Speaker 1 (00:00):
All right, I think we’ve got a full house, so why don’t we kick it off here. So welcome to Friday Forum, December 30th, 2022, last of the year. It’s going to be relatively fluid and short, but we’ll do a quick recap of the week and then the past year as well.
(00:18):
So forum reminder to all of us, it is now we have moved into more synchronous updates. There’s a lot of asynchronous channels for having some of the information flow that we have. We’ve got weekly async updates that go out. We’ve got the looms in the different meetings that get updated in comms, and then we’ve got different social connection outlets. So this is a great opportunity for us to hear updates synchronously and chime in on chat of how everything is going.
(00:45):
So recent achievements, even though it seems to be a light week, it’s always a full week. This week Chris had taken a bit of a think week and he spent some time updating the Snowflake’s metrics dashboards. And so, one of the things that we want to always have is our hand on the rudder as far as visibility into metrics across the organization. And this comes down to things like product metrics, growth metrics, ops metrics, business metrics, and it’s always good to have that dashboard in front of you so that when you’re flying, everyone can see visibility into how things are going across the org. So he spent time cleaning up some of the queries and then adding new queries into an existing dashboard and it will continue to evolve.
(01:24):
Ops is or ops support is working on, and Chris’s running point on this, an autonomy pilot. So the idea is to bring on two agents, two outsource agents, so that we can scale up and down support volume as needed. Membership renewals are set for January 3rd for a very large cohort of our existing members. And so, we’re expecting an increase in support volume from that. And so having autonomy has an outsourced lever, if you want to call it that, for us to scale up ops and support as needed is very good. So this is a pilot and we’ll assess as we go.
(01:55):
From an inch standpoint, so spent the week paying down tech debt, a lot of backend cleaning up as far as bugs go, finishing out the Prisma migration, debugging some of the Stripe issues that have come in the backend as we’ve gone through membership status updates and renewals to find that some people had two accounts listed in Stripe, and so that’s been cleaned up. There’ve also been some growth eng work underway as far as updating the analytics and the infrastructure needed to run experiments, which Maxine’s been running point on.
(02:25):
Oops. Swapping out the metabolic score for the daily, weekly, monthly reports and then the member portal 2.0 initiative’s underway. So building that out as that’s been redesigned. And then we talked about the growth analytics. Two new ultimate guides. So from an editorial standpoint, we’ve got the metabolic benefits of zone two, which is a cool thing because that came through I think either Sam or Josh or someone said, “Hey, what happens as far as metabolic impact when in zone two fitness?” And so that became, of course, an ultimate guide and it took a few months of research as most of the deep ultimate guides do, but that is now launched. And then we’ve also got one that’s timely, why metabolic health matters for cold and flu season. So those ultimate guides are always great pieces of content and they end up leading to quite a bit of benefit from an SEO standpoint to drive more of our organic search, because these are things that people end up searching for which drive them to our content, which reinforces the value of what we’re doing.
(03:24):
Lauren was on the podcast circuit, so three different podcasts, Unlock Sugar Shackles, and then Dolce’s podcast, which Dolce was a guest probably a month ago, maybe six weeks ago, on form which is great. And Lauren and Dolce did a podcast, the First Levels podcast in Spanish, so very cool to see that launch. And then Escape Your Limits is a UK podcast that Lauren is on. So as we continue that circuit there to bring more awareness to levels in the UK, these are initiatives underway.
(03:52):
We’re experimenting with partnership placement content to drive conversion. So again, this is experimenting with new channels and then sometimes with existing partners but through different channels. So in some cases we’ll experiment with a podcast and we’ll move to a newsletter and we’ll see which drive more convergence. So we’ve got One Commune’s newsletter and Dr. Pearl Letter’s newsletter, Having Levels Placements, and those are driving some early conversions and it’s good to see how we might think about those as far as consideration pieces long-term to keep nurturing their audiences through two levels.
(04:25):
And then lastly, performance marketing tests. So we have put roughly $10,000 budget towards two different performance marketing initiatives. Mark Hyman, we’re doing some whitelist ads. So whitelist ads are when a partner has ads go out through their channels where they’re giving testimonials or talking about levels, but it comes from their account as opposed to Level’s account. And we’ve got user generated content, so ones that Tony had cut internally and they’re basically a montage of a bunch of testimonials of different members talking about Levels, and we’re seeing pretty interesting performance. So the Hyman ones are driving significant conversions as are the UGC ones, but the CAC is different. And this is blended CAC. So right now we’re running six different ads for Mark Hyman and then we’re running four different ones for UGC. And from that we reassess and we say, “Hey, which ones are performing best?” And then we double down on those. So there’s actually lower CAC on the customer acquisition cost on some of the Hyman ones, but the overall blended rate looks higher, because of the initial test. So we’ll continue to double down on that and see what we can do to extrapolate that across either different partners or redesign some of the creative and collateral that we put out through our own channels so that we can keep getting more and more conversions from that.
(05:40):
As far as the podcast goes, so there was an episode with Cleo Abram talking about editorial integrity and some of her journey about content creation and how that ties into some of the work that we do from an editorial standpoint. And then one about brand metrics with Nick Sharma, and he’s always got such deep knowledge when it comes to direct to consumer marketing. So it was fun jamming with him.
(06:03):
Nicole and Sam did one about culture and about roles and how we think about that as we scale as a company. And then Delion Asporab have from First Round, he and Sam had an open debate, or a dialogue if you want to call it that, they’ve got very different perspectives on what it means to have a remote team or a remote company versus an in-person one and how that can trend long-term for the startups.
(06:25):
We have the podcast, so we ended up doing a podcast split. We’ve got a new channel called Inside the Company if you haven’t seen that. And that is where we’re turning a whole new level specifically into metabolic health content. And then inside the company is for our business and culture content. And so, we’ve now launched that and moving forward we’re going to put all different content in the different feeds so that people can find the feeds that fit their interests, which is pretty interesting.
(06:49):
So we have three feeds and to date we’ve generated roughly 850,000 downloads between two podcast feeds. So it’ll be cool to see how that grows and evolves as we serve up content to people in the different channels.
(07:03):
We’ve got a year in review video that Tony did. We’ll talk more about that in the culture and kudos section. Learn with Travis, so comparison of Levels in Lumen, which was pretty cool. Kevin Jabal did another video, and then Nurishable did a video on how alcohol impacts metabolic, or how alcohol impacts glucose levels, which is pretty cool. And then lastly, Ritual did a story piece, so we’ve got that going out. I think there’s one more thing here. One more thing in-app notifications. So when it comes to social proof, we know that testimonials from people on different channels help to drive trust and buy-in. And so, the more reviews that we have, the higher we can rate in the app store. We want this to be a pretty seamless experience for people. And so we’ve now got an in-app notification that’s getting built from products so that people after a certain number of weeks will see this pop up and we’ll say enjoying Levels go rate it. It’s a lot easier than sending out ad hoc emails saying, “Hey, do you want to rate Levels?” And we can still do that, but the more that we can integrate it into the product experience, the better it is for everyone.
(08:10):
So full week as always, and it’d be great to talk with Steve now. So Steve Clemetson is one of our great content creators and partners with Levels. Steve, if anyone hasn’t seen his videos yet, does lots of experimentation with Levels and how that ties into things like how do you mitigate some of the glucose spikes that come from pasta or certain breads. And so, anyway, it would be great to hear from you Steve. You’ve been using Levels for a long time now. You’ve got a lot of tenure as a member and would love to hear about your experience and some of the things that you look forward to with product as we continue to make changes.
Steve Clemetson (08:46):
So as a former process excellence, lean Six Sigma guru, I love data and that’s why I love Levels. I think it was Tom Peters that said what gets measured gets managed, and proof of that, I think you see with Fitbit and Apple Watch, I mean before those nobody thought anything about getting 10,000 steps over the course of the day. And it’s my hope that eventually we can get glucose monitoring to a place where it’s more readily accessible, both in terms of technology and price to the general population because once they’re able to start measuring it and they can start seeing a graph on a daily basis, I think it’s going to drive a lot more people into some form of low-carb lifestyle.
(09:39):
So I think Levels is positioned wonderfully. First, it’s great software. I love it and I love how it’s continued to evolve and I’ve had the opportunity to watch it evolve over the past, gosh, I don’t know how long it’s been, has it been two years since I’ve been a partner? But I think you are positioned in a great place from a software standpoint. So if a company, like Apple, creates a non-invasive glucose monitoring system as part of their Apple Watch for example, they can still tie into your app. So, I tell you what, I could just ramble, but maybe if you’ve got some specific questions, you can kind of corral me a little bit.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
Yeah, it’s interesting. You tend to do so much experimentation and it’s something that we talk about long-term, how people like you can help the greater community. So we’d love to hear about, even if you want to riff on ideas that have come up as far as the way you’ve used a product and what would help you as both the content creator and a thought leader to help a wider group of people through the experiments that you do or through being able to create content, either through Levels or through your own channels. But if there’s anything that comes to mind that would make that experience more seamless to be able to share your insights based on the data that you see and the way that you live your lifestyle, because you can extrapolate that to one of many. So I’m sure there are more than a thousand true fans out of your 243,000 YouTube subscribers that would love to get deeper insight based on the Levels data.
Steve Clemetson (11:18):
Yeah, one of the first ways I started using Levels, and in fact I was using a Keto-Mojo prior to that, but when you’re doing multiple product tests in a single video, you get tired of drawing blood over and over and over again. Drawing a baseline and then at a half hour and then an hour, then two hours, or potentially even longer if the spike continues. So getting to a continuous glucose monitor was a big deal for me and that I think really opened up not necessarily the opportunity, but my willingness to do more reviews and incorporate glucose monitoring into product reviews.
(11:59):
There is a huge amount of keto branded products out in the marketplace that deserve some skepticism. And I like putting them to the test. But either I wind up proving that they are in fact a decent product and they’re not going to spike your glucose, or I prove that there are claims of zero net carbs, while perhaps factual based on the FDA’s description of what fiber is, it still can cause a massive glucose spike.
(12:32):
One of the biggest ones I think I saw was from Hero Bread, which claims to be either one or zero net carbs per serving and I had a substantial, substantial spike from that. So I think by demonstrating the Levels software, well, let me back up for just one second. I’ve got a very diverse audience and that’s just not in terms of age, or ethnicity, or geographics, but also financially. There are some people out there that I think get a little bit bothered by me using Levels because it’s not within their budget and they get, I think a little bit, I don’t know if it’s jealous, or bitter, or what it is, but I’ll get some feedback from those people. I also get feedback from people who don’t have it in the budget and are thankful that I’m being the Guinea pig and testing these things out for them. And then, there are the people that do have the financial wherewithal and they share the same sort of hunger for data and insights that I have and they wind up signing up for the product. So it’s one of those things where I have really no misgivings about sharing it in videos. I think it’s great.
(13:50):
In addition to products that I review, there’s a lot of claims out there about how you can curb the carbs that I find a little bit dubious, including some of the arguments about creating resistance starch. So I’ve done a number of videos on that, and some are somewhat valid, some aren’t. But it’s interesting to be able to kind of put these to the test even though I’m just a sample size of one. Oh, oops, sorry, banged my keyboard there.
(14:22):
The other thing that’s really interesting, I’ve mentioned insights is some of the unusual things that will cause glucose to spike or go down. You’d mentioned, and I haven’t seen obviously the podcast on alcohol consumption, I made the decision at the beginning of this year to quit drinking, but one of the things I found is that my glucose, it would dip whenever I would drink. So I don’t know if that’s the same findings that you had in that video, but some of the unusual things that can cause a dip or a spike.
(14:55):
And then this one actually happened last night, because two days ago I got a big tattoo kind of covering my whole shoulder and upper arm, and once you get into about day two, that’s when it starts feeling like a really intense sunburn. And a couple of times I rolled over onto my shoulder and woke myself up just from the pain. And this morning when I looked at my Levels data, I see two rather substantial spikes that occurred that probably coincided with that. I had an instance once where I was pulling on a T-shirt while walking through my bedroom door and I banged my elbow about as hard as I’ve ever banged my elbow. And that resulted in, I think close to a 50 point glucose spike. And it’s one of those things that if you think about the limbic system and flight or fight response, you want that kick of glucose in your system in a pain or danger situation. So it makes sense.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
Love hearing all the anecdotes we’ll have to hear. Mike Haney on our team has an upcoming session for tattoos. We’ll have to see if there’s maybe a correlation between tattoos and glucose spikes there.
Steve Clemetson (16:10):
Well, definitely the rolling over onto my side in the two-day phase, you’ll feel that.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
No, it’s great. But truly appreciate you joining us and creating all the content that you do, because the one thing that you highlighted about the audience, and we’ll hear this time and time again, CGMs are not at a point where they’re widely accessible or available to many people for different socioeconomic reasons, but content and free content is a foundation that we can all rally around and all share. So changing people’s perspective through the work that you’re doing is integral to our mission, and your mission, and everyone’s mission that is on this idea of spreading awareness about metabolic health and how people can make meaningful changes in their lives. So thank you for all that you do and we appreciate everything that you’re doing moving forward and look forward to lots more videos in ’23, maybe even another tattoo video, or who knows what will come down the pike.
Steve Clemetson (17:09):
Well, who knows, if I get into a good enough shape, maybe there’ll be a DeLauer style video with me with my shirt off.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
There you go. You’re welcome to stay. We’ve got probably a shorter meeting today. Usually they’re about an hour. It might be shorter than that, but you’re welcome to stay or if you have to jump off whenever, feel free to do that.
Steve Clemetson (17:25):
I got to jump off and go play some Nintendo with my grandson.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
Amazing.
Steve Clemetson (17:29):
But thanks for having me on and everybody have a wonderful, safe, and happy new year.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
Thank you, you as well.
Steve Clemetson (17:38):
All right, thank you.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
All right, culture and kudos. Talking about the 2022 year in review video. So if you haven’t seen this yet, this is a video that Tony put together and we’ve been doing them every year, and it’s kind of wild to watch through it. You can watch through it once or twice, but you start to see all of these things come together and you go, wait, that was last January? And time moves so fast. It’s just this perpetual vortex that we’re in where it moves a lot faster and if we don’t document things like this, if we don’t share a lot of the information, a lot of this content has come from the content in this video, has come from these forums. So whether it’s guests that are on or whether it’s the updates that we do, but it is very cool to see how this comes together.
(18:28):
So appreciate everybody’s work that goes into everything we do in a year and how we evolve and how we adapt. I think that’s one of the big points too, is that week after week, month after month, year after year, we adapt, we change, we learn, we pivot, and we do what we need to do to run the experiments as we get to different product market fit phases of the company. So make sure that you watch it. It’s a great video and appreciate seeing all the work and how the team has grown.
(18:58):
Now onto Miz, so as far as the value of the week or the anecdote as far as how we work, Miz has a segment here on deep work.
Miz (19:07):
Awesome. Thanks man. I’m going to be that guy and bother you for a command R, so hopefully just get a quick refresh. Cool. Thanks. All set. Back one. Perfect.
(19:21):
All right, so for the culture and kind of axiom value share of the week, we’re going to mix through between some of the cultural values and some of the axioms, you’ve seen those week over week. The initial intent was to share updates from the book club and kind of connect those to how we’re doing and do a check-in. So mixing it up this week and doing a throwback to the deep work book club that we did back in March of 2022. And this book had really big meaningful impacts on our onboarding, on the way we work, on a bunch of different pieces of culture. I think we were very much aligned to this philosophy even before reading the book. And the book helped us double down on a lot of things. And so if you haven’t read this one, highly recommend it, or at the very least, check out the book notes in the notion page.
(20:04):
But a quick primer on this, so two kinds of work that Cal Newport, the author of this book, he’s a professor and an author, defines deep work and shallow work. Deep work he defines as professional activities performed in a state of distraction free concentration that pushed your cognitive capabilities to their limit. And the key here is that deep work by definition has to create new value, I think that’s supposed to say improve your skills, and be hard to replicate. And that’s in contrast to shallow work, which is the work that we can often find ourselves in which is going from task to task, often fairly logistical. But the key on shallow work is a lot of times it does have to happen, but it doesn’t necessarily create new value in the world.
(20:50):
And so, a lot of the things we’ve done around time blocking, around calendaring through onboarding around the use of Athena EAs has really been to help us get into that deep work state and make work that’s meaningful and valuable, and helps the company move forward. I demoed a really cool product earlier this week for companies to kind of replicate the virtual HQ. And I was fascinated by it. You can have meeting rooms, you drop in, it’s a very lightweight Zoom. And on the one hand I was like, this is really, really interesting. And then on the flip side I was like, this is so contrary to our values of how we work and how we interrupt each other, and how we have the online status, the presence thing. And so, it really does make you think when you see how other companies work and how some of these products are built. There are really good products, they’re just not how we work. And it was a good reminder of that.
(21:38):
So next slide here. It’s often very easy to get into that left-hand schedule, how most people work. I found this screenshot, I was going through all my old iPhone screenshots, which I like to do often. I found the screenshot on my calendar from January 7th of just a normal day. And this one even started at 9:30. It was quite late. But just like back to back to back to back meetings to project preps, to other meetings, to syncs, to one-on-ones. And this is pretty common for most people working in an office at a modern tech company. It’s not uncommon to see schedules like this. I think Zoom and remote work has started to change that a little bit, but very, very much still a common occurrence for people’s days to look like this cut up into a bunch of different slices.
(22:21):
And what we encourage is the time blocking method where you’re working on important priorities over the course of 90+ minutes and really intentionally scheduling what your priorities are and how you’re going to work on them. But if you don’t intentionally do that, it’s very easy to slip into the what looks like the left instead of the right.
(22:39):
So next slide here. In order to get into the deep work routine, there’s a few things that you have to set the environment for. One is be really intentional about your location. Second, around duration, it’s not possible to just deep work eight hours through. The third is around structure, the things that you’re going to do to orient yourself to your time to set goals, and to make sure that the environment is right. And then requirements that help you get into that structure.
(23:06):
So this is pulled from some blog posts on deep work you can read, and let’s go to the next slide. One other example, you can read some of the examples of how people do structure their days. I think this one is timely because as we go into the new year with fresh calendars, it’s a good chance to reassess where your time is going, what your priorities are in the new quarter, and how you’re going to work towards those. And this is true across functions whether you’re doing support tickets, whether you’re building documentation, whether you’re writing copy, doing product engineering. Some roles do involve interaction, but there’s time to build that in and being intentional about it is key.
(23:41):
One more slide here. I pulled a bunch of quotes from our action items document. And so a few of them that were interesting to see how we’ve done on them. One, the deep work sessions I think originated from that and that’s had a resurgence in maybe the last few months. Some other practical tips on setting the environment from Paul, turn off your wifi. From Ben, outsource documentation and memo outlining to Athena. This one for me, which I think we could do a better job at, when sending messages and comms being really mindful of whether or not that requires a response from someone to keep things moving, or whether you can structure it in a way that doesn’t rely on a lot of shallow communication. So saying, I will move forward with this unless I hear otherwise, versus requiring input from three or four different people, things like this. Mike D referenced some good Huberman podcasts with links in there, so if you want to check those to see how Huberman structures his focus time.
(24:35):
And then what else here? We had a lot of chatter around tally and displaying deep work and showing it on our calendars. Some of us do that well, some of us have found other methods, but that was good to revisit. Tom had a suggestion around whether or not creating a day that’s explicitly defined as deep work. I think we’ve slipped into a state where it’s more common for us to have more sync meetings as projects have gotten more complex and we should revisit whether or not that’s serving us well or whether or not we need to revisit that.
(25:03):
And other things just coming down the pipe. Scheduled delivery and comms is a default feature coming soon. You can turn it off. What this is going to do is deliver your messages at set times during the day. Three or four times a day so you don’t get into the constant checking. The messages are still there but you don’t see them. And other buzzwords from the book, draining the shallows, embracing a shutdown ritual, creating separation between workday and personal day, and just drawing some clear lines. So great book, good time of year to refresh on it. And that’s the update on deep work.
Speaker 1 (25:37):
Amazing. Thank you Miz. To highlight a couple of those points as we move into ’23. One-on-ones, recurring meetings, they’re a very good time to assess week over week or if you’ve got them biweekly to say, “Hey, do we actually need to go synchronous this week?” And the answer might be no. But if neither party addresses that, you can default to meeting for the sake of meeting, which is not always the best use of time. So that’s always a good thing to keep ourselves honest about.
(26:06):
The second thing was communication. So Miz highlighted clarity and communication, and sometimes putting upfront the no action needed or for anyone tagged on this thread, no response needed. So if somebody sees a longer communication come through, they can go, cool, I don’t even need to think about this thing right now. But if they’re tagged they might think, gosh, I have to follow up with this.
(26:27):
So these little habits of how we work asynchronously and how we communicate do make a very big difference in the long run. So thanks Miz for highlighting this and it’s good to revisit these practices every quarter or every six months so that we know we are very much on top of the values that we live.
(26:46):
Company objectives. So, we all know, Level shows you how food affects your health, and this is increasingly important as we move into ’23. I think now is a good time for us to all reflect on some of the things that will be coming down the pike and some of the ways that we’ll adapt to what we’re seeing macroeconomically and what we’re seeing as far as traction goes with our products.
(27:05):
So there’s lots of work ahead. We know that product is our top priority in Q1 and top priority for the company. We’re very much at a stage where we’ve got a lot of early adopters who are very interested in what we’re building, but we now need to reach a broader audience and that comes through building something that people want and that is accessible to many people. So we’re very much in the phases of revisiting what it means to have product market fit and asking ourselves do we truly have it?
(27:33):
And so on January 15th, there’s a new product roadmap that’s coming out, but that’s going to be something that we’ll all work towards as a company to make sure that across product, across growth, across operations, we’re very much working together and working in sync so that we are doing the right things to reach product market fit and to make sure that we are taking feedback into account, make sure that we are acquiring and retaining customers in the way that is beneficial so that we are creating value for them and it ends up being something that we all need to contribute to and we all need to keep top of mind.
(28:07):
And probably one of the most important things is keeping each other in check and if you have questions or comments or concerns about what is being built, to surface those things so that we do go down the right path. This is very much a together effort and we can’t forget that moving into ’23. So lots of work underway, lots of adaptation as far as how we will all fit into the mix with adjusting what we’re working on at any given time. So thank you everyone as always for the work and contribution that goes into getting where we are, but ’23 is an exciting year ahead. Lots to do. So let’s go get it.
(28:45):
And I think we’re at, oh hiring updates and we’ll go into individual contributions. So hiring updates, R&D engineer, that role is still open. And something else, if there’s something else, if you’re watching this and there’s something else that you’re interested in or if you’ve got a great candidate either for R&D or for any other role, make sure to pop us a note or apply through our careers page, levels.link/careers.
(29:10):
Onto individual contributions. So relatively small audience, but why don’t we start with putting up your hand if you want to share anything. Anyone has anything to share? We’ll start it off, we are now in Austin. We’re here and we are getting settled, which feels pretty good. So other than that, just adjusting to new house, new routine, new everything. And so, very excited. Big year ahead and yeah, lots to do. Most importantly I guess is a pretty good update for the team. Most importantly, Theo is doing really well and yeah, we’re super happy about that. Rebecca.
Rebecca (29:51):
So for me, I just got back from a week off of work and it was so awesome just working, it’s awesome working for a company that I can take a week off and I actually got to disconnect and I was technically kind of available if I needed to be and I didn’t need to be. Nobody reached out, of course, which was just so nice. So I was really able to disconnect and then come in yesterday and just feel like a new person. So it’s definitely reinforces the knowing that I already have of like, yeah, you need to take time off, because it makes a big difference. And then in personal, besides just having an awesome holiday and getting to see family, my wedding is in less than two months, so we’re kind of finalizing all the details for that. So it’s been really exciting.
Speaker 1 (30:36):
Amazing and great to hear. So much goes into planning. So good luck with that, and very exciting ahead for you. And good to hear too that we’re all there to support each other so that when you do take time off, you can truly take time off. Matthew Flanagan.
Matthew Flanagan (30:53):
Excited to have the autonomy team joining us in the new year. So big hat tip to Brittany who’s been working with me to get the op stocks up to date so they’re ready to get started and hit the ground running. Personally, we’re just got some tickets to see the new Avatar movie this night. And this morning actually got up super early and was able to see the sunrise over the beach, which I realized I haven’t watched a sunrise at all this year, so I was able to get that in before the end. So that’s it. Happy New Year everybody.
Speaker 1 (31:25):
Amazing. Happy New Year to you as well. Great to hear about the sunset too. Those either get more frequent as you get older and have kids and you’re up at sunrise, or they get less frequent if you’re sleeping in, so catch them while you can. Casey.
Casey (31:41):
Hey everyone. So professionally, highlight recently was got to work in person with Moz and David in Mill Valley last week with us down in the Bay Area for the holidays. And we were doing some work on the upcoming product strategy, and I’m just feeling such intense excitement and momentum for what’s coming with the product strategy. So that was really energizing and fun to work at a WeWork in person. It felt so novel after being at home working for a year. So we also ran an experiment this week that was really fun with members called Levels Guides, where basically we’re experimenting with what it looks like for a set of members to be in a small group with a guide during their first month, and see how that impacts their experience. So I was the guide and we did it for three days. We’re going to do it for five days next week and it was amazing and just so much engagement from the eight women, sort of eight Maureen profiles in the group. And yeah, really wonderful and much more meaningful than I was expecting. Just really great connections. So we’ll write up a sort of a retro on this and share it with the team.
(32:56):
And then personally, I was in Half Moon Bay, California for Christmas and for the holidays. And I think the highlight was seeing my 10-month-old nephew and he’s starting to eat, so that was so fun to just explore different foods with him. He loved crab and duck, which was really interesting. And avocado, he’s obsessed with avocado. And then doing a cold plunge in the ocean on Christmas Eve was probably the highlight with the most beautiful sunset I’ve ever seen in my life, and it was just really beautiful. So Happy New Year everyone and can’t wait to see you in 2023.
Speaker 1 (33:33):
Amazing. Can’t wait to hear more about the Levels guides. That is such a cool thing and it’s really a throwback to the way things started when it was the David Bot and the Mike bot and self, or I guess guided tours through the product. So I can’t think of a better way for anyone who’s a super fan of Dr. Casey means to have Dr. Casey guide them through the journey. Tommy?
Tommy (33:57):
Hey team. Before I forget, Casey, I just remembered that a good friend of mine over the holidays, her dad just started using Levels and she texted me on Christmas saying that their whole family was gathered around watching the Levels Kitchen series and they were on episode three of that and their whole holidays were just talking about Levels and metabolic health. So that was awesome.
(34:23):
And yeah, for me, just professionally enjoying this period of more downtime and reflection. On Casey’s note, yeah, very excited that so much of the team is just thinking really deeply about the future of Levels, the product growth, everything. So I’m excited about 2023.
(34:47):
Shout out to Ben. I just want to say he’s been dealing with a move and unfortunately a bunch of sick kids and family members and he’s just had a ton on his plate. So in true Ben fashion, he’s leading Friday Forum today when he’s got so much else going on. So just shout out to Ben for always being the example of hard work at Levels.
(35:09):
And then personally on the note of just more downtime. Yeah, I’ve just been enjoying doing a lot of life stuff. Yesterday I cleaned my apartment, I donated a ton of clothes and I bought an enormous plant that is way too big for my apartment, but I’m really excited about that.
Speaker 1 (35:29):
Need some photos for proof, Tommy, glad to hear that you’ve had a chance to take time off. It has been, truthfully, it’s been very nice to not see you in comms for once, and then tag you in things. So if I’m texting you or anything, I go, I know Tom’s off right now, so glad that you’ve found time to do that. Miz.
Miz (35:48):
Yeah. Wanted to give a shout to Chris. He’s not on here, but I think he took I think week last week and really went deep on a lot of projects that had been on his list and he made meaningful improvements to a lot of the Snowflake dashboards, our data analytics, things that are going to be very, very useful for us moving forward into the new year and stuff that we’re overdue having. What I appreciated about it is we have the concept of think week of being writing long form memos and really just kind of doing what you needed to do to think strategically and get out of the day-to-day. And he was able to do that in his own way and make it analytics focused, which I really appreciated. So well done Chris. Nice inspiration for the rest of us to make think week our own and figure out how to do that and for keeping that piece of the culture alive and well. So enjoyed that.
(36:33):
On a personal end, yeah, similar to Tom and some others, really enjoy dead Week as it’s called and have gotten nice long blocks of time that makes me wonder why I don’t do that more often during the regular work week as well, to do important things like notion housekeeping, personal organization, clean out, to-do list work better on time blocking, revisit things that needed revisiting. So I very much enjoyed that and looking forward to kicking off a fresh year.
Speaker 1 (37:01):
Good, good. I love dead week, it reminds me of something Grateful Dead or I don’t know what I’m thinking with that, but love the labeling. I think Sam is the last, and unless anyone else has anything to add, Sam can take us home into ’23.
Sam (37:16):
Yeah, I’m particularly excited about everything we have being worked on in product strategy. There’s been a lot of thought going into that. We should have that in a couple of weeks.
(37:27):
On the personal side, I was at my parents’ house for a lot of Christmas and realized how much I like dogs. I have two labs and I got to just hang out with the dogs for hours and dogs are so much fun. So one day we’ll have a dog.
Speaker 1 (37:49):
I can attest to that, Sam, whenever I’ve seen you around dogs, you light up. So we’ll expect that you and Josh will have the newest dog additions to the Levels team, so very cool to hear.
(38:02):
If anyone else has anything to add, chime in now, otherwise we’re moving up. Huhai? I think you are, you’re not on mute. Maybe check the audio input. We can hear it.
Huhai (38:26):
How about now?
Speaker 1 (38:27):
Yeah, you’re perfect.
Huhai (38:28):
Okay. Okay. Yeah, sorry. I’m still adjusting to my [inaudible 00:38:32] headphones. Yeah. So last year in the middle I joined Levels. So it was definitely excited decision, but at the same time it feels risky to join a series A startup, right? Yeah. So it has been a very fruitful half year. I learned a lot of things. I worked with great people here and I really appreciate everyone who is really hardworking. I see them most I guess within product group, but I definitely know everyone is doing so across the company. So yeah, I’m really glad that I made the decision and I’m really excited to, yeah, like everyone else here, to start their fresh new year with everyone and looking forward to their product vision, build a really awesome product to make the impact I always have been wanting to make in this area. Yeah, that’s it.
Speaker 1 (39:31):
Love it. Well, thank you to everyone truly for all the work in ’22. We’ve got lots of work ahead into ’23, lots of exciting things to work on. So it’s time that we go out there, we get it, we all work together and we work very hard because we’ve got lots ahead, but this is part of the startup journey. So thank you for everything you’ve done and for everything that we will do. Happy ’22 and let’s go get it in ’23.