Josh Clemente (00:00):
All right, let’s do it. I’m going to try and keep pace here despite being at altitude, I’m at like 5,000 feet here in Bozeman and telling you, I feel the hypoxia. All right, Friday forum, December 16th, 2022 quick reminder on what this forum is intended to do. So it’s our time to celebrate recent achievements, hear from members, talk directly to partners, talk about culture, realign on everything that we are working on so that when it’s out of sight out of mind during the week, we can still close that loop on at the end of the week. So this is not the area that we focus on, business metrics and steering metrics and OKRs, this is mostly about achievements. We’re going to fill those in different formats inside the company. So just appreciate everyone keeping that context in mind. On the recent achievement side. So this week we had a really important memo drop and had a fireside yesterday about company strategy and in work product focus, or a product strategy rather.
(01:01):
So I highly recommend everyone if you didn’t join either the fireside or review the memo, please do both and then I suggest doing them in order. And we have a lot more to come on this. So this is not the end of the road for that conversation. The product strategy is still very much in work. We’re going to be shipping more on that. The goal is decreased barrier of entry into the Levels ecosystem. So delivering value in a way that does not have such a high hurdle of price and commitment to get started in understanding metabolic health. So lots more on that. Definitely please collaborate on this process. Big news, Dom DiAgostino is officially our principal investigator on our large general population CGM study, so that’s super exciting. That was approved and he has formally taken over for Taylor, which is great. We shipped sign up 3.0.
(01:51):
So big shout out to the team that worked on this. It went live to 10% of traffic on Monday, so we’re doing some fast follows. Learning from that early process and very excited to have a very clean new UX for check out. We’ve got a try out limited test, so this is the $99 try out for Levels. This went out to a cohort and we’re targeting just 25 conversions for now. Just to learn about the process, make sure we debug. We’ve had 22 orders so far, about 30 abandons. We’re going to follow up with retargeting, so make sure that those people that checked it out went all the way through up to cart purchase and then dropped out. Make sure we give them another opportunity. So this is a really important process of learning. And then also on renewal, this is running really smoothly. The renewal process, this is the annual membership renewal.
(02:37):
For those members who have an active subscription we had about 108 turn their subscriptions off. And for those who did not have an active subscription, we had about 71 turn them back on. So this is the first time we’ve been through this process. There’s a lot of learning to do, but really proud of the team for all the back end work that went into this and all the lessons learned that are being surfaced in real time. We’re going to be launching a steering metrics initiative. So this is kind of what I touched on at the beginning of the meeting, but there’s a lot more to come here. I just want to get this out in front of people that we intend to bring attention to and alignment. So just shared context across the functions on the key metrics that are sort of describe function effectiveness or function health, however you want to think about it.
(03:16):
But really a number of metrics that we can track in higher resolution than for example in OKR. So look out for that. Also, if you have recommendations on how to run a process like this, please share them with myself, with Miz and we’ll be rolling something out soon. Four weeks now for support, 90% happiness or above, this is really awesome, especially through the craziness of Black Friday. We are seeing an uptick in support volume as Black Friday members are receiving their products, but we’ve also seen some real improvements again on logistics. So our turnaround time for orders is now down below three days, which is by far an all time high or all time low, however you want to look at it. But really, really great work by the support team. Thank you again. We’re wrapping up eCommerce backend work for renewal. So there’s a lot there.
(04:01):
Cancellations, the renewal process, both manual and auto, tons of stuff that went into that. So that engine work is nearing completion before renewal season really hits. And then Levels Levels. So we’re preparing the final tweaks before full rollout for Levels Levels. The old dashboard for the Levels app is removed for everyone. So that change has happened. We have a new spike extension. So for some people the window for detecting a spike is just too short. Our bodies respond over a longer time period. And so a lot of work went into extending that. So we now have sort of a dynamic spike extension, which is live. And then a new fast logging experience with ingredient suggestions is near completion. Kelly Obeck had an awesome giveaway. I think it was more than double the entries of any other giveaway we’ve tried, which is great. We are launching retargeting. Well, I won’t get too deep into it, but we’re essentially trying out retargeting on different platforms for people that have seen Levels before.
(05:00):
So we’re not using performance ads to get new attention. We’re also about to launch white listed partner ads such as through Dr. Mark Hyman. And Tim Gray in the UK is live on Levels. We’re learning a lot about conversion versus recency, so how recently someone signed up versus their likelihood to convert with different initiatives. That’s really exciting. And then we are revamping the email nurture series. So lots to come there. There’s a ton we can do here. So testing a demand capture project with Casey, a Zoom welcome call as a perk. So just trying a lot of different projects all kind of wrapped into this demand capture and sort of nurturing people who are interested in Levels into the understanding of what Levels does. Because initially we had a very high barrier of entry. You kind of land on Levels and suddenly you’re in a checkout process that you don’t quite understand.
(05:51):
So just a ton of work that’s going into really educating people on what we’re doing. I won’t walk through all this stuff, but a lot of exciting activations. UGC recognition for Levels in our async work culture. Sonya interviewed Jeff Krasnow. We hit 500,000 plays on a whole new level, which is about 2000 per episode. And Casey and Dr. Howard Luks had a really great episode as well. I think that’s kind of the gist of it. Okay, I want to welcome Jennifer Felice. Jennifer’s a member of Levels, she’s a registered dietitian, shares a ton of interests with the Levels team here in both outdoors, nature, PubMed, all the things that we love I think Jennifer loves. And Jennifer, I really appreciate you taking some time to spend with us this morning. I’d love to just kick off by hearing more about your interest, experience and excitement about the metabolic health space and where we’re heading.
Jennifer Felice (06:47):
Sure. Thanks so much for having me Josh and Team. Jackie. Thanks for all the coordination. I have to have just a really quick fangirl moment here because I so admire all of the work that y’all have been doing over the past that I’ve been aware of you for maybe about three years or so. I love your approach and the way that your team seems to work together. I’m thrilled to join y’all for a few minutes today. So thanks for having me. I am drawn to Levels for a few different reasons. Obviously you can see there that I’m a registered dietitian. So professionally and just to be clear, not like a typical food guide pyramid, registered dietitian. I’ve been in the field for about 20 years now and I knew immediately when I was in school and even doing my rotations in the hospital setting that I really wasn’t drawn to that area.
(07:53):
And the reason that I went back to school for dietetics, it was a second career for me after working for a few years in the technology industry, I went back for dietetics. And I really was drawn for the preventative benefits that food offers and lifestyle choices and things like that. And so it was really a difficult challenging period when I had to be in the hospital because it was just depressing and I felt like it wasn’t really the best place to help people in the most optimal way and I’m super grateful for all the people who do work in hospitals and we need them. I’m just not one of them. It’s not my passion. So thankfully I left, finished up my internship and got a job with a supermarket, which was my dream job. A supermarket called Wegmans, which is based out of Rochester, New York. And I worked at the corporate office there for about 17 years and really was about helping to develop practical solutions for customers and the community through dietary and lifestyle interventions.
(09:01):
And I think that a lot of what we do in this space, whether you’re a dietitian or a nutritionist or physician is really trying to convince people that these things that we’re telling them work on the inside. They have to really trust you because so many people don’t realize how poorly they feel. That adaptive nature of the body, which is so great, fools people into thinking that they’re just fine and the way that they’re eating and sleeping and not moving and all those things don’t matter as much as they do. So a lot of it is convincing people that really look, it matters when you eat, how you eat, what you eat, the quality of food, how you move your body. And then you get people who come to you are thrilled it really is working. And I just had someone last week say to me after explaining, working with them on balancing their blood sugar and she came to me, it’s been only two months and she was so shocked and this is a really brilliant woman, and she said, “And you know what? My labs are better too.”
(10:11):
And she was just stunned that it actually works. She’s like, “I feel better and my labs are better.” And so what I love about Levels, so that’s all around about way of saying that. What I love about Levels and professionally, what draws me to the space is that I think that it’s so empowering for people to have a tool that if they’re not convinced, if you can’t convince them to just hang with you for a couple of months and try this out, then they get that instant notification by using something like Levels. So I just, I’ve seen it time and time again. I recommend it to people all the time and I get so excited for them to feel empowered and to feel like they really do have agency over their health and the ability to help themselves have a better quality of life.
(11:05):
And then personally, of course, I love to try everything and I’m not probably as early adopters a lot of y’all, but I feel like I’m an early adopter with a lot of things. And so it’s just been really great for a tool for me and my husband just to optimize our health and really see how to tweak what we do, even being into fitness and health and eating, cooking, all that good stuff as we are. Yeah, so I think that it’s been exciting to see y’all grow so quickly and my husband and I were not as… I would like to have been a bigger investor if we had the ability, but we were a little mini investors when you were raising the funds. So yeah, it’s just going to be fun to watch all continue to expand and to see this be available to more people out there. So that’s-
Josh Clemente (12:07):
Awesome.
Jennifer Felice (12:08):
… a little about me.
Josh Clemente (12:09):
Well thank you for all the support-
Jennifer Felice (12:10):
And I do have to really quickly, when I was first using Levels, whoever, I don’t know how big your team is, but I would email someone periodically about any job opportunities. Because you didn’t have them listed on your website yet and you were always so kind. Whoever would respond to me was always really kind about, “We’re working on it, we’re working on it.” So I just think it’s fun to see how your team’s expanding so quickly.
Josh Clemente (12:39):
Thank you for that love and for the support across the board, especially as both an investor and a member, these sorts of things are invaluable to hear directly. I love what you described, because frankly, you’re a power user. You are an early adopter given how long you’ve been paying attention, but how you are describing and educating other people on first of all, that this is real and that is a tool that can support them. And just that nurture campaign that you were running with other people, including this one woman who you just shared her story and then eventually she tries it and then she sees the feedback and how it’s useful.
(13:17):
And I think that whole process of you are currently standing in for something that we’re working on building, which is that nurture process, a lower barrier of entry, educational information to just sort of lead people to the ultimate conclusion that this tool does have some mechanism that matters to them. And that ultimately the “interventions” of just eating different foods and eating to your biology does work. So thanks for sharing that. Thanks for being that. We can’t do that for everyone right now, but people like you are doing a tremendous job for us and we really do appreciate it. If there was something that you would recommend we focus on or do differently or build that we haven’t been building, what would that be?
Jennifer Felice (13:57):
Honestly from what I see when I think I maybe use Levels for the first time in 2020, so even I think that the biggest thing was just the logging, the food has gotten easier. I think it’s great now that you have the ability for people to talk to a dietician and get some feedback. That was the biggest thing that I remember when I first started using it. I did think like God there are… I know what this is telling me and how I’m doing it, but a lot of people don’t know how to tweak this and make this a little better. So honestly I think that what I see on your blog and what I see with you offering customers and just making the app easier and more visually appealing, I think I wouldn’t even ever say I had any complaints, but I really don’t have any now. So I think that I would say just keep doing what you’re doing and getting the message out there to people. And probably, I guess you mentioned it earlier, I think price is a barrier for some people.
(15:13):
I help teach a nutrition certificate program for Cornell University and I tell my students about Levels all the time. And I do get a little bit of resistance because there are just people who I kind of try to offer, “Look, here are the different ways that you can try. You don’t have to have this tool, but if it’s in your means then it can be incredibly enlightening for individual information.” So I think that that’s the pushback I get from people sometimes is the cost. And I know y’all have been working on that for quite a long time and I expect that that’s… Yeah student discounts are great. They’re not all students, honestly. My students are physicians for doing continuing ed. They’re psychologists, psychiatrists, they’re regular people who just want to learn about their health. I was just responding to something in the chat when I answered that, but a student discount for college students would be great, but mine aren’t always college students.
Josh Clemente (16:15):
Well price is certainly a significant barrier when you don’t understand the potential value. And
Jennifer Felice (16:20):
I will be clear, let me rephrase that. I do explain to people that it’s really, it is a matter of where you want to invest your resources. So to me, I’m always willing to invest my resources in health because without that I just, what else do we have? So I do explain that to people a lot that is there a way to figure out how to do it. But I think I was just sharing that’s the pushback I get, but I feel like it’s a very valuable investment and when you think about the long-term, it’s way less of a hassle and expense than medications and the downstream impacts of not taking care of your health earlier. So on the same page with that.
Josh Clemente (17:06):
I couldn’t agree more. Well Jennifer, thank you for joining us this morning sort of thing. Like I said, this is invaluable for the team. If you’d like to stick around, we do have a full meeting, happy to have you as part of the audience. If not, thank you again for setting aside Friday morning to talk to all of us directly.
Jennifer Felice (17:20):
Thanks again for having me, I appreciate it.
Josh Clemente (17:20):
All right, thank you.
Jennifer Felice (17:24):
And happy holidays to everyone.
Josh Clemente (17:26):
Happy holidays. All right, culture and kudos. So two quick things. Just want to shout out Karen and Maxine for some amazing work over the past few weeks. First of all with the new sign-up flow launch is just a tremendous lift and looking amazing and we’re going to learn a ton from this. I think the trust building part of this, which was shouted out, is so true. It’s really hard for people to trust a new brand, a new product, and when the education isn’t upfront and it’s not entirely clear what you’re getting, which frankly we’ve been at various Levels of this throughout the course of building several iterations of checkout. And this one is a high watermark.
(18:01):
And then Maxine just doing a tremendous job onboarding, leading on the technical side, doing a ton of work with Alexei on the growth front. Just been a really great partner in getting things built. So thank you both. And then lastly, I’m not sure how many people are tracking their Levels Bingo, but you’ve met the team in person. Make sure you update your bingo card. Final results are end of this month. And this is a really important thing. Just so you know, whoever wins this, there’s a trophy involved. All right, I think this is Casey.
Casey Means (18:29):
It is. We have a new cultural axiom. Also can you hear me okay? I’m on my new fancy mic. I’m so excited. So we have a new cultural axiom, which is say what no one else will. Next slide, Josh. So I think that saying what no one else will is really a commitment to sharing hard truths for the benefit of a teammate or relationship or Levels as a whole. It’s very linked to many of our other cultural axioms which are up on the top right, but it drills in on being bold in sharing things that are important but hard to say. And I love this quote from 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership, one of our past book club books, which says “The team that sees reality, the best wins.”
(19:20):
And our team is made up of over 60, unique, extremely special humans. And for us to achieve our mission to reverse the metabolic disease epidemic, we need the precious insights of every person here so that we have the best opportunity to see reality, be effective and therefore help a billion people. And if we get lost because we don’t say the hard things that no one else will, we fail the people we could help and we block our opportunity for personal and team growth. Next slide.
(19:55):
So I wanted to give six quick examples of what saying what no one else will could look like. So the first comes from this week, so many people speaking up in Fireside, it was amazing to see so many productive thoughts and questions about company strategy. It’s such a gift to the whole team to share that honest input, major shout outs to Karin, Chris, Ian, Lynette, Justin, Charo. There were so many others who shared thoughts in written form and in the call, this is a great example. A second one could look like writing up a memo that takes a strong and potentially unpopular stance on a particular topic in your function that you believe in. And this made me think of a memo from about a year and a half ago from Ben called Outlook on Conferences, Events and Trade Shows. And he put it together when we were starting to get all these invitations to these cool glitzy conferences all over.
(20:45):
And he basically was like, “We shouldn’t do them. And it was sort of like, “Oh, bummer.” And we easily could have wasted a ton of time doing these if he hadn’t said that. And it was very well supported and well backed up. And at the moment it was a bold stance to take, but it was completely spot on and actually really differentiates us as a company that we don’t do a lot of those. A third example might just be giving direct feedback to a teammate you’re working on a project with. So maybe you view an element of their communication style to be causing some friction and you share that feedback in a clear and compassionate way directly to them. A fourth example example could be just clearly and compassionately expressing to a direct report that they’re underperforming in a certain area and suggesting clear ways to work together to rectify that.
(21:32):
Fifth example is maybe telling a colleague that you’re sensing tension with them, even if you’re not certain of it, you just sense it. And you’d like to go on a call to better understand it and work through it. And then a last example is sharing with your teammates on a project that you think you actually should all totally put the brakes on the whole project despite tons of sunk cost. And this is actually another real life example. Last year Tom and Ben and I and Miz were working on a project. We were months in on working with this conference to basically supply all these VIPs with sensors for the conference and there were all these red flags and it wasn’t really working out. And finally I think Tom and Ben were just like, “We need to pull out of this.” And it was painful, but it was absolutely the right decision and I think we all knew it but no one was saying it.
(22:19):
And so kudos to them for saying the hard thing. And I just want to add a quick seventh ad hoc example which came up as I was looking at the chat today. Basically the shorthand for say what no one else will is Rob Lustig. So he always has the boldness to say what no one else will and in doing so is completely changing the world. So this is the Rob Lustig axiom. The last thing I’ll just say is this is so hard sometimes it can be very painful to say what no one else will. You can be fearful of interpersonal conflict, you can be distrustful that it’s even going to have any impact. Like if I say this and it’s a risk, is it going to even change anything? You might be fear of being judged, you might be fearful that you’re wrong and there’s just always reasons to not speak up.
(23:02):
And I just wanted to share two things I remind myself of, two framings to sort of help move through that reticence to share something hard. The first thing is that I actually play a huge role in how what I say is going to be received. And there’s a ton of room on my end to do the work to make what I want to share be effective. And that could be getting as much context as possible so that I can speak from a place of awareness, knowledge and empathy. It can be working with a trusted mentor or manager to workshop what I want to express and craft my message and tone. I can figure out a timing that makes sense so that the message is best received. And I think most importantly I can pause and Mike talked about this last week. You can pause work to get grounded in non-reactive and really be in a good head space before expressing yourself.
(23:57):
And the second framing I think about and actually confirm with myself is that I’m sharing my hard truth or belief in service and support of that person relationship or organization that I am speaking to. And it’s not to control, it’s not to process my own emotions, it’s not to be a contrarian, it’s not to push my own agenda, it’s not for positioning, it’s certainly not out of malice. It’s about service. And so I think getting in that head space sometimes can help with speaking up. And if those two things are true, I’ve prepared and I’ve really checked what the motives are, I think it really increases the chances of having the positive impact you want. The last last thing I’ll say is that it’s important to remember that no matter how much you do to prepare for saying what no one else will, it’s not always going to come out perfectly. And that’s totally okay.
(24:46):
I have so many examples of the last several years of sayings of getting feedback for something on something I’ve shared by Sam or other members of the team and getting feedback that it maybe didn’t come out exactly right or I could have done it differently. And I’m so grateful for each of those pieces of feedback because it’s really helped me grow. And just like anything, communication’s a skill, it’s a muscle. And if we’re willing to learn and grow from a place of positive intent, we’re definitely doing okay. So that is say what no one else will. Thanks guys.
Josh Clemente (25:18):
Amazing. Nothing else to add there. Thank you Casey. That was awesome. Miz?
Michael Mizrahi (25:24):
For the ultimate in juxtaposition and whiplash. Thank you Casey. I want to talk about how this concept of say what no one else will relates to some of our topics of transparency and visibility and just the amount of information that we have available to us internally and how we merge those two together for effective decision-making, right? Because one thing to say what no one else will, but you really need to know your zone, know where you stand, know what your role is within the framework and not have 60 people throwing sand into the operations of the company. So something that we do uniquely is that almost all of our communications are shared and visible to everyone, but what’s important is that we don’t stop and slow all of our progress in all of our decision-making. So in each decision-making process we have, we have a DRI and that gives us a clear responsible of who is responsible for moving this forward and using the RACI model, who they’re accountable to, who they’re consulting with and who’s informed.
(26:22):
And by nature of sharing everything at the company, everyone is default informed or default an observer in the peanut gallery. And so while we welcome observation and transparency for all those reasons, we can’t let it become the Achilles heel. And if anyone can object to anything even outside of their function, we just won’t be able to get anything done right or wrong, we’re just not going to move anything forward. So input is welcome when feedback is invited and we’re really clear about when we invite feedback. And there is a part where if you see decisions being made, you kind of do need to watch through the glass window of the donuts on the other side of the Krispy Kreme factory. People are going to be doing their job and you need to know where you sit in that context. So if you feel strongly, seek additional context, seek out what you might be missing before contributing and reacting.
(27:12):
And if you feel the need to stop and say “This is unsafe, we need to stop doing this, I firmly object.” You need to kind of think through some of the pieces that Casey mentioned about tone, timing, context, really making sure you have the full picture. Talk to people to make sure that you’re seeing it right. And ultimately if you feel something is unsafe to try, it is your duty to speak up. But in all other cases, make sure you understand the role that you’re playing, make sure that you understand the case for objection, where veto power is granted, where it’s not. And this hodgepodge of emoji here, we make everything visible. We have a peanut gallery. In comms specifically, we’ve added the section where who’s involved versus who’s just in the audience. And really try and understand the role there. You can use emoji to react, you can keep an eye open, but be careful on slowing down progress of work when t’s in the range of tolerance.
(28:06):
And this piece here on the left comes from Brave New Work. So another book club throwback if you’re interested in understanding the context of that decision-making framework, it’s all in the book club notes if you joined after that one. But this is a really helpful framework. There’s a lot more to it on how we make decisions and what the difference is between these different areas. But just wanted to kind of juxtapose this with Casey’s. I thought it was a good opportunity to balance it out a little bit. That’s it for me.
Josh Clemente (28:31):
Awesome. Thank you both. Yeah, I think those messages mesh nicely. If you feel differently, please share that because ultimately what we’re trying to do here is navigate what is nuance, how we all work together, how we make progress versus all of the unique perspectives that we could pull together. And so again, it’s not about consensus, it is about getting the right information at the right time and moving forward and trying things. So thanks to everyone for continuing to contribute on this. All right, company objectives level shows you how food affects your health. No change to the main thing, no change to the top level objectives, retention, new member acquisition, member health improvement. There’s a lot in work here. New product strategy, the company strategy document I mentioned, please go review it, watch the fireside. There’s a lot more coming as we enter 2023 on these major objectives. Products are our top priority, demand capture as well. And functional group taglines are unchanged this week and we are now, I’ve got an order to play this on 1.25 accesses Caitlin with our editorial update.
Caitlin (29:37):
Hi. Hello everybody. Happy Friday. It’s time for an editorial update with me Caitlin. This week I’m going to be talking about a project that is a little bit different than your standard editorial fare and I am about to explain why. So first off, I want to give a big ol’ hat tip to Dana. She’s one of our contractors and she’s really responsible for kind of inspiring this project and getting it on its feet. So hat tipped. So this project essentially started with a query analysis that Dana ran, just kind of looking at what are people Googling that brings them to the blog, what pages are getting a lot of hits, stuff like that. And one of the findings was that about 52% of all blog traffic was to a single article. So half of our blog traffic was to this one article, namely the ultimate guide to blood sugar Levels.
(30:37):
So that’s giving us a hint that people are curious about what their glucose levels should be, what are healthy glucose ranges, what are optimal ranges? That’s the type of stuff that’s in that ultimate guide. Has a lot of other stuff too, but that’s kind of the core of it. Another finding from Dana’s analysis was that a lot of questions that people were Googling to get to our site kind of had the same theme. So they were questions like what are normal glucose ranges? What’s healthy blood sugar Levels? And then some kind of variations on that theme. So also Googling, what are normal Levels after fasting? What are normal glucose Levels in the morning or at night or after exercising? And then the last category of we’re calling what’s normal Googling, was around specific results or numbers, meaning people Googling “Blood sugar 84 is good? Or “Blood sugar 70 at night, why?” Or “Blood sugar 140 is normal?”
(31:39):
And just a snippet of the data that Dana collected. Here are some of the types of things that top queries in this category. So normal blood sugar Levels, normal blood sugar, normal glucose Levels, optimal glucose Levels and the point. So in the one sense it’s like, “Oh wow, that’s a really interesting finding.” On the other hand it’s like, “Yeah, this is what people Google. People want to know what’s normal. Am I normal? Am I healthy? What do my numbers mean? Am I weird? Why don’t people call me back? Why don’t I have more friends?” Stuff like that. Normal late night Googling thing. So what are we going to do about it? And this is the reason why this is a slightly different sort of editorial project in that we try to be aware of what’s happening on the blog, what articles are getting a lot of hits, what’s not working, what is working? But this is an instance in which we’re saying clearly there’s an appetite for this kind of content.
(32:36):
And the project now is to create content that satisfies that appetite. And the opportunity here is A, we’re going to answer real questions that people have and in doing so, help them ideally to improve their metabolic health, which is the number one goal of the blog is education. And in doing so, hopefully increase their satisfaction when they’re on the blog. We want to give the people at the very least information that they’re looking for. And then on top of that, this is clearly, this all started with search queries. So this could be an SEO opportunity, a way in which we can increase readership. And then on top of that, once we get people to the blog, keep them there. In theory, if we’re giving them information that they’re looking for and more of it, we can increase the time that they spend on the blog and that is a win for us.
(33:29):
So how are we going to do that? Basically in the short run create more content on this topic. We can also think a little bit more specifically about who we are creating this content for. So in general with editorial, we always say “The blog is not for members necessarily. It’s not necessarily for CGM users even. It’s for anyone who wants to improve their metabolic health or is curious about their metabolic health and anyone should be able to benefit from it.” However, in this instance we are seeing people are Googling, “What are normal glucose Levels? Are my glucose Levels normal?” This is kind of the core finding from Dana is that people want to know if their blood sugar is normal. And to have that question kind of by definition you have some blood sugar results, whether that’s a CGM proper or a much bigger category, which is people who maybe got some sort of annual blood work and want to know where they stand.
(34:24):
So how are we going to create this content? In some cases we actually sort of have the goods already meaning so I started by talking about this article that is getting all this traffic. It’s a really great article, tons of context, lots in there. But as I’m scrolling down, you see I’ve gone for a while before I get to this, which is probably what a lot of people are looking for, what is the normal range for glucose Levels. We could create some derivative content that maybe gets to this sooner and then break out the other content into separate articles if they are also topics of interest. Having said that, we’re not doing anything with this article because it’s doing so well. So any derivative content from here would be in addition to what exists.
(35:16):
So in some cases it’s going to be a matter of making existing content easier to find or revising it so that it more directly answers readers questions. But in other cases it will of course require that we write new content as editorial is wont to do. And in terms of the types of articles that we foresee producing, whether that’s completely from scratch or derivative content from existing pieces, I think it will end up falling into one of three categories. So the first is what I’m calling general concepts in what’s normal. So fundamental principles like what is individuality as it relates to glucose Levels. So we talk all the time about the fact that different people might respond to the same food differently or you might respond to the same food differently at different kinds of times of day. So why is that? What is this idea of individuality and why are we so individual when it comes to our glucose Levels?
(36:17):
So that could be a foundational piece. Another one would be fleshing out this idea of the difference between normal versus optimal and why doesn’t normal cut it? Yeah. Then a second category would be more directly speaking to people who are using CGM, which again is something we haven’t really done before. But we are seeing some questions around what’s normal after exercise, what’s normal at night. Things that hint at the fact that these are coming from people wearing CGM. So because of that, I think we’re able to create some content that we haven’t before that could in theory really help our members. So questions around what is a spike? What counts as a spike, why does it matter, what does it look like? There’s an opportunity to include some data shots in there. And again these sort of context specific questions about your glucose Levels I think would also fall into that bucket.
(37:12):
And then finally making sense of blood work. And we’ve already sort of started this with our metabolic marker series, but even more targeting the person that’s just gotten results back and wants to understand what they mean. So really keeping that blood work Googler in mind and developing articles that serve them. Practically speaking, how are we going to do this? What’s up next? We’re going to finish defining that first set of articles to test out a few things once we’ve got that process down, define a larger set of articles, assign them to writers, edit, publish, and then go back to the data, see how they’re doing. Oh look, I’m done. Probably a good time to mention that all of these dystopian broccolis come from Dolly and I got a kick out of them. Thanks from editorial. Goodbye.
Josh Clemente (38:04):
Thank you Caitlin. The dystopian broccoli theme was ideal for the topic I think. All right, jumping ahead to product Alan or maybe Maz to kick off.
Maziar Brumand (38:18):
All right. Kick it off. Welcome to product update December 16th. I love the radioactive broccoli. I’m hoping that’s good for you. All right, so we’ve been working on product 2023 and we gave you a sneak peek last week and we’re going to do another one this week. First off, I want to really thank the team, great collaboration across from Casey, Sissy, obviously Helen and David that have been the core and the heart of it. Daily feedback from Sam and Josh as always centering us. So thank you to everybody. We’ve heard from a lot of other people, a lot of great feedback and we are incorporating some of those feedback including from yesterday’s AMA or what we call fireside. All right, so 2022, what do we do? Again, mainly focused on biological feedback using the CGM and our biggest nemesis or Achilles heel: price. We keep on hearing about it all over the place as Jennifer also mentioned today.
(39:17):
So what we’re going to do about it? All right, so one of the feedback we’ve gotten and we’ve been focusing on but maybe not communicated as much is really tightening our focus. We really want to focus on a persona and get it right so that we can expand from there. At the same time, we’re going to do a real tight rope walk, which is how do we not alienate others? This product is for everyone, but in order to make it work and be specific, meet the ability, meet the motivation, meet the rewards that really resonate with people, we have to focus on a group of people and we’re going to start from Maureen. And Maureen is a persona that we’ve created. Maureen is the person that is between the age of 40 and 55, female and has a lot of other characteristics we’re going to not get into.
(40:05):
But the short of it is we’re going to start with Maureen. We’re going to design an experience that will be delightful for Maureen, an experience that will make Maureen take action. But also that will resonate with others. We’re focusing on guided programs. Today when you get into Levels, a lot of people that already know a lot from our fantastic blog that Caitlin talked about, they know what to do after obviously reading the how-to guides and ultimate guides, but a lot of others as we push into the mainstream don’t and they get into Levels and wonder, “What am I supposed to do next? How is this going to help me achieve my goal?” Right now, Levels is like a mirror. It looks inside you, it tells you how your glucose is doing based on your behavior, but doesn’t really guide you.
(40:47):
And so the guided program is designed to take your hand and help you get there. We’re adding in addition to biological feedback, emotional feedback. So really the social validation. CGM is optional. This does not mean we’re going away from CGM. This just means for people that want an easier glide path into the experience, now there is an option and they can have a fantastic experience and if they want to go and buy a CGM and see their individual response, they can. So everything we’re doing is going to not only create an entryway for people that either don’t want to wear a CGM or can’t afford a CGM, but in addition to that it’s going to enhance the CGM experience. So it is not that foreign or something completely new, it is a continuation what we’re doing to really expand the market. And again, affordability is top of mind, a big focus and creating a CGMP optional will drive that in a big way. Again, the framework that we’ve been thinking about is increase value, reduce effort, make it simple, reduce barriers and reduce costs without a turnover problem.
Alan McLean (41:47):
Awesome. So I’m going to start presenting. I’m going to take over again wielding the power of present. You can see my crazy desktop. I actually closed many tabs before this started. Okay, so I’m going to begin with what I’m calling the community table. I think we probably need to run this through the marketing gamut, but so let’s get into it. This question of… Wait. Oh, so I should ask you to caveat all this with, these are a starting point, right? We’re going to really adapt and be responsive to the things that we learn as we put these forward. You can do a bunch of research and we have done a lot of that, but you need to get started and we’re going to use feedback to really shape this. So with really relentless focus on user needs, we can do anything, I think. Almost anything.
(42:41):
So we can look at this question of why CGMP optional from a couple of different lenses, but I’m going to focus on just two. I can’t really speak to the business side, but looking at behavior change, I think this comes back to the core user experience. So if we just think about what we’re trying to do when we change behavior, one of the fundamental principles you have to come back to is this concept of friction. It’s really hard to make change if it’s difficult to do. That’s the premise of the whole tiny habits format. Make it incredibly small, incredibly easy to do. And that’s sort of the seed that’s planted to begin making habitual change. And one way to think about that in your life is the best chance at change is being able to do it every single day. And the way I’d like to think visualize this is imagine you’re at the center of this tree trunk.
(43:29):
You’ve got these very tiny thing that you’re doing and it eventually opens the window for you doing more and more and more and you can build on it. And if we look at our data, there’s kind of an interesting story here. The green, this is contributed by Kozama. Thank you so much. The green are days that people are wearing the CGM. The white is when they’re not. Each row is a person. And when I’m thinking about behavior change in a user experience, I’m really looking at these white gaps and for me, see here’s the super dedicated people. Maybe they have a day or they’re transitioning to a new sensor. I’m not too worried about them. But these folks, especially these folks at the end, look at these gigantic gaps. These are the folks that for whatever reason turn out of the experience because there’s friction added on getting a sensor.
(44:18):
Maybe it’s late, maybe they knocked it off or they’re walking around, maybe it’s the summertime, they don’t want to wear it anymore. So when we think about CGM optional, I really want you to think about that is how do we make it such that when you take off the experience or you take off a CGM, it doesn’t just sort of vanish from your life. So that’s sort of very closely related to what Sam usually calls the empty house problem. When you start Levels, when you leave it for a little while, it essentially becomes kind of empty and lonely. That also adds a lot of subtle friction. What are you going to do when you come back to this place? It’s quiet. There’s no more data. The trends are starting to fall apart. So we need to be able to change that. And I think just thinking about who our user is, we don’t have to give up any one group as Maz was saying, but we do have a target user and when they come into Levels, it should be absolutely amazing.
(45:11):
It’s going to have to solve their problems, it’s going to have to resonate, it’s going to have to be kind of fun. So we’re talking about Maureen and if we sort of think about what Maureen is looking for, essentially she wants kind of a restart, right? Maybe she had kids and she’s gotten really busy, she’s fallen out of the habit of maybe exercising and eating really well. She’s got lots of other responsibilities right now. And so what does she want? She wants to go back to a time where she had just a little bit more energy, she felt a little bit more confident in her body and she could commit more time to taking care of herself. And hopefully her schedules opened up a little bit. Maybe her kid’s a little bit older and this is a chance for Levels to come in and provide a solution.
(45:52):
So when she starts the Levels experience this empty house problem, we got to kill that. We have to get away from that. And so imagine her starting with a really warm welcome from Levels. You probably all know or have experienced, that beginning point when you start Levels and you’ve got this video from everybody, it’s so at odds the typical onboarding experience for somebody. And for me personally, I found it really welcoming and encouraging. It was so great. And so we can bring that into the product experience too. So when she begins that welcome video, they’re going to tell you what to do. They’re going to tell you to log your last meal and that person’s going to get almost immediate feedback. It’s actually in some ways complimentary and perhaps even better than when you wear a CGM because we’ve got this rich database of food.
(46:36):
We can look at the tags of the composition of some of these meals and we could potentially tell them, “Hey, it looks like you’re likely to spike on this.” Maybe we can’t estimate the actual score right away, but we can provide some kind of suggestion on what we think may happen if the log is effectively written or well-written. We can also prompt with an insight. We can get you right into seeing how that food is you might’ve experienced maybe you log beer. This was kind of my aha moment. I logged an IPA and the next thing I saw was an insight talking about alcohol. So we want to really close that, get the feedback loop happening as fast as possible.
(47:13):
The other primary thing that we’ve been talking about is the kitchen. Again, I haven’t run this through marketing at all. I like the name. So this is a home for the food that works for you. We did do that test on healthy food choices and we had a ton of people asking, “How do I get back to it? I want more of this. I want more variety.” That’s essentially what the kitchen is. These are our recipes. These are the things that you’re already eating and these are the tweaks that we’re going to tell you to make on the food that potentially spikes you. It’s a home for food swaps. It’s a home for recipes that are really well produced video, some of the stuff we already have that we’re going to really invest more time in. And again, on swaps, we see people love swaps and we can’t expect everyone to change everything that they’re eating.
(48:01):
Not everyone’s going to resonate with a recipe and a lot of people are in the habit of buying the same food and eating what they’re already eating. But perhaps we can make some subtle tweaks. Perhaps we can replace that bread with keto bread. Perhaps the oatmeal become chia seeds with the same sort of toppings. This is the kind of philosophy that we’re thinking about for not a meal plan, but the food that you can go to and build your habits around. However, better choices have always required more than knowledge. We’ve known that from the very beginning of Levels and thankfully so many of our users are so self-motivated and driven. But we need to be able to address the Maureen, who’s got other things going on, who’s quite busy and maybe that motivation will wane. And so coming back to that, we really need to be reminded that eating is a social function.
(48:48):
When you’re out eating, why be so lonely? Just be you by yourself, thinking about taking care of your health or making effective choices. That’s probably not going to work whether you’re wearing a CGM or not. So what we want to do is expand the aperture of the food and eating experience within Levels. It’s not just about you, but it’s also what this larger community of people that are at the same table as you essentially. The community table is a place to learn from other members. It’s to learn what they’re doing and that’s working for them and maybe what’s not working for them either. Is there parallels to my lived experience? Probably because there’s so many passionate users using the Levels of experience. It’s also a chance to give and receive validation. This is essentially an example of the community potentially rating a meal. What do we think this is going to be?
(49:36):
This is another way to tap into that feedback loop, make it a little bit more fun. And then finally, not everything is a score and we don’t necessarily want everything to be a score, especially when it’s a food and we’ve got a community speaking to that. We don’t want people to be super self-conscious about what they’re eating. But we do want to do is encourage healthy choices and think about that use case where you’re having an amazing meal and it’s not healthy but it tastes great. We still need to live our life and be able to do that. And so we think that these means of providing feedback around the food in a more textured and empathetic way could potentially make this a really rich experience and more fun to eat with Levels. And also you’re going to have questions. You’re going to get stuck.
(50:19):
And so how do we get support from pros? Well, having this social fabric built around food is going to allow us to get feedback from the different recipes you’re trying, the food that you’re logging and so on. Here’s an example of me drinking oat milk. I actually know this is a spiker of course, but here’s Casey popping in. And it doesn’t have to be just Casey, it could be anyone from the community. That’s sort of the beauty of having comments on this kind of stuff. We want to be create the structure and framework to allow it to be positive and helpful. And that’s some work that we’re going to have to continue to look in and interview users around. And so now her choice has become so much richer. She’s logging this food, she’s getting quick biofeedback, she’s getting community feedback. And you can see here that this experience is starting to open up, become a lot more engaging and potentially more of an investment for this user. I think… Oh yeah, that’s it. Thanks everybody.
Josh Clemente (51:17):
Awesome. Thank you for the update Alan. I’m going to grab share again. Where’d it go? Here we go. All right, awesome. Thank you. Okay, Paul on demand capture.
Paul Barszcz (51:33):
Yeah, so two weeks ago on our Friday forum we had a quick recap on our Black Friday campaign and the next few slides I’ll be showing an overview of what we did, what the goals for it were and the results. Next slide please. So as a reminder, we had a promo code in place to save $100 on a Levels membership. This was exclusive to our new members only and was promoted through the email list that we had and also an email capture pop-up that we had on our website. The sale ran for four days and we had the email capture on for six days and we also sent out three emails. Next slide.
(52:12):
So we had two funnels to drive these sales. The main one was with the email list as I mentioned. And then the second one was the email capture pop-up on our website. So just as a quick note for anyone who is not aware, we have the email pop-up that you see on the left. This shows up on a website normally after 30 seconds of being on a website. But we had this one kind of redesigned for these six days and it would pop up after 10 seconds after landing on the website.
(52:44):
So going back into the funnel. So we had either the email capture where a person would submit their email there and we would send them an email later on with details on a promo. So we set it’s $100 off and we gave the Black Friday twenty-two promo code that they can then use to go on a website or the landing page to make their purchase and save that amount. Next slide please. So for our goals, the main one was to boost their sales for November. And the secondary ones were to see how our first discount promotion would evolve and also gauge how the decrease in price would also increase our conversions. Next slide.
(53:37):
So the pop-up we had for six days actually had a double conversion rate than we normally see for the pop-up. And out of those people that signed up through the pop-up 129 of them became Levels members. Next slide. And here’s a quick overview of our performance for our emails. The main takeaway is that the more recent the subscriber, the more engaged they are with us. Also, as they typical for Black Friday, we’re competing against many, many other brands for people’s attention, both in their inbox on social feeds and everywhere else.
(54:16):
But finally, the emails that we sent out to our full list yielded 703 new members. Next slide please. This one I’m just going to go quickly, but this slide represents the number of page views that we got from our emails versus the distribution of sales. So the top slide is page views on a website and the bottom chart is the sales that came in throughout the four days. You could see that there’s not a one-to-one correlation in terms of page view and conversion and we could see a lot of the last conversions came towards the last days of Monday night. Next slide please.
(55:02):
And this slide here, this is… Quickly one sec. So this one is, so for all of our Black Friday new members, we had about 830 of them. And what I did is I pulled up data in Drip to see when did they first sign our newsletter. And I populated by month just to see where they came from. And we could see about 39% of those people actually signed up to our newsletter in November and the rest of them throughout the last two years. So we could still see that people who signed up a few years ago actually signed up to us this Black Friday. Next slide please.
(55:48):
So for our results, as mentioned earlier, our target was 300 new members and we surpassed this by hitting 830. Our full funnel conversion was 0.5%, which means that only looking at the sales coming in from the emails, we got that much. And if we compare this to our liftoff sense that we had a few months ago, this is about two to four or two to five times higher than we did previously. So those are quite good numbers. For our check out conversion rate, we had 9.7%, which is about two to three times higher than our standard homepage and partner page conversion rate. And this is purely just for the checkout conversion rate. So from step one of the checkout to the purchase. Next, we saw 90% click-through rate for those that sign up through Black Friday email capture pop-up. So this is a very skewed number, but so we had about 500 people that signed up through the pop-up and out of those people we had a 19% click-through rate.
(56:54):
And if we compare this number to our full segment, so we had about 166,000 emails that we sent out to everyone. We had a 1% click-through rate for those. So you could see the more recent that people signed up to our pop up or newsletter, the more engaged they are with us. And then for the last one we saw 1.8 times more people used the desktop to actually make the purchase versus mobile. We’ve been trending more and more towards mobile as a conversion for people to checkout. Previously our number was about half of conversions were happening… Sorry, I got my numbers wrong, but half the time people were using desktop mobile to make their purchase, but the number… Sorry, I have to reset on this. So we have more conversions on desktop, but more traffic on mobile. So about 70% of our website traffic comes from mobile, but about double on desktop.
(58:07):
So there’s kind of a cross in terms of traffic and conversion around that, but we’re trending more towards mobile. And as the final learning, we’ll be digging deeper into our cohort analysis on those new members and also following their journey through Levels. And we also have a lot of work to do in terms of our analytics infrastructure to better understand our attribution segmentation and reporting. That’s it.
Josh Clemente (58:36):
Awesome. Thank you Paul for taking point on this and some really interesting numbers lost to learn here. And thanks for everyone that launched this so quickly. Okay. Hiring updates. Nobody in the pipeline right now. We’ve got everyone’s onboarded and we have taken our software engineering position down. So we have a general R&D engineering role open. And then if you’re interested in following along with Levels getting into our orbit, please check out levels.link/careers and fill out the general application and we will be in touch. We can share more information on what we’re up to and from there, we are right at time. Sonya has a really interesting retro update coming soon on the Levels Kitchen video and series. So we’re going to do that probably in the first week of January since next week as a reminder, we do not have a meeting for the holiday. So the next meeting will be the 30th and then the January 7th. So with that, thank you everyone. Tons of content packed in this week and have an amazing weekend.