Josh (00:00):
Welcome to Friday Forum, May 20, 2022. All right, so on the social and digital channel side, we had a pretty wild week and really last month with YouTube we hit 13,000 subscribers, which is huge, but in particular the last 30 days we’ve had something like 10 years of watch time, 86,000 hours of watch time and it’s massively increasing, so the rate is really very impressive.
(00:28):
And this recent video on uric acid with Dr. Perlmutter and Casey hit 360,000 views, I think, over the course of a week or so, and 96,000, a 100,000 of those were in the last 48 hours and it led to 6,000, so half of our subscribers from one video. So anyway, our reach is obviously extending on YouTube. It’s going to be a huge platform for us both on the partnership side and with organic content that we develop internally, and it’s really awesome.
(00:56):
As many of you know, we rolled out the company objectives and key initiatives project on the fireside. This has been a few weeks in the making, really over a month in the making, but working with many stakeholders across functions to get alignment on what’s in scope and the sort of anti-priorities. From those we’ll have key initiatives, which will be a little bit more revolving than the company objectives, but we can now push a new product development process and focus into the entire organization and start to execute to this. If you did not get a chance to join that fireside, I highly recommend watching the recording and sending thoughts and questions or concerns. The memo’s been circulating for some time, so hopefully this wasn’t too much news for anyone, but very excited for this initiative.
(01:44):
This week on Member Success side, happiness is at 99, that’s a 100 in my book. Pretty unbelievable, 250,000 people on the email list and our lowest support volume ever. This has been about three weeks running, which just to give some context there, support volume means that we are hitting really good leverage on the content we’re producing. So, if people don’t have to reach out to support, it indicates that they’re able to find the answer to their question more easily, which is great. On the liftoff side, logistics agreement is signed and delivered, so that’s between two third parties that Levels is not sort of in the middle of. Obviously, very exciting to have that completed, but we still have a few more items to knock out before we are ready for liftoff. It’s all execution from here. It’s going to be, I think JM’s going to have an update on that. But one thing to highlight is the updated protocol for the IRB and the informed consent form were both IRB approved with a two-day turnaround, which is huge.
(02:46):
Dr. Sara Gottfried, we sponsored some research with her and her new paper was published this week revealing some of the asymmetry between cardiometabolic risk for women and men. This paper is, it’s a meta review or meta-analysis and review of a huge, huge amount of literature and it’s amazing. I’m very excited that this was put out into the world and we’re working with Dr. Gottfried to really raise the volume on this as well. So, excited to see that on our blog and to see that in the world.
(03:14):
Similarly, another sponsored research program, Dr. Halls, Florida Medical Clinic and University of South Florida, study with Dom as co-investigator was published or well, preliminary findings were shared at Metabolic Health Summit and it showed that levels users as compared to the standard 12-week wellness program, participants had a statistically significant decrease in liver fat, along with other benefits. And this is kind of the first evidence of clinical quality improvement in a health metric that is really meaningful. Liver fat, specifically non-alcoholic fatty liver is a leading cause of long-term metabolic complications and it’s pretty amazing to see at this early stage when it’s not necessarily designed for such a thing, people taking their own behavior change steps that lead to this improvement. A lot more to come here, but it underlines what we’re talking about as a company, which is that people can improve their health in meaningful ways with better information.
(04:16):
We’ve got a partnership kicking off with One Commune, which is going to look into curriculum-based content on metabolic health, of course featuring Casey. Similarly, pilot experiment for Dr. Casey’s Kitchen went live, which was really a great video, so we’re going to be experimenting, I think with a lot more content with Casey live on screen.
(04:34):
And then design is nearing completion on the homepage user research project, so I’ll let Alan and Brett speak to that, but exciting to get so much member feedback in the loop, and the checkout flow design for liftoff and the logging process are both queued up as well. Let’s see what else do we have here? We had a huge week on whole new level. I think we had seven episodes recorded across a whole range of topics, including our research project and plenty of great episodes. I haven’t been able to catch up on all of them, I highly recommend it.
(05:03):
I want to highlight these two articles, excuse me. We’re seeing language showing up, food as medicine, leaning into metabolic health for skincare, language showing up that Levels has really been pushing through our content for years now, and it’s really exciting to see mainstream conversation about metabolic health connected to skincare in a headline.
(05:25):
Food has Medicine from Fit Insider, so these are moves that did not come about I think by accident. This is evidence that the concepts that we’re pushing are making their way into the mainstream zeitgeist. I was able to join a biosensor conversation at Caltech, just sharing what we’ve learned about how people interact with data and hopefully create some excitement, some innovation for these post-doctoral researchers who are looking to get into the future sort of hardware space. Hopefully we see some cool companies and initiatives pop up from these researchers who are looking to build the next generation. Excuse me, sorry, got something in my throat.
(06:11):
Let’s see. And we had Dr. Matt Walker who I’m sure many people here have heard of. He wrote Why We Sleep, and it’s an amazing book that hit the world in 2018 and has led to I think a lot of people completely renovating their approach to sleep. He’s going to be into our orbit sometime soon and oh yeah, the other big one, enabling research. Taylor and Azure and others on the research team put this memo out there for review. This is defining the potential future of a distributed, participatory research platform that Levels could power, given the nature of our product and platform. More to come here, but super, super exciting and inspirational stuff. And then we had several really cool shared partnership features, including Lauren. This was Dr. Sherwin or not Dr. Sherwin. Sherwin shares his YouTube channel Going 30 days without Sugar, and then she had a Facebook Live with Being Bridget, right? I think I touched on everything here. Oh yeah, JM, his [inaudible 00:07:17] podcast.
(07:19):
Awesome. With that, I want to welcome Michael Kummer. Mike is a member and partner of Levels. I think the intention behind the content that he produces is second to none. He’s a professional, former professional sprinter and an avid CrossFitter, unbelievable shape, and just shares his own explorations and experiments with a substrate of real data integrity. He participated in the Koch challenge and I think had some counterintuitive results, which was really cool, and has since been really, really continuing to produce content that pushes the boundaries of human performance as it relates to metabolic function. Also, the founder of MK Supplements, which makes extremely high quality, organic, grass-fed organ meat supplements and other I’m sure products on the roadmap. And thanks for A, being a supporter for so long, and B, joining us here today on a Friday.
Michael Krummer (08:09):
Absolutely. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
Josh (08:13):
Well, I would love to, you’ve now been using Levels for, well over a year I think, on and off I’m sure, but since you first got involved, I’m really curious to hear what you’re excited about in the future of metabolic health, maybe how this sort of product in the future of biosensing impacts you personally, and what you’re excited for as the industry continues to evolve?
Michael Krummer (08:37):
Yeah, I mean there are a ton of things that I learned that I never thought would happen out of my body. And one of the most, I think significant findings for me was to see the blood sugar spike during or right after an intense workout. Just the other day actually, I recorded an ask me anything video and my editor put one of the screenshots from Levels into the video, and it was one of the workouts where my blood sugar spiked from, I think maybe before the workout, it was 80-something and then it went up to 195 milligrams per deciliter during a CrossFit workout. It’s like, whoa. And then this is a massive spike that you would probably otherwise only see when you, I don’t know, down a Coke, or have a bunch of Cokes, not only one. Because I did the Coke challenge, I said, and the spike was not as significant as it is during some of those workouts, so that was really one of the things that I noticed.
(09:31):
The other thing, just regular lifestyle events like stress can influence my blood sugar response and ultimately my insulin response. And that really leads me into what I’m very excited about for the future is to not only see blood sugar, but also insulin response, which ultimately, not saying that it’s maybe more and more important, but it’s equally significant to see how your body deals with the sugar, be it dietary influence or workout influence, or I’ve even seen blood sugar spikes jumping into the sauna. And so all of that and then other metrics and then how all of that fits together, because obviously the human body is super complex. Looking at one metric in an isolated fashion doesn’t always tell the entire story. There are so many facets and nuance to all of that and bringing all of that together and really looking at the big picture and what that means for your personal health, that’s something I’m super excited about.
(10:29):
And then obviously, one of the big things is, not only do you see the raw data, because you can do that in many cases already on an individual basis, but bringing all of that together, making sense of it and giving you actionable feedback on what you can do to potentially improve certain areas, that’s really where I think the money is. And that’s, I guess the core of your platform to make sense of the data.
Josh (10:55):
I love the focus on the other variables, so not the single-minded focus on just glucose, but understanding that once glucose is the door and then recognizing that the difference between that 200 milligram per deciliter spike from a CrossFit workout, which I’ve seen as well, versus the double Coke back to back challenge is likely hormonal. And so we need to be able to recognize the delta between, in terms of how it’s going to impact the human body. Its very different physiologic response and surfacing those sorts of insights can only be done with the integration of lots of data. And it doesn’t necessarily mean that we need to be able to measure insulin directly today. Obviously, that would be the holy grail, but today we can sort of weave together activity data, movement data and the glucose information to be able to tell the difference between that sugary drink and a CrossFit workout. Michael, if there’s one thing that you would like to see Levels improve today based on your experience, what would that be? Nothing’s off the table.
Michael Krummer (11:57):
Yeah, so there was actually one specific case that I had and that was I did the blood work with you guys as well. And regularly I do typically my blood work every three months anyway, but since you have the capability now too, I did it actually twice with you. And one of the biomarkers that stuck out almost like a sore thumb and probably more in a positive way than in a negative way was my morning insulin. Because it was below the standard range. And it’s been 1.8 for since I’ve been doing my blood work, so it’s always been below, I don’t know what the unit is, but two is from two to whatever is the normal range, and I’m always below two.
(12:43):
And I could not find any good information on what that means. The only thing that I could find is well, maybe type one diabetes. I don’t have type one diabetes, I’m relatively certain of that. But then the other day I had a call with Dr. Bikman, who is, I think on your advisory board as well. And so we talked about that particular case and he basically said, “Well, that just means that you’re incredibly sensitive to insulin, which is a good thing.” And so what I’d like to see is maybe more, and I know, I got the feedback after the lab work based on the, I guess a review or there, I don’t know how we do it, but there was some information on what that means, et cetera.
(13:28):
But that one part was, it might be an off case because there might not be that many people that have below two, but for that to have the ability to have a one-on-one session or to dive deeper into something and say, “Hey, okay, I understand those are the standard ranges. Standards are not always where they should be in my opinion. And based on what I’ve seen with the LDLs of the world and some of the other markers.” But being able to have maybe more of a deep dive and have a even more correlation then gets maybe some information what you can do to further either improve, or change some of that if it turns out to be negative. That would be maybe a coaching program that you can sign up for, or something like that. That would be cool.
Josh (14:16):
I love that, love that idea. It’s definitely something that we’ve explored at length internally and being able to, like you said, seamlessly both provide the experience and let people pull the information that they need up to and including potentially having a live session with a digital care team that maybe we can weave in. Lauren on our clinical product side has done a lot of thinking about this and certainly it’s an area that I would love to see more information about. Our whole purpose here is to get people thinking about the molecules that drive their metabolic health. And so obviously that worked in your case, you were focusing on getting this information. And then obviously, we need to be able to provide the information necessary so that people can find the confidence level that they need.
(14:59):
If something needs to be improved, ideally we can lead them in that direction. If something is optimal, like sub two doesn’t mean zero as Rob said, we need to make sure that’s clear to people. So that’s really great feedback. Michael, anything else you wanted to share with the team? I really do appreciate you joining us.
Michael Krummer (15:18):
Yeah, no, maybe one more thing, because it just popped into my head the other day, and it also is something that applies to me personally. I’ve always, I’m a competitive type, always have been, but over the years I’ve realized that being the fittest doesn’t necessarily always mean being the healthiest. You can do many things to improve your performance that don’t necessarily improve your health span or your overall wellness. And one good example is consuming carbohydrates right after a workout or even before a workout, depending on of course what type of workout you do, but there is a potential of it improving your performance. And I’ve seen that during CrossFit workouts where just running on ketones for a Murph challenge might not be the best recipe for success. However, on the other hand, if you cut out the carbs after intense workouts, you really work on your insulin sensitivity and you can easily undo that if you then consume carbs after workout, even if it might not derail you from a metabolic perspective. But just that particular aspect, there is a clear distinction between improving performance and improving longevity and insulin sensitivity and metabolic health.
(16:30):
And so I don’t know how much focus and how much work you guys have done in that area, but that might be, there are potentially two different audiences for that. One who uses the platform to improve performance maybe and another group of people who want to improve their health. Probably the latter one is the majority, but there is also probably the pro-athletes types that really want to disregard health a little bit for a couple of years to maybe succeed at the Olympics or whatever goals they might have.
Josh (17:04):
Another really great point, there’s an awesome episode of the drive with Peter Attia and [inaudible 00:17:09] where they basically say, “Peak performance and peak health are parallel for most of the time, but once you get to the limits it’s orthogonal or maybe even opposite.” So, small improvements in your performance could be actually detrimental to health. So, it’s a really interesting balancing act, something that our main focus, of course is how food affects health and helping people in the middle of the bell curve understand what the direction of travel is for their health. But I’m very excited to be able to A, better understand these limits where that divergence appears and help everyone, no matter what their goals are. Do so with full awareness of what’s happening behind the scenes. Well awesome. Michael, it was awesome to hear from you. I know speaking on behalf of the team, we really appreciate people setting aside time, especially on a Friday morning and thank you for joining us. Thanks for being such an awesome partner to us, and looking forward to much, much more.
Michael Krummer (18:06):
Absolutely. Thank you for having me, I appreciate.
Josh (18:08):
Awesome. All right, jumping ahead to quick culture slide. First of all, Mike D and Sonja got to hang out in LA, which is always awesome to see. Love that. And then want to highlight Jackie real quick, this is a great example of Levels culture in action. What Jackie did here is essentially put off work. She said, “I recommend we punt something because my time is better spent elsewhere.” And that is just, that’s ownership and autonomy personified and that that’s exactly what we’re looking for here, the culture that we are seeking to build. And there there’s a memo here that I sent out earlier this week, but very much along these lines, which is that each person is, because we’re so fully distributed, each person controls their schedule, we’re asynchronous. It’s just really important to be able to close these sorts of loops in a way that optimizes for what the key objectives of the company are.
(19:01):
And just being ruthless about prioritization is part of that. It can be very difficult, I know it’s a lot easier to say yes to everything than it is to say no to some things, but ultimately that’s what Jackie’s shown us here and I think is super important. So thanks Jackie. Thanks to everybody who’s doing this sort of thing daily and I recommend taking a look at this Confidence is Earned memo which talks more about the communication side of async work and leave feedback, if you don’t mind.
(19:30):
All right. Over to company objectives, nothing’s changed here on the main thing. Levels shows you how food affects your health. And with that we’ve got Miz with an async update. Oh, one second.
Michael Mizrahi (19:44):
Hi everyone. We had a fireside today talking through company objectives and that fireside really talk through what are the company objectives, why we pick these, what are the metrics, why we pick the metrics, how does key initiatives tie to company objectives? And then how does the DRI database tie to the key initiatives and how do we think about these and how do we put new initiatives on the board and when we actually review them. I highly recommend that you go listen to that fireside if you haven’t had an opportunity to join. It’s really important that all of us speak the same language and pull the same direction and let me know if you have any questions.
(20:22):
The second thing that we’ve been working on is the product, the what for the product, which is, who are we building for and what are we building? And it’s recommend reading the threads on this that talks through what is the what and for whom. And nutshell really it is, we’re going to build a behavior change product that uses food as an intervention and really want to drive metabolic health and specifically for to build the product in the system we’re going to start with women with the age of 35 to 65. And we’re going to try to help them manage weight, but the product will remain as a metabolic health product. And the marketing positioning of the science is really trying to get people to destination, which is metabolic health. And once people reach that destination, obviously people that are trying to manage their weight will benefit from that metabolic health. So, recommend also reading this as a frame group for what we’re going to work on.
(21:25):
Also, in addition to that, we created a process for how do we actually run the product development process and how do we actually get ideas and shape them, schedule them for build? And I’d recorded a loom for this in the async section of the forum and I also have the video here forum. So there is recommend you do that, but good product this week we ship the company objectives, we finalize the what for the product and for whom we’re building it. And we developed the product development process which will really help us kick off the concept design for the new product, behavior intervention product. And then how do we actually build on top of the new features that will develop the system that will help people get to their metabolic health. So anyways, if you have any questions, let me know. Thanks, bye.
Josh (22:25):
Sorry for the lawn care noise behind me, hopefully that’s not too loud. Thank you Miz. We got JM with the experimentation.
JM (22:32):
Hi everyone. I wanted to share the results from the survey I ran last week. First some background, you might have seen this thread in Voice of the Member, but basically I wanted to talk to people that have spent $800 or more with us, more broadly, people that have subscribed, received a bunch of CGMs, used our product extensively and then decided to churn. I felt like that was an interesting group of people to talk to. As I explained in this thread, I did a filter for people with two or more subscription orders, meaning they received three total orders at least, including the original shipment, which means they spent at least $800 with us and then canceled. That group was about 1,368 people, and I sent a survey last week. We got 199 responses as of yesterday, I think a few more have come in since, but when I ran the analysis on those roughly 200 responses, that group has an average of 350 food logs and 2,800 hours of glucose data, which is a lot.
(23:28):
And that group who responded, if you take their last NPS result, they have an NPS of 72.5. Here are my top level learnings. Obviously, making Levels less expensive is going to be a big one. This is not news. Miz has talked about this extensively. I think we all sort of intuit that charging less will be better. I was that three quarters of the folks cited Levels being too expensive as one of the main reasons or the main reason that they decided to churn.
(23:54):
Willingness to renew. So I believe Josh suggested that we asked this, do you intend to renew? This was not a mandatory answer, so only about a quarter of people answered and it was about 40/60 yes, which is better than anticipated considering that I would view churning a subscription as an indicator that you will not subscribe. The fact that a lot of people still are suggested there might be some independence between subscription status and membership renewal intent. Only getting one sensor a month, there was some interest in that. And everyone should feel free to read all the responses. It was a lot of trips that we’ve heard before, and that’s about it. It showed us the obvious that number one headline thing here is, Levels is too expensive. So says folks who have spent $800 or more with us. Thank you very much.
Josh (24:39):
All right. I think that’s really, really invaluable information both in terms of why people are churning, being primarily price, that’s really for me an invigorating response, because one of our primary initiatives is focused on getting price down, so we’re on the right track there to increase the retention in long-term usability. And then it’s also very interesting from my perspective that people are willing to, if you’re willing to cancel a subscription but still going to renew the membership, it indicates that your plan is to take advantage of the other products and services that we’re building into the membership. So, it’s an early sign that we’re on the right track, membership to me, even though we do need to lose those numbers. Thank you JM.
(25:20):
All right, quick hiring updates. We’ve got Qew starting in three days and we’ve got Charu on May 31st joining us as a software engineer. This is very exciting. If you can in threads, please put together a little something that we’d like to give to our new hires. I don’t want to give it away in case she’s watching this one. But yeah, please do follow up on that thread. And then on the open roles, continuing to look for software engineers, visual designer and corporate counselor are still open and support associate still driving through the process there. If you know somebody that fits one of these roles or if you are one of these people, check out levels.link/careers and shoot us over some info.
(25:59):
All right, so this week’s story is actually a Metabolic Pearl from Casey. We’re experimenting with format here and we want to definitely make sure that the messages that Casey’s putting out into the world are also making their way internally, because I know there’s, she’s so prolific and there’s so much volume at this point that it’s somewhat hard at times to be able to keep up with the most important stuff. And so thanks to Casey and Sonja for taking lead on this one this week on obesogens.
Casey (26:24):
Hey, team, I am super pumped to share our first edition of Metabolic Pearls. This is a new addition to Friday Forum, and the goal of this is to share an interesting and novel concept in metabolic health that might be able to benefit us and our members. The first one we’re going to start with is obesogens. And this is a super interesting topic that’s really under-recognized. So, what are obesogens? Obesogens are metabolism disrupting chemicals that are in the environment and they directly increase the fat mass. A landmark 49-page paper on this topic just came out last month. Dr. Rob Lustig is an author and it concluded these chemicals are not just associated with obesity, but they’re mechanistically a causative factor of obesity. They concluded in a paper that exposure to isogenic chemicals is an under-recognized factor in the obesity pandemic caused by largely unregulated industrial chemical additives. And Dr. Lustig has actually said that he thinks 15% of obesity may be directly attributable to these chemicals.
(27:16):
These chemicals can also frighteningly affect our eggs and our sperm so they can actually have heritable detrimental impacts on our offspring and the next generation. These chemicals are found all over the place. They are largely industrially manufactured chemicals. And again, they’re minimally regulated. And some examples of what they’re found in are things like can linings, thermal papers like receipts, vinyl flooring, all plastics, even if they’re BPA free. Lots of personal care products and home care products, so things like shampoo and sunscreen and makeup and lotion. They’re found in food preservatives, which of course are found in lots of processed foods. They are in several drugs like antidepressants. They’re on our clothing. They are in the coating of non-stick cookware. They are sprayed on our furniture and mattresses as flame retardants. They’re found in toys, electronics, lots of home disinfectants. They’re also in the air as part of air pollution and pesticides obesogens. So they’re all over our food.
(28:13):
They also have, so it’s important to realize they don’t just have one effect on metabolism, they have so many different effects on metabolism based on what the chemical is. And some of the actions that they can have on the body include impairing the microbiome. They alter our hormone function, specifically the hormonal control of eating behaviors. They can affect our thyroid function, which of course is closely involved with metabolic rate. They can change our epigenetics, meaning the expression patterns and the folding of our genes. They can directly also cause gene mutations. They cause inflammation, oxy and stress. They impair circadian rhythms, they affect sirtuins, which are key longevity genes that you read about in Dr. Sinclair’s book. And they also affect our hormone function by doing things like actually blocking or activating hormone receptors. So finding the estrogen receptor and acting like an estrogen. And these are, of course relevant to Levels, because these chemicals alone have been shown to induce metabolic dysfunction.
(29:01):
Even if the food is totally, totally dialed in, these can be playing a significant role. What can we do? The most important part. The first thing is just eating real clean whole food and ideally organic food to minimize pesticide exposure. And the added benefit of eating a nutrient rich whole food diet is that micronutrient deficiencies can exacerbate the problems with obesogens and also added sugar in and of itself, like fructose is an obesogen. And so just sticking to whole real clean foods is really important. We want to include cruciferous vegetables, which are things like broccoli, kale, cauliflower, bok choy and cabbage, which have sulforaphane, which activates our antioxidant defense systems. We want to minimize plastic use and offshore thing like things like glass and other materials. We want to use clean home and personal care products. Environmentalworkinggroup.org is a great resource for finding clean products. And we also want to filter our air if we can, because air pollution is a big part of this.
(29:53):
Last thing I want to mention, the paper mentions and has a call to action for people to think about creating a personal bio monitoring kit that can measure endocrine disrupting chemicals in obesogens to help people understand what’s going on inside their bodies, what their levels are, and give them more biological observability. And they use the word empowerment in the paper, which is the word that we love. More on YouTube with the conversation I had about this with Rob Lustig. And thanks so much for being here for our first Metabolic Pearl.
Josh (30:16):
Huge success. Thank you, Casey. Thank you Sonja. Looking forward to many more of these. I think this is the ideal platform to deliver these sorts of really concise but instructive insights. All right, well we trucked through this one, but that’s okay. That’s the point. Now we get to spend more time on the individual contributions. So let me jump over to. Participant list, if you want to follow through, we’re going to do this one top to bottom as usual.
(30:47):
This lets me kick off. I am excited about many things. I think the research, the publication from Dr. Godfried and the prelim results from the USF study are both super awesome. Just seeing these early seeds that we planted with the research project starting to show some real promise is really cool. And then combined with the enabling research memo that came out, which I have not been able to fully review yet, but caught the first half and it’s just super inspirational. We’re teeing up to be able to make some big changes in the world of metabolic health and that’s very exciting for me. And then on the personal side, my sister and her family were in town in Austin for the last week and it’s been really fun hanging out. All right, Miz.
Michael Mizrahi (31:39):
We put out these asks in the investor update every month and they just go out there. And I put a quick thread to ask what the inbound was on that and every single person had just a ton of the network to actually respond back. And so that was really just encouraging and a really good reminder of how well-supported we are and how engaged our investor community is, our member community is. It’s really, really interesting. If you’re curious to see that, check out that post in the forum in the investor update forum. That was encouraging for me this weekend. It felt great. Then the other thing is June 6th, liftoff date is in the books and very much looking forward to this next phase. I know we’ve been looking forward to it for a while. And so that’s on my mind. Nothing too notable on the personal side. Everything’s great.
Josh (32:25):
Awesome. Azure.
Azure (32:29):
Hey guys, I’m excited to move out of Memo Land and into Project Land. It was very fun to write these, but then it makes me want to actually do all the things that we’ve written about, so that was really fun. And then got to see Taylor in-person again, which is cool. And one of my best friends who’s been in town staying with me this week, so it’s been a good week overall.
Josh (32:48):
Very nice. Brett? We got you on mute.
Brett (32:57):
I have been deeply in the weeds on habit forming. Yeah, different, having performing frameworks and protocols, trying to plot the future of Levels with Alan. So I’m up late. I’m reading white papers. My eyes hurt, my insomnia is kicking like a bull. And it’s fine, it’s going to be good in the end. But yeah, I’m just really tired and I’m going to, drum roll. I’m going to fly out on Saturday to Georgia, pick up a 25-foot box trailer that’s all black, brand new and beautiful. And then I’m going to road trip across America while I work. From Georgia to back to Nevada in four days. So, this is really good for me. I get a lot done locked in a chair. I did it on Caltrain for years. I did it on airplanes. I’m very effective. I’m assuming that the car will be the same.
(34:01):
I’m going with a buddy. We’re switching off trailer driving and working, so I might have patchy, I’ll have more async than usual. I usually like to do video stuff, so I might be a little patchy. But yeah, I’m really excited for a very focused week of work while I go through the middle of nowhere.
Josh (34:21):
The future of the writer’s cabin is mobile. Love it. That’s awesome. Keep us posted. Britney?
Britney (34:31):
Hi. On the Levels side, I’d say, I mean there’s a lot of things, but we’ve been interviewing for new candidates to join the support team, so super excited about that the more and more we’re talking to people and we’ve got some, I think we’ve met some really great people, so excited to continue to grow the team in that way. And then on the personal side, we’ve been out of town the past few weekends for weddings, so just really excited to have no plans in the books this weekend and just relax and enjoy Santa Barbara. Thanks.
Josh (35:06):
Sounds great. It’s beautiful area. Casey?
Casey (35:11):
Ooh, hello. I think for me, I thought the fireside yesterday was amazing. I thought, yep, I’m really appreciative of Miz leading the charge on this initiative, I thought it was really useful. Second, I have to just shout-out Jenn, she’s creating the world’s most incredible, useful complex social media tracker and it’s a Notion work of art and she studies Notion and really knows it and it’s really beautiful and it’s going to make things even more efficient.
(35:46):
And then Sonja’s Advisor Forum, I am so excited to see that there’s a place now where all the incredible successes of our advisors are going to be. And just reading that first thread of the last two weeks of what’s happened in our advisor orbit, it’s like, holy moly, this is incredible. So many publications and media things and it’s really exciting because the word is just growing and growing and growing about metabolic health through all these amazing voices.
(36:13):
And then personally, Steph might be coming to Bend in June to hike with me and I am so excited, I cannot handle it. The guest room is ready for anyone who wants to visit Bend, but I’m so excited Steph is taking me up on that, so.
Josh (36:32):
Love to hear that. I’m jealous. Chris?
Chris (36:35):
On the Levels front, a big plus one to the fireside yesterday. I just want to say thank … Again, thank Jane for driving that. Really to make sure that it’s easy for us, as Josh pointed out earlier, to say yes to a bunch of things, but to us to … What are the things we’re saying no, to make sure we’re all rowing in the same direction, so that was great. Also, I’m super excited about the liftoff. It feels like it’s been forever, so that’s great.
(37:05):
On a personal front, kind of work and personal. One, super excited next week to be in New York to meet a bunch of east coasters and also to visit one of the truth health sites. And then later on today, because I have a bunch of trees that have been cut down, that means I have a bunch of stumps. So, actually I’m getting a stump grinder, which hooks to the back of my tractor, so I get a new toy. I’m happy to up my Montana man skills, so looking forward to that. I’ll be sure to send videos this time.
Josh (37:38):
Definitely do. Stump disposal is a lot easier with one of those than with the shovel. Hao?
Hao (37:46):
Yeah, super excited about the work Yun did. Engineering documentation standard, because documentation is such an important thing for engineering team. And hopefully with the new standard documents, we can easily follow up the steps and have more, better documentations around our code base so everybody can understand the abstraction more easily.
Josh (38:16):
Love that. We should highlight that on the forum next week. I must have missed the signal on this. Jenn?
Jenn (38:25):
Casey, thank you for the shout-out, I so appreciate it. It’s been like my little baby, my huge baby, whatever you want to call it. But yeah, just really excited to work out this copy process and Sonja’s been a really awesome contributor. I thank you everyone for helping with that. Yeah, just really excited about that. I’m really excited about NYC next week. Been meeting a whole bunch of people in person.
(38:47):
And on the personal front, this weekend I’m going to take this beautiful weekend and put myself in my office and work on a personal blog post for a super dorky digital bullet journaling thing that I’m working on, so I’m excited about that.
Josh (39:01):
Good luck, so we got that all figured out. Jhon?
Jhon (39:06):
Yeah, Levels wise, I will be leading a couple of projects related to the mobile application, so I’m excited about that. And personally I got a new standing desk and it makes a huge difference, so totally recommend that, it’s great.
Josh (39:27):
Yeah, I also am standing at my standing desk and I was listening to Attia actually talking about his son. He connected the dots for me that kids have this perfect squat form and hip mobility until they start sitting in school. And I never, ever connected those dots. It’s literally right as they start that, everything goes to hell. So I’m going to try and stand more like Brett. Matt? Oh, jump to Mike D.
Mike D (40:01):
Yeah, so definitely plus one to what Josh said about the research stuff with Dom and Sara. It’s pretty cool to see the loop closing. I thought it was last year around this time, maybe a little bit earlier that we kicked that off. It’s really exciting. And then personally, I was out of office for five days and I was able to unplug for a majority of the time, which is nice, but excited to dive back in and get caught up.
Josh (40:36):
Nice. Glad you enjoyed the LA trip. Matt?
Mike D (40:41):
Oh wait, really? Wait, wait. And I met Sonja in real life. Of course, can’t drop the ball there.
Josh (40:46):
Wow, that was close. Good recovery though. Matt?
Matt (40:51):
Sorry about that. Yeah, Levels wise this week got to watch Scottie’s first installment of the research breakdown. So 10,000 foot view looks awesome. Excited to watch the next two. Also excited to see everybody in New York this next week coming up. And personally, I’m helping a friend move this weekend, so going to be a busy Saturday.
Josh (41:13):
Enjoy. Lift with the legs. Mike Haney?
Mike (41:20):
Work-wise, the research I’ll echo as well, as somebody who spends a lot of my day reading studies about metabolic health, that’s really exciting to see, to think that ours are going to start being in there and that we’ll be researched directly on the kinds of things that we’re writing about. On the personal front, just a quiet weekend at home. So looking forward to that.
Josh (41:44):
Nice. Enjoy. Rob?
Rob (41:48):
Sorry there. First of all, excited about Dom’s article. I would love to see exactly what was done, since I’m giving a talk on fatty liver disease in Seattle on June 9th at the other metabolic health conference in Seattle. And Taylor, you have no excuse, you must come. Everybody else, please come to Seattle. If you want, I will send the link to the meeting. And thanks and kudos to Casey for that Metabolic Pearl. Very nice to see it so encapsulated. And then lastly, on a personal note, my daughter is flying home from Toronto today. She is finished with college. She graduates a month from tomorrow. And most importantly, she is bringing the boyfriend home first time.
Josh (42:43):
Wow. It’s a big moment. Congrats to her and enjoy.
Rob (42:48):
I need a Valium.
Josh (42:51):
It’s going to go great. Remember, stress is a glucocorticoid. Let’s avoid that. Ryley?
Ryley (43:00):
Yeah, super excited. Plus one to everybody that mentioned liftoff June 6th. Just so looking forward to all the learning that’s going to happen once people start to come in post liftoff. So really excited about that. And then just a shout-out to JM about that research survey. I think that’s super, super promising on the value of our membership and the willingness of people to continue to reengage, maybe even if they’ve let their CGM subscriptions lapse. I think that’s really exciting.
Josh (43:39):
Yeah, definitely. Sonja?
Sonja (43:42):
All right. Levels wise, you definitely have to switch the order because my name and alphabet, I have to go after Casey and Jenn, so I’m going to have to double down on what they said. Big kudos to Jennifer leading this social tracker process. I think we’re so close to having an amazing way to get the most out of all of our future and existing content. And it’s the type of notion work that makes your brain hurt by thinking through how all the pieces fit together, so big kudos there. And second, it’s been so fun to shed more light on all the amazing work that our advisor are doing. And honestly, I love seeing you here Rob, too. That’s just a highlight is having Rob here in these meetings. So thank you for joining, and love-
Rob (44:25):
I’m not lecturing. Two weeks ago I was at the Metabolic Health Summit with Taylor, and last week I was at FoodInno, where Casey was noticeably absent. I was at Stanford. Yeah.
Sonja (44:41):
Well, I so appreciate you joining and loved, I love surprises and I feel like the Metabolic Pearl was sort of a surprise that went over really well, so glad that everybody enjoyed it.
(44:51):
And personally, two things. My partner is officially, we’re ending a year of long distance today. He gets back from a trip in Israel, so excited to have, even though I love living alone, excited to have a roommate and a permanent dishwasher here at home. And second, I am taking vacation next week, which is not really convenient, seven weeks into a new job, but that’s what you do when it’s been pre-planned on the books for a while and going to spend a week focusing on health and wellness with my parents and my partner out in Tucson. It should be really relaxing, and looking forward to that.
Josh (45:29):
That sounds like work if you’re focusing on health and wellness, so it counts. Enjoy. Steph?
Steph (45:37):
Oh, there’s so much I want to say and I’ll probably forget some of it. But plus one to what Hao said about Ian has really spearheaded the effort within engineering to document everything and create good norms around that. And so that’s been really, really appreciated and exciting to see that come to fruition. And also related to Levels. When I was off two weeks ago, road tripping with my mom out West, we listened to so many a whole new Levels podcast and every episode she was like, “I can’t believe that you work there. This is the coolest thing.” And then I would be like, “I can’t believe it either. This is like, I’m so honored to work for such an amazing team.” But that was really cool.
(46:14):
And personally, I don’t know if you guys can see, but we are getting two feet of snow today, which is very, very strange. But the precipitation is needed out here and so that’s a good thing. And yes, final thing, I’m super, super, super excited to hopefully see Casey next month.
Josh (46:36):
So cool. Love that about your mom that she appreciates us. Sunny?
Sunny (46:43):
Gosh, so much going on. I am particularly just filled up by being a part of the process to hire the support associate. I’ve really enjoyed those conversations. I’ve really enjoyed working on, that’s something I set out to do when I started here was I’d like to get better at hiring and I’ve just, every time someone comes on board here, I’m astounded. I’m like, “Where did you find this person when we thought we couldn’t get anyone else more excellent?” Just the wealth of knowledge and experience that’s brought to this team. Understanding even a portion of that process has been really enriching for me.
(47:16):
And then personally, my husband actually is now fully remote work from home. He was so inspired, he thought he would never do it as an engineer. I know he worked for big corporations in gas and oil and thought it wasn’t possible, but he went out after seeing that it is possible and found a job with a company in Denmark, which also means we get to go to Denmark sometime close to Christmas next year. I’m already excited, already planning, so if you have things in Umberg all the way up to Copenhagen, I’d love to hear your [inaudible 00:47:50].
Josh (47:51):
Awesome. Well, congrats to him on the new job. That’s awesome. Taylor?
Taylor (47:59):
Yeah, on the professional front, it’s super exciting to see these publications coming out and shout-out to Casey actually for making sure that Levels is amplifying these publications as they’re coming. That’s really great. I also really want to thank Azure for all of her work on the enabling research memo this week. Couldn’t have done it without her. She’s been super thoughtful and I’m really excited for this participatory framework. Also, this is a preview, but I think she may actually be able to reanalyze the WHOOP data and find correlations that weren’t there previously. I think what may have happened with the original WHOOP study is that they just didn’t use the right method to analyze. And this is why it’s so awesome to have someone on our team who really understands time series data and can look for these correlations, so really great stuff.
(48:51):
Personally, it’s nice to be back in Berkeley again. It’s always 10 degrees warmer than it is in Seattle, so I feel like I’m previewing what it’s going to be like the next month. I’m going to get to go for a walk with Miz today, which will be really great. And I’m sorry I’m going to miss everybody in New York next week, but I’ll have to get there for the next one.
Josh (49:11):
Very cool. Enjoy. It’s been 99 degrees for the past four days down here, so enjoy Berkeley. I’m sure I’d have to wear a sweater.
Taylor (49:20):
Not like that. No sweater, but it’s not a 100 degrees.
Josh (49:25):
Love it. Tony, wrap it up.
Tony (49:30):
Nice. Yeah, I just have to plus one to Casey’s note and Sonja’s note about Jenn’s social tracker. Again, today was my first time testing it out and I’m just blown away by just what she did there with the tracker. It’s just so awesome to have everything all in one spot, especially YouTube descriptions and podcast descriptions. It’s just, yeah, totally blown away. And then also Levels related and personal side. Just looking forward to seeing some of the team on Monday at the dinner.
Josh (50:07):
Very cool. All right, well, here we are. Got to the end, another week, huge week. I really appreciate everybody’s help and just continually, I think reinforcing what we’re building here and helping us to improve. I mean, there’s several examples that were brought up on this meeting that just describe how people are not settling for what exists, but always improving, and it’s really, really amazing. Appreciate it. Okay everybody, have a great weekend. Enjoy the great weather and I will see you next week.