand that has very high quality gear. Hit 50,000 followers on Instagram. Our crowdfunding round is now at 6.3 million in reservations from 1,200 reservers. Those are not all members, but many of them are.
(00:04:11):
And then, we’re in contact with Apple Health. Had a good call this week to learn about the final details before we button up our app store submission. A couple other cool things, we had great coverage from The Verge. We got our fourth nutritionist up and running in the nutritionist pilot program for early access there. Talked to Flo Bio. We’ve been in touch with biosensor teams at Stanford University. Got some great feedback from, this is Sander Daniels from Thumbtack on his experience with the Levels Metabolic Health Panel. Rolled out a referral response campaign, so an email campaign. You can see the giant spike we got here in orders by referral codes. So this is a cool initial insight. People are definitely learning from the features that we announced through our email channels. Good coverage in Women’s Wear Daily.
(00:04:56):
Let’s see, Mike McKnight, who is a Triple Crown winner in Ultra Running, he ran the Moab 240 and won it in October, it’s a 240-mile foot race. And he ran a 100 miles with zero calories. And he’s going to do this again with the CGM on wearing Levels. So we’re going to participate in that case study and see literally the tip of the spear on human endurance. A bunch of great feedback from the mission patches initiative. Can’t wait to hear from Jesse on the update there. And then, Austin McGuffie. Austin was on a whole new level. He produced some awesome content around metabolism on Thanksgiving, and he’s with us today. I’m going to jump straight ahead to announce him.
(00:05:41):
Austin is co-founder of Building Generational Health. He’s a content creator, we all know and love his work. Please check out the recent episode on Whole New Level, if you haven’t already. He’s a huge supporter and really one of the best voices in explaining why metabolic health matters that we are working with. And just want to say thanks, Austin, directly for everything you’re doing to educate people, and for being a part of the Levels community, and would love to hear some words from you.
Austin McGuffie (00:06:09):
Cool. Well, first of all, thanks so much for… Sorry, that’s my two-year-old in the background. Thank you guys so much for having me here. It’s really cool. I joke with Tom often. It started out with me bugging him with an email, and I think what was the equivalent of him sending me to his intern, and then went and drank a bunch of tequila, and then he was like, “Hey.” That was interesting. But no, I guess like you said, Metabolism Mentor started out with just really trying to optimize my own personal metabolism. I was a personal trainer for five years, and I had a very hard time communicating some of these more tough concepts to some of my clients. So my building origin story started in college, I think. I was supposed to graduate with a marketing degree, and I had an economics class that it was very tough.
(00:07:04):
I failed the class miserably. Turns out it wasn’t my fault that I failed the class, it was the professor’s fault, and that’s in true millennial fashion to blame the professor and not myself, but he didn’t do a good job breaking down the concepts, or rather I didn’t understand them very well. So I dropped out, I didn’t finish a marketing degree. Instead, I went on to major in Spanish with the degree, a concentration in international business. And I made that decision, because I spoke Spanish, and it was an easier decision for me to make to get out of college and stop wasting money. And what I learned from that experience was, when you present complicated information to somebody that they don’t understand, oftentimes they’re going to revert back to what’s comfortable for them, their basic set of knowledge. So that’s what I did. And then fast forward several years, when I started personal training, I had one specific client who typical, he wanted abs and he wanted muscles.
(00:08:04):
He was on the dating scene and he wanted to become a more attractive candidate for his prospects, and he enlisted me to support him. So at the time, what I started doing was requesting them to get blood drawn so that I can see what their cholesterol was like, their blood pressure and their fasting blood sugar. And this particular person had a lot of visceral fat, triglycerides through the roof, over 300, HDL very low. And what was shocking was, his mother had just recovered from a stroke and who also suffered with the same metabolic dysfunction. And so at that point, my job changed from training him and showing him what exercises to do, to teaching him what his habits were that were causing him to be in the condition that he was in.
(00:09:00):
And this was a few years ago, so I didn’t have as much success with him as I probably would have now, but that’s where I started to think, well, maybe my effectiveness is not in the amount of knowledge that I have, but more so on my ability to communicate this in a way where people can easily understand it.
(00:09:17):
And so, that put me on a deep rabbit hole of listening to several hour long lectures on YouTube, Dr. Bikman’s book, probably Get Sick was the first one that really helped me to understand. And then I started working my way up from there. And now, the reason why I try my best to break down this content in a way that’s easily digestible, is because I’m afraid that the more complicated topics are just not reaching people, and that’s why we’re seeing that 88% of our population is metabolically unhealthy. So even for myself, I’m not a guru or an expert by any means. And I knew that easily. I was reading Metabolical, Dr. Lustig I see is on the call, and I got to chapter eight, and fair credit to Dr. Lustig, he warned at the beginning of the chapter, “Hey listen, this is very scientific, feel free to skip this chapter.”
(00:10:13):
I didn’t do that. And I started getting glossy, I’m missing words, and I’m like, okay, I’ve just got to go binge Netflix or something to get my mind back to ease. But I’m afraid, that’s what the average everyday person goes through when we start to throw out words like metabolic dysfunction and high glycemic index foods. The same way that chapter eight had my eyes glossed over, I see how people, when I’m communicating these complicated subjects to them, where their eyes start to droop, they lose interest in what I’m saying. And I have family members, like a aunt of mine who I love dearly, who has Type 2 diabetes and who really needs to understand this information. And when we first had this conversation, I was like, “Hey listen, this is what metabolic syndrome is. This is what’s going on with your blood sugar levels.” And I started throwing out the more complicated stuff like, “Hey, insulin resistance, your blood cells aren’t accepting insulin, so we got to do all this stuff.”
(00:11:15):
It wasn’t too long before she was like, “Okay. Yeah, I’m going to go have a shot, because I don’t know what you just said.” And so, from that conversation, it inspired me to approach this with a more relatable, not dumb down, but just a more approachable way for people to understand this information. I think a really good example of that is you guys did your own experiment, and you guys learned that 30 minutes of walk after 30 seconds of exercise, or within 30 minutes of finishing your meal, those are wonders for keeping blood glucose levels stable. And so, when you take that information and you break it down, it’s not necessarily the walking that helps to keep blood sugar levels stable, it’s the use of muscles. And so, when you approach people with this knowledge, and if walking isn’t their thing, then for me to tell them to go for a walk after their meal is bad advice, because their likelihood to implement it, is low.
(00:12:12):
So you take that same set of knowledge and you say, okay, well instead of walking after you eat, why don’t you stand up in the kitchen, turn on your favorite song, and I dare you to not dance while you’re eating your food. And we’ve all danced to our favorite song while we’re eating our meal, but it’s a lot easier and a much more approachable way to using our muscles while we’re eating foods, hopefully that aren’t spiking our blood sugar. But if they are spiking the blood sugar, at least you’re doing something to combat that.
(00:12:43):
So that’s the mindset that I have when approaching each piece of content that I can create. And instead of diving really deep into the knowledge and the subcellular pathways and into the deepness of it, it’s like, well, how can I take this and go broad and deliver this in a way where most people can understand? So that’s the brain behind all the content that you see and just try to make it fun. I have fun with it, and I don’t take anything in life seriously, and I think it’s finally starting to pay off. So yeah, that’s it.
Josh Clemente (00:13:20):
Amazing. Austin, that was awesome. I absolutely love hearing the explanation of the platform, and it makes a ton of sense given just the quality and the relatability of the work that you do. I think it balances perfectly, exactly what you were describing, which is taking these complex concepts that everyone has to understand. If we’re going to achieve the mission, we need to get this across to people, but you got to start where people are. I mean, you can’t expect them to jump to your level.
Austin McGuffie (00:13:48):
Yeah, it’s very difficult for people to execute on knowledge that they don’t understand.
Josh Clemente (00:13:53):
That’s right. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for sharing and for joining us today on your Friday. Definitely hope to have you join us for the rest of the call, but if you have to drop off, thanks again. Team really appreciates this.
Austin McGuffie (00:14:09):
Thanks. I’m just going to mute myself so you don’t hear my two-year-old.
Josh Clemente (00:14:12):
Oh, no worries.
Austin McGuffie (00:14:13):
Thanks guys.
Josh Clemente (00:14:15):
All right, jumping ahead. Welcome Maz. Maz has been up and running with us for about a week now, but this is his first Friday Forum Live, and I just want to intro a person who is going to be deeply involved in the Levels business as we grow from where we are today, who’s already been super valuable to us as we start to think through a whole broad spectrum of problems that we’re facing, from getting the app store, to considering future products. So Maz, I’m going to let you take it from here. Say a couple words, feel free to add to the slide you’ve got here. Thank you.
Maz Brumand (00:14:49):
Thanks, Josh. No, I’m really excited to be here. I’m energized and I’ve met a lot of the folks and really, really impressed with the quality, caliber of people here. I’ve been following Levels for over a year now. I got introduced to Sam about a year ago, and the fantastic progress that you guys have made in this really important space, is really amazing. One of the things that really actually drew me to Levels, which is the other side of the coin of what Austin just described, which was a fascinating story, is the deep thinking that goes into the science and the underlying things that affect metabolic health. Sam was kind enough to point me to Dr. Lustig’s book and Dr. Bikman’s book, and when I read those and I considered myself a knowledgeable person about metabolic health, but when I read those, it really opened my mind, and they were both one of the best books I’ve ever read in this space. So thank you for writing those.
(00:15:48):
But it really made me think that what that Levels is onto, is not just another consumer play, it’s really, really focused and deeply committed in solving this metabolic problem, which as the numbers say, it’s pretty bad, but when you really look at it in the communities, it really hits you. So just being here, being able to work on that with a fantastic group of people, I’m just really happy to be here. And the work that obviously Ben, Mike Haney has done, Casey, to get this content out there and making it easy for people to understand, it’s just been phenomenal. I’ve never seen anything like it. A company that’s been around for two years has accomplished so much, and it’s just really amazing.
(00:16:30):
And I think what Austin said, really resonates with me too, which is, how do we make it, if we’re really going to go tackle the billion people at 88% of the population, how do we make it accessible? How do you go from what’s traditionally a very clinical problem to a consumer problem, and really solve it from that perspective? And I’d say, I’ve looked at many, many companies, whether in my investment days or at Apple, which I think what you guys have built here is just exceptional, and tackling it from the consumer perspective is just special, especially in a clinical and important area like metabolic health. So anyways, with that, I’m just really happy to be here, and turn back to you, Josh
Josh Clemente (00:17:08):
Stoked good to have you. Yeah, everyone, please make yourselves available, set up some time to meet Maz as he’s getting onboarded and ramped up. And yeah, I’m sure you’ll have great conversations. We did a café with him a couple days ago and it was great. So please continue to have one-on-ones, get to know each other and stoked for the future. On that note of meeting each other, quick culture aside, we had a couple IRL in real life meetups this week or maybe over the past two weeks. Scott and Tom were able to get together in the Pacific Northwest. Jeremy, Gabriel and Steph in Chicago in Windy City. And then in the hometown of Bogota, we had Jhon and Zac get together for some Tejo, I believe is the name. There’s actually gun powder involved in this game as far as I know, and I can’t wait to play it someday.
(00:18:01):
This is really awesome to see. I don’t know who won, but I imagine it was Jhon. All right, yeah, looking forward to more photos of IRL meetups. This is always fun. Ooh, I missed the prayer. Levels helps you see how your food affects your health. That has to be said verbally. All right, second Culture and Kudos slide. So this week, or actually I think just yesterday, Miz put out the employee engagement survey results. Highly recommend everyone go and review this. We had really good adherence. I think we had 30 or 33 people were able to fill this out. It’s really, really helpful. It’s a great insight into how everyone inside the team is thinking about a whole host of considerations around how the team is growing and where our problems lie. So thanks for participating in this. It’s going to be really helpful.
(00:18:50):
We’re going to do this on an ongoing basis. Miz provides a good writeup of specifically how we’re taking action on some of the themes that arose, but some of this is adding a formal feedback process, which we’ve accelerated after recognizing this is a main consideration on the team. Fireside discussions, Sam produced a couple videos to address direct questions. If you have any questions or concerns on this survey or the process that we’re putting in place, just add them in that notion doc, and again, really appreciate everyone’s participation as it’s really a meaningful thing, especially as the team grows.
David Flinner (00:19:24):
Can you refresh, Josh, please?
Josh Clemente (00:19:26):
Yeah.
David Flinner (00:19:29):
As is traditional. Awesome. So Scott is out with Alan as well this week. Well they’re here, but they’re heads down in a couple think weeks. They’re leading the charge on an updated product strategy and roadmap. And there’s more to come on that, I believe, on December 17th at our assemblage. So you may see them popping in and out of threads, asking for advice on some surveys to get your input on the product strategy. Please do prioritize that. It’s a big effort for our company and we want to make sure that we have the right direction going into 2022. So with that, you can go to the next slide. No major changes to our priorities looking into December. As Josh mentioned, had some big wins this week on launching blood work pilot, membership, as we’ll get into, is hitting the final approaches of the first phase with Apple. John closed out tagging within the last week, some of the first version backend, John, and how the first version backend things that we’ll lay the stage for our updates there, and some good progress on the core looping amongst many other things.
(00:20:28):
So let’s kick it off. I think I’ll hand it to Virtual JM. Oh, actually no, I’ll keep it on myself. Okay, so membership model, the very first phase of this, which is, well, the current phase, which is in-app product signup, which is a prerequisite for us to getting live on the app store. Huge congrats to Jeremy, Gabriel for really being heads down and getting us to the point where all that work was engineering complete by the end of November, which is really awesome to see. Big thanks also to Justin for diving in with really timely code reviews and debuggings and stuff on our app store launch. So really appreciate all the work, guys, on that. And then we got connected, as Josh mentioned, with an Apple developer relations contact via Maz. So really thankful for that introduction, Maz. And also, from the A16Z team, Mike from that team facilitated an introduction, and all that was super useful.
(00:21:25):
We’re currently in conversation with Apple, the developer relation contact is trying out Levels, and he’s just going over our positioning and making sure that we provide the right level of detail for the Apple reviewers to get through the process in a smooth manner, and that sets us up for a good relationship with them going forward. So very excited about that. He should be getting back to us for some feedback hopefully today, if not, early next week. But I anticipate a full submission to Apple for our first major non testified version by mid next week. And with that, kick it off to Virtual JM.
Virtual JM (00:22:09):
Good morning. I am recording this just before 4 AM. I had an have an event at my daughter’s school to celebrate Hanukkah. Happy Hanukkah to all. Before I do my normal updates, I wanted to close the loop on an experiment that I ran at the very end of October, beginning of November, around cart abandonment. So as you may know, our conversion rate is about 13% now, and that means 13% of people who start checking out, enter an email and go through that flow, most of them do not end up buying Levels for whatever reason. And we could speculate why that might be. It’s the price, it’s the wording, they forget about it, they open a tab and get distracted, for whatever reason they don’t buy. And that amounts to about 300 folks a day getting us email and then not buying. So we tried an experiment, and I’m doing this in one take, and I see that the slide says at the end of August, that means at the end of October. I treated about a 1,000 people to this experiment.
(00:23:07):
And basically what happened was, after they went through checkout but did not purchase, so that is they answered their email and then they abandoned at some point before paying and joining Levels. Our system waited an hour, and then sent them the email that’s behind me here, a very light touch with a few Q&A’s and a link to click to reengage and continue the flow. This email is sent to anyone who abandoned in for about three and a half days, at the end of October through November 1st, at which point I turned it off. And I wanted to let the cohort age a bit, because I knew that we would see some activity right away, but also probably a drip over the coming weeks as people maybe had this in their inbox, on a to-do list. So the open rate and the click rate of the email were pretty good.
(00:23:50):
And 51 or 5% or so of the people that received it ended up purchasing, which is good. And it depends on how we do attribution here. If it’s a click attribution where they open the email, they clicked it right away and bought right away and none of their cookies were blocked, all their tracking was on in their system, the number that we can attribute is a little bit lower. If it’s view attribution, they open the email and then they bought after, it’s a little bit higher. And what’s interesting is a few things. One is that the activity obviously bunched up a lot right around when it was sent, with a bunch, probably the single biggest day was one or two days after the campaign stopped. So someone had the email in their inbox for a couple of days and then did it.
(00:24:34):
We saw a trickle of purchasing over the next few months, even with a few this past week. And the attribution on this graph is the click attribution, excuse me, where they open the email, they click the email and they go through. And it’s hard to know if they just got the email, and we don’t know for sure that they saw it or clicked it, the attribute. So let’s say it’s 3% of people. Does that matter? No, we’re going to send this email and only 3% of people do something. But actually, 3% is pretty amazing in a world where 13% convert every day. It’s essentially 25% more people who go through the process eventually buying. On an annualized basis, it’s about a million dollars in incremental revenue on this very light touch thing.
(00:25:14):
So I think our position is typically that these optimizations are not necessarily something we want to do, we want people to really want to do this so much so that we’re putting videos in front of them and explanations, and really want to make sure that anyone who ends up a member of Levels is someone who really, really wants it. But I think as busy people, all of us have probably had the experience where we intended to do something and we didn’t, we forgot. And I think subtle reminders have a place in our world, and these results certainly indicate that. So I’m considering this a success. That doesn’t mean we should turn this on tomorrow, but the notion that it is only incremental and not worthwhile, I think is largely disproven here. So thanks for letting me indulge in that experiment. And finally, touching on blood work, we have had one Forum since this launch, which we didn’t have it last week. The first results have come in.
(00:26:03):
We’ve had about 74 people go through this. 31 have received results in app so far. I have not gone out and collected feedback explicitly yet, but that is coming soon. Some of this inbound feedback though has been positive. The next steps is some phase two engineering work to close the loop on results and make them integrate automatically. And some of the BioReference language is being modified to be easier to understand for our members, but this is off to a great start. And in terms of when I imagine pushing this out to everybody and making it a proper thing, I think that’s probably a January thing, as we have a couple more weeks of engineering and other loose ends to tie up. That is all for me. Have a great weekend.
Josh Clemente (00:26:48):
Awesome update. Thank you, JM. Always replays. There we go. All right, I think we have a a-sync Tom update too.
Tom Griffin (00:26:59):
Okay, nutritionist update. The main update here is that we added a new nutritionist this week. So meet Karen, she’s over here on the right side. Karen is awesome. I chatted with her a couple weeks ago for a while and she’s been a Levels member. She’s followed our journey for a long time now and she’s most importantly, very philosophically aligned with what we’re doing, so really excited to have her on board. Otherwise, we are pressing pause on any major dev work around this project right now, just based on team priorities and bandwidth. We’ll likely revisit, I would say, in early January, but in the meantime, we’ll continue to manage the program as is, as well as talk to new nutritionists and hopefully add some more diversity here just in terms of background and focus area. So that’s it for now. Let me know if you have any questions.
Josh Clemente (00:27:57):
Thank you, Tom.
Tom Griffin (00:28:00):
Okay.
Josh Clemente (00:28:03):
All right.
David Flinner (00:28:04):
They try to repeat themselves. All right, Guided Looping. Had some really substantial progress from Justin and Steph this week. All the modals interactions and navigation of the core structure for this are largely engineering complete. You can try it out in the app, you can in the internal demo memo, give it a shot. Justin wired up real scores, got the gradients from Alan, so that now your scores and the experience you have reflects the color and emotions that we want to convey. And then, we also wired up the full immersive full screen insight card experience. Justin has that live, and you can test it out in at least a demo in the app right now. Steph’s working on the triggering logic. So basically, who’s eligible to receive this? What time of day does it happen, how much glucose did you have to have yesterday?
(00:28:54):
And Justin’s working on some retool stuff as well to provide certain insights, let them be eligible for the day review experience and certain ones not. There’s one other experience here that I didn’t get a chance to highlight in the demo video, but we’ve been talking to Alan a lot about, when you get your score, helping you feel that you’re in contact with other people who are sharing the same, you’re not alone, no matter what score you got. And Alan working on some really cool visuals. While he’s heads down on the product think week, Justin put together a nice companion slide to the initial score reveal that shows you just in a grid fashion, other people’s heads, that you’re not alone. Didn’t get a chance to sneak that into the slides here, but do take a look in the app. And this is progressing towards, I think being completely internally demoable, certainly in December, probably in the next couple weeks. Stay tuned for that, and then we can get some feedback from members.
Josh Clemente (00:30:01):
Awesome, thanks David. Looks great. Right quick, hiring updates, software engineering, this gives you a historical flow for where people are in the process. We’ve got Taylor, Jeff, Britney starting soon. We’ve also, I haven’t added here, added a new head of expansion for international work. We’ll probably announce that… Actually everyone, I think we’ve already announced it. Karen Nielsen, she’ll be joining us to lead expansion overseas and be a counterpart for Jamm’s work. And so yeah, those four will be starting soon. Community manager, got some people rolling through on that. Same as visual designer, a couple more candidates in the loop now as things start to pick up. And then associate editor, moving people towards about the middle of the process. Chris.
Chris Jones (00:30:54):
Thanks, Josh. Josh alluded to some of these points on the first slide, but to reiterate, we’re seeing, I guess as I call, females leading the pack when it comes to Levels on multiple fronts, from faster growth to higher NPS, to more engagement within the apps. So the chart you’re looking at on the right are two things. On the top, you’re looking at the number of orders, meaning the number of CGMs or the number of months people have been using the product of the NPS by gender. So for people that are new to Levels, you see almost a 20 point gap between females and males. And then as people get into month two or month three, that gap really starts to close. On the bottom, I’m just showing the number of surveys to get a sense of, as you get into people with seven or eight orders, it’s a really small sample size, so that can vary a lot.
(00:31:47):
But as we think about the onboarding loop, this one can be really critical around how do we get close that gap so people don’t have to wait till month three or month four before they really get a ton of value out of Levels, and how do we bring that much closer in the product and add value right away, and not have to wait for people to really on their third month of, okay, now I get it. We’ll be tracking this as we go forward. Josh, on the next slide.
(00:32:16):
On the growth factor, the chart in the upper right is looking at the number of active users by people where we’re actually seeing glucose scanning. And you can see early on, it was primarily males that were our audience. And then quickly, females eclipse males and are growing much stronger. The big spike you see is when we did the Hyman podcast where we had say, when we do reach out to certain podcasts or certain audiences like Good Morning America or Mark Hyman, that can really change the demographic, because of that audience behind it as we go into these things. So we can see real swings depending upon what we’re doing from a marketing standpoint. As you go on the top to the right, you look at how often they’re logging food, and then that relationship of how often they’re logging food versus glucose.
(00:33:02):
So in general, females are more engaged in the app, which also is a reason which explains why they have higher NPS, because they’re seeing more value in it. On the bottom, we’re doing the same, but now just looking at age buckets. So again, early on our primary demographics was people in the 30s, but then over time it became more 40s and 50s, and even people in the 60s are making significant growth. Again, specifically you saw some of those step changes with the Mark Hyman podcast around we have a very wide demographic and lots of different users with lots of different needs. So as we think about a lot of the work we did around profiles and personas, we need to make sure, is this really changing as we bring in new audience members? Next slide.
(00:33:53):
A little bit of looking back as everyone’s recovering from probably all the Thanksgiving leftovers they’re having, these were just a sampling of things from our Levels Facebook group in terms of people prepping for Thanksgiving, worried about being a bumpy ride, giving their glucose monitors a pep talk. So I really enjoyed the conversation, people preparing for Thanksgiving in terms of what should they eat? Reacting around having mashed potatoes and having a super high score, then getting really nervous about Thanksgiving, because that’s a key item. So it was just fun to watch the community share. Next slide.
(00:34:31):
Not going to read through these. This is just to keeping our voice and member top of mind. These are a sampling of comments from our net promoter survey for last week. How to read this is, where the comments are in green, all green are promoters, the grays are passives, and all reds are detractors. But then I do try to highlight where a promoter is talking about something negative or a passive negative, which is why the color coding, is how to read it. A couple call outs top left. One person mentioned that they learned more in one week with Levels than in 70 years together of knowledge, which is great. Or in RN talking about how she thought she was very knowledgeable, but that she actually didn’t need Levels to understand her glucose Levels, and it told her not. I absolutely need Levels and CGMs to monitor, because I had no idea what I was doing. We’ll continue to surface this in many different ways. And next slide, and I’m going to turn over to Mike D for a little bit of feedback from the member calls that he does.
Mike Didonato (00:35:38):
Thanks, Chris. Really just want to focus on one thing primarily. A few weeks ago, we had our internal book club and it was for the membership economy. One of the main takeaways there was the need to continue to focus on onboarding and improving it, so we’ve been trying to gather some more feedback and insights from our members for the team. Just two of the examples revolve around getting in and using the app, and then the other part was actually, I know how to use the app and the sensor, how do I make sense of this data?
(00:36:14):
And I think we’ve chatted about maybe running some experiments, whether that’s an onboarding buddy, and we raised this with the members and they were more than interested to at least explore that. Some of the takeaways were, “I wish I knew this information that you clarified for me before getting started with Levels.” If we do decide to run that experiment, I’m more than happy to support with it, since I think I probably have done the most synchronous onboardings. But yeah, that’s it. And then just one of the shout outs, want to call out JM, Merilo and Alan that thought about the blood pad, although I think the formatting is a little bit off, but just the value that the members saw and they really want to be able to upload all their labs. That’s it.
Josh Clemente (00:37:02):
Awesome. Love the number feedback loop closure. Thanks, Mike, and thank you, Chris. Ben.
Ben Grynol (00:37:11):
All right, growth. We’ll do a monthly recap here of performance. So weekly we have limited data as far as the month goes, but weekly we’re at 151, so pass our goal of 75, and then 85 already, so the month started on Wednesday. No changes to cash, debt or runway. Next slide please. So recognize revenue, 771 for the month. It’s our second highest month in the history of Levels. The highest month was 836, which was when the Mark Hyman and Casey podcast are opt when we saw a very big influx, but it’s a pretty significant month considering that we’re not in growth mode, and we’ll talk more about that in a bit. 770 of cash generated, and those numbers are pretty close as far as recognized revenue and cash, because of the way that we realize those numbers. Next slide, please.
(00:38:03):
On a monthly basis, we’ll start breaking down our revenue and the contribution to it. And we’re seeing more ancillary revenue streams, that being nutritionist, that being blood work, that being memberships, that being CGM. And so, it’s important to see where the breakdown is and what our focus is moving forward, that being membership. So CGM sales, 550 of the 771. Memberships we had 1,277, so $254,000 of revenue driven from those new memberships. And that’s the annual membership to reiterate that, that’s our model now. And then blood work, as Jay mentioned, it hasn’t been pushed out as far as awareness goes. It’s still very much in its infancy, and so we’ll start to see that number grow as more people become aware of what is the Metabolic Health Panel, why is it valuable? And we’ll continue to educate people about that. Next slide please.
(00:38:57):
So year-over-year growth, we’ll look at, and we’ll get into membership in a sec, but recognized revenue, we’re at one 55% year-over-year growth from last November, was when the Seed round dropped the announcement about it, and there was a big surge in revenue, but there’s still a pretty significant difference year-over-year. Membership, so we used to report subscription revenue and we’ll no longer report that moving forward, we’ll start reporting only membership. So we’re using last year’s subscription revenue for CGMs as a benchmark for this year’s difference, but that’s 322% year-over-year growth in that respect. Next slide please. We’re not in growth mode. This is something that we reiterate, and I think it’s important that we not only state that we’re not in growth mode, but understand what is growth mode and what is not growth mode and why do we want to have this outlook.
(00:39:49):
So not being in growth mode means that we can run lots of experiments. There’s a ton of wiggle room for us to test, learn, test, learn, test, learn when in growth mode. And actually, sorry, these experiments are things like community challenges, they’re things like doing mission patches, they’re focused on owned media, which creates earned media and staying away from things like performance marketing. Not that we can’t run experiments with that, we’re just not focused on that right now.
(00:40:15):
So what is growth mode? Well, that is once we launch, we start committing to growth rates. So month-over-month growth rates, and these become targets. And we have these targets internally, not just for our team, but we commit to them for our cap table and we say, we are aiming here, and here is how we’re going to get to that point. Once we’ve made that commitment, it’s hard to get off the track of meeting those commitments and you spend less time experimenting. So we’re at a very interesting point, and we are afforded the opportunity to still see growth. So 771 recognized revenue is significant over last month, but that’s not the goal right now, the goal is experimentation. So if anyone ever has questions around what is growth and how do we pursue it right now, given that we’re in beta, happy to chat about it further. And on to Tony with the recap of the podcast.
Tony Milio (00:41:06):
Thanks man. This is a quick recap for November. We released 12 episodes and we recorded 10 episodes. And then we also have nine schedule for December. You could see all the episodes we released in November on the top right there. On the bottom left, you’ll see our all-time top 10 episodes, and three of which were from November, including the Philip Ovadia episode, Ben Bikman and the Betsy McLaughlin episode. Those three performed really well, and based on a lot of the qualitative feedback we received last month from the survey, we’re definitely going to create more member story episodes, especially obviously episodes about members on our team especially as well. On the bottom right you’ll see our all-time weekly plays. And you’ll notice from October to November we increased in a 100% in weekly plays from, I believe it was a third, 2,400 to 4,800 weekly plays now in November. So in a month a 100% increased. Yeah, really happy about that. And that’s it for the recap.
Josh Clemente (00:42:25):
Awesome. Thanks Tony and Ben. All right, Jesse?
Jesse (00:42:32):
I recorded a little… Oh, there it is. All right, update on Mission Patches 2.0. On November 16th we sent out 128 seed investor patches. Laurie sent these all out single handedly from her distribution center in Southern California, which you can see here pictured on the left. We’ve gotten some pretty cool feedback from some investors. This was just the first wave, so we’re collecting some additional addresses with another email campaign this week and next week, and then next week as well. All the supplies for the 2019 and 2020 patches are at Lori’s house, so she’ll get back from vacation this week or Monday, and then we will get rock and rolling on additional distribution for these. So if you haven’t gotten yours yet, don’t forget, it’s on the way and this project will reach completion around December. So yeah, thanks.
Josh Clemente (00:43:26):
Love it. Thank you, Jesse. Okay, Tom.
Tom Griffin (00:43:33):
Hey, team. Going to run through a few partnership slides. So starting with November, promo code performance. As a reminder, these codes here that you’ll see on the right are both internal codes as well as external partner codes. So for example, what I mean by internal Doubleopt here, which is in the lead for the month of November, is the access link that wait list signups get. After they sign up, they’ll get an email. If they click through and read it really carefully, they can sign up for the beta program. Newsletter here is the link that goes out in the newsletter from Mike Haney. Just a couple things to call out. Doubleopt was at an all-time high this month, which is great to see. New codes here are in red, so these are new partners or new promotions. Specifically going to call out The Verge, which I think is nearing in on about a 100 conversions in the last few days, which is really cool to see.
(00:44:26):
And I would say we haven’t seen anything like it before, in terms of a conversion event based on some editorial piece, like a tech review. And then, Dave Asprey up here at 123, which is very significant for him, and that’s because of the podcast drop with Casey a few weeks ago. Noting that the conversions we’re seeing are about 50% roughly of what we saw when Josh was on the podcast many, many months ago. That was one of the first promotions that we did with Dave and his audience, so totally expected that we see a drop off. We’ve been consistently hitting his audience on a monthly if not weekly basis. And then lastly, just shout out to Kevin Rose, who somehow is still generating 10 to 15 conversions a month, which is pretty incredible, because that podcast aired over a year ago, and we haven’t really recirculated it too much.
(00:45:19):
Okay, quick podcast tour update. So just shining a light on the fact that we’ve got a number of awesome recordings upcoming. Casey’s going to LA the first week of January to record with Drew again, Mark Hyman, and a new one here, Sean Stevenson, which is another, I think, top 10 health show. So a huge get came inbound and really wanted to interview Casey, so super exciting. And then lastly, Sam is interviewing with early 2000s Silicon Valley legend, Noah Kagan. So we’re excited about that one as well.
(00:45:51):
And then lastly, just high level, a few focus areas right now for partnerships that Jackie’s adding a lot of horsepower to, which is awesome. So Creator Outreach over the next few weeks. This is between now and end of year with a focus on YouTube, continuing to secure and plan for 2022 paid placements. So the best example of this would be podcast advertising. And then lastly, just doing a look back on the current affiliate program as well as figuring out how to level it up in 2022. And then on that note, I will pass it to Jackie who’s going to talk more about the affiliate program. Happy Friday and have a great weekend everyone.
Josh Clemente (00:46:31):
Thanks Tom. Let me try and not replay that. There we go. Jackie.
Jackie Tsontakis (00:46:38):
Hey, I’m going to share a quick overview of an analysis that I shared earlier this week in Threads of our affiliate program to date. The screenshot of the Notion Doc is there on the left. We wanted to see what was working, what wasn’t, and identify potential builds to our affiliate program for 2022. The key metrics that we focused on were engagement. Those were clicks that we got from Short.io conversions, which came from Ambassador. Those are also in Retool, and it’s worth noting that this was just conversions on affiliate links. So that table that Tom just showed, is all partner codes. This was just focused on affiliates, so the people that received commissions off of the conversions through their link.
(00:47:26):
And then looked at conversion rates, what they looked like across each of our affiliate links. Purpose of the analysis was, there were a few different objectives. One, to understand activity patterns across all of our affiliates, see what learnings we could generate, understand better how perspective consumers move through the purchase funnel differently for various affiliates, and then use those insights to inform next steps and what changes and improvements we can make to our affiliate program moving forward. Next slide.
(00:48:00):
Awesome. This is what we found, just a quick snapshot. Each of our affiliates fell into one of four buckets based on how their engagements, their clicks and conversion rates compared to the averages. On the left you can see what those four buckets looked like, and we’ll use this data to inform how we engage these affiliates moving forward. And there’s more to come with that in the Strategy Doc that’s to come, but just to quickly go through each bucket. So that green section, high engagement, high conversion rate, these are our most valuable affiliates, like Kelly LeVeque and Ben Greenfield fall here. We want to make sure we keep engaging them regularly. Purple represents low engagement, high conversion rates. So these folks are really influential among their audiences. We want to make sure that we engage them to post more.
(00:48:59):
And then yellow is high engagement, so lots of clicks, lower conversion rate. This might be due to a number of different reasons. Maybe audience profile is playing into this or the way that the affiliate’s posting their link, so we’ll work with these folks moving forward on different content approaches or maybe dig deeper into their audience demos. And then pink, low engagement, low conversion rate. We’re looking into these on a case-by-case basis further, but some of these folks are totally inactive, some of them we can engage more.
(00:49:34):
And then high level takeaways on the right there. These will feed into that Affiliate Strategy 2.0 Doc that we’re working on now. But first one there, we saw some of our affiliates have not been as active or have dropped off. Most of these fall into that bottom left corner quadrant, the pink quadrant there. So we’ll make sure that we, one, continue to set a high bar for letting people into the affiliate program. And then two, maybe manage affiliates more closely in the beginning, more specific tactics to come there, just to make sure that we’re supporting them in any way we can. The second thing there, doubling down on high converting affiliates. These are really, really valuable and influential folks in our network. So want to make sure we increase and standardize engagement with them, so more details on how we’ll take action against all these takeaways. And that’s it.
Josh Clemente (00:50:30):
Thank you, Jackie. I love seeing these breakdowns come to light. All right, social update. Stacie.
Stacie Flinner (00:50:39):
Yeah. Mercy usually provides our social update on analytics and metrics, but I figured I’d take over this week to help you understand a little bit of the strategy that goes on behind the scenes, and to celebrate hitting a major milestone, having 50,000 followers on Instagram. So just a look back at the past year, our Instagram actually started in December of 2019. David actually started it, David Flinner. And so, it has been live for two years, and it took one year to gain our first 10,000 followers. Most of that growth was actually a product of the amazing podcast tour that Tom organized for Josh and Casey as these large podcast accounts would talk about us, but that’s really what lifted us to our first 10,000 by the end of the first year in December 2020.
(00:51:39):
From the content side, we were largely using this as a teaser account to drive people to the blog. The blog was where we were putting our most effort, and so we wanted to make sure that we were getting as many eyes on it as possible. And so, we had great growth, but we didn’t have great engagement. And this befuddled me a little bit. We had low likes, low shares and saves, but people were actually going to the blog. Next slide.
(00:52:17):
It took a little figuring out as to how we could have engagement that reflected the audience size, and we think the audience enthusiasm, and so two things happened in 2021 that led us to actually generate our own growth out of the platform. As the podcast were tapered down, we saw growth stalling, but about March of this year, I piloted just a very info graphicy style post called, What Is Glucose, which got great engagement and shares. And shortly after that, Mark Hyman had a call with our team, and he has incredible engagement on his account if you guys follow him. And he shared some of his secrets and he really encouraged us to share all of the value that we had in the blog post on our Instagram post. So we weren’t driving people to another platform and having people drop off, but we were providing a lot of value simply in bite size pieces in each Instagram post.
(00:53:19):
And that honestly, made things pop. We still get lots of new followers from the podcasts that we’re on. We still get a lot of content from our affiliate partners, but you can actually see now that our normal, quote unquote, members are promoting us extensively, because they’re finding a lot of value in this content and it’s presented to them so they can absorb it quickly and then share it to their own accounts. It’s really evidence of the value that this extensive research that goes into each blog post has, but then meeting people where they’re at. So just a quick look at some of… Oops, next slide. At some of the top posts from 2021, they’re all very simple and very actionable. And I don’t know if you can see the post insights at the bottom, because the font is small, but we have posts with extraordinary numbers of saves and shares. Almost as many saves as likes, which saves and shares are more valuable metrics really on the impact of the post.
(00:54:29):
Because a like can be very passive, but if someone’s saving and someone’s sharing, that means that they either want to reference this later or they want others to know about it, because they’re finding it so beneficial. So really incredible, a lot of interest whenever we post about sugar. I think people appreciate the data on how damaging sugar can be. And then also, practical how-to guides, like understanding your metabolic blood test results. We had a lot of messages where people were like, “This came out at just the right moment, because I had just got my blood work back and was mucking around in the data and not sure how to analyze it.” So these are very tactical and simple and actionable.
(00:55:09):
Last one, how to take a walk for more stable blood sugar. Making it easy and straightforward, and seems like people love it. So that’s been an important transition from teasing our blog posts and saying, okay, well here’s a sneak peek of what we’re writing about the blog, but you really need to go to the blog to get all of the information to transitioning where we’re providing people with those resources in a really digestible way. Yeah. That’s enabled us to, in our first year we grew 10,000 followers on Instagram, and then in our second year we grew 40,000 followers on Instagram, which was a 350% increase year-over-year, which is really incredible. Next slide please.
(00:55:55):
All right, so this is just a quick, what’s happened in the last month. We exceeded 50,000 followers on Instagram. Our top post was, again, about sugar, why we crave it, and how we can stop those cravings. Just in that month alone, we grew 10%, had over 500,000 impressions on our content, 201 stories shared through our Instagram stories. And that does not include everything that our members and followers tagged us in. That’s just what we reshared on our account. So you can see a few more metrics there. Twitter also going really strong, almost to 20,000 followers. I’m really excited that we’re starting to crack the net on how to get good engagement on our posts about Whole New Level. Tony’s been doing a great job in creating little teaser snippets that provide a nugget of great information and then encourage people to listen to the whole podcast at the link in the tweets.
(00:56:56):
So that’s been really incredible. And our top performing post in November was actually Dr. Casey’s conversation with Dr. Ben Bikman on a Whole New Level. Yeah, I think the next slide, Austin, if you’re still on the call, we really appreciate you. Just wanted to highlight all of the amazing things that Austin has done in the last month. And to start, he debut this concept of A Day in the Life Takeover, where we ask a Levels member to give us an insider peek at how they use their CGM and how they think about metabolic health throughout the day. It was really incredible to both see the amazing content that Austin put together. We know he’s always so winsome and makes it fun and easy to learn about this, but I think his full takeover was really fun to see his family jump on board, his wife’s participation and support.
(00:57:56):
His mom was even DMing us, which was really incredible. And so that enthusiasm, hopefully you guys felt it too, but I think that it went quite well. And we’re looking forward to giving these inside peaks into additional members’ lives and how they use CGM. So coming up, we’ve got Gabe Mendoza this month. We’ve got Natalie Vanderpump in January, and then Steph Gronke, I’m sorry if I’m saying your name incorrectly, but in February after she’s completed leading many people through the whole 30 challenge. And so, really looking forward to just, I think we’re doing this across many platforms, but really highlighting the wisdom and the contributions of our members, because they’re incredible evangelists and really, we have a lot to learn from them. And so, it’s great to capture them in this way. So, all right.
Josh Clemente (00:58:48):
Amazing update. Thank you, Stacie. Those insights into the post engagement are awesome. I think that’s the first time I’ve seen them presented that way. So obviously, huge year plus on the social front. Thanks. Haney.
Mike Haney (00:59:06):
Yes, on content, I’ll just go through a handful of posts that have gone up since last we spoke and how it relates to the broader strategy. Last time we talked, we had a piece up that was locally called Why Glucose Doesn’t Matter. And this, I guess it was last week, we released the companion piece to that, which was, Eight Reasons We Still Think You Should Measure It. And again, this falls into that metabolic basics category that we’re trying to fill out. We’ve come to the realization over the past couple of months that there’s an awful lot of concepts that we’re super familiar with, that are captured in little tiny pieces in other posts. It would be a great thing in the reverse diabetes post or in the fiber post about glycemic variability. But we don’t have a lot of these things as direct, immediate, available articles for people to just start this on our theme of education today to start their journey down into learning about this.
(00:59:59):
So I think this piece really is an accessible, yeah, here’s why we talk about glucose so much, and here’s why we think it’s worth measuring, even for people who don’t have diagnosed metabolic impairment. Couple of great people pieces this week, many of you know Mona Sharma already, she’s joined us on this really great Q&A with her. And then, the one over there on the right with Jenna Gress-Smith, she’s a sleep expert. This falls into the bucket of company collaboration, so we get connected with a lot of other companies, a lot of other folks in this space, in the health and wellness space. And what we found is, the best way to collaborate with those companies to create content, is usually to interview one of their experts, especially if it’s on a topic that has some relationship to metabolic health.
(01:00:46):
This one is really pretty deeply focused on sleep. We don’t get real deep into glucose and insulin and those kinds of things, but I think there’s still a lot of really good information in there and some good tips from Jenna about sleep. The one in the middle I want to call out. This is another one of our study breakdowns from Matt Le, who’s become just a really great valuable content contributor professor, metabolic researcher. But this is also, if you haven’t seen it yet, he started doing videos to accompany these research breakdowns. He calls five minutes, five slides, five questions, and he really worked hard, and I think has done a good job at distilling these study breakdowns into these five-minute videos. So I think we’ve got three of them up now and we’re going to keep producing these regularly. We’ve a great designer named Jeff, is helping us make some nice looking slides for them.
(01:01:35):
So excited to build more. This is a first toe into more video content on the blog, and more using that as a format to fulfill that educational mission to give people another way into this content. And finally, on the right, this is a piece that we produced with our content agency partner, Revel. One of the things Revel is really good at, they bring a lot of expertise in is, the real service driven content. So the real actionable, what you can do stuff. We’ve got a lot of other great contributors who are really good at our science deep dives. Revel’s really good at thinking about how does this information translate into people’s everyday lives? How do we give them tips they can go out and use? And so, one of the rubrics, one of the formats they propose is what we call metabolic menu.
(01:02:20):
And it was right, when you’re in a sports bar, you’re in a Chipotle, you’re in, I think we got one about smoothie shops coming up, what can you order? Because as we know, and Casey shared with us before, there’s ways to have a salad that’s great, and there’s ways to have a salad that’s a disaster, and capturing that nuance of what to do is really useful. So I’m really happy with the way this piece turned out. I’ll be curious what folks think about it, but it’s basically how to navigate Chipotle. And because Chipotle is such a highly customizable menu and they encourage customizing, it’s a good place to be able to avoid the stuff that you don’t want and lean into the stuff that you do want. So yeah, that’s the content for this week.
Josh Clemente (01:03:03):
So much great stuff here. Thanks Haney. And yeah, I particularly love the breakdowns of research as an addition. That’s going to be, I think really, really helpful along the lines of what Austin was talking about, making these sorts of things approachable instead of nearly deliberately impenetrable by the non-scientists. All right, we made it. Yeah, so a few minutes over, and now we have the rest of the time to get through our individual contributions, so thanks everyone for experimenting with us on this new format. Miz, you’re kicking us off.
Michael Mizrahi (01:03:37):
All right, right on time. On the work side, got to meet Maz this morning, so that was very excited to have him on board. And just generally, the recruiting and the new hires starting soon. We have a handful starting in the next few weeks, and so that’s encouraging. I think a lot of our team building and recruiting processes are falling into place and processes are hitting their stride, so that feels good generally. Thanks Mike for the help, and then Michelle on our team, who’s helping with the recruiting coordination. Has been great and been contributing quite a bit. And then on the personal side, my sister’s visiting in town. Excited to spend some time with her this weekend and finish the year off strong. That’s about it.
Josh Clemente (01:04:14):
Awesome. Helena, I don’t see you on the call, but if you are, please jump in. Let’s go to Zac.
Zac Henderson (01:04:23):
Yeah. On the personal front, just honestly, getting excited about Christmas. December is definitely the Christmas month for me and my fam, so excited to hook a bunch of Christmas food and decorate the house and all that. On the professional front, lots of great stuff going on. I had an awesome conversation with Maz last week and it just made me really excited that he has joined us, so I’ll flag that as my professional thing.
Josh Clemente (01:04:50):
Awesome. Love it. Alan.
Alan (01:04:53):
Yeah, I’m super excited to be digging in with Scott on some of the roadmap and the strategy planning for the year. I’m looking forward to what we’re all going to be working on. And on the personal side, my wife is getting ready to leave on Monday for New York, so the transition is finally happening and she’s going to be out there a little bit before us, but it’s all falling into place, so excited about that.
Josh Clemente (01:05:21):
Glad you guys are finally there. Good luck with this last mile, so to speak. Tony.
Tony Milio (01:05:28):
Yeah, on the professional side, it was definitely great seeing that growth that Stacie presented with the social media following over the last year or two. Really love seeing that. And also, just having Austin McGuffie on the call today, it’s just awesome. If anyone hasn’t seen the reel that he posted recently, definitely check it out, because it was really cool. Definitely made me happy. Personal side, I’ll probably be saying this for the next few weeks, but obviously, everything Christmas, honestly this month, a lot of Christmas shopping every weekend for the next few weeks.
Josh Clemente (01:06:09):
Good luck and enjoy. Thanks. Rob.
Robert Lustig (01:06:12):
Had a meeting with Taylor over the phone, discussed next steps and next analytes and compliance. We’re going to get Alan roped into this as well. So Taylor’s already working, even though he is not an employee yet, or not getting paid yet, but we’re on it. Looking forward, Casey, to your Eye Select conference on Wednesday with my good friend Mark Cucuzzella. Do you know him?
Casey Means (01:06:49):
No. Only digitally at this point, but not in person.
Robert Lustig (01:06:52):
All right, all right. Well, he’s a runner, so he gets it. He’s actually using Metabolical as a medical text for University of West Virginia. So you should have a very, very good conversation, I’m looking forward to it. And one last piece of advice, whatever you do, if you get your COVID booster, don’t plan anything for the next day. My wife got her COVID booster the day before Thanksgiving, and she ruined it. She was in bed for two days with the worst body aches, headache ever. And was she sorry. Okay.
Josh Clemente (01:07:32):
Bummer. I hope she’s feeling better now.
Robert Lustig (01:07:34):
Yeah, she’s better.
Josh Clemente (01:07:36):
Mark Cucuzzella, by the way, his natural running videos on YouTube are fantastic. If anyone’s interested in Forum stuff. Scott.
Scott Klein (01:07:46):
All right. Personally, my wife left yesterday to go to New Jersey to go see her best friend, so just me and the kids for a couple days. Good luck, everybody. On the professional front, the strategy stuff is really fun, and just take a moment to talk about that. I think, when we talked about Alan and I needing some space, I want to make it very clear that this isn’t just Alan and I’s decision to make. I think it’s quite the opposite. We’re going to be involving a lot of people, a lot of our members hopefully, and really trying to get a sense for what’s on people’s minds. He and I only have two lenses into this massive thing that we’re working on. It’s going to take, everybody, you can maybe think of us more as shepherd’s, facilitators, designers and visioners. We want to be able to communicate almost as the oratory part of it, the narrative part of it, why we’re doing what we’re doing.
(01:08:39):
But to think that we’re going to come up with all the ideas, is certainly wrong. I don’t think that way. I know Alan doesn’t, and I don’t want you to either. So I think for as much as we can get some time with you, please make yourself available. I know we really have compressed the timeline here, but the hope is that by December we have something that everybody’s really galvanized to go work on in the new year. We can take off some break around the time of the new year, and then really hit it hard, and know exactly where we’re heading in the three to five year timeframe, but also in the next maybe 12 to 18 months, exactly how that’s going to directionally get us set and going in the right direction. So that’s the plan right now. Thanks everybody for covering in various aspects for us, and just winging it as we get to the last couple weeks of the year.
Josh Clemente (01:09:25):
Thank you, Scott and Alan. Looking forward to that process, for sure. Lauren.
Lauren (01:09:31):
Hey, everybody. I am feeling very lucky, because I’ve been thinking about holiday gifts for the people that I love and I really just want everyone to have Levels, which makes me feel just really happy that we’re doing what we’re doing and that I get to be a part of it. And personally, I’m apartment hunting this weekend, which you might not be able to tell from the background noise, but my current apartment is practically in a construction zone, so I’m very excited to switch up my surroundings and have some quiet.
Josh Clemente (01:09:58):
Good luck. Some people enjoy that process, I’m not one of them. Hope it goes well. Let’s see. Hao.
Hao Li (01:10:06):
Yeah, I just really appreciate the effort we are continually making to improve our workflow. I’ve been testing out our new task management tools, and it’s been great.
Josh Clemente (01:10:23):
Awesome. JM is on read only. Gabriel.
Gabriel (01:10:30):
Yeah. I’m going to combine personal and professional and just say what a pleasure it was to spend yesterday with Jeremy and Steph, and meet Steph for the first time. It was great, and I hope more meetups to come.
Josh Clemente (01:10:41):
Awesome. Yeah, I love seeing that one. Kunal.
Kunal Shah (01:10:46):
Yeah. Professionally, I just want to give a shout-out to the engineering team. It’s just such a pleasure working with everyone on the team. There are just so many constructive, thoughtful people that it makes getting to work each day just so much fun, and I really look forward to working with you all every day. So I just want to say that. And then on the personal front, I just got my motorcycle permit, so we’ll see there where that takes me. That’s all I have.
Josh Clemente (01:11:21):
We’ll have to talk. I’ve got two sitting in my parents’ basement. I haven’t ridden in a while, but be curious what you’re going to look for.
Kunal Shah (01:11:29):
Oh, boy.
Josh Clemente (01:11:31):
Austin, if you’re open to it, go ahead and jump in. No pressure. There we go.
Austin McGuffie (01:11:42):
Yeah, I wasn’t expecting to do that, but cool. So a personal win, I guess is, I don’t know, shoot, being happily married after being pretty much stuck in the house with my kids for two years as a pretty big deal. And professionally, just the past couple of months was when I really started digging deep into creating more content around metabolism, and it’s going great. So yeah, looking forward to continue collabing with you guys and making some really dope content.
Josh Clemente (01:12:13):
Love it. Thanks for jumping in on this last part here.
Austin McGuffie (01:12:17):
Absolutely.
Josh Clemente (01:12:18):
We love these. Murillo.
Murillo (01:12:22):
Yeah, something that jumped out at me this week, was the results of the engagement survey, and it was really amazing just seeing how thoughtful everyone was about Levels and what we’re building here. So yeah, that was really encouraging, for sure.
Josh Clemente (01:12:38):
Yeah, agreed. Tom is out. Jesse.
Jesse (01:12:43):
Personally, I have finals to study for this weekend, so I’m looking forward to that.
Josh Clemente (01:12:50):
Good luck. I’m sure you’ll crush them. Mercy.
Mercy Clemente (01:12:55):
Professionally, yeah, it was super cool. Stacie, thank you for doing the recap for social. I mean, I knew we had a lot of growth, but seeing it laid out, that was really crazy. And then personally, yeah, I’m going to decorate for Christmas this weekend. So, excited for that.
Josh Clemente (01:13:10):
Enjoy. I think Andrew had a jump. Ben.
Ben Grynol (01:13:16):
Levels wise, stoked to have Austin here, and stoked to have Maz officially join the First Forum, so very cool. On the personal front, we’re having family photos taken today, which is going to be interesting, so right after Forum.
Josh Clemente (01:13:31):
Nice. Family photos, always fun. Maz, kickoff column number two, neck-in-neck with Miz.
Maz Brumand (01:13:42):
On the workflow, it’s just been really fantastic getting ramped up and a big kudos to Miz and Sam, I’ve been using Max for many years now and I learned a lot just watching some of those videos. It’s just almost like magic how they navigate the different systems in different apps, so thank you for that. On the personal front, my brother was traveling and he’s back, so we’re going to have a close Thanksgiving dinner on Sunday. My parents are visiting too, so it’ll be great. And there is something called a kimchi [inaudible 01:14:15] on the menu, which I’m super excited. It basically has no carbs in it, and so I’ll let you guys know how that goes with the CGM.
Josh Clemente (01:14:23):
Please do. We need a recipes channel, I’m realizing. Matt.
Matt Flanagan (01:14:30):
Yeah. Plus one to all the Christmas, good holiday cheer here. Professionally, I got one month in here at Levels, so appreciate everybody helping me get up to speed here, and finally feeling like my feet are getting underneath me. So excited for the next couple months to come. And personally, finisher, we have the apartment’s ready and the move’s lined up for next week, so just trying to get all those things in line.
Josh Clemente (01:14:57):
Always fun to get that over with. Good luck. Jackie.
Jackie Tsontakis (01:15:03):
Yeah, professionally I was checking the conversions on just Conversions and Ritual last night and seeing, I think it was 88 as of last night on The Verge article, so that was really cool to see. I know Tom highlighted that too, but congrats Haney and Casey on that. Personally, big game for Michigan tomorrow, so I’m excited for that. Chris Jones, we’ll talk on Sunday.
Josh Clemente (01:15:31):
Chris.
Chris Jones (01:15:32):
On the Levels side, definitely a big plus one to Maz joining the team. Super excited about the team growing, the variety of talent and backgrounds, so really looking forward to his value there. Also, I had a lot of fun playing around with Snowflake and beating it up left and right. It’s a lot of fun. As you probably all saw, I was just spinning off dashboards left and right on a whim, so I had a lot of fun on that. So thanks, Jen Lou for building that platform out. On the personal side, next week I’m doing a dry run of Farm Assemblage 2022 by having seven of my closest friends visit the ranch to really test out how many people we can hold, activities. So it’s a long weekend of axe throwing, machine gun shooting and tractor pulling. But one guy is a Michigan fan, and I told him if Michigan beats Iowa tomorrow, that he’s not allowed to come.
Josh Clemente (01:16:32):
I think that’s fair. I’ll be there, I think Thursday at 7:00 PM.
Chris Jones (01:16:37):
Awesome.
Josh Clemente (01:16:40):
That sounds like blast. Enjoy. Justin.
Justin Stanley (01:16:43):
I was super excited how well the meeting with Apple went about our app and how excited they are about Levels. So yeah, looking forward to that. Progressing really well. And also excited about the multi-day fast that some of us are going to do as a group next week. So starting that on Sunday after dinner, I guess, for myself. So, excited.
Josh Clemente (01:17:05):
Awesome. Yeah, looking forward to that. Mike D.
Mike Didonato (01:17:11):
Yeah, plus one to all that everything that everyone said. But two quick things on the Levels side, the podcast, it’s just crazy the amount of episodes and the content and just how well done it is. So big shout out to Ben and Tony and everyone else that’s participated. It’s super awesome. And then the other thing is, I think I said this before, is just the company focus and attention to culture and recognizing how important it is. I’ve been, as I’m sure some of us have been a part of companies that either didn’t really pay too much attention to culture, or didn’t really have the best culture, so just super cool whether that’s the employee engagement survey, conversations I’ve had with JM and Miz, and then obviously adding quality people like Maz and Lauren more recently. It’s just super cool to see.
Josh Clemente (01:18:06):
Love that. Stacie.
Stacie Flinner (01:18:09):
Professionally, David and I just realized that when we’re in California for Christmas, we might be able to schedule our Metabolic Health Panels. Those aren’t available in New Hampshire and I been feeling a little left out, so that’s pretty exciting. And then, yeah, I just love having Austin on, welcome Maz. Love seeing the amazing team growth week over week. And then on the personal front, yeah, I have to say, I’ll send photos. It’s been very impressive what David has been doing to do some really intense building things, because literally no one will call us back. So yeah, we’ll share photos. It’s impressive.
Josh Clemente (01:18:50):
Please do. Looks like there’s a storm going on behind you. I don’t know if that’s true or not. Looks pretty intense.
Stacie Flinner (01:18:56):
It is windy. Yeah.
Josh Clemente (01:18:59):
Let’s see, I’m going to focus on professional stuff this week. There’s just been a bunch, the launch of the Metabolic Health Panel, the deeper insights in areas of the business like affiliates and NPS and just a lot of the intelligence that we’re getting with the data warehouse. And then, let’s see, I think Lauren’s clinical Product Strategy Doc is just super awesome and really points to just how many opportunities there are ahead, and does a great job of just laying out what strategy is available to us in the future. I’m super excited to use that going forward and see what we can build. It’s been a fun week. And then let’s see, personally, jump back on the Peloton after running for a long time, and unfortunately those two skills don’t correlate very well. My output is terrible, so nobody look at my Peloton scores until I get back in it. Haney.
Mike Haney (01:19:53):
Yeah, I’ll plus on a lot of stuff professionally. Super excited to have Maz joining. I had a great chat with him this week. Really happy the donut chats have been brought back. I had a great conversation with Chris yesterday. I got to ask him all kinds of questions about hashtag farmlife that have been eating apnea, so that’s great. And just really excited to see the stuff that Stacie presented. This has been a ton of learning for me and really grateful for just the great feedback and guidance from her and others on the team, and making that so successful and really just helping expand the education mission. So look forward to a lot more of that in 2022.
Josh Clemente (01:20:34):
Love it. All right, Steph, close it out.
Steph Coates (01:20:36):
Closing it out. Yeah, absolute highlight of this week was meeting Jeremy and Gabriel. It was super fun. And addition to that, from more of the technical side, I spent a lot of time this weekend last in unfamiliar territory with the backend and learning a lot of these trigger logic things, and just shout out to how helpful everyone has been. And plus one of what Kunal now said of just working with such a encouraging and incredible engineering team. And personally, I am moving this weekend to Colorado, and so I’m super excited to get out of the Midwest and head back to the mountains, and excited for the fest next week too.
Josh Clemente (01:21:14):
That’s awesome. Congrats on the move, and thank you everybody. This was a jam packed 85 minutes of the 90 that we set aside. I know we did a little monthly review on this call, but just generally, thanks for all the hard work week after week, making months like this happen. And yeah, we’re getting close to the end of the year here, so we’ll have to do a year recap. I don’t know how we’re going to fit that in 90 minutes, but thank you all, great week, great work. Have a great weekend, or jump over to the Breakout Café. And Austin, thank you for joining us. It was awesome having you.