January 21, 2022

Josh Clemente (00:00:00):

Cool. Welcome to January 21st, 2022. Got some new faces on the call. I’m just going to call him out at the beginning here and say hi to Bridget, who is one of our amazing nutritionists and just an awesome supporter of Levels. We’ll get into that in just a minute. We’ve got Sean Grenning on the call and we’ve got Cissy Hu on the call. Cissy is going to be joining us in a few weeks as our head of community and very excited to have all of you. We will do some more formal intros in the future, specifically for Cissy.

(00:00:33):

All right, diving right in. So, first line item for today, just chatting about the progress on crowdfunding. We’re bringing in the investment collection now. So, everyone initially reserved their investments a few weeks back, which was a very exciting day for us. We’re now at the process of the filings are complete and we’re bringing in the cash into the bank account, which is quite exciting and we’re seeing those rolling in. Along with them, are many, many moving heartwarming motivating testimonials that people are sending. Personal accounts of success or knowing a family member or just generally believing this is the future. So, I’ve been reading all of those and it’s bringing a happy smile to my face.

(00:01:15):

We got the growth model updated for 2022. Ben’s going to send that out, I believe imminently. Email experiments are starting. I think Braden’s taking point on this. So, we’re going to look into subscription engagement, better messaging, the fact that subscriptions exist. I think we had 130 tickets this week asking if subscriptions are a thing. So, we’re going to continue to iterate on that.

(00:01:38):

And then outreach to inactive numbers. So, right now about 20% of our members don’t finish within 10 weeks. It’s not entirely clear what the source of that is, but we’re going to continue to drill in, learn more, and hopefully improve those numbers. We got podcast ads locked in or actively live with a couple amazing shows. Huberman Lab, Lifespan with Davidson Sinclair, and Best Like the Best Now with Patrick O’Shanasee and Sustainable Dish. So, really awesome. We’re seeing amazing numbers from specifically David’s show. I think Huberman Lab goes live in Q3, but awesome stuff here.

(00:02:13):

This week we had a good discussion of jobs to be done, or at least that’s how I’m framing it, for the Metabolic Health Panel. Really appreciate the people who have weighed in on what that product needs to offer and how our principles align with things like results presentation and keeping insights intact while remaining in general wellness in terms of categorization of the product.

(00:02:34):

So, we’re going to iterate on this a bit on the presentation and everyone, highly recommend if you’re in an area where we’re live on this, definitely use that product. Try and try and experience it as a new member might and provide feedback.

(00:02:51):

The Model Health show that Casey was on hit number one and number two on Apple’s nutrition charts in Canada and US respectively. And another crazy, crazy number here, Dr. Casey’s kitchen email hit 51% open rate with 94,000 opens on that individual email, which I’m not sure that any email in history has done numbers like that. We got new Snowflake dashboards for Level’s program completeness, which circles back to the email experiments on inactive members and then post [inaudible 00:03:19] reports are live on video, audio, and content engagement, all of which we’ll be using to continue to own the product experience.

(00:03:25):

Then a couple cool numbers. We’ve got 1,068 orders this week, which is the best ever by over 10% from last week’s high. Again, we’re not in growth mode. We are paying attention to these metrics because they’re interesting and they’re very useful as we continue to improve the product. But it’s also cool in terms of absolute numbers. Replacement rate has been nice and low for two weeks straight now.

(00:03:44):

Our food logs per user is hitting a three month high right now, which is great. Obviously with tagging and food logging actively being iterated on, it’s a reassuring number. And then our product market fit has been at 57% for two weeks. We had a little dip there for a little while and we’re resurfacing, so that’s great.

(00:04:05):

Couple other things we’ll see here. Maz has been doing the beginnings of his podcast circuit. Can’t wait to hear these episodes. 10,000 in Levels are doing a crossover with Ryan Hall. We’ve been talking to Tony Robbins and Peter [inaudible 00:04:19] of Fountain Life about a potential activation. We made it into the Economist print. Good Housekeeping, selected us for a fitness award this week. Wall Street Journal published an article with us and then couple great internal memos on the email experiments that we’re going to be doing, how to host a podcast.

(00:04:39):

We made it onto TikTok with Ben’s incredible email template being the source of this guy’s productivity hack. So, here’s how to write the world’s most efficient email, which is really funny because it’s an internal joke and now it’s external. And then big week on Twitter, people are just quite excited about the product and sharing about the community or the crowdfund investment and their own experiences with Levels. So, couple of examples there.

(00:05:06):

And then finally Sam took one of our blog post about a recipe and gave it over to a Fiverr consultant to see what a video production could look like corresponding to it because we are going to likely weave in more video associated with our longer articles. So, that was an experiment and it will lead, I’m sure, to more digital channel experimentation.

(00:05:32):

With that, I want to welcome Bridget Titgemeier. Had the chance to hang out with Bridget at the CrossFit Games last year, and it was an awesome and just super inspiring conversation. Totally a random run in, but she has been a supporter of Levels for much longer than that. And before that, just a total believer in what we’re doing and she has worked closely with Mark Hyman and others and her practice is taking the principles that we’re building on and really putting them to work. Bridget, I will let you do the talking from here, but thank you for joining us and would love to hear a few words.

Bridget Titgemeier (00:06:07):

Thanks so much for having me. I can’t remember the last time that I was this excited for a Zoom call. When I met Josh at the CrossFit games over the summer, I was a total fan girl of this. It was really embarrassing. I was there with my friend Julie Fushe, and she was making so many comments about how I just was such a fan girl, and I guess that’s the easiest way of saying it. It was really embarrassing. I’m going to try to contain my excitement a little more today.

(00:06:39):

But I just love everything that you all are doing and am super humbled to be here for your meeting. The reason that I love it so much is because I know that in my own personal journey, my own personal health journey, that this would’ve been a real game changer had I had a tool like Levels early on, that it would’ve really expedited the process and so much of the guesswork that went on for years.

(00:07:05):

And just as a little background, about 16 years ago, I was falling asleep every single second of every day and having about 30 mini seizures a day and was diagnosed with narcolepsy and cataplexy at the Cleveland Clinic and my doctor just pulled out a prescription pad and was like, “Here’s the rest of your life.”

(00:07:30):

So, my parents fortunately had the insight at that time to take me to a functional medicine doctor and was able to figure out, over years and years, how to become super diligent with my nutrition and lifestyle to be able to, not replace medication, but decrease the overdependence on it, keep it in a really controlled dose that has allowed me to just really function at a much higher level than I believe I would’ve ever been able to.

(00:08:03):

And that really led me to working for Dr. Hyman. I helped to start the Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional Medicine in 2014, and at that time we were using fasting insulin to our postprandial glucose testing, just more in depth awareness, of course, of glucose since Dr. Hyman is just the most amazing human. And when I was working with a lot of his patients, you’re seeing such incredible transformation in people that just had access to data for the first time in their lives. A doctor was willing to order as many labs as they wanted to be able to see what was going on underneath the hood.

(00:08:48):

And it was amazing. But at the same time was not scalable. Not everyone can work with Dr. Hyman. That’s the reality of it. So, I just remember when I saw Levels for the first time being like, “Oh my God, this is it.” It’s not everything, but it is such a game changer when it comes to health transparency and being able to take what I saw working so well at the Cleveland Clinic under Dr. Hyman’s incredible brain to the masses so that it makes it more accessible.

(00:09:21):

And I guess that really leads us to today and me being able to be here and to share a little bit of background on my experience of working with Levels clients in the last two months. I’ve worked with 17 Levels clients that have signed up for our nutrition offering, and it’s just been really amazing. It’s hard to explain from a branding perspective even, the revolution that Levels is creating, until you see all these people from such different backgrounds and ages and locations that are like, “Wow, this just makes so much sense and this I want in on this.”

(00:10:13):

I pulled a few numbers to just share with everyone. We are skewing older in our Levels clients that are signing up for our offerings. So, we have an average age of 58, and there’s not many people that we’re working with under the age of 40. We skew from 32 to 71, but the majority are very much over the age of 50.

(00:10:37):

And I know there’s other nutritionists that have nutrition offerings as well, so maybe that’s not the case for them, but that’s my own case. And then the top three health goals that we’re seeing that they’re reporting is wanting to lower their hemoglobin A1C and or fasting glucose, lose weight is the second, and then the third is heart health improvements, whether that’s like they’re on blood pressure medication or cholesterol medication. There’s others, like gut health and GI symptoms, joint pain would be a close fourth and fifth, but those are the top three goals that we’re seeing.

(00:11:16):

Also people reporting that they want to improve relationship with food and decrease some of the food anxiety that they have. That’s not everyone, but it’s well over one third of the people that we’re working with. And then the other thing actually is that one third of the people that we’ve worked with, approximately, are health coaches. So they’re people that are in the industry that do have real health issues that they’re trying to work through, but I also think that there’s an interest in just learning so that they can also help their patients and that’s why they’re doing levels and that’s why they’re signing up for additional coaching.

(00:11:53):

That’s not something that we see as much in our typical programs, but is definitely something that’s more common in the Levels audience. Also, just to note, we have been using Levels in my practice for the last year, actually more than a year. It was October of 2020. So, we have almost 100 people that are using Levels that aren’t necessarily finding us through Levels who are using it in conjunction with either my Food is Health program or our other services.

(00:12:29):

But I think just to explain the role that I see in them working with us or having the opportunity is to be able to take personalized nutrition to the deepest level possible. You can only go so deep on personalized nutrition with technology for people that have more of these multifactorial health issues. And I think that being able to … We’re not recommending keto for every person. Some people are eating keto and their cholesterol levels are actually going up, and so we’re increasing carbohydrates in their diet and they’re confused because they’re reading about all the benefits and have listened to all the books and podcasts.

(00:13:09):

And so it’s not just personalized nutrition in this lens that we believe in, it’s across the entire landscape of meeting them where they’re at and seeing what they need. And then also really trying to increase biodiversity of foods in their diet because we have people that are afraid to eat onions because they don’t want a 10 point rise in their glucose levels and trying to explain to them the importance of those flavonoids and prebiotics in supporting their overall gut health and not sacrificing their gut health for a flat glucose line is, I think, something that we’re continuing to reiterate over and over again.

(00:13:48):

And actually we ran a blood sugar reset in November that we had over 2,000 people sign up for. It was a free 10 day program. And I came up with recipes and tested all of them on my CGM, and then we provided glucose graphs for each of the recipes. We had incredible feedback from people that were using Levels that said that it helped them expand the diversity of foods in their diet because they had limited their food intake more with trying to just keep more flat glucose lines. So, that was a great experience. We’re actually going to do it again in April because of how positive the feedback was and I would love to invite any of you to join if you’re interested in being able to test some of the recipes and see what the experience is like. I’ll send information to Tom so that if that’s something you’re interested in, then you can join the community. We had a Facebook group too that was pretty active, so that was fun to experience.

(00:14:47):

But I think that really the most important thing that I wanted to highlight in my time that I have, which I think I might be over five minutes now, is that in addition to you helping these people that are right in front of us, I think that we owe it to the world to take a different approach because conventional medicine is failing people every single day. And to be able to not only change people’s lives that are active current levels users, but to be part of something so much larger that’s truly transforming healthcare in the way that people are able to access information about their body is just like … I can’t think of a more incredible job for all of you to have.

(00:15:34):

To be able to wake up every day and of course there’s so much excitement around the financial potential of your company, but the actual lives that are influenced is so significant. And if you’re not seeing that being in the weeds on a day-to-day basis, I just wanted to make sure that you’re aware of the fact that that’s happening.

Josh Clemente (00:15:57):

Well, that was incredible and insightful, Bridget. I appreciate you’ve got a lot of nuanced perspectives all wrapped up into one brief commentary there. I think we’re going to have to clip this section and re-share it in threads because this is what it’s all about. It’s taking the individual and allowing them to access and then optimize for themselves as opposed to trying to force some philosophy, whether it’s dietary or a work back from symptoms approach.

(00:16:28):

We’re trying to break all those molds simultaneously and we need people like you to help us do it. So, thanks for being a part of what we’re doing and thanks for taking the time to join the team. These really are very meaningful for us. All right, jumping into a quick culture slide.

(00:16:43):

Levels helps you see how food affects your health. For those of you semi-new to the forum, this is the prayer, we will repeat it often. It’s the single summary of what Levels seeks to accomplish today, what we are working towards. If the product is not doing that, we need to figure out why and we need to fix that.

(00:16:59):

Okay, two sidebars here. The community calls. So, Sam had a pretty awesome community call, which again, these recordings are typically posted in threads and what they are is a collection of people who are active members or prior members of Levels, and it’s just an open conversational format. And the feedback that we’re getting from these is both live and after the fact, especially from this individual here who took the time to really consider what had been discussed on the call and then send a follow up about scoring mechanics, is just phenomenal. We need to continue to lean in and tap our community because people who are so internally motivated to take on an early product like this one and then also take the time out of their day to communicate with the team, that is an untapped gold mine and we really have to continue to double down here. In your daily work, just consider ways that we could pull in our community and activate them. They’re very eager. And so this is just a great single example, but there’s many more.

(00:18:04):

And then on the recruiting side, just want to highlight two people here, Scott and Casey, for continuing to lean in on really good note-taking during the interview process. It’s super important. We’re still working through the kinks of setting up a well-oiled machine on the hiring and recruiting, but for sure the most valuable thing is being able to keep tabs, a very quantitative perspective on the candidate and being able to share those among our ourselves even if you don’t record the conversation, if the candidate’s not comfortable with that, make sure you’re taking rigorous notes for the rest of us.

(00:18:43):

And so thanks, Scott and Casey, for doing so very recently, but this is eventually going to touch all of us on the team. So, as you’re thinking about interviews, think about how you can document. Okay, over to Scott, I believe.

Scott Klein (00:18:59):

Oh yeah, can I get a courtesy refresh, please? All right, so quick update on strategy and roadmap. I recorded about a 40 minute Allen-ish loom, is what I’m calling it, and just weaving through roadmap, strategy, envision, how they all fit together, what we wanted you all to take away from them in a narrative format. If you haven’t watched that yet, it’s highly recommended. Please don’t do so on 3x. We all know you’re not going to absorb that and hopefully we can have you pick up on some of the nuance there.

(00:19:29):

On the notion side, we also have documents for all of these. So the short links on levels.link, you can go to /roadmap/strategy/vision. All of those are available. I do believe that next week we’re going to have the fireside be about this. So Q&A, we’re just going to have open forum to talk about what we’re working on and why. So, bring questions to that if you are interested. Next slide.

(00:19:53):

All right, so the two pillars coming out of the strategy document. If you haven’t or seen the Loom, some of this might be a little bit new to you, but that’s okay. It should roughly make sense. Two pillars we’re focusing on in the product. First, show people how food affects their health and then give them a home to become healthier with others. We’re spending a lot of our time on the first one, and so couple things that we’re going to be doing differently on the Friday forum now is talking a little bit about priorities, but also giving you just an overview of resource allocation and where we’re actually spending time with people. So, next slide.

(00:20:24):

We’re going to see this dinner plate looking thing where we’ve got our different priorities laid out. When you watch the Loom, a lot of this is going to make a lot more sense. But if you go one more slide over, we showed up this week and actually did pretty well. So hopefully most of our weeks are actually going to look a lot like this.

(00:20:43):

One of the things we do talk about in the strategy document is that the business enablement stuff is oftentimes gated on external parties. And so if we have nobody working on it, that’s totally fine, but the point is that we’re going to sort of maximally staff as much as absolutely possible down the priority list. The priority act on membership gets a little bit different treatment. All this is explained and we can talk about it also in a week.

(00:21:04):

So, pretty decent week this week. Hopefully most of the weeks are going to look a lot like this. We’re going to be spending so much of our time on the education and insights piece as our focus for the coming couple quarters. Next slide.

(00:21:18):

Last thing, just to note. I’m going to start reporting on this, but it’s been almost 40 days since our last app store release. We do have a candidate in the pipeline with them. They found a bug when they went to go do the review, and so we weren’t able to get the release pushed out. But there’s a couple technical reasons I think, specifically around our use of feature flags and how we’re integrating mobile code. Totally fine. We just need to get our build process and the way that we do feature releases into a better place so that we can continue to integrate code, but also keep us on a weekly launch cadence.

(00:21:47):

And so hopefully this slide doesn’t have to show up every week if we’re hitting a good weekly interval. Now that we’ve got the first approved version through, we’ll get into a nice cadence where we can get, maybe every Wednesday or so, a new build pushed in and life should be good. Good to get new versions out to members as frequently as possible. So, I think that’s it for me.

Josh Clemente (00:22:09):

Cool. Thank you, Scott. Jim?

Jim Mohrer (00:22:13):

Yes. Josh mentioned it at the top of the meeting, we’re mostly still figuring this out. The discussion on legal review continues. Hoping to have an outcome on this in the next week so we can blast it out to everybody and that is actually all from me this week.

Josh Clemente (00:22:32):

Thank you, Jim. TG?

Tom Griffin (00:22:38):

Sorry, that snuck up on me. Okay, nutritionist marketplace update. This is just a quick one. We’re actually going to put the project on hold right now for a little while and that doesn’t mean the feature is going to be on hold, that’s still going to be live, and we’ve been seeing really consistent engagement and traction, which is awesome. We’ve seen 253 connections between members and nutritionists to date, which is great. But just due to priorities and resource constraints across both DRIs, directly responsible individuals, and engineers, we’re pressing pause on this right now.

(00:23:13):

Give a little shout out to Scott’s Directly Responsible Individuals document there on the right side where Scott outlined that putting a project on hold is a viable path and in this case we shipped something, but then in terms of future iterations, we decided to hold on it for now. And then in terms of some areas that we’re going to explore in the future, we’re going to think a little bit more about what standardizing aspects of the pricing or duration of programs might look like, as well as improving matching and recommendations between members and nutritionists.

(00:23:46):

And the goal here is just to think about reducing some of the friction so when people land on this page it’s not a ton of work and effort for them to figure out what they need and who they should be connecting with. And then lastly, this has been on our radar for a while, but giving nutritionist the ability to actually annotate in app and comment on zones. So, more to come on this probably in the next month or so, but on hold for now.

Josh Clemente (00:24:12):

Great, appreciate that update Tom, and looking forward to getting back into this feature. Mike D?

Mike Didonato (00:24:19):

Okay, thanks Josh. So, I have some images here that came out of some jam sessions and some of the work that Justin and Steph are doing, and then I have some recent progress on the bottom left. But I want to spend most of the time zooming out for a second.

(00:24:34):

So, the now page project, as we all know, is it’s a pretty massive project. It’s currently ambiguous and we have some really large goals, specifically supporting our prayer, showing members how food affects their health and making sure that they never feel alone and always know what to do next.

(00:24:53):

With that in mind, I don’t know if it’s been clear, but with phase one, we’re not shipping that to members. And in fact, phase two might not be either. The plan forward here is let’s get an initial set of insights, framework, ship internally, gather a lot of feedback, iterate a ton, and then once we feel that the page or the designs are in a good place and are able to support our members and their long-term goals in seeing how food affects their health, that’s when we’ll flip the switch on the feature flag and release it to members.

(00:25:39):

Alan’s going to go a lot deeper on the design work, but I just wanted to level set there.

Josh Clemente (00:25:46):

Sounds good. Appreciate the clarification. All right, John?

John Cruz (00:25:52):

Yes. All right, so everything is on track on the tagging project. As you can see there on the left side, we started offering a way to suggest and capture tags while you’re adding a lock, but tags are not useful if we don’t provide any insights about them. So, in the zone page we have a new tab called insights.

(00:26:16):

What we do here is to take all zones from all members where these tags are detected and then we calculate the average of some glucose response and score data. That should give us some insight about the contribution of this ingredient [inaudible 00:26:33] in the glucose response in general when it’s included in a meal. And then we show a nice bubble animation, the size and the colors are calculated based on the average score. And finally a table version of that showing the average delta values. When you tap on tech there, it will redirect to the tech page where more insights will be presented. We are working on this screen right now and one this is ready along with the ranking system, we can launch internally, test for a few days, and if everything looks good, we will finally launch these to members.

Josh Clemente (00:27:21):

Huge. Love what we’re seeing here. Yeah, this is going to be a big change in the value proposition of logging, which is core to getting people to adhere to it, is understanding what they’re getting from it and something like this upfront is going to help tremendously.

(00:27:39):

And I also want to, just going to shout this out for Mike, he wanted to mention on the previous now page, appreciation for the team, Justin, Helena, Steph, Alan working in ambiguity on the now page. Want to plus one that.

Mike Didonato (00:27:50):

Thank you, yep.

Josh Clemente (00:27:51):

All these projects are moving fast and it’s just awesome to see the teams making it happen despite the ever changing landscape. Thanks, John as well. All right, explore page, Murilo.

Murilo (00:28:08):

All right, can you hear me okay? All right. So, for Explorer page this week, as soon as the app store approves our new build, we’re releasing improvements to our members. But more importantly than that, we’re also instrumenting a lot of those pages with analytics that will help us understand how our members are engaging with our content in app and will help establish a baseline for evaluating future changes that we’ll be making to content.

(00:28:41):

All this to make sure that we’re providing as much value as we can, educational value as we can, via the content that we offer to the app. In the meantime, work around recommendations is continuing full force. Helena did some awesome work and if you’re interested, I suggest you check explore tab notion doc for some of that around tagging the articles and creating summaries. Blew my mind when I went over it.

(00:29:13):

Kunal is doing work around building an infrastructure that we’re going to be able to use to keep that content page dynamic and always fresh for our members. And I’ll be doing some work around making sure that the presentation that we’re giving our content in the app is solid and works as expected. So, yeah, that’s it for Explorer for now.

Josh Clemente (00:29:39):

Awesome. All right. By the way, the content reorganization, if you haven’t seen that in app, highly recommend checking out the video that Murilo posted. The favoriting is going to be a huge favorite, I think, for our members as well. Thanks, Murilo. Hao, prisma migration.

Hao Li (00:30:01):

So, for prisma migration, we continue to assess the risk using Prisma Migrate in production. So once that done, we will completely merge that per request and also I rolled out a documentation on how to make the migration change, a guideline, and also added two new tables with Prisma or M conversion and looking forward to use those two tables as the example on how to reveal a pro request on migration changes. That’s it for this week.

Josh Clemente (00:30:42):

Awesome, thank you, Hao. All right, Andrew.

Andrew Conner (00:30:46):

Oh, quick check in on engineering SLAs, KPIs. One change we’re doing is counting work hours, that helps on weekends. So, if someone opens something Friday afternoon late or something like that, then Monday morning it’s fine. And so we are in SLA for average and median first code review and merge time. A couple of board requests took longer this week and so we’re continuing to keep an eye on that. All engineers are working on a DRI project. Engineering hiring continues to proceed well. One of the issues we’re having for stale candidates is sometimes they’ll book something weeks in advance, so we want to find a way to measure that appropriately. So, two candidates currently, we haven’t talked to in a week, but we have a calendar event scheduled in a few days or something like that. And that’s it.

Josh Clemente (00:31:33):

All righty, thank you. Quick hiring aside, nothing much has changed here. We have some great candidates in process on the controller role in particular, some update for Miz. Besides that, still actively looking for all the listed roles and please refer, share, and or apply if you’re watching this. And Maxine is going to be starting on January 31st. Jump into threads for a quick update on a deliverable for Maxine and we’ll excited. So welcoming you soon, Maxine. All right, Alan.

Alan McLean (00:32:08):

Sorry, I’m doing these as Josh is talking. Pretty busy day. So, a big part of where I’ve been spending my time the last week is looking at our educational content for the now page and essentially rewriting some of it or reformatting some of it to accommodate the app. We’ve got all kinds of great material, we’ve got these videos for onboarding, we’ve got all this great stuff. It’s not all that appropriate though, for the app. And by appropriate, I mean it’s pretty long. And whether we like it or not, whether it’s TikTok or Instagram or whatever people are using on their phone, patience on the phone is much lower. Next slide, please.

(00:32:48):

So, we’ve got this, as I said, amazing content. Thought pieces, thought leadership in the space. It’s also 4,449 words, this really important guide to healthy blood sugar ranges. And so we need to find a way to distill that. Next slide.

(00:33:04):

This is what happens when someone on a phone looks at an article that big. Unless they are hyper motivated, they’re just going to go to sleep. It’s just too much stuff. That’s not to say there’s anything weak with the writing. It’s just people on their phones, they’re just not conditioned to read this way anymore. So, we’re going to start to translate that. Next slide.

(00:33:25):

Glad that GIF got in. Because when we look at an article like that, there’s all this amazing stuff, but all a user may really care about is something like this. This is one of the graphics that’s in that particular article. It’s about fasting glucose, pre-meal, post-meal, mean, and we’re going to translate that and turn it into something that’s accessible for a user. Next slide.

(00:33:44):

So, this is an example of this. I think ideally we’d have graphics at the top and these big open spaces to speak to that. For now, we’ll use stock art. That’s fine. So I’m going through some of this content, stilling out what’s most important. Morning glucose, what is fasting, what is a good fasting value? What happens after a meal? Taking it a rise versus talking about the full breadth of the glucose’s response. Some of these will have graphics in the top, some will be stock imagery. That’s fine. We’re going to iterate on this content. Next slide.

(00:34:16):

Here’s another example about alcohol. Sorry, this is an important one. This will be perhaps triggered by actual food logs. So, it’ll be a little bit smarter, but it’s educational content that’s attached to what you’re doing in the app. Next slide.

(00:34:30):

So, I didn’t get a chance to add all my little narrative stuff that I like to do usually in here, aside from the GIF. But part of the journey will be asking a little bit more from our members, a little bit more information so that we can provide a better experience. This is definitely more of a phase three type thing, but if we want to talk about your sleep schedule and see what’s ideal, maybe we initially start with just providing that educational content.

(00:34:53):

Down the road, we’re going to probably want to know a little bit more about your bedtime schedule. When do you typically go to sleep? Can we understand that and give you prompts in the app? So, become a little bit more relevant on a regular basis. Next slide.

(00:35:08):

And I had a really brainstorm this week with Mike, looking at community glucose responses. And so this is actually remarkably easy to do. As people have pointed out, PIC dash has some amazing stuff. We can look through there and we can tend to see these trends and certain kinds of ingredients. And so this is a community-based insight material that would surface if you logged something like a Poptart or grapes or a Magic Spoon cereal for example. All kinds of great results out there. It’s pretty straightforward. We grab the average zone score, we tell people what’s typically happening with this, and all of a sudden we have this giant library of content that we can surface for people with relatively low effort. So, I think that’s it for design this week. More slides next week.

Josh Clemente (00:35:56):

This is great. Super exciting on this last slide here. Thank you, Alan. All right, Chris.

Chris Jones (00:36:04):

Hey Josh, you just want to do a quick refresh for me? Thank you.

(00:36:10):

So, it wouldn’t be a week unless I was creating a new Snowflake dashboard, AKA, my happy place. So, the one for this week is program completeness. This is something I think Helena started a while ago around noticing we had a lot of members who had bought levels but that we never saw glucose on their end. We did some surveys around it, but this is just trying to bring that data into Snowflake so we can track it over time, specifically for some of the efforts that Braden’s doing around the onboarding and trying to reactivate users.

(00:36:43):

So, as you look at it, the big takeaways is roughly 30% of our members who order a kit, we never see glucose for them. And most of those from a survey that we did never open the box or they might open the box and not even apply the CGM.

(00:36:59):

So, it’s not a big audience that is … There’s some of it, but most of it is it’s just sitting on a shelf or they open it and they realize like, “Oh, this looks a little bit harder than I thought. Maybe I’ll do this later.”

(00:37:10):

So, how the report works is I’m trying to break it down on number of sensors applied. So, whether zero sensors means we never see any glucose from them, one sensor, two, or three or more means they’ve gone past the first month. We don’t have exact data around how many sensors, but I’m using number of days of glucose that we see as proxies for how many sensors they’ve gone through. Next slide. Thanks.

(00:37:38):

Big shout out to Murilo on this of adding a bunch more taggings to PostHog. So, as we are looking at both in-app analytics and a lot of the work that he’s doing around the explorer tab, building a lot more dashboards just to make that data easier to pull. So, in this case, I’m trying to organize reports around tabs. So, when we say, “Hey, we just created the explorer tab, are people clicking on the thing?” Trying to make it where I’ve pre-created reports per tab. So, just trying to make it easier to find versus “Hey, I have a bunch of individual reports.” Next slide.

(00:38:15):

And then similarly around articles opened, read, search terms, favorited content, top videos, whether people loaded them, watched them, started them, and content sources. How did they get to the content from the homepage, from the content? So, a lot of time in PostHog, so just wanted to make the team aware. Next slide.

(00:38:38):

A little bit on the voice of the member. There was a member who actually wrote in a fairly long email to support, copied me and Sam, around some of his feedback. I also noticed that he posted a poll on our Levels Facebook community talking about, where do people get their sensors? Do they continue, how long? So, this is just results of the poll. Roughly 155 people took it around are they using getting sensors from us? Are they getting sensors from someplace else? Did they stop at the first month?

(00:39:10):

And one key insight that I took away is the the bottom one of there’s significant group of people that are continuing but looking to get sensors from other places. Whether that be Costco, GoodRx, CSV, and it was a meaningful size and a lot of conversation around how to go about doing that and how to get their prescriptions transferred.

(00:39:33):

So, I love it when our community is a great place for insights and I love it even more when they do a little bit of market research for us and we can benefit. So, that was great. Next slide.

(00:39:46):

So, this is Happiness comments from last week. The big takeaway, it was a Jesse love fest. A lot of the comments on the upper left around him being a rockstar, being fabulous, it’s great when they call specifically our members out. Even Brittany got a call out which was great, so she’s hitting the ground running.

(00:40:05):

On the flip side, we run into things with ID verification. Whether it be people not being in the US or tired of waiting, it’s not coming to their country. Or as we look for people to upgrade the app, worried about losing their data. So, we had a member that was on a really old version and she was worried if she updated to the latest version, was she going to lose all of her data? And that’s it for member experience.

Josh Clemente (00:40:34):

Quality and depth just keeps getting better. Thanks a lot, Chris, and thank you ops team. Ben.

Ben Grynol (00:40:40):

All right, growth is focused on providing value through membership. So, this is everything we are doing to create content, everything we’re doing around retention, community, all of these pillars. Next slide, please.

(00:40:53):

Recognized revenue for the week $169, for the month $731. So, we are on track to have our best month yet, probably somewhere just over nine, hard to say, but lots of paid initiatives in the pipeline. So, we’ll see how it ends up next week. 16.9 in the bank, no changes to cash, debt, or runway. Next slide, please.

(00:41:17):

So, growth theme of the week. We haven’t had one of these in a while. This is Jerry Garcia. Some people are fans. He is most notably the front man of the Grateful Dead. What does that have to do with us? Well, their number one hit song was called Touch of Gray. Next slide please.

(00:41:32):

So, we had a bit of a touch of gray in 2021. This was our digital media stack. And you can see there’s creation, distribution, engagement, measurement. And across that, we’ve got all many different people involved and we’re all somewhat contributing to these different parts of the stack, which is good for getting going. But what happens from a scale and optimization standpoint is that everyone does pieces of the work, but no one’s directly responsible for entire parts of the stack. Next slide please.

(00:42:04):

So, in 2022, we’re trying to make things a little bit more black and white, more of a process flow. So, if you break up the creation, distribution, engagement and measurement, what does this mean? Well, we’re going to have editorial and multimedia be focused on the creation. And then Stacy, you can see is sitting in between, which is the creative direction, which is in between distribution and creation, to make sure that we’re maintaining a lens on our brand guidelines, on the voice of Levels, on the content and the information we put out.

(00:42:33):

Mercy in Q2 or Q3, to be determined, is going to step in and start helping out more with the shipping and the project management. So, all the distribution because as we create more content and assets, there’s a lot to manage. There are a lot of files going out and a lot of platforms to be updated.

(00:42:51):

On the engagement side of things, this was done ad hoc before, so it was split between Stacy and Mercy and Matt’s currently exploring platforms, so different SaaS platforms where all the engagement can be managed under ops because there is so much information flow coming in now. On YouTube specifically, you can see there’s a flow of comments. The more videos we put out people are asking questions. Some technical, some support related, and that becomes way too much for one person to manage.

(00:43:19):

So, TBD on that, there’s the exploration going on. Last part of the stack is measurement. So, Chris is going to, based on some of the SaaS platforms, he’ll start doing more reporting and insights to get deeper lens on what is working and what isn’t working so that we can evolve the content from there. Next slide, please.

(00:43:39):

So, the way that we are thinking about this, digital is falling under the pillar of the function of growth as far as being a DRI. So, what the why and how. Our goal is to 2x the audience on each platform, still create high quality content, and put it out with a faster velocity. Increase engagement. Why are we doing this? Well, metabolic health education, that is our mission and our North Star as a company. But the other side of the thing is the content that we’re doing around culture and productivity that’s helping others learn from the way that we work.

(00:44:11):

The idea is to create more owned media, more of this content that we put out and to create more awareness about levels. The how is around derivative assets and distributing more content so we can have the information flow from editorial, creating this foundation. And then with multimedia, we can just start putting out a lot of different versions of content to optimize for different platforms. We’re going to get more active on platforms like TikTok, Pinterest, where we currently have a very humble presence, if you want to call it that. And then the idea is to glean insights from all this content and keep making things better. So, on to Stacy with derivative assets and how we’re starting the process.

Stacy Flanner (00:44:51):

Sounds good, thanks Ben. So, digital update derivative content. Of course, we have an incredible encyclopedic assortment of content on our blog. It’s long form. Alan, I can’t believe some of our blog posts are over 4,000 words, which they’re super rich and super informative, but not everyone is heading to the blog. Oftentimes we have used our social to drive people directly to the blog, however many people just don’t make the jump. And so we want to make sure that people are being able to absorb content on the platforms that they use on a daily basis so we can become a part of their daily lives, even if they’re not members Levels yet.

(00:45:33):

So, what does that mean? That means taking the incredible resources that are oftentimes originating on the blog and recreating them in shorter, faster to digest mediums. So, right here, for example, you can see Austin unpacking the ultimate guide to Metabolic Health in a short YouTube video. This then has multiple permutations. There are clips that are cut out for Twitter, for Instagram reels. Hopefully taking these incredible assets and then repurposing them in ways that will be able to broaden the impact and the impressions that the core content gets.

(00:46:18):

So, it means new faces, new mediums, more ways to learn. And as Ben said, we’re going to be expanding. We have very baby presences on Pinterest and TikTok for example, and we’re looking to expand those in the future. Next slide.

(00:46:32):

So, just a little case study, looking at the flow of how we’ve shared one of our, perhaps, most user-friendly and actionable blog post to date, the 29 people in Metabolic Health you should know. This blog post went up either December or January of December 2020 or January 2021 and we promoted it on Instagram after it went live. We promoted it on Twitter. That was a year ago.

(00:47:03):

At that time, our social followings were largely limited to Instagram and Twitter. I think that we had maybe 5,000 on Twitter and generously 15,000 on Instagram. And so even revisiting this content, it’s new because our audiences have grown. There are 45,000 more people on our Instagram than were in January of 2021. And so this is likely new to them even if it’s not quite new to us. And so we’re looking at new ways to share it and also create really valuable content that is native to the platforms that they’re featured on. So, next slide.

(00:47:43):

Actually go back, sorry. The January 22 re-promote. Instead of doing one Twitter post that said, “Hey, go to the blog to find all of these incredible experts to follow them.” Why not deliver very easy to execute on our call to action on the platform itself? So, you can see the Twitter thread behind the black box, which is an Instagram story, but summary to start off and then one individual tweet per expert in the neuro experts bucket to enable people to go through it and then immediately click on that link and while they’re in Twitter, hop to that person’s profile and hopefully follow.

(00:48:36):

So, twitter doesn’t have great analytics on how many people clicked on each of those links or each of those Twitter accounts, but Instagram we could see a bit more. So, now if you can go to the next slide. In case you don’t follow us on Instagram or Twitter, shame on you, but this is a story set that we put up this week. There are six slides. We have four neuro experts that are featured in the blog post. And so just took those descriptions, gave them each a dedicated slide, and a direct call to action.

(00:49:11):

It’s perhaps a tiny bit small on the screen, but you can see those white bars say follow and then@DavidMutter, et cetera, et cetera. So, those are clickable links where someone, while they’re in the app, can hop to that person and then see their full profile. What we want that blog post to accomplish is to get these experts into our members and our audience’s lives. And so this is a very direct connection. So yeah, we only had four in this bucket, but every Wednesday we’re going to be rolling out the other categories of experts that were featured in the blog.

(00:49:50):

And at the very end we have the more classic call to action to read more on the blog. But we’re going to do this for every category of expert going forward. And so what you can see on the next slide is the impact of tying the call to action so closely, making it easy for the viewer. So, I’m breaking out Dr. Masconi and Dr. Bredeson because Dr. Bredeson doesn’t have an Instagram account. And so I linked to his Twitter and you can see the difference in engagement. I apologize that these fonts are so small, but Dr. Mosconi, we had 263 people click through to look at her profile and we had about 1,700 people view the story in total. So, roughly one in eight people did what we asked them to do, which is pretty incredible. So, that I think is because it’s asking them to take an action that keeps them within the app where they want to be at that moment.

(00:50:52):

But then if you look at the next one, Dr. Bredesen, we linked to his Twitter and we only had 23 link clicks and I don’t think it’s because the content is any more or less compelling. I think it’s just we want to make it easy and if you’re staying within the context of the app that they’re already using, they’re more likely to do what you asked them to do. So, that was a great insight just from this little experiment. More to come, but it’s allowing us to fine tune the impact of what we’re creating as we take this amazing blog content and then tailor it especially to each platform to make sure that it’s impacting people as much as possible. So, thanks.

Josh Clemente (00:51:37):

Awesome dive. Thank you, Stacy. Okay, Tom,

Tom Griffin (00:51:42):

Couple of weekly highlights here. Some new content on the left, most notably Casey was on the Model Health Show with Sean Stevenson, Ashash. Josh mentioned at the top of the hour. This is a tier one health and wellness show, so we’re very excited about this and there’s also a great YouTube video that’s gaining a lot of traction already, which is exciting. And Josh mentioned it’s number one in the nutrition space and also Sean joined officially as an affiliate partner. So, we’re going to be doing ongoing work with him and also as an investor.

(00:52:11):

So, kudos to Casey who not only kills these shows but kills these relationships, generally. We’re very lucky to have her out on the front lines. And then another YouTube video with Kevin Jabal. YouTube generally has just been experiencing a lot of traction across the board, both with our videos, as well as partner videos.

(00:52:30):

And then they’re on the right. These are the shows that we are experimenting with in terms of podcast advertising in the month of January. So, you’re all familiar with Lifespan. We’ll give an update on that in a second. But we’ve got three new shows this month, Invest Like the Best, Sustainable Dish, and Intermittent Fasting podcast. Particularly interested in Invest like the Best because it’s a new audience for us, tech business, finance, and that’s really the goal of these advertising tests right now. It’s less so to hit certain metrics, but more so to learn and just better understand audiences and growth levers for the future.

(00:53:04):

And then update on Sinclair. I should probably stop being amazed on a daily basis about the performance here, but I can’t help it. We’re seeing just continued and increasing performance from Sinclair. So, I was blown away in the first week and the second week, this bar chart here is showing daily revenue. So, over 10K a day and our daily revenue has increased from the first week. I think we’re nearing it on 500 conversions and $200,000 in revenue in about two weeks. So, pretty incredible. That’s it.

Josh Clemente (00:53:38):

Amazing. Thank you, Tom. All right, over to you, Haney.

Mike Haney (00:53:44):

Yeah, so a handful of good pieces up, all of which will be great fodder for all of the awesome stuff that Ben and Stacy were just talking about. All different ways to push this out. So, in the camp of relatively long articles, we’ve got another ultimate guide, a deep dive into Omega-3s. Definitely recommend that one. Again, lots of good takeaways, great member story. And another research highlight. If you haven’t seen these before, the research highlighter, pay attention to them.

(00:54:12):

This is our best attempt at being newsy. Most of the content we do is really evergreen and we might be looking at research that goes back 10, 15, even 20 years in some cases. But what we’re trying to do these research highlight articles, and we’re trying to do more of them, is take recent studies that have come out and just bring them to our reader’s attention, primarily through pushing out both on social and in the newsletter.

(00:54:34):

And then just give a real world breakdown. We know studies are hard to read, but whenever we see something that we think is really cool and interesting, we try to crank one of these out relatively quickly. And so you’ll see a lot more of these coming through. And we mentioned at the top that Casey’s newsletter this week had another fantastic open rate. It’s so exciting every time to see. I keep waiting for the fall off and it keeps not happening, it only keeps climbing. But I wanted to put this up here also just to call attention to the fact that we have been posting these newsletters on the blog usually right after we send out the newsletter. So, if you want to send us on to somebody, if you missed the newsletter, if you want to share it out, these are all blog articles as well. Next slide.

(00:55:15):

Just a quick, another peek behind the curtain this week in terms of what we do in the content side. I want to talk just briefly about what we’re doing in the SEO world. It’s been a long time since I visited this. So SEO means search engine optimization, and it basically means what are you doing to make sure when people search for certain terms, your content comes up? And we do that for a handful of reasons.

(00:55:38):

The reasons that we do it would be in some cases, if you’re running a real commerce based operation and you’re really just trying to get people to buy your product, you might use SEO to try to make sure that anytime anybody searches for Marino hoodie, which I’m wearing, it’s fantastic, that they land on your site and that they click to buy on your product.

(00:56:00):

We’re doing something a little bit differently. What we’re trying to do is make sure when people are looking for information, if we have the right relevant information, if we’ve got the article that we know is the best article about that particular topic, that folks are finding us.

(00:56:13):

So, it’s much less about driving conversions, about driving even membership signups. It’s much more about getting the right information to people. So, SEO right now without a huge effort is about a third of our traffic depending. And to that earlier point about in some cases in some operations, the keywords that you could possibly rank for that you do rank for would entirely drive the editorial calendar. It would tell you, “You should write these 27 articles because this is what will get people to click on your product.”

(00:56:43):

We take a slightly different approach. We use that information to help inform what we’re writing. So, if we see from the analysis that our agency does that people are searching the term postprandial glucose and we use it a lot, but we don’t really have an explainer on it, we can write that piece that says what is postprandial glucose? And we can do a full piece on it to make sure that that’s a term that’s very much in our wheelhouse, it’s something we should have that information on. So, that’s an example of where the keyword is something we should rank for and that it informs the traffic.

(00:57:14):

In other cases, we’re writing stuff because we think it’ll be useful to our members or because we think it should be part of the library of content that talks about metabolic health and might be useful to our newsletter audience or popular and social, but maybe not quite a big SEO driver.

(00:57:30):

So, just briefly, the way we do this, we work with an agency called 97th Floor. We’ve been with them about a year now. They do some of the things you see there on the side, so they suggest articles, they give us an outline that we try to follow while still adhering to our very deep, very reported, very editorially driven approach to things. We also have a tool, you’d see that sardines example there, shout out to Bridget’s awesome review of that article and video that she did for it, that does a similar thing. We take and plug in our article and it says, “Hey, if you want to rank for this keyword, use these words a little bit more. Maybe swap this word for that word.” Gives us a little grade and just helps us optimize the content a little bit more.

(00:58:08):

And so in the next year we’re going to be leaning into this a little bit more. We’re going to be using a lot more of those SEO insights to drive a second wave of content. So, we’ve got our giant Omega-3 piece. What are five smaller pieces we can make that repeat some of that information, but maybe tackle a slightly more specific part of the Omega-3 conversation that could come up for a search word bring people into our content universe and then hopefully help them discover the other content or maybe back to the product or membership as well? So,~ yeah, any questions about this, feel free to ping me any time. And there’s a memo about this [inaudible 00:58:40] as well. That’s it for content.

Josh Clemente (00:58:43):

Yeah, I was about to mention that memo. Definitely recommend for deeper dives here. Thanks, Haney. Casey.

Casey Means (00:58:50):

Awesome, amazing update, Haney. So, quick run through of some of our recent press, which has been absolutely off the charts maybe our biggest eight weeks yet. On this first page, you’ll see some of the digital press and media we’ve received and what’s neat is that you’ll see themes all across the board of different areas we’ve been trying to hit. So, you’re going to see how Levels is used to enhance training and fitness, Levels as a key tool to stay generally healthy, and Levels as a nutrition biofeedback tool.

(00:59:19):

We’re also seeing outlets bring in our perspective about accessibility and how we feel that increased consumer demand will reduce costs and increase accessibility over time. So, just a wide range of topics that we’ve been aiming to hit. Next slide.

(00:59:35):

This shows a couple outlets that did some press on our early Crowdfunder efforts. So we pushed a pitch to several media outlets about our Crowdfunder raise and we’re going to do a separate full press push on our raise once it’s fully closed, likely in March. But this was a really good opportunity for us to share some of the nuance around why we crowdfunded and what it means about community for startups. Next slide.

(01:00:03):

If you’re interested in a little bit more about process, you can check out in Notion this document, “Talking Points Re: Crowdfund Raise.” And so this is the type of thing that we’ll put together for JTPR to basically give them this is what we think is important about what we did and why. And then that can be used as fodder for press pitches to be created and sent out to different outlets. But there’s a lot of really interesting stuff in there. Next slide.

(01:00:31):

So, next we had some gorgeous print media in Women’s Health, Entrepreneur, and Runner’s World. Again, a wide variety of topics addressed Next slide.

(01:00:41):

From our origin story and business innovation and entrepreneur, which had probably our spiciest headline of the couple of months When to Launch Something Illegal. Full disclosure, they very specifically said that this is not illegal, but more that it was really more talking about the innovative approach of finding inroads to do different things in healthcare and it was actually a great article. And then in Runner World, talking about how to use CGM to train for the Chicago marathon and then an odd piece for Women’s Health that I was interviewed for about why taking a warm bath can stabilize your glucose levels, but we’ll take it. Next slide.

(01:01:23):

We also had some TV media, which is always exciting on HLN, which is subsidiary of CNN. Lovely video in there, a clip of Mike D. that was actually shot by Tony back in New York over a year ago before Tony worked for us full-time. Some beautiful images shot by Stacy and a great message throughout about the value of managing glucose. Next slide.

(01:01:47):

This was really exciting, fabulous print spread in the Wall Street Journal in the future of everything section. On the far left is what it looked like in the actual Wall Street Journal. So, a gorgeous two page color spread. And then on the right is what the digital version. We had our first, I think, custom illustration of a Levels patch. I think it’s so insane that Josh designed this patch on his computer a few years ago and now it’s in the Wall Street Journal, memorialized forever.

(01:02:16):

But this was just a fabulous article. We were the entire section called in the blood and it’s a message we obviously really love, which is that this is the future. This is the future of healthcare and personalized, empowered health. So, awesome article and we had a great connection with this journalist, Laura Cooper, and they’re interested in actually doing an exclusive potentially on our [inaudible 01:02:41], so more on that hopefully in a couple months. Next slide.

(01:02:47):

Josh and I were interviewed for The Economist. This was a fabulous article on consumerization of healthcare with the great title, Move Fast and Heal Things. We love it. It was really cool. Josh’s story was actually mentioned in this article that made it into the print version as well of the magazine talking about his time at SpaceX and having to get sensors from Australia and it’s just so cool to see that in print.

(01:03:10):

And then lastly, Good Housekeeping, which is actually a really large outlet, obviously totally different demographic. We won their fitness awards and so that’s going to be included in this month’s Good Housekeeping and in the great irony, we were mentioned on the page where a Honeynut Cheerios ad was also on there, so love it. I think Honeynut Cheerios is one of our worst scoring cereals in our dataset. But alas. Next slide.

(01:03:43):

And then just lastly, if you’re ever interested in more about what’s happening with press, there’s a lot going on. Jack Taylor, who has just been absolutely amazing. Our PR firm. You can always take a peek at our weekly sort of agendas if you’d like to. And in terms of upcoming stuff, we are working on, as I mentioned, the series A announcement, lot of push for Levels culture and inside the company type pitches. 2022 is the year of metabolic health. We’re working on an op-ed response to a Boston Globe article that was kind of poo-pooing using CGMs and that’ll be bylined by me and some of our advisors.

(01:04:21):

Doing some female founder pitches, getting our advisors looped into press. And interestingly, there’s been a lot of UK press interest right now, active conversations with Daily Mail UK, Men’s Health UK, we were just featured in Courier UK and Well To Do, which ids the Fit Insider of the UK. So, that’s really cool to see that type of interest even though we have not launched and we are not in the UK yet. So, really cool to see that. So, that’s the press update for the last little bit.

Josh Clemente (01:04:49):

All fire right there. Thank you, Casey. That was awesome. Huge, huge couple weeks here. All right, so we are going to try something new here. The team has officially reached as stage where we’re filling out three columns here and we’re going to fill out more than half an hour if we were to do all of these. So, what we’re going to do is we’re going to run the clock down to 12:30, well 12:30 my time, which is central, and we’re just going to get as far through as we can and then we’ll pick up on the list where we left off next week. So, unfortunately we probably won’t be able to fit everyone in, but that’s just how it’s going to go as the team continues to scale. So Matt, if you want to go ahead and kick us off.

Matt Flanagan (01:05:26):

Yeah, I’ll keep it short then. It’s been super fun to go through the social channels and plus everything Bridget’s saying about just how strongly our community feels about what we’re doing. Personally, it’s really cold, so I’m going to stay inside this weekend.

Josh Clemente (01:05:43):

Mercy.

Mercy Clemente (01:05:45):

It’s nice to be back at work and back at the forum. Personally I was able to see a lot of my family the past two weeks, so that was nice. And second what Matt said, it’s about 20 degrees out here so I will also be staying inside.

Josh Clemente (01:06:00):

All right. I think that’s a theme. Andrew.

Andrew Conner (01:06:02):

Super excited about the now page. I think the designs, the whole approach is really cool. And then a special call out to Ian and the ops team for iterating on onboarding. I really appreciate the feedback. It’s amazing. If anyone hasn’t seen how we onboard people, please take a look at it in Notion, it’s really awesome.

Josh Clemente (01:06:24):

For sure. Dave

Dave ten Have (01:06:27):

Andrew is handing over foot cannons to me, so I will be using those next week, which is exciting. It’ll be about 80 degrees Fahrenheit here and Pony Palooza for the girls.

Josh Clemente (01:06:42):

Sounds like a blast. Tom,

Tom Griffin (01:06:45):

Yeah, Levels wise, mostly just excited about the future direction of the product, just really excited about everything that we’re working on there. And then personally, Ben, under the weather and I’m on about day eight of brain fog, so I’m hoping that this weekend I will finally stop feeling like every morning that I had 15 gin and tonics the night before. Not that I would know what that feels like, but I’m assuming it feels like this.

Josh Clemente (01:07:14):

I think you’re right. Feel better, man. Jesse

Jesse Lavine (01:07:18):

Plus one to the direction of the product, all those other updates are super exciting. It was great to meet Sam and Zach and Ian for the first time in Austin this week and also Josh and Casey. And it’s really cold in Austin this week, but yesterday I went and did a cold lunch in Lake Travis, which was very invigorating.

Josh Clemente (01:07:36):

Wow, it was very cold yesterday. Good work. Rob.

Robert Lustig (01:07:41):

Earlier this week I gave grand rounds at UCSF psychiatry on metabolic psychiatry and I think this might be an avenue we might want to talk and promote. It’s having its moment. So, something to think about.

Josh Clemente (01:08:01):

Definitely. For me, I have been in Austin, it’s been great to meet Zach and Ian and then hanging out with Jesse, Casey, Sam, it’s a lot of fun. And then also just generally getting to know the area. It was 80 degrees at one point this week and now it’s like 30 degrees or 26 last night. So yeah, it was interesting. And then on the professional side, besides that, just really very excited about the community we’re building, all the initiatives that are coming to a head with the crowdfunding and with people like Bridget coming on and giving us those testimonials and with Cissy joining us. So, the community’s awesome. And then the validation of the Crowdfunding testimonials is just phenomenal. So, excited about what we’re doing here and the product is heading in the right direction. Bridget?

Bridget Titgemeier (01:08:54):

Well, I would say that my highlight has really been being here for the week. Sounds pretty corny, but it actually is. Just so much great energy that I feel listening to everything that all of you just went through. And we’re working on actually a CGM for Dummies guide so that we can help people that have a CGM who may not be interested in investing in a nutritionist, to just break down for them the first steps to look at as a free download. And to also encourage people to sign up for a CGM through Levels, obviously.

(01:09:26):

And personally, I am hoping to drive five hours south. I live in Jacksonville right now. I’m half in Jacksonville, half in Cleveland. I’m hoping to drive about five hours south of here this upcoming week to just enjoy some time with family.

Josh Clemente (01:09:46):

Nice. Enjoy. I think Dom and Lori are out. Lauren.

Lauren Kelley-Chew (01:09:51):

That is so cool to see you too together. It’s been really exciting for me to meet Bridget on this because we’re going to get to do a Whole New Level podcast in February, so that’s very exciting. And I am in my new apartment at long last, so there’s not furniture in it, but I feel really excited to be in the new space.

Josh Clemente (01:10:13):

Nice. Congrats on the settling in.

Lauren Kelley-Chew (01:10:16):

Thank you.

Josh Clemente (01:10:17):

Think Sam’s out. Maz.

Maziar Brumand (01:10:21):

I’m excited to be back in the States after a few weeks in the UK. And on the work front, it’s been really fun working with JN and Karen on the CGM stuff and also doing the podcast circuit. It’s been really fun. And also on the membership demo, heads down, trying to get it dropped out.

Josh Clemente (01:10:42):

Looking forward to it. I think Taylor’s out. Jackie.

Jackie Tsontakis (01:10:48):

Hi. I knew all the press that we got this fast couple weeks was amazing but Casey, the way that it was presented today was like, whoa. I think I’m most excited about the fact these are all pretty mainstream publications. Men’s Health, Women’s Health. It’s just amazing to see us so mainstream and personally I am super pumped to hang out with Braden this week. And then this was also a total coincidence by the way, guys, we’re both in [inaudible 01:11:23] right now and I’m going to go paragliding on Sunday for the first time, so I’m excited for that.

Josh Clemente (01:11:28):

Phenomenal. Send some pictures. Let’s see, Zach.

Zac (01:11:35):

Yeah, just both personally and professionally, it was really, really cool to get to actually meet so many members of the team. Also just super excited about the awesome people that we just keep bringing on board. The press too is super great, but really getting to meet some people face-to-face and have untimed lengthy conversations every once in a while is pretty neat. Great time.

Josh Clemente (01:12:01):

Ditto. Cissy.

Cissy Hu (01:12:04):

Hey, team. Excited to meet you all. Thanks for having me on Friday forum today. Super energized by the last hour. I’m sitting on my first live Friday forum and seeing all the amazing work that’s happening across the team. I’m super excited to start accelerating our community efforts in February. A lot of ideas to start experimenting with. So, I’m excited to get started. On the personal front, I’m doing a long bike ride over to Sausalito over the weekend and dog sitting one of my favorite dogs in the Coal Valley area.

Josh Clemente (01:12:33):

Enjoy. Sean.

Shawn Grening (01:12:38):

On the Level side, I’m pretty pumped on those magnetic bubble tags. I hope those make the cut. And then also excited to find out what an Alan-ish loom is. I don’t think that was in the onboarding material, but seems like an important one. On the personal side, it’s not super cold here on the West Coast. So, I think my wife and I are going to go out to dinner in one of those open air tent deals for the first time in over a month, I think. So, should be fun.

Josh Clemente (01:13:12):

Nice. Let us know when you discover what an Alan-ish loom is. It’ll become clear soon enough. Is Helena on the call?

Helena Belloff (01:13:22):

Yes, I am actually.

Josh Clemente (01:13:23):

There you are.

Helena Belloff (01:13:24):

Alan-ish looms are well worth it, by the way. Levels wise, I’m really excited about all the projects that are going on. I think we really hit the ground running in 2022, so I’m super excited to see all of those develop. And then personally, I posted about this in the threads, but my dog had surgery. He’s toggling between being in pain and being really bored. So, that’s been fun. So, this weekend I’m hoping to catch up on sleep.

Josh Clemente (01:13:55):

Yeah, enjoy. Murilo.

Murilo (01:13:59):

Yeah, I’ll just, plus one people. One on the press and two on the product presentation. It’s great just seeing the thought that goes behind it and the direction it gives us as we’re working on this day to day just to know where we’re going and what the vision is. It’s inspiring.

Josh Clemente (01:14:20):

Love it. Mike D.

Mike Didonato (01:14:24):

Whoops, was on mute. So yeah, I’ll just go ahead and plus one on all that and I want to spend time talking about, it’s been pretty exciting to be the DRI for the outpage. I think Sunny had shared something in the water cooler chat about the creative process. It’s like, “This is awesome, this is tricky. This is shit. I am, this might be okay. This is awesome.” So, a lot of those feelings and it’s just been pretty cool, just another reminder of how awesome the people we have on the team, getting to work more closely with Steph and Helena and Justin and Alan’s been pretty cool and excited to see what happens.

Josh Clemente (01:14:58):

Perfect. Love that share, makes a lot of sense. Scott. Oh, Scott had to jump, actually. Chris.

Chris Jones (01:15:10):

On the levels side, super excited to get the product shipped and then get into more of a regular cadence of weekly ships of the 39 days from our last update. So, getting features in front of members’ hands versus just internally, super excited about that. Also from a culture standpoint, Gian Lu calling in from the slopes, Braden and Jackie, randomly meeting up in like Columbia. From a culture standpoint, I just can’t stop smiling. So, it’s awesome and celebrating that is just something we should continue to do and encourage it. So, it’s great to see.

(01:15:46):

On the personal side, it is cold here, but in that time, just like people in Canada, we actually go outside. So, looking to teach my wife how to skate ski cross-country and hopefully that I do an okay job. But I imagine it’ll be lots of stumbling and falling like Steph’s early exploits. So, that’s it.

Josh Clemente (01:16:13):

Enjoy that. I have never gone skate skiing. You’ll have to teach us on Farm Assemblage 2023. Sunny. Actually Sunny may not be with us. Haney.

Mike Haney (01:16:29):

On the level side, super excited for all the stuff Ben and Stacy talked about, the digital media efforts. This is just a great next phase of everything we’ve wanted to do with content since the very beginning. How can we get this education to more people, give them more ways to digest it, more ways to learn? We’ll keep cranking out the 4,500 word articles, but I love that we’ve got such an awesome team dedicated to helping that education mission. So, that’s great.

Josh Clemente (01:16:58):

Super great. Love it. Gabriel.

Gabriel (01:17:03):

Yeah, plus one for the press stuff. Super exciting. Also the typing project, I’m very excited about, been following it. Yeah, looks super cool. Excited about it.

Josh Clemente (01:17:16):

For sure. Steph.

Stephanie Coates (01:17:18):

Awesome. God, I’m excited about everything. I could go on for like five minutes. But the explore tab, the now page, and how fun it’s been to work with Mike and Alan and Helena and Justin and really see this thing start to get legs and plus one to the press releases.

(01:17:36):

And also something I was thinking is shout out to Haney. I feel so proud to work at a company where the editorial efforts are so focused on quality rather than just quantity or clicks. And so it’s really cool to see that continue to evolve. And personally, Chris, I will be joining you in stumbling around and falling a lot in skate skiing this weekend as well.

Josh Clemente (01:17:59):

Enjoy that. Kunal.

Kunal Shah (01:18:02):

Yeah, on the levels front, I completely agree with everything Steph just said. I’m pretty excited to be jumping in with the Explorer project with Murilo. There’s a whole lot of exciting stuff to be done there. And on the personal front, I finally got confirmation that I’m going to be moving to California, so back to San Francisco. And it’s about time because I’m moving in nine days and of course that means there’s a lot to do in New York and of course I’m spending the last week in New York, not actually at home, but in Miami for a hackathon. So, that’ll be really fun. So yeah, it’s going to be really chaotic, but I’m really looking forward to it. Good change.

Josh Clemente (01:18:44):

Sweet. Well, congrats on the next phase. Brittney.

Brittney McLoad (01:18:51):

Thanks. On the Levels side, I this week started working on putting together a plan for revamping our customer knowledge base, our external knowledge base. So, super excited about getting started on that. And on the personal side, my stepdad is making an impromptu trip to Santa Barbara to come and visit. So, really excited to spend some quality time with him this weekend. Thanks.

Josh Clemente (01:19:19):

Love it. Enjoy. Ian.

Ian Schuman (01:19:22):

Hey, definitely plus one from meeting everyone earlier this week in Austin. Super cool to connect with people so soon after starting here. That’s an easy one. On the personal side, my wife and I are doing our first cooking class tonight for date night at [inaudible 01:19:39], theme is date night in Tuscany. So, looking forward to that.

Josh Clemente (01:19:43):

Oh, cool. Enjoy that. All right, Alan. Oh, Alan had to jump. Hao.

Hao Li (01:19:57):

Yeah, I’m heading to the mountain tonight and probably going to be actually skating on the slope tomorrow because it’s been warm and sunny. And also I want to figure out a time so I can have a slope side forum as well.

Josh Clemente (01:20:16):

Yes, 100%. Make it happen, John. All right, I think we lost John. We’re going to jump to Casey.

Casey Means (01:20:32):

Ooh, I got to plus one what’s going on with the now page is super exhilarating to watch. Just seeing the team work together, it’s so organized. Dia’s doing an incredible job leading it and communicating and I think making everyone feel like we’re all able to follow along with what’s happening. So, this just feels like a huge inflection point for product and I’m so excited by what’s happening.

(01:20:56):

Also, really loved Stacy’s update and just how the focus on creating value for members at every single touchpoint of our digital strategy is really playing out and not being diluted all as we continue to grow and scale. So, I think that’s just so awesome. And I think the example she gave really shows how that’s happening at every level of our digital, which is so great. Personally in Austin, was so awesome to see a bunch of people from the team this week and excited to explore this weekend.

Josh Clemente (01:21:33):

That’s fun. All right, we’re too close here. We’re going to finish it up. Ben.

Ben Grynol (01:21:37):

Let’s cut it. We have to pull off the bandaid sometime.

Josh Clemente (01:21:42):

It won’t be today. Most of these people are out. You’re up.

Ben Grynol (01:21:47):

Okay, I’ll rip it. Super stoked on the experiment that Sam ran with Fiverr. So reason being is he didn’t ask permission. He didn’t say, “Hey, what do you think team?” He just went and did this thing and then it allowed us to give a ton of feedback and start a conversation about it. And it was just on the edge of not being at the quality where we’d want to distribute.

(01:22:06):

But doing those things fast, we get things done so much quicker and don’t distract each other by thinking about it. So, that was a big hat tip. And then on the personal front, doing my first ever Think Week next week. Super stoked to do it. Going into memo mode and going to do some fun things. So, I’ll share some pictures at the end of it.

Josh Clemente (01:22:26):

All right, I believe that all of Mis, Justin, and Stacy are out as of right now. So Tony, close it out.

Tony Milio (01:22:38):

Oh wow. Going last. Yeah, definitely have to say plus one to Ben’s note Sam’s scrappy approach to the Fiverr clip, that was a awesome idea and I’m looking forward to seeing more of those cooking clips as well.

(01:22:56):

Yeah, on the Levels side, just really excited about all those media pieces that Casey shared and all the derivative assets that we’re going to be creating on social with Stacy and Mercy and everyone. So, really pumped for that.

Josh Clemente (01:23:15):

Agreed. All right team, we did it. That wasn’t too bad. Got over here by about two minutes. So, there’s a cafe after this. I have to jump, but Ben is going to take lead on signing that up. I think there’s a separate link. So, if you want to join that, please do. And if not, have a great end of your Friday and weekend. Enjoy the slopes, for those of you that are out there. Talk soon. Great week.