(00:00) Josh Clemente:
Welcome to Friday Forum, July 14th, 2023. We’re more than halfway through this year already, and it’s not sunken yet. Um, reminder on what the Friday Forum is all about. So this is our weekly sync time. We celebrate achievements. We hear from members and partners directly. We share our culture and, uh, generally want to see across functions.
(00:18):
We’re a remote async team. So it’s, uh, it’s not always easy to keep up to speed with what’s happening, especially at the pace that’s happening across the company. So this is a good opportunity to do that. We have the Monday metrics meeting, which is our steering meeting. That’s where we look into the business analytics.
(00:30):
We really probe into what’s happened on the past week and how that’s shifting the core metrics that, that drive and validate that we’re on the right track. So, um, And then of course we have our, our asynchronous culture that, uh, that we operate on and the recent achievements front. So, um, the single app or reduced app surface area has shipped to a hundred percent of our members, which is, which is huge.
(00:53):
Um, we have a few more updates going out to the Android user base. But overall, this was a, you know, this was a big push and we’re, uh, we’re seeing some good signs. So logging is consistently up for the last two weeks. Um, some of that is downstream of some of the UX fixes we’ve put out. But generally I think the reduced surface area, the easier navigation is, is helping people kind of get to the core features that matter.
(01:16):
We’re also experimenting with a re engagement email because of the recent deep dives that Kostam has done and others have done on the, uh, churn and retention, we’re, uh, exploring and Taylor’s taking the lead on a re engagement email campaign. To help surface to people who are likely to churn, um, more about the goals and the value proposition that Levels brings.
(01:35):
So we’ll be learning a lot from that. We have fixes for anomaly detection and our logging UX, our two step logging UX to remind people that you don’t have to go through two steps. You can actually just do a one step log. Um, so it’s just a reminder of that along with a fixed anomaly detection, which we’re calling V2.
(01:52):
Uh, both of those are done. They’ve been through validation. We reported on them in the Monday metrics meeting. We’re going to have a little bit more on, on that, uh, today. And then customers doing a lot of work on shaping monthly and yearly reports. This is an internal process right now. So taking the team that our reports have been essentially stagnant for months and months, and we don’t actually do monthly reports after the first one.
(02:12):
So the huge opportunity here to reconnect with people with a deeper dive about the data they’ve collected. And so customers doing some, uh, some data collection and generating some synthetic reports or, or some, uh, prototype reports right now. And, uh, Testing these out with 10 of us on the team. So this is awesome.
(02:29):
And then we’re working on calendar access from the today page. So you can see the scrolling with, with streak, um, representation that you can get to in past days. So we’re going to be unifying that with the today page and making it just much easier to get to the past days. This is something we’ve really heard consistently from the member feedback calls we’ve been doing lately.
(02:47):
On the member experience side, which we’ve had three consistent weeks with happiness at 95 percent or above, which Pretty unheard of, you know, these numbers are very hard to achieve and it’s been, um, obviously we’ve, we’ve had ups and downs, but this is a great streak, a big shout out to the team. Um, we’ve had eight weeks below our reprint replacement rate target, which really helps with overall cost of, uh, providing our program to our members.
(03:10):
And then there’s a really interesting, um, prototype that. Chris is looking into on using AI trained on our FAQ database to give people an easy sort of pull interface to, um, get answers to their questions. So this is an intercom product. There are several like it, but the point is, is there some really cool tools that could come that could learn from the huge compendia of data that we’ve built from our help scout tickets, our FAQs.
(03:35):
To make it more easy and conversational for somebody to land on our page and scalably get the answer to what they’re looking for. And then there’s also been just, uh, we touched on this last week, but a ton of member calls across the team. Um, these are really great. We’re interfacing with members who are, uh, churned members who have been, or potential members who have abandoned carts.
(03:54):
Um, and just overall. Connecting in a, in a bigger way as part of the culture shift that has happened recently. I have a little highlight down here of a, of a great community call that Justin and I did. And this, this moment in particular is the moment after which, um, one of these numbers who had actually churned heard the other member giving her, uh, Just excitement and testimony about how much she loves the product.
(04:16):
And he, you know, on the spot resubscribed two levels, like was just, he’s like, I can’t go without the state. I hear it just hearing her talk about it as too much. So, um, you know, it’s just really cool. These organic moments and hearing directly from what people are, are loving and, and learning from each other.
(04:30):
There’s a ton we can do with community and these calls are super, super important for us. Um, okay. On the engineering side, so we’ve combined the product database, product roadmap database, the growth roadmap database. All into the engineering roadmap database. So this is a notion. So this is a single location to go and see what’s happening with engineering.
(04:47):
We’ve got a new cart flow abandoned cart flow. So this is a campaign of emails that go that go out to people who have abandoned their cart. This is the first like real meaningful campaign we’ve done for abandoned carts. And it, one of the steps is, um, offering a co founder call. So Sam, myself, or Casey, we’ll jump on a call with somebody who’s been in the cart and just want to learn from them, you know, what, what are you looking for?
(05:09):
And, uh, what could we be doing differently to help express what levels is all about, um, measurement V one. So the big, big process of adding analytics and, uh, Making, you know, putting engineers in control of measuring the impact of their products. Or their projects is wrapping up. So that whole project has, um, has shipped.
(05:28):
And we’ve seen some, our first few projects make their way through validation. We’re currently testing three homepage variants on the growth side. So we are ABC testing right now. And we’re considering things like in app notifications to, uh, surface the referrals feature that we have in app right now, because many people just don’t know it exists.
(05:47):
On the content side. So we’re up 20 percent month over month for both podcasts, whole new level and metabolic insights. This is really awesome. YouTube views and subscriptions are both up. I think about 4 percent month over month. So we’re seeing good consistent growth on the digital side. Our weekly newsletter is live.
(06:02):
So we shifted from a bi weekly to a weekly cadence on that and all indications are that our members want more content that this is not going to feel like a you know, like a an A nuisance or something like that, because we’ve gone to a higher cadence. And in fact, it’s going to be a value prop. And so we’re seeing that with open rates and such.
(06:16):
So, and we’re also bringing that newsletter in house as we were using a contractor for that. Casey’s YouTube ad reads are live. Dom is starting a three part. You can see this, the metabolic mind on a whole new level. Um, so Dom’s on the call. This is really exciting. Um, So this, this is hosted by Dom and it’s diving in with the bazooki group who, uh, are a research institute who are really looking to fund really important research and innovation in the world of mental health and metabolic health.
(06:43):
And so this is a three part series on a whole new level. The first one went live. We have deep analysis on blog topic to conversion rate. So we’re trying to understand how our blog and the topics that we write on You know, lead to actual member conversion and then a great analysis on our member stories.
(06:58):
So, uh, Haney had one of our contractors do a super deep dive on all the information that we’ve collected on member stories. I highly recommend reading it and some comms. There’s some, some real gems in there. And finally, on the performance side, we’ve got the optimizer landing page. So we’re working on landing pages for all the various profiles of people who are interested in levels.
(07:15):
Um, the optimizer page is ready for building. That’s going to ship next week. We have four more landing pages close behind. We have new ad creative for. Meta that is, um, I think we received that today. So we’ll be looking to ship that very soon. And then we’re working with pure brands. So, similar brands in the wellness space and sort of trading information about.
(07:33):
Partners that are working super well, and how to engage with different partners as we really ramp up the partner initiative. So, um, we’re also seeing an uptick in content from our affiliates. You know, we’ve been. Over the last month, we’ve been sort of re steering the ship on growth, on product, and some of that stuff comes with a bit of a lag time between, you know, steering in a new direction and actually seeing the momentum pick up.
(07:57):
So we’re, you know, we’ve had a few, uh, slow or down months on partnerships, but we’re starting to see the content. With our affiliates picking back up Casey’s podcast store is picking back up, uh, you know, steam. She’s got, I think, um, her first, she’s got a show launching on Monday. And then there’s like three back to back coming shortly thereafter.
(08:14):
Uh, we’ve got new, new activations with Huberman and several others. So anyway, we’re seeing momentum picking up across performance and some of these earned media opportunities, and we should see the fruits of that labor. Uh, shortly thereafter. So lots of stuff here. Uh, we hit 5. 5 million views on YouTube.
(08:31):
I think in aggregate. So a lot of good stuff that I’m actually going to hand it over to Rob and Rob is going to introduce our very special guests this morning, Keri Sprung.
(08:44) Rob Lustig:
Thank you so much, Josh. That was, uh, quite a whirlwind. Um, so first of all, thank you, Keri, for, uh, uh, agreeing to appear today on Friday Forum.
(08:53):
So I met Keri in November of this past year when I was asked to give a talk at Texas Heart Institute, uh, in Houston, uh, you know, Texas Medical Center. I have to say that, you know, up till now, uh, the cardiology, uh, uh, Profession has been much more interested in treatment than they have been in prevention, but that seems to now be shifting and changing, and they have a very enterprising CEO, Joseph Rogers, who invited me to come give a talk about.
(09:26):
my favorite topic, of course, sugar and ultra processed food and its role in cardiovascular disease. And that’s when I met Keri. So she is again, vice president of communications and education. And she came up to me and said, you are advisor to levels. And I said, uh, well, yes, I am. She says, I use it. And I said, really?
(09:47):
And so, uh, I thought, Well, you know, look, Keri is number one, a user and number two, very well positioned within the medical profession to try to help disseminate this information that we are trying to get to, you know, the cardiology and, um, you know, metabolic health community to try to, you know, uh, fix the problem.
(10:12):
So, um, you know, if anybody has some insight into how to get to the medical establishment, I think Keri would be a very good place for us to start. So with that, Keri, why don’t you, uh, tell us a little bit about your personal experience with levels and also how maybe you, you know, you can, you can see this growing, uh, within, uh, within THI and other, uh, venues.
(10:38) Keri Sprung:
Absolutely. Well, thank you for that nice introduction and, and thank you all for inviting me to, uh, come to the Friday forum. I’ve been looking forward to this, um, Dr. Lustig, I’m a big fan, and, uh, we recorded your video on sugar and it is our absolute 100 most popular video on our platform. And so it’s been pretty impressive and to me that says a lot that we really are.
(10:59):
Shifting into a prevention world. Um, so I can’t say enough good things about this program. I will say I’m definitely an early adopter. I have, um, I have the aura ring. I have scales that link over to apps on my phone. Phone. I’ve had every wearable, um, exercise tracker imaginable. I have everything linked through my Apple Watch.
(11:25):
And I would say that what I’m learning through the LEVELS program has really transformed how I’m managing my own health. And, and since I get to talk about health all day long and try to help others prevent cardiovascular disease, I’m certainly finding myself talking about the program. And I think the continuous Glucose monitoring.
(11:44):
I had no idea prior to this program just how much I was taxing my own system, taxing my pancreas. And, and as I reached a milestone birthday, everything that I’d ever done in the past to try to maintain weight and maintain energy and focus just wasn’t working. And I, I’ve been a vegetarian in my life, in my years when I was living in Austin and throughout college, which served me well.
(12:11):
I love sushi too much. So that didn’t work out to be a complete vegetarian, but I eat healthy. I eat whole, but I was eating far too much sugar. I, I, I love juice. I love rice and I love fruit. And I realized that. Although those are great things to eat, I was not getting enough fiber. I was, um, spiking my sugar and I was kind of sipping on juice all day long and drinks that were sugary.
(12:41):
I don’t drink sodas, but I was drinking healthy drinks that had too much sugar. So I would say that all the items that are on my grocery list have completely changed. I am a seed cracker advocate because of Dr. Means and videos. I make my own seed crackers. I started to use nut butters. I don’t drink any juice.
(13:04):
Everything is thrown into a smoothie and it’s almost like a little chemistry project every day. So the way I, I love in particular, um, having an alarm go off. Uh, unfortunately it goes off, uh, during, uh, difficult times when I’m in the middle of a meeting and when you’re around a bunch of doctors, they all know what’s going on, but, uh, I, I use it to, to figure out how different foods acting my body, um, It’s not what I always thought.
(13:31):
It’s not what I always read. It’s not what I always write about. We write about health all day long. So I think it’s a game changer. And, uh, I personally have taken on this idea that we’re going to develop programs at the Texas Heart Institute, um, for people like me who are reaching 50. I’m, I’m 51. And, uh, but I feel better than I’ve ever felt.
(13:55):
And I, I think it’s time for us to really think about prevention in a new way. And Exercise is a hundred is critical, but we can’t exercise off a bad diet. And a bad diet is, is complicated and it’s complicated for a lot of people. So I think that I don’t see how we’re going to be able to change behaviors without this type of feedback.
(14:16):
Um, I think everyone is super comfortable with wearables at this point, and it’s just a matter of time, um, before people realize that this type of feedback really can help you on a moment to moment really change what you’re doing, what behaviors, what you’re eating. And, and then I can figure out if I don’t feel well, well, maybe my sugar is too high or it’s too low.
(14:40):
I also learned a lot about how, uh, I was not eating in regular intervals and that was really, um, causing my sugar, my blood sugar to, to drop and it was causing headaches. So I don’t have any headaches anymore. It’s just been a game changer. So it’s transformational and whatever we can do in the medical field to um, really advocate for these types of devices and programs.
(15:03):
And I think levels is really an entire program and the content you’re putting out is solid. Um, it’s, it’s based in science, which is really important and it’s makes, I think, eating healthy fun. It’s, there’s a whole gaming component to this. And I, I, I don’t. I don’t approach this as I’m dieting. I approach it as I, it’s a nutrition project and every day I’m thinking of ways I can get all the different components I need to keep my, um, my blood sugars from spiking and I just feel better.
(15:38):
So I know I’m preaching to the choir here but I want to congratulate everybody on this call for what you’re doing because I, I, I think it is going to impact medicine. In a huge way that we have not been able to do that. We can’t really do a traditional medicine. So we would like to keep people out of our institution.
(15:54):
We’re very good at treating you once you come in, but really where it’s at is to, is to do what you’re doing and to invest in these types of programs. So I thank you.
(16:05) Rob Lustig:
So Keri, uh, all of that is phenomenally important to us and great, uh, you know, positive feedback. Can I ask you one question? Sure. Working around all of these doctors at THI, what would you say is the greatest barrier to them adopting this concept of number one glucose stability slash insulin regulation slash nutritional intervention, uh, you know, for their patients, what’s the thing that’s getting in the way of their being able to, uh, to, uh, uh, embrace this,
(16:43) Keri Sprung:
you know, sadly, I, I think I think the doctors, at least in my level of cardiologist, you probably understand this are so pressed for time and they’re managing so many different issues that this just becomes one of the many and it’s not the priority because they’re they’re fixing chest.
(17:04):
Or they’re listening to all the different complaints, but it’s I don’t think nutrition is prioritized at all. And so I think that that has to change that it should not be a question of whether we talk about nutrition. Everyone, these, you know, all the doctors are trying to help the patients to eat right but I don’t know that they’re necessarily pushing the devices.
(17:29):
May just be education, not really fully understanding how easy they are. Um, and they’ve gotten a lot easier. And I think it, I think we have to educate the doctors. And then I think we have to really show them programs and how it can work and integrate into their practice. So I think it’s going to take some time.
(17:48):
It’s almost as if we need to pilot programs. in a place like ours and, and some results and they need to understand that it’s, it’s not nutrition is over here. Uh, glucose management’s over here with the endocrinologist and cardiology is over in this camp. So I think we’re going to have to integrate the different disciplines in a very meaningful way.
(18:11):
So I don’t, the time is a problem, um, and just probably the focus that this is that important. So I, I. I think we’re getting there. The data is looking great. What you’re doing, Dr. Lustig, is important. I’m trying to invite as many, um, speakers around this topic as possible, um, so that we can kind of cross that threshold.
(18:33) Rob Lustig:
Yeah, I will tell you, I think that this has to be, you know, uh, uh, taught in medical school and the problem of course is that, you know, medical school is the hardest nut to crack in part because number one, there’s so much to teach already and it only goes up every single day. And number two, 80 percent of the medical education is underwritten by big pharma.
(18:58):
And it’s not like they actually want this information out. So, you know, we have some very significant barriers in terms of being able to, you know, sort of get this into the hands of the people who need it most, which are the, you know, primary care physicians. So I agree. It’s going to be a long slog. It’s not, it’s not going to be fast.
(19:20) Keri Sprung:
It’s not fast, but the momentum is there and I think that’s encouraging and, uh, you know, more and more we have fellows that are coming through our program and, um, more and more they’re very interested in, um, prevention and they’re interested in cardiometabolic health and it’s, you know, you met one in particular that was recording everything you said.
(19:40): I think that that is encouraging and, you know, maybe we need to have A fellowship program that’s specifically focused on this because, you know, this is what patients want. Patients do not want to take a bunch of medicine. Um, they want to prevent it. And so they’re trying to do it on their own and they’re part of the way there.
(20:00):
And they understand some of the concepts, but even diabetic patients that I speak with are, are not really fully, fully Understanding how they should be changing their behaviors and eating. And it’s, it’s frightening. They’re, they’re, they’re doing some things, right. But it’s a complicated topic and I, and I think we’ve got to educate them.
(20:19):
And this type of feedback, I think really helps because everyone feels like, Oh, that’s not my problem. Um, my body’s fine. My sugar’s great. And so they test their sugar here and there. And, and, but. To know what’s happening all day long constantly has been eye opening. And so I hope that the more adoption we have through program like levels, the more that will gather the data and we can publish these case studies and these reports and then get this education out into the medical community and have them endorsing the same message. It’s going to be critical.
(20:54) Rob Lustig:
So I’ll just, you know, throw one last, you know, sort of monkey, uh, you know, wrench into the, into the gears here. And that is, you know, there is something called preventative cardiology. The problem is preventative cardiologists don’t make money for the institution. Because they’re not doing procedures.
(21:16):
And so there is a directive, if you will, you know, to be, you know, doing calves rather than lipids, you know, for just that reason. And so, you know, this is going to require, you know, a change in sort of how we view, you know, medical care, medical reimbursement, et cetera, before this really becomes a major thrust of both medical education and hospital, uh, uh, uh, medical delivery. So, um, does anybody else on the call have some questions for Keri? Uh, this has been, I think, very, uh, valuable, very enlightening for us. Any thoughts, anyone?
(22:00) Josh Clemente:
Jump in for the group here and, uh, and just say, I, you know, first of all, awesome, really exciting to hear about your personal experience and how it sounds like you had a couple of the, the famous magic moments, um, especially around juice.
(22:11):
I had one of those moments myself. That was, uh, pretty, pretty wild, but you know, I, I just want to say that you, you know, you sit in a really awesome spot as a conduit into the medical establishment and system. And, you know, it’s a, it’s something that we want to be able to facilitate you. With this tool, we want to be able to facilitate the traditional medical, um, practitioners in their, in their interface with, with patients.
(22:35):
But we also, um, as individuals, you know, the number one priority is our own health, right? And so this is the tool that we’re really building for that individual. So hearing about your own personal experience, I think this is a battle of, uh, of end of one, you know, getting, getting practitioners to be able to, to experience for themselves, um, what we’re kind of, you know, Sharing with with individuals lay people, um, it can have the same effect and we’ve seen it before.
(22:58):
And so I’d love to, I would definitely love to stay in touch and and find ways for us to make this even more accessible for, um, the professionals and the experts to see just how tactical and sort of tangible this sort of data, this sort of program can be. Well,
(23:15) Rob Lustig:
you have, you have a thank you. A thoughtful, you have a thoughtful CEO at THI, so very thoughtful. Maybe we can push that relationship a little further, Keri.
(23:26) Keri Sprung:
Absolutely. Yeah. Our CEO is a hundred percent supportive and it’s, it’s really refreshing. He’s a heart failure specialist and so he’s, he’s dealing with patients that are facing a heart transplant or a, a ventricular assist device, and so to have that kind of support.
(23:41):
From your leader over a couple hundred cardiologists to our, our, our thought leaders really around the world. And there’s specific areas, um, is, is, is, is really a game changer. So he, uh, he’s building a group that is in his camp and maybe we need to get levels in their hands and let them try it for a month and see what they think.
(24:02):
It would be a lot of fun. Um, I’m going to try to work on encouraging that. Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you so much. Congratulations to everybody. It’s a beautiful program. Thank you, Kerry,
(24:11) Josh Clemente:
for, for joining Rob. Thank you so much for setting this up. Rob, Rob is, uh, he’s, he’s connected to everything out there and really appreciate you bringing in, uh, awesome guests, um, and, and Kerry, thank you for being a supporter of levels for, for using the product and for making some time to come and chat with us.
(24:24) This is truly invaluable for the team.
(24:27) Keri Sprung:
Thank you, Dr. Lustig
(24:31) Rob Lustig:
So, Keri, you’re, you’re welcome to stay on the call, uh, for today, uh, or if you’ve got to get back to work, uh, you’re welcome to, uh, roll off also your choice.
(24:43) Keri Sprung:
Okay, thank you. I’ll probably roll off let you have a private conversation, but I’m around and I look forward to continuing this here to help in any way I can.
(24:51) Thank you.
(24:52) Josh Clemente:
Thank you, Keri. Have a nice weekend.
(24:55) Keri Sprung:
You too.
(24:56) Josh Clemente:
All right, jumping ahead into some culture and kudos. Um, All right. We got a couple of anniversaries here. So Victor has hit his one year and Chris is at two years. Um, this, this past week, congrats to both of you. Um, really awesome working with the two of you and, um, very excited for, for what you are bringing to the table and gonna, you know, I think in particular in this next phase, the, uh, The simplicity of the team and just seeing each every person sort of step into their superpowers.
(25:24):
I’ve seen the two of you just, you know, move mountains already, and I’m excited for more of that. And then on the on the individual call out section, you know, Matt Flanagan has been stepping into a really deep diving like analytics role, uh, over, you know, Overlapping and interfacing with a number of DRIs who are working across growth in particular, but also other areas of the business, uh, like product and, uh, and member support, of course.
(25:48):
And, uh, Matt just does a really amazing job, um, stepping in to, uh, To just take small items off other people’s plates and sometimes very big items off other people’s plates and, and just a purely proactive manner. And, uh, it’s, it’s really cool to see him close the loop, um, dot button up documentation. Uh, just make things a little bit easier by, um, preparing templates, implementing fixes just in a, in a very sort of like stitched way.
(26:14):
And, um, so this is a shout out from, um, I’m sure many people are feeling these things about the way Matt is, is interfacing and getting stuff done, but it’s a lot of ownership and a lot of, uh, just. Bias towards action. So, uh, thanks a lot, Matt. And especially as you transition into an entirely new group, it’s really cool to see you, um, getting on your feet so fast.
(26:33):
All right, company priority. So 10 percent month over month growth, Sam, anything to add here?
(26:38) Sam Corcos:
Nope. That’s pretty self contained.
(26:40) Josh Clemente:
This is the main priority. And then as a reminder, the mission level shows you how food affects your health. This is how we are working to impact a billion people in reverse the metabolic health crisis.
(26:51):
People need to understand how their actions are leading to reactions in their bodies. This is how we do it. With that, we’re going to shift over to validated projects. And in this case, we’re going to do the logging UX fix first.
(27:04) Murillo Nicácio:
All right. So on the, we were seeing a declining food logs, um, across the app.
(27:12):
And the hypothesis there was that our rollout of logging V3 had something to do with it because, um, on the new version of logging, um, Logging food is now a two step process where on the second step you select the ingredients that were in your meal. And before it wasn’t super clear to our users that that second step was optional.
(27:40):
So our hypothesis there, if it was that if we fix that, if we made it, uh, made it clear that, um, that that second step was indeed optional, uh, we would see, uh, logging, uh, Pick up so you can see on the two charts on the side there. The first one is the number of the food loggers per active users as measured by users that have glucose data.
(28:10):
And on the second one is log tag density so block tag density means the amount of tags that you find in your average log. Um, and marked there highlighted is the date we released this fix. So, as you can see, um, what we, what we’ve seen since then is some recovery of the food logging rate. And, um, unfortunately, some also some, uh, we’re seeing decrease on the log tag density.
(28:46):
Um, so I, the data is a little bit more ambiguous than, you know, we’d like it to be in this case. But, um, overall, what we’ve seen is a 5. 5%. Increase in food logging rate since the project release and we get we’ve given back some games that we’ve gotten from releasing the second step. Um, that 2nd step, you can see that major increasing, uh, log tech density.
(29:17):
Which, uh, was when we released a new version. Um, so we’re still above what we was before, but as expected, um, After making sure that users knew that the second step was optional, we’ve seen fewer logs being attached to logs. So, uh, the next steps here. I will continue working on logging. I think logging is central to the app.
(29:44):
Um, and there are a few issues that are affecting, um, the perceived value of logging, um, issues around, uh, the quality of the tags we detect. So work on that. We’ll continue looking forward.
(29:56) Josh Clemente:
Great, thank you. And, yeah, as a reminder, you know, this is, um, logging is part of the accountability project that is coming up soon. And so there there’s going to be a major push on logging. There already is some shaping happening to, um, consider how we can, you know, really renovate with the logging experience is some exciting projects where we can.
(30:21):
Like the leverage tools like AI in the future to make this much easier. We are already using AI on the interpretation of tags, but it can be a little slow and that’s the reason that we wanted to give people an out rather than having to do the two step processes. Make it, make it easy, make it effortless, increase the number of people who are logging.
(30:38):
That’s our main priority right now. I want more people to. To know that logging can be easy, get in that habit, and then we can really improve the value prop, the sort of what we’re calling log tag density, the number of tags per log, as we, as we make the feature overall better. So, um, thanks Marilo. Um, and we’ll be interested to watch how this trends over the next few weeks, especially as new people come in who have only ever experienced this version of feature. All right. Over to Ben for special projects, update and growth.
(31:08) Ben Grynol:
All right, here we go. Uh, so I think it was August of 21. We read this book, Eli Gil’s book, the high growth handbook as part of our book club. Um, and he’s got one section in it, which is great, which he talks about this idea of a gap filler role and so what exactly is that? Well, it’s basically special projects and it’s, um, the idea of being broad and filling in, in any given area for. A certain period of time to do what is needed necessary to, uh, they get something taken care of until you can backfill it or just to take care of that until you can get to the next milestone.
(31:43):
So that’s very much what this idea of special projects is and I think it was January of this year when Tom and I swap places and Tom started leading growth the function of growth full time and I went. More into ninja mode, which is special projects. So I think the spring looked more like, uh, driving conversions for beta and now a lot of the focus is still on growth projects, but with a specific focus on performance marketing, next slide, please. So talking about what exactly is this idea of special projects will 10 percent roughly 10 percent of my time gets spent on different buckets so projects come up and sometimes it’ll be taking work off other people’s plate where might get punted for a few weeks because it’s a bit of an ankle biter but still an important project, and other times it might just be a matter of coming together on.
(32:30):
The skillset or things that need to get done. So performance marketing, that’s what we’ll talk about now, as far as the main focus, uh, for growth that, um, that I’m spending time on. So right now we’ve got a bunch of assets at the bottom. Those are all meta assets. Um, and across the stack of performance marketing, we can get very granular about all these different areas because every platform is so different, but we’re spending a lot of our effort and capital and ramping up meta. And so I wanted to talk about this idea of how do assets come together and how do you know whether or not things are working? So you’ve got these different buckets of creating assets, targeting them, uh, testing them, measuring them and learning, and they all take very different skill sets to be effective at and so, uh, Why don’t we go into the next slide? So rule of seven in marketing. This is nothing new. I’m sure everyone has heard this before, but it takes seven touch points until somebody converts. And that, um, arguably is going up higher and higher where people are saying there’s so much noise in the system.
(33:27):
There’s so much media coming at us. Always there’s billboards, there’s TV ads, there’s radio, there’s Spotify, you name it. Um, It’s looking more like 12 plus sometimes 20 touch points until people convert. Next slide please. So, we have to be data informed and not data driven about all this attribution and this cartoon is the classic one I think it’s been shared before, um, on forum but The guy gets a shoe in the catalog, and he sees a billboard, and he sees it on his desktop, and he hears about it on the radio, and he sees it on TV, and he just throws it in his cart, and he checks out and then all these, uh, suits, we’ll call them, in the boardroom are saying, we’ve got to spend all our money on mobile. Just like inaccurate attribution because it takes so much awareness for people to convert. So the call it on the left is, where did you first hear about levels and that’s from our post purchase survey some of the results that just came back and that’s like scrolling through the qualitative input box.
(34:23):
That’s two. And it’s basically, you can replicate that for everyone, but like 2019, two years ago on Mark Hyman’s podcast, people are talking about Tim Ferris and all these things, and these are people who just checked out. And so was it a met? This is not looking at UTM source, but like, was it a meta ad?
(34:40):
Was it a. Google search ad was like, where did, where did they actually end up converting? Um, it takes a really long time. And especially for us, we’re not only creating a category, but we’re offering a product that a lot of people are learning about for the first time. And they’re educating themselves and it’s an expensive product.
(34:55):
So we have to always take that into consideration. Next slide, please. So this idea of create how exactly do assets get born? Well, you have a campaign or you come up with a concept for creative. Sometimes it can be video concepts or static images, they could be user generated content, they could be add ideas, they can be product centric and so once you do this, Um, then you create all these derivative assets. And so there, there’ll be a bunch of different headlines that you want to test, or maybe you want to test the product where it’s, uh, bleeding off the page versus a full image. Maybe there’s a gradient and you start testing all of these things to see which one’s actually converting because the, the headline that converts one group of people might not convert the next.
(35:39):
Maybe one’s focused on longevity and the other one’s focused on, um, optimization. Next slide, please. And so targeting this is very nuanced, but this is also called media buying. It’s when you start targeting specific audiences based on interest based on demographics and based on geography, and it can get very nuanced to take a step away.
(36:00):
The way we did it with skip was so hyper targeted where we would target like the. 27 year old who liked butter chicken in Red Deer, Alberta. And that was a very different ad set than like the guy who’s going to eat poutine at like 2 AM in Montreal, Quebec. Like they were just, you’d have all these different assets running cause you could be that hyper targeted for us. We’ve got more of a macro lens, but what we do is, um, We’ve got two things. One is prospecting and one is retargeting. And so with prospecting, what we’re trying to do is build interest with an audience. Um, Who might be interested in metabolic health and glucose monitoring.
(36:35):
So you’re still targeting on the interests of health and wellness. Um, and you’re doing it to a targeted age demographic, 35 to 64 tends to be our window where people check out. And we know it’s a little bit skewed a little bit higher, um, as far as the majority of our checkouts go. But what our goal is, our main goal is obviously we want to convert people, but we want to drive traffic to the website to get people interested in levels and then retargeting, um, that’s converting people’s interest into a purchase. And so that might be people who have visited our website in the past 180 days. And we want to target, um, target these people who are already aware of levels. And you can see the demographic. These are just like two snippets of the retargeting and prospecting audiences on meta, but retargeting is 18 to 65. It’s like, well, why would we do that? If somebody is 18 years old and they visited the website and they’re interested in levels, they’ve got high propensity to check out, like we want to capture that lead. We don’t just want to say, well, you’re outside of the 35 to 65 window.
(37:32):
Um, so it’s very nuanced and you’re, you’re always having to tweak how you’re prospecting and how you’re, uh, retargeting based on lookalike audiences. Like if you like Mark Hyman, you might also like, uh, levels. So, um, Lots of, uh, lots of adaptation and tweaking there. Next slide, please. So testing, um, when testing, you can’t just look at a single result because there are different things.
(37:56):
So prospecting, we care a lot about link clicks, like our, an asset might not be converting people, but if it’s driving a lot of traffic to the website, that’s a good thing because then you can capture them as far as a retarget goes. So you have to look at all of these different factors. Um, prospecting, we care about link clicks.
(38:10):
We still do care about CAC and CAC customer acquisition costs tends to be. Um, higher for prospecting then retargeting because it’s a colder audience, um, and then actual conversions. So that’s when you, these are different ad sets on the left hand side, but. At this point, we’ve already narrowed down. Like when we’re first putting up all those different headlines, we’re testing against each of those assets to figure out which are the winners.
(38:33):
And then you, um, close them down once they’re, uh, past the learning phase. And then retargeting, we care mostly about customer acquisition costs and conversions, which assets are driving power, a lot of returns. And there’s always going to be videos often provide power, a lot of returns, but sometimes the low hanging fruit with static images will have a pretty low CAC.
(38:53):
Um, they might not drive as many conversions, but that over time ends up being a pretty good asset. And, um, one of the things Actually, next slide, please. So as we’re measuring, as we start to think about this, what we want to do is maximize attention capture. So impressions and then hook and hold rate. So the hook rate is the idea of like, is this getting people to actually watch the video and then hold rate?
(39:15):
Like how long are they watching for? Cause so many people just like the behavior is just this, everyone knows, especially on mobile, people tend to scroll past things pretty quickly. Um, So we care a lot about maximizing the attention capture and then we want to limit fatigue. So, uh, there is no one on this call who hasn’t seen an ad before.
(39:33):
They’re like this thing again, right? And when you get that, then that can become a negative impression for a company where it’s just like you exhaust that ad in that audience, even if it was once fruitful. So the, the way of looking at it is you want to keep frequency, um, Below seven for sure. But the best practice is usually like around four or below.
(39:53):
And so when you have a cash cow or you have a great asset that’s producing, you want to keep it running for as long as you can, and then you turn it off a couple of months go by and you turn it back on and you serve it up to a new audience. And then it keeps producing. So it’s one of those things where assets don’t necessarily get old if you produce them well.
(40:11):
And over time you find all these assets that work, and it’s just a bunch of levers, you’re toggling ads on and off, serving them up to new audiences at different times. Next slide, please. So learn, um, of course we want to learn, but how do you take the next step in, um, in getting, uh, even better at not only the targeting, but the capturing the actual traffic.
(40:31):
And so this is something we’re working with Sharma as an agency right now, where we, every month we are just entering our first cycle, but we’ve got five different landing pages that they’re developing and you can get pretty deep with some of these things. So this one on the left, it’s just a bunch of comments on it, but this one’s focused more on the optimizer. Um, moving into the next round for the next month, we’ll probably focus. Women’s health for, uh, for one of the landing pages, but we’ve got five of these. So we’ve got these and we keep building them and building them. And then the complimentary assets are all the targeted ads.
(41:02):
And so this is just a small sample set of a few, but you take these ads and you serve them up to the complimentary landing page so that it’s not a disconnected experience where you’ve got a hyper targeted ad to an optimizer and they land on. A women’s health landing page. It’s just too disconnected and of course you’re going to like, you’re not going to capture that traffic as well. So you always want to learn, you want to take these away. And, uh, as we work more and more with Sharma, we’ll keep building this toolkit of all of these assets that we have to turn on and off and figure out what works and learning is the key.
(41:32): So last slide, please. And the main goal, we all know the main goal. This is the desktop picture is every day when working on all these meta things are, are multiple check ins per day. It’s we’re working on this, whether it’s an asset, whether it’s a landing page, whether it’s tweaking headlines, we’ll spending any time on whatever it is, get us to 10 percent month over month growth.
(41:52):
And it’s something that I’m staring at all day and quite happy to be doing. So, so that’s it. If anyone ever has questions about performance, happy to dig in.
(42:03) Josh Clemente:
Thanks, Ben. Great overview. Yeah. I think that, uh, The attribution cartoon is actually particularly useful and something we should keep handy for our team. Cause I, I know that those of us who haven’t done a performance marketing like this before are quick to, to actually jump to those sorts of conclusions where, Oh, well, why don’t we focus on the thing that is obviously returning most and it’s because there’s such a background process that all of us go through, we hear from our friends about a product, we look it up on Amazon, there’s a whole process that we each go through and we kind of forget that. So yeah, thanks for making that approachable. And, um, Really excited to see the steam picking up and see some momentum payoff here, uh, with, uh, with hitting that 10%. All right, hiring updates. Open role. So, uh, we don’t currently have open roles.
(42:51):
We are putting feelers out for some R and D roles. As everyone knows, there’s been a, we had an AMA on R and D last week and, um, a lot more information about what we’re doing as we move into sort of phase two there. So, um, that’ll be coming soon. And then generally speaking, if you are somebody, you know, is interested in levels, check out the careers page level settling slash careers, feel free to drop us a line and we will keep you in the loop as we, as we move forward.
(43:15):
Uh, as we move forward, hit our growth goals and start to grow. Once again, on the team side. Okay. We got some time here for individual contributions, which is always great. Let’s stop the share. We’ll use the raise hand function. Definitely encourage everyone to participate if you’re up for it. Um, Just go ahead and go like that for me on the professional side,
(43:43) I am, let’s see, it was great to hang out with, uh, with Ben and Tom and catch up on some of the growth stuff. I’m, you know, I, I’m feeling like obviously all of us are in terms of wanting to see the payoff of our efforts on, on, uh, Steering the ship back in the direction of levels classic and investing in, uh, adjusting course for product and growth.
(44:04) And, you know, we want very quick payoff there, but it was really good to just chat with, uh, with, uh, Ben and Tom yesterday and just kind of like, you know, reset my own expectations on timeframe and understand that momentum is building. We’re seeing sort of the first derivative, the sort of change in the changes is starting to become visible.
(44:20) Um, we haven’t yet seen the numbers like really pick up and pay off, but we are seeing really awesome. Activations. For example, I think I heard that Mike D and, um, and Jackie had like 13 partners reengaged last week. Landing pages produced new affiliate codes, updates on all their content that they need.
(44:36) So we’re equipping people were like sort of building momentum behind the scenes that I think I’m really excited to see pay off and same for product. Um, you know, the dives that customers been doing on customer Monthly and annual reports was just really fun. I went in there and I spent some time thinking about the reports and I looked at what we were putting out there and we have one one month report and it is the same one that David David in particular, but David and I worked on in like 2020 like I mean, maybe even 2019.
(45:03) I don’t even know. And so there’s just so much low hanging fruit and obviously it takes time to rebuild these things and then see them have an impact on retention. But I just want to say, like, I’m encouraged. I’m excited to, to see, you know, the numbers start, start matching our expectations and the amount of effort that we’ve put in, but, you know, we are just in that sort of in between moment after re steering the ship.
(45:24) And then personally, um, yeah, I’m going to have like a pretty chill weekend. I’m still kind of buzzing from the Montana experience. Can’t stop thinking about it. Can’t stop wrapping it on my shirt. So, um, I’m here for Montana. That’s all I got.
(45:45) Wow. shy bunch today. Okay. There we go, Chris.
(45:49) Chris Jones:
Well, if you’re going to lead up with Montana, of course, I have to follow up to keep the theme going, uh, on the professional side, uh, a couple of things. One, it’s, it’s really, It was really encouraging to see some of the culture shifts, specifically the end to end ownership from engineering.
(46:05) So like, you know, great, you know, uh, presentation by Murillo and a lot of the product validations, like seeing engineers in there, like how is this moving metrics as opposed to just shipping code? So that’s really, um, great to see. I’m super excited that we’re kind of back on, or now into the lean hybrid version and kind of, you know, more of a foundation to start building forward.
(46:25) So it’s great to kind of see some of that, I guess removing some of the jank or process in the app. Um, and then on a, on a sad personal note, uh, probably everyone saw my note about Brittany deciding to leave us, which was really sad. We were getting pretty excited about her coming back, but I can’t be more proud for her.
(46:45) Like she wants to be a full time mom. And I just like, that’s like the, it warmed my heart of like, yeah, of course, like that’s a great reason to leave levels to go to raise a child. So that was, um, but still sad. On a, uh, on a personal note, um, it is music season in Montana. So I’ve got my cowboy boots, I’ve got my party hat, and I’ve got festivals for the next three days.
(47:10) So if you can’t get ahold of me, um, I’m out enjoying lots of country music in the beautiful state of Montana.
(47:17) Josh Clemente:
Could not be more jealous. Um, yeah, just, I think the, what you mentioned on, on the app stuff is also, I, I want to shout that out. I, I’m, I’m excited to see the app service reduction out there. And I think Justin just eliminated 6, 000 lines of code the other day.
(47:32) So there’s, there’s like a, there’s just a lot going on. That’s pulling the app together and you know, I, I’m very excited to see the payoff there as well.
(47:42) Ben Grynol:
Yeah. Lots of professional stuff. It’s like hard to even pinpoint one thing. It’s just like a laundry list hanging out with Josh and Tom was. Very fun to spend some time and jam sync on things. Um, go ahead. Top of my head. Yeah. It was just like moving very fluidly and it’s amazing to see it sort of like you’re keeping up with all of it as best you can.
(48:04) But it’s like, Kostman is like crushing some like, Hey, I got an idea for an email campaign and it’s not necessarily, or how we might. Undertake lifecycle and it’s not working the system. It’s all additive. Um, Haney’s jumping in and helping out with like copy and headlines and all this stuff for ads and everyone’s just making things better.
(48:21) Maddie’s doing all this stuff around analytics. One’s crushing. Um, one of the things that got me super stoked was, This backdoor that Tony and Casey have been doing for podcast ads, like whole new level ads. And I like played it and I’m like, what is this thing? This is amazing. I’m like, can we turn this into an actual ad to run on meta?
(48:41) So it’s like, you see all these things and just want to hat to Casey for crushing that ad. But, um, yeah, it’s super exciting just to see everyone sort of leaning really deeply in it and constantly trying to make things better and and staying out of each other’s way. So, um, Hat tip to the whole team, uh, personally got to go to Canada land last weekend, which is pretty cool.
(49:03) Was at the lake, had to find a way there, an avenue there. It was a very long drive to get there in a rush trip to get back, but it was one of those things dipping the toe into the old lake never hurt. So, uh, yeah, I really enjoyed
(49:15) Josh Clemente: That’s awesome.
(49:22) Sam Corcos:
I think echoing what Chris said, I’m, uh, it’s really great to see the end to end ownership of engineering that we’re seeing right now of, uh, Murillo jumping in and, uh, proposing a hypothesis for a set of features that we want to update around, uh, navigating between days and consolidating several views, um, Maxine.
(49:47) Taking end to end ownership of accountability. We’re really starting to see that culture shift, uh, materialize, which is great. On a personal note, I’ve been testing out, we’re considering moving to the Bay Area from New York. And I’ve been testing out different locations currently in San Carlos. We’re going to Mill Valley later today.
(50:09) We tested out Sausalito. We’re going to try Noe Valley. Vernal heights and a whole bunch of places. And so far, so good. Well, uh, we’ll see what comes of it.
(50:20) Josh Clemente:
It’s a qualitative or quantitative decision.
(50:23) Sam Corcos:
It’s a very, very much qualitative based on what my wife likes the most. If I’m being honest.
(50:31) Josh Clemente:
That sounds right.
(50:33) Um, awesome. Well, good luck with the, with the call or the decision. Sure. Uh, Sorry, Justin was reading Jeremy’s name,
(50:45) Justin Stanley:
I’m super stoked that we’re finally going to be rid of all of the old now task related code, which was tons of tech debt we had left over. So I deleted that and it’s in PR. That’s part of the 6000.
(50:59) Code line removals or whatever. Uh, personally, I’ve been loving my ballet class. It’s the highlight of my week. I’ve been going twice a week and I’m able to do it. And it’s just energizing that my body could have improved versus where it was.
(51:20) Josh Clemente:
Awesome. Getting those steps in too, very consistently. I want to know what your average step count is in a, in a levels workday. It’s gotta be higher than your lines of code deleted. All right. Anyone else? Got a couple minutes here.
(51:41) All right. Well, great meeting Rob. Thanks for having Keri join us. Uh, really appreciate that. And, uh, Chris share, share video from the concerts. Everyone else enjoy the weekends. See you next week.