Josh Clemente (00:00):
Good morning, everybody. Somehow another Friday has arrived and we will jump right into it. All right, June 10th, 2022. Recent achievements, so the big news continues to be our approach towards liftoff. So the internal date is tracking for Tuesday, subscriber conversion to begin Wednesday. A lot has gone on behind the scenes to get here. Huge shout out to everyone working on this, on the eng side, on the business dev side, on the logistics side, an amendment was signed with our primary fulfillment company to facilitate this. Just a lot of moving parts and it’s awesome to see the symphony come together. On the UK side, we’ve hit 84% GDPR compliance, continue to trend towards that. It’s a really challenging milestone, so great to see continued progress. We’ve got plans in place for internationalizing our websites and September podcast tour is starting to get on the books.
(00:59):
We extended our sponsored research effort with Dr. Sara Gottfried. So part of this, it’s a large meta-analysis review with the intention to understand the development of pre-diabetes and other signals associated with it. Dr. Gottfried published a paper about cardiometabolic factors for women, some of that work came from our first sponsored research grant, so very excited to continue this and just wanted to surface that for everyone.
(01:26):
Now 2.0 is dropped for engineering execution, so this is going to create the basis for how we highlight insights content to drive behavior, really based on a lot of user research, which I think Alan is going to be talking a bit more about later in the meeting. Series A extension, we published a macroeconomic environment memo a few weeks ago with the intention to define our plans to adjust as the larger economy does so. That extension’s going well, expected to wrap up in July. So just a brief update there. Things are moving and we’ll see that reflected in our numbers in Runway.
(02:04):
Levels channel hit a million views on YouTube. This was dramatically driven by the Dr. Perlmutter episode with Casey, which is just amazing. I mean, that was like… I don’t know, our digital strategy adjusted to focus on YouTube a few months ago and it went from it seems like zero to one real quick, so awesome work on everyone’s part. Let’s see, experimenting with a women’s healthcare curriculum. So this is a really cool experiment that Haney talked about in his async update, but the goal here is to kind of set up a strategic arc for specifically women’s health focused content. Rather than taking topics as they come, can we sort of plot the course? So I’m very excited to see how this plays out and I’m sure the opportunities are… There’s just dozens of potential curricula that I could see us putting together and distributing, so very cool to see.
(02:57):
Then restarting the product marketing monthly email. We used to send these out on a monthly basis to sort of highlight a specific feature that was either already in the app or coming to the app. So I think this month we’ll be focusing on the metabolic health panel and glad to see this coming together again as well. We’ve added posthog tracking to the website. So this will give us the benefit of being able to add and measure event tracking, which is obviously very important on our website as we approach liftoff.
(03:26):
Then other updates. We’re finally at the point where we’re starting to scrub the partner pages on webpage to eliminate the waitlist mentions, and that’s obviously a big moment. Here you can see the email templates that we’re going to start to distribute through drip to our waitlist to essentially announce the wait is over, people can start to purchase Levels, so really exciting. A couple other things we’ve got here, we had a huge week on Whole New Level, a lot of really great recordings. We were covered in… Well, very briefly mentioned in Politico. Had a couple great podcast episodes this week, including a tier one episode recording with the Ultimate Health Podcast.
(04:05):
Little sneak peek here of something I’m quite excited about, which is kind of the Scoring 2.0 effort, but giving not just a score but also an easily interpretable, maybe not definition, but description of what that means. So helping to connect dots for people, which is quite challenging behind the scenes. This is obviously a mockup, but being able to say, “The walk helped stabilize your glucose,” is something that we really need to do for people to show them that that number is driven by a specific series of actions.
(04:36):
Let’s see. Got some love on Twitter here, a couple people. Samiac, we actually wrote a member profile from Samiac, and love to see continue love from people like he who are out there basically sharing that their lives were changed by Levels. Then page view is up 14% month over month, still over a quarter million for the month, which is amazing. All right, I think I touched on most of that stuff. Jumping ahead, I want to welcome Lauren. Lauren, there you are. Okay, you are here, great.
Lauren Hutnick (05:11):
Good morning. Yes, I’m here.
Josh Clemente (05:13):
Lauren is a member and a community investor in Levels, so I want to first of all thank you for both of those things. It’s amazing to have your support. You also are a supply chain director, but a self-described newbie biohacker, so on a quest defined the best latte in LA, which I can understand. I used to be on the same journey. Lauren, I would love to just hear about your experience with Levels. Just kind of take us into your approach to metabolic health, how you’ve experienced Levels so far, and just really appreciate you joining us this morning.
Lauren Hutnick (05:46):
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks Josh. I’m glad to be here with the team and was really excited to see the invite. A little bit about my health history and how I found Levels, growing up, I remember my grandmother really struggling with diabetes and metabolic disease most of her life, and also had some family history of heart disease as well. Growing up you think that you have a lot of time before you have to start worrying about that or before it affects you, and maybe five or six years ago I got my blood work done and was just under the pre-diabetes measurement, which was pretty frightening. When you start to go through how to make improvements, how to change, there’s some general information out there, but it was really frustrating for me because I didn’t understand why I had to wait 12 months to see if what I was doing with my lifestyle changes made an impact.
(06:42):
So that was my introduction into medical care as we see it today isn’t really preventative care, it’s more so disease management. That was really frustrating for me to work through. I had made a lot of changes on my own and tried to make an impact and just, again, got frustrated with why can’t I see changes more frequently? How can I get the best information? I think I found you guys through Be Well by Kelly on Instagram. I saw a lot of people posting about it and had great information, and I didn’t realize that I could have access to continuous glucose monitoring. I thought that I just had to wait until I had diabetes and kind of dealt with it then.
(07:26):
So I signed up and the first month for me was life changing, to say the least. Everything I thought I knew or could impact just kind of went out the door with all of the knowledge that I had. It was so great for me to learn that it wasn’t just foods that I was eating with lifestyle, but it was stress, sleep, hormones, my work all made such a difference on the foods that I was eating. Also, I don’t think most people realize that the goal isn’t to just have your annual blood work average out and be okay. It’s way more important to have that continuous level each day and to keep that consistent. That was such a huge learning for me as I was going through the process with Levels and measuring everything on my end.
(08:15):
So it’s been quite a journey for me to know that I am making an impact on my own health and learning so much from the newsletters and the information that’s out there. It’s just what you guys are doing is just so life-changing for so many people. That was how I joined as a member, but the reason that I invested with Levels was that, if I could make a difference in just one family and having their loved ones stay with them a little bit longer, means the world to me.
(08:48):
I just want to thank you guys for what you’re doing and how you’re contributing, especially with the education and knowledge. I appreciate anyone who really works on preventative care and is just going above and beyond to help people prevent the need to get treated for serious disease. I’m so excited to be part of the team here and part of the community, and I just want to commend you guys for what you’re doing because those small changes made such a difference for me and I’m excited to be part of the team and help as many people as possible with the messaging and the actions that they can take their control of to live a longer and healthier life. So I just appreciate everything you guys are doing and was really excited to be here for the opportunity and just hope you know how much of an impact you’re making.
Josh Clemente (09:37):
Well, that gives me the warm fuzzies. I really appreciate, first of all, the support. Really putting a financial backing into Levels is so meaningful. That was such a role of the dice for our team, just not really understanding outside of the product usage how much support there was out there. So having people like yourself who really believe in what we’re doing is tremendous. You said something that was really powerful, your expectation was that you had to wait until you had diabetes in order to get this sort of tool. It’s a judgment on our current system. So anyway, your participation and helping us do what we’re doing is going to change that sort of concept altogether and I hope eliminate it. So would love to hear, just if you have some thoughts on this, what you would need to see Levels do or change in order to take your experience with the product to the next level. So something, a problem that you’ve experienced or just a gap, anything that comes to mind would be great.
Lauren Hutnick (10:42):
Yeah, I love that you guys are switching to the membership model. I think that’s really smart to do and that’s great for consumers, so I’m glad that you have that program going along. I think for me, just as a consumer who’s trying to do so much on their own, it is expensive to try to do what you need for preventative care because insurance doesn’t cover a lot of that. The medical system doesn’t recognize it. For me, I’ve been able to get my doctor to write prescriptions a couple times for a continuous glucose monitor, so I think anything that you can do to help with just the monthly cost for someone that is using that on a consistent basis I think would be huge. It sounds like you’re working through that with the membership model as well and helping that be more accessible.
(11:35):
So I think that would be the main thing for me, and I hope that someday this care is all covered by insurance, but I think that would be the main focus. But also, I think the second one would just be how can you get more of an outreach around the awareness of you don’t have to have a disease to be treating this. Really sharing that if you think you’re fine or you’re healthy and you don’t have any issues, now is the time to make sure that that is the case and to start preventing this for the long term. So getting it more into a crowd that maybe doesn’t… I shouldn’t say crowd. An audience that doesn’t realize they need this yet, because that’s where you have the most impact for long-term benefits.
Josh Clemente (12:22):
100% agree. There are a lot of examples of people who have had a shock or a scare and it put metabolic health on their radar. I’m really proud of the team, especially the content, and seeing things like a million views on YouTube about the previously abstract biochemical concepts of metabolic health. We’re marching in that direction, and honestly, it’s people like you joining the mission here and sharing your own experience that really, it solidifies it for people. Because a company can say what a company says, but at the end of the day it comes down to real people saying, “This product is important to or it’s affected me.” So I just appreciate you sharing your story, and on behalf of the whole team, thank you for setting aside some time on Friday morning to come join us.
Lauren Hutnick (13:12):
You got it. Thank you guys so much.
Josh Clemente (13:14):
Of course. We have a full meeting, please feel free to hang out for the whole thing. I know you’re busy. If you need to jump off, no worries, but we would love to have you join for the rest of the meeting if you’d like.
Lauren Hutnick (13:23):
Yeah, I’m good until 9:30, so if that’s okay with you guys, I’d love to sit in for a little bit. Thank you.
Josh Clemente (13:31):
All right, great. Okay, jumping ahead, I want to also welcome Jason. So Jason is head of data analytics and coming in with a pretty awesome background in a variety of things, from mechanical engineering all the way through systems and research. I won’t try and cover the whole background here, Jason, but we’ve had a great conversation. He’s already diving in with both feet into Threads and Notion. Really, the extent to which Jason had understood the culture and the way we work before joining I think was pretty awesome and I think a real shining example of how our culture and these sorts of artifacts that we’re producing through the Friday Forum and updates really help. Excited to have Jason on board, would love to hear some words from you.
Jason Shu (14:16):
Yeah, I mean super excited. I was talking to Dave yesterday about how I was feeling. I was like, “I’m happy, but more than anything, I’m just excited to be talking to everybody and working on these problems.” It’s hard to describe the feeling to be a part of this now, and coming from the outside, but overwhelmed obviously, and we’ll show that in the end. But like I said, excited. Every time I have a conversation I learn something new and looking forward to getting at it.
Josh Clemente (14:55):
Awesome. Well, as Jason gets started, please make yourselves available. The whole team can help in some way just by sharing experiences, sharing best practices, and please reach out and connect as you can. I think we did a coffee this week with Jason and looking forward to many more.
(15:14):
All right, quick culture and kudos. So this week we had a fireside just yesterday and we talked about Confidence is Earned, which is a memo and concept that put out a couple weeks ago, and it was really great. First of all, I want to just thank everybody for participating in that. If you didn’t have a chance to join, highly recommend watching the recording because it was really interactive. We had a lot of variety and insights shared from people just about how these concepts actually play out inside the culture.
(15:44):
I want to surface something from Taylor that he put in Threads, but just essentially demonstrating this concept and communicating, over-communicating maybe per some past experiences that people might have had, but just communicating where he is maybe struggling with keeping up to speed and sharing in a very vulnerable way with an entire group and audience what he’s up to, what he’s struggling with, and how to break through that if necessary, if you need to escalate to him.
(16:15):
So I just thought this was a shining example of what this whole topic is about, which is not necessarily polishing and only sharing the good, but also keeping everybody up to speed and repetition on this sort of thing is what builds confidence. It’s a different concept, it’s a nuance, but it’s a different concept from trust, feeling confident that you’re being heard, your message is coming through, or that you at least understand where the system is being challenged is huge. It’s examples like these that reinforce it, so shout out Taylor, appreciate that and everyone else who’s doing these sorts of things on a daily and weekly basis.
Taylor Sittler (16:53):
Thanks, Josh.
Josh Clemente (16:54):
Thank you. All right, main thing, Levels shows you how food affects your health. No change here. Everyone should be marching towards this. As we approach liftoff, we will really be testing this concept in the next few weeks. As we break into a newer, larger audience, we’re going to really be collecting information about whether or not Levels is succeeding here and it’s going to be a very informative process. So stay tuned, we’re going to learn a lot. Over to Moz. Let me… Okay.
Moz (17:29):
Hi everyone. Quick update on company objectives. Keeping it short this week, obviously there’s a ton of work going into US liftoff to get us ready for next week. Thanks to JM, Chris, Scott, and Maxine and team to really pushing on that and getting us to the finish line, or I should say starting line, which will drive the new member acquisition company objective.
(17:50):
On the other two objectives, there’s a lot of work going into the product development process and thinking, and not only we are tightening our process so we can develop features, but also we are spending a lot of time on thinking through how to build the rails to deliver our current experience and future experience in a high quality way, which is that the two of the pillars are obviously Now 2.0 and Scoring 2.0, and then there’s work to be done on content and tagging and logging. I will publish a memo next week to kind of outline the product direction there.
(18:22):
There’s also a lot of work going into selecting a few behaviors we can experiment with to show that we can actually drive the outcomes that we need to drive for our members. The last part is really around the behavior change frameworks that can be applied to these behaviors so we can actually drive engagement and retention. So there’s a lot of thinking going on in those three areas to get us ready for the next generation product, which I will cover some of the specifics in the async version of this. Thanks, see you guys are all next week.
Josh Clemente (19:04):
All right, plug there for the async updates, those are distributed in Threads. Erwin already shared that, so highly recommend everybody catch those if you can. Okay, experimentation and learning section I think is Alan today.
Alan McLean (19:18):
Yes, I’m back. Haven’t done a Friday update in a while, so happy to be with you all. I get a chance to flex a little bit of a gif game here, so that’s fun. Okay, so today I’m going to be talking about some of the updates to Now, the Now project, based on some learnings, user interviews, jamming with some of you on iterating this project, this concept, on the dashboard. So if we can go to the next slide.
(19:43):
So as you probably are well aware, we talked a lot about the Now page with this big focus on big full screen cards. They’re really pretty, they’ve got these treatments that they do away with a lot of the detail and they help to improve comprehension and the product experience. Next slide. of course, we heard some feedback from people. We heard that the simplified presentation and the navigation was not ideal. We’d reduced the data density on the dashboard and some people were really missing it. So we started iterating on these concepts, we wanted to really address the nav. We knew some of these things were a problem when we launched it, but we were hoping to learn in the real world what people were saying and what was working and what wasn’t.
(20:29):
So we started chatting with people, showing some of these concepts. We collected a bunch of feedback from people and we started to develop some confidence around increasing the density on the dashboard. We’re playing around with this tiled approach, bringing it to much more prominently and then retaining the cards. Next slide. However, what emerged really in feedback, and as we were going back and forth internally, was that the treatment of the cards continued to be a problem. They were very assertive, taking over the app, taking over the screen. We didn’t really have a structure for what was being surfaced to you, so everything got the loud treatment. So by increasing the volume of everything we were saying, we were starting to turn some people off. So despite adding more density to the dashboard, we still had this card problem, which kept popping up almost no matter what we did. We tried a bunch of different experiments just in terms of design and user feedback and it still sort of persisted. Next slide.
(21:31):
So really what a lot of it came down to was that the content value was not consistent and sometimes it was duplicated. So sometimes some of these cards were awesome, they had all kinds of great stuff in it, you could see a really zoomed in view on your glucose graph, you could see what was happening, what was attributed to it. Then other times it was like a reminder to log, or potentially by having just this one means of communicating to people, we were potentially going to create a situation where we’d be pushing really low value content into those cards. Say we want to tell you about blood work, where do we put it? I guess we put it on the homepage? Do we push it in the card? It starts to get a little confusing. Then ultimately, the problem we had here was that user agency was reduced. We were kind of annoying people by pushing stuff that they didn’t care about in that moment, and so they were feeling a little lost in the experience. Next slide.
(22:23):
So this is something we really want to avoid in user experience. If it’s not useful, it’s going to get kind of annoying. If it’s in my way, that’s a real problem and people will just go somewhere else. You can’t really have both of these attributes in a product experience or people are going to get turned off pretty quickly. Next slide. Then I think finally what this actually just reinforced for me when looking at the experience was why am I here? We kept trying to address the density in the dashboard, and some of these we were hearing good feedback about increasing the density, but there was still this sort of fundamental problem, which is why am I here? The lack of purpose and guidance. Even if we increase the density, you’re still going to have just a dashboard, and that’s not really going to be too engaging or really solving anybody’s fundamental metabolic health problems. Next slide.
(23:14):
So the objectives of the second version of the Now project is to simplify, create some kind of content taxonomy, and invest in purpose. Next slide. So I love this image. I’m sure all of you have heard about this before, but the Strider bike, it’s such a wonderful example of removing things to create some simplicity and to create learning. Bikes that have existed forever and people have been trying to figure out how to teach kids how to ride them, and usually they include the version of the bike with the pedals or usually kids start there and there’s all kinds of contraptions to get you to figure out how to ride it as a kid. Ultimately, what turns out to be the most effective is actually removing one of the most complicated elements of it, the pedals, lowering the bike, and allowing kids to just learn how to balance themselves by pushing their feet.
(24:02):
I think it’s not a perfect example, but in some ways what we’re going to try doing here is to increase comprehension and engagement in product experience. We’re going to start playing around with simplifying it in a pretty considerable way. Next slide. So I think let’s start with the navigation. We’ve got all this amazing content in Explore and we don’t want to lose it. However, what we do want to do is really focusing the experience and sort of creating, as Moz puts it, the rails or the structure in the app to deliver that content to you more effectively, when it matters, based on what your goals are, and having it in sort of this browse mode potentially is a bit of a problem because it distracts the product experience a little bit.
(24:46):
That’s not to say that we shouldn’t have it, we just need to find a more effective way of delivering it. So what you’re seeing here is a very simplified representation of the nav. You’ve got Today on the left, you’ve got My Data on the right, and we’re going to find a way to use the simplified structure to deliver some of that content through the insight cards or the insight delivery body. I don’t know what to call it anymore. Next slide.
(25:10):
So simplification also comes down to the presentation. We were experimenting with all kinds of interesting uses of color. I’m a real sucker for that kind of stuff. We have these cards, when you first use the experience, you’ve got the day one guide at the top, this glucose graph, metabolic report, all these different presentations on the dashboard. We’re going to dramatically simplify that. When you first come into the experience, after you finish your initial onboarding, you’ve got one thing to click on and this is starting the game. This is a little glucose animated game that we’ve talked about a couple times. I think you’re going to see that principle represented more in the product experience, basically one thing to do, try to keep it really simple. Next slide.
(25:50):
Then the insight reveals. So before we were doing this big thing, we were taking over the screen, and that was annoying people of course. So I think there’s other ways that we can do this while still making sure that people see this content. So we’re starting to play around a little bit with this animation treatment. So when a new insight comes in, it’ll definitely grab your attention, but it’s not going to block you from doing anything else in the product experience. Next slide.
(26:14):
So content taxonomy, we don’t really have that to date because we don’t have anywhere else to put it other than Explore. So we need some kind of structure so that people know where to go for different kinds of content. We want to make sure that the content we’re delivering to you around insights and your food and how things are affecting you, we don’t want to dilute that with things you don’t care about. You can go to the next slide. So having a bit more of a structure around where things go is going to really help us a lot.
(26:41):
Before we had just the cards and then everything else, sort of browse, would be an explorer. Now we’re going to have this structure on the dashboard where you’re going to have essentially a notification panel that’ll be for low priority events. Maybe we tell you your metabolic panel is ready or your weekly report, things like that. Insights, that’s going to go into this dedicated Insight section that you’re going to see in a little bit with that little animated reveal. Then really urgent prompts, those are for maybe your sensor’s not working or you need to redo, maybe your billing isn’t working, something like that, that’s what the full screen takeover is for and that’s more consistent with other product experiences. Next slide.
(27:20):
Investing in purpose. This is a really important one and this is basically the foundation of a lot of the behavior change work that we’re starting to embark on now. This is giving people a reason to be in the product. A lot of people come in, they’ve got their own sort of purpose for being here, and we don’t actually fill in the gaps for people who don’t actually know how to use this tool all that well. So we’ve talked about this a lot, that’s the next stage of this product, and I think really what this project is about in V2 is establishing a baseline so that we can layer in guidance and also give them something to do for those who are just here to observe. Next slide.
(27:59):
So part of that is a spike goal. I think some of you may have seen conversations around this in Threads, but this is giving people a simple goal during the day. For some of us, some of this it’ll be really easy and some of it will be really hard. We want to figure out how to personalize this, but really you should be able to look at the graph and know how well you’re doing. We want to reduce the number of spikes in the day, we want to find a way to consistently make this representative of your data. Azure and Taylor are doing a good job of looking at the data and seeing what makes sense for individuals. We wouldn’t want to necessarily hard code this to any one person.
(28:35):
It doesn’t mean going above 110 is a spike. There needs to be really some research going into exactly how this works, but I think what this is going to do is give people an opportunity to be celebrated, something to look forward to, another reason to look at the product experience and more tangibly understand what this glucose graph is trying to get you to do, because ultimately glucose stability is one of the starting points to improving your metabolic health. Next slide.
(29:02):
I am not done merging this, the previous set of screens to this one, but what it comes down to is now you’ve got a goal, we want to help you achieve it. We want to help you do as well as possible. So part of it is coming up with some kind of understanding about what’s happening in that graph right now and what do I do to correct it so that I can continue hitting that goal every day. So what you’re seeing here is sort of a description of what we’re seeing in the graph and then a bit of a prompt on what to do to potentially improve your glucose stability. This is sort of setting us up for more advanced guidance, behavior change recommendations. Brett’s doing all kinds of great work there with behavior change framework with Moz. So this is essentially your V2 of Now, I’m pretty optimistic that this is going to be great. Thank you.
Josh Clemente (29:51):
That was such a simple but action-packed update. I think the framework of simplification and organization just makes so much sense now that we’ve got some miles under our belts with Now V1, so can’t wait for this. Especially, as Scott raised, the real time data combined with the spike detection is going to be a very engaging live update. Awesome, thank you. Quick hiring update. So we’ve got Lynette Diaz joining for the support team on July 11th, which is exciting, and that is the only update there.
(30:27):
Coming soon, well still open, we have a few offers out, which we’ll be getting an update on shortly, and so we may have a few more. But continuing to look for great software engineers, visual designers, support associate remain open. If you know anyone that is a great fit for the Levels culture or if you are, Levels.link/careers. With that, we are already to individual contributions. So fast moving meeting this week. We’ve got a little extra time for people to share on the personal contribution side. I’m going to pop open the participants’ list and I’m going to work backwards on this one, since last week we went in the normal order. So to kick things off, Tony?
Tony Milio (31:11):
Oh, wow. Yeah, I have to say that that Jin Lu update was awesome. I don’t know how I could… I mean, that was just amazing. I love the Now page V2 update and all the team growth, and then obviously the recent one million view mark for YouTube. Just can’t thank enough the whole team involved for getting us there, really appreciate it
Josh Clemente (31:42):
Plus one on all that. Tom?
Tom Griffin (31:46):
All right. Hey everyone, I’m excited by Alan’s update. I’m going early, so I can say that and everyone else isn’t allowed to say that. One thing that’s happened a couple times recently is close friends have asked me if they should order Levels and I’ve said, “Give it a few weeks. We’re making some awesome product changes.” I feel like that’s a really good sign. I’m not sure if I’ve felt that way in the past, but I really feel like when we roll out some of these new changes, the experience is going to get fundamentally better start to finish, especially for someone that doesn’t have a ton of context, so I’m really excited about this. Then what else? Personally, I’ve just been moving slow recently, which has been awesome. Was traveling a lot and then had a trip get canceled this week, which I was sneakily happy about, and reading a lot of Harry Potter, which is great.
Josh Clemente (32:45):
Love it. Taylor?
Taylor Sittler (32:50):
Yeah, so for me, personal and professional definitely merged this week. I met so many Levels people, it was freaking amazing. I feel like my bingo score is probably pretty good now. It was just so much fun to be able to hang out with the team, have dinner at Sam’s house. I got to go bridge jumping with Josh this morning, so that was fantastic. No, I love seeing all your faces async, but meeting in person is another level, so thank you all. It was an awesome week.
Josh Clemente (33:24):
Got to plus one that. Sunny? Wait, did somebody just jump?
Sunny Negless (33:30):
No, I’m here.
Josh Clemente (33:30):
Ok, Sunny, there you are.
Sunny Negless (33:31):
I was folding laundry, doing that work from home action. I am so excited that Lynette is joining. Again, another example of where do we keep finding phenomenal people? There’s just a mine that we just keep tapping and I’m very excited for her to join the team. Additionally, I’m going to be joining in just a few minutes to the community and the onboarding party with Cissy and super, super pumped for that. So lots of that, and then personally, nothing and I’m really happy about it. Actually, everyone’s already read Stolen Focus, but if you have not, great read. Also picking it up on audio so I can pick up insights that way.
Josh Clemente (34:10):
Nice. Steph?
Stephanie Coates (34:16):
Super inspired by Jin Lu’s update. I don’t feel worthy in terms of all the mileages that she’s covered, that’s totally amazing. Also super excited for the Now designs. Plus one to what Tom said, I think I’ve been holding off on comping Levels for my parents because, with how non-tech savvy they are and just not super knowledgeable about metabolic health, I’m always like, I don’t know if you’re going to get this. So once we’re really shipping this V2 Now experience, I feel super confident that they would have a really well-guided experience, and so I’m pumped to get that to them. Personally, I was actually in Texas last weekend for a close friend’s birthday. We rented houseboat and it was amazing. I’m back in Illinois and then I’m driving back to Colorado this weekend, and so I’m excited to catch up on podcasts.
Josh Clemente (35:08):
Nice, that’s great. Yeah, it seems to be a theme where people who love Levels immediately think about, how will my parents use this product or how quickly can I get it to them? So hearing that we’re inching closer to a version of that that might work for many people is really exciting and I feel the same. Stacie?
Stacie Flinner (35:32):
Definitely echoing enthusiasm for Alan’s update. We were in Nantucket with a friend last week who had just started Levels, very accomplished businessman in his 60s, and he was struggling a bit with the interface, so I’m excited for V2. On the personal front, we are home this weekend and I am going to attempt to make drapes for our dining room.
Josh Clemente (35:57):
Enjoy. Sonja?
Sonja Manning (36:00):
Hey, team. Levels wise, this week, this is in my async update, but I’m really excited about an idea, kudos to Ben and Stacie and Tony, that we’re kicking off in July based on a bunch of feedback we’ve gotten from members in response to newsletters and social, that they’re hungry for more recipes and want to understand how to do metabolic health. We’ll be doing a few days of filming in Portland where Casey will make three to five different recipes and we get to see Tony’s amazing work in action. So just really looking forward to that experiment and providing members of some more kind of recipe content, and selfishly, for myself to have more recipe content as well. Then personally, I am in Chicago and I am driving up to Lake Michigan in a couple hours for a camp themed bachelorette party, which should be very sporty and fun.
Josh Clemente (36:51):
Nice. I’m looking forward at some point to the Levels official recipe book. I know that that’s got to be on the horizon. We’ve been talking about that for a while. Scott?
Scott Klein (37:02):
Same as Taylor. I mean, New York is just a magnificent city, so always just an honor to go hang out there for a couple days. My bingo score I think quadrupled, which was nice. I really just enjoy getting to spend time talking about life with people. So it’s like we go on these one hour walks and it’s like, “How’s your siblings? What’s your parents up to? How’s your partner doing?” I find that to be as rewarding and as work beneficial as some of the more tactical stuff that we can do. So I’m never going to get used to the five minutes of weirdness when you first meet somebody and you’re like, I’ve known you for a year and we’re now in the same room for the first time, so I’m going to hold that near and dear. That’s the entirety of personal and professional for me right now.
Josh Clemente (37:47):
Yeah, the how tall you are thing, Andrew just commented on it. That’s the biggest shocker, it’s really hard to tell what size this person is from a distance. Ryley?
Ryley Walker (37:59):
Following up on that, I got to go from zero to one for my bingo score this week. It was great catching up with everyone in New York and really, really special to meet everyone. I really enjoyed that. I also took advantage of being in the States and booked my blood panel for this morning, so looking forward to getting the results and hopefully not too much actionable insight, but maybe a little.
Josh Clemente (38:29):
Love it, coming to the US for blood work, hopefully not forever. Haney?
Haney (38:38):
I’ll say a plus one to everything has been mentioned on the professional side, but the other thing I just want to call out is Jim’s update last night about liftoff, the fact that the dates continue to shift a little bit, but that Thread contained a haiku about liftoff and the response to it was smiles and happiness and applause. It was just a reminder, something that came up on a podcast that Tom and Josh and I did this week, about trying to create a chill environment and how intentional that is and how much we all have to work to do it. It was just a really good example of like, yep, that’s what we have here. Nobody’s head is rolling, nobody’s screaming, at least that we’re seeing publicly, which I think is really good. So it just made me happy to see that that’s the way we operate here. On the personal side, just a chill weekend, nothing big.
Josh Clemente (39:27):
Nice. Yeah, I love that example and the haiku. Mike D?
Mike DiDonato (39:34):
Sorry, I wasn’t paying attention. Yeah, definitely continue to say liftoff, but then definitely with the work that Alan and the team have been doing for Now V2. It seems like we’re getting super close to the end goal of the project when it was started, just to increase comprehension and to make everything really easy, accessible, and digestible for our members, so can’t say enough about that. Personally, like many people on the team have said, I think this weekend is relatively lowkey, so I’m pretty excited to not travel, and yeah, that’s it.
Josh Clemente (40:22):
Nice. Lauren?
Lauren Kelley-Chew (40:26):
Well, based on everyone else’s updates, my main thing is I’m going to New York City to meet the Levels crew in July, and now I realize that I should have very high expectations of the equivalent of bridge jumping, or New York’s equivalent. So super, super excited about that. I’m five-seven, so that takes the mystery away from the whole thing. This weekend, not much. I’m going to see a show tonight of an amazing Cuban dance company, it’s like Cuban modern. It’s going to be really, really amazing. That’s it.
Josh Clemente (40:58):
Enjoy. Yeah, JM is I think the most tenured New Yorker. So you’re responsible for figuring out what bridge jumping equivalent is, JM, you’ve been assigned, sorry.
JM (41:08):
Central Park run, buddy.
Josh Clemente (41:12):
Right, I guess that’s it. Now you know. Justin?
Justin Stanley (41:18):
I’ve been having a blast building the Now V2 stuff this week and looking forward to what I can get done next week. We have a goal of the Tim Paris promotion, so we’ll see if we can hit that. Personally, it’s very sunny in Winnipeg, so just basically outside every day and it’s great.
Josh Clemente (41:39):
Show us the piles of snow behind you, we know it’s there. JM?
JM (41:49):
Hey, guys. I really liked seeing so many of you this week and meeting some of you for the first time. That’s always a thrill. Went on a nice run just now with these guys who are standing really still. Spent a couple hours with Scott, which was great. Had a really nice time at Sam’s seeing a bunch of you. On the personal side, though it’s really the work side, I had this moment this morning, I was at my kid’s school and a mom who I don’t know but kind of know, but I don’t know her, I don’t know her name, she came up to me and she was like, “You work at Levels.” That’s happened once or twice before. I remember when that happened at Uber and it’s very exciting, both because it means people are hearing about it, but also it’s interesting enough that they’re like, “Oh, you do that thing.” It’s really, really thrilling for me, I think it’s a good indicator for us, and have a good weekend.
Josh Clemente (42:51):
Love that. Yeah, I had a surprising situation. I was at a barbecue this past week and somebody came up and we were talking and they were like, “Oh yeah, you do Levels.” It was a very nonchalant thing and I was actually put off by how nonchalant it was. It was like, not only does this person know about it, they’ve already processed it and it’s just a thing. It’s like a whole industry that they’re well aware of now. So that was a first for me, rather than an excitement sort of thing. Jesse?
Jesse Lavine (43:20):
Hey everyone, first Forum in a few weeks, so it’s good to be here with you all. I took my first run/walk during Forum, which was awesome. Also, shout out to my new transition lenses for keeping my eyes protected in the Houston sun. So it’s been really awesome to be in New York and Austin the last couple of weeks and meet some Levels people for the first time and see some people again. On the personal side, also slight plug for Sonja and Casey, I just made some black tahini chocolate chips sea salt cookies this morning, which were sort of a spiritual experience, and that should make it in the recordings for the Portland run. Have a good week, everyone.
Josh Clemente (44:01):
Let’s see the recipe and the photos. Jason?
Jason Shu (44:08):
During the interview process, people are like, “The culture is what you think it is.” It’s sometimes difficult to replicate the actuality of a company during the interview process, but being overwhelmed by everything and then coming in and actually having it be as incredible as you think it is during the process, it has been sort of a seminal moment for me. Then just getting through all of the different documentations and trying to indoctrinate myself to a different way has been really cool, just breaking old habits, realizing, as Dave said, pounding rocks together the old way of doing things. I think just seeing how thoughtful everybody is and intentional about how and why they do everything has been just super eyeopening, and to be part of it is very exciting.
(45:03):
On a semi transition between excited and personal, last night I was having a mild panic attack as I was going through the onboarding checklist and freaking out that I wasn’t contributing enough, I think probably some people on this call know that feeling, but my watch actually beeped at me because it says, “You are unusually stressed.” So I looked up and I looked around the room, and I look at my dog and I walked away from my computer, and it was a reminder to me that everything that we’re doing right now is giving us an opportunity to change how we respond. We don’t wait until the end of our lives till we’re unhealthy after years and years of just micro moments, of not poor decisions, just non-optimal decisions.
(45:50):
So what we’re doing is super important. Last night was a good reminder that the real-time nature of what we do is really important. And so anyway, it was a good inspiration for everything that we’re going to be doing going forward. Then on a super personal note, last weekend to work on the house before my folks arrive. So the big push is here, starting to freak out a little bit. But anyway, just amazing week, week one, and looking forward to contributing.
Josh Clemente (46:20):
Super well said. Thanks for sharing that. Yeah, couldn’t agree more. Very excited to be able to intervene in those little moments. Cissy?
Cissy Hu (46:30):
On the Levels front, really excited for all of the Now V2 updates. Hits on a lot of the questions that we’ve been seeing on the onboarding side, so super excited to be able to direct users to all the updates we’re making on that front. From the community perspective, I’m excited that a lot of folks that I got to talk to this week and thinking about how we’re going to partner. So after this call, Chris and Sunny are joining for their first onboarding party, which I’m excited to start looping more folks into more of these community initiatives. On the personal side, I’m also having a pretty chill weekend, probably going for a bike ride and dog sitting.
Josh Clemente (47:08):
Nice, enjoy. Chris?
Chris Jones (47:12):
On the Levels front, I’m definitely all excited about liftoff and really, I mean it’s been said before, the team effort on all fronts, from Moz to JM to Maxine to Scott. I mean, we’re getting a lot of curveballs thrown at us in a hurry and how the team reacts to it quickly and to keep it, as said before, super positive, it’s just great to be a part. So that’s really fun. On the personal side, yesterday I had to go pick up a 28-foot scissor lift and I was towing it maxing out my Land Cruiser. I’m like, am I going to make it? My turn signal on the trailer wasn’t working, so I was like the opposite of UPS. I kept making all left-hand turns to go all the way around to avoid going right. Then I got it back here and we barely got it off the lift without it raising my Land Cruiser off the ground when it came off the ramp, and within 30 seconds we got it stuck in the mud. So that’s a thing, farm life
Josh Clemente (48:22):
Action packed, I love it. Casey?
Casey Means (48:30):
Oops, sorry about that. Oh my gosh, so many things. I think this end of forum updates from everyone might be my highlight of the week. This is amazing. But yeah, plus one on the just incredible work from the liftoff team. I also want to, I feel like something that inspired me this week was just seeing how much Tony is firing on all cylinders. He’s running Whole New Level, he’s doing a million sub cuts, he’s managing Erwin and Vanessa, who are doing incredible work on the Athena team. Things are just happening so quickly and iterating so quickly, and it’s just really amazing to watch. Also, was really inspired by the Confidence is Earned fireside. Josh, I think he did an amazing job leading it and it was really cool to see just so many people pipe in and talk so openly. I think that’s just a really unique and beautiful aspect of our culture. Really, really awesome leading it with such great vibes, Josh.
(49:29):
Let’s see. Otherwise, yeah, just plus one to what everyone else has said. Now Page, amazing progress all around. Also, last thing, Tom, wrote a great memo on the Levels Approved concept, which is really worth reading. It’s great. What I loved about that, he time boxed it and it was still super in depth and awesome, and just really articulated pros and cons and really steel-manned some arguments really well. Ultimately the decision was to punt and not move forward with that project, but to have that artifact for the future when we might be thinking about this again sometime down the road is just so incredibly valuable. So just love those memos that kind of capture a bunch of conversations really succinctly and really set us up for future success.
Josh Clemente (50:16):
Nicely said. Thanks, Casey. Britney?
Britney McLeod (50:23):
Hey everyone. On the personal side, I am very excited, I snagged a under desk little walking treadmill directly inspired by Casey, so thank you for that. I’ve been on the hunt ever since you posted about that, Casey, and it’s been life changing. I’m on day one and already feel more energized, rather than just sitting down all day. So really excited about that. Also on the personal side, planning a backpacking trip was to see and Steph at Desolation Wilderness next month and everyone’s invited, so check out the meetup page if you haven’t seen it yet, but really excited about that. Then yeah, just on the Levels front, the Now designs, liftoff, really enjoyed the fireside chat yesterday. It was a great week all around. Thanks.
Josh Clemente (51:17):
Love all that. Andrew?
Andrew Connor (51:21):
Yeah, so several people have mentioned the liftoff stuff and engineering, there’s a ton going on, but another really special call out to Maxine. She’s just absolutely killing it and I’m just so impressed and it is a joy to see you do stuff, so that’s awesome. Also, I’m just really excited to see the new Now stuff that Alan and others are working on. Nailing this experience is the core of what we’re doing, and so this just gets me so incredibly thrilled. One more thing, if you haven’t seen, Gabriel is leaving today, so a really warm send off to him. We’ll miss you a ton. I’m bummed about that. So see the Thread with his sendoff and that sort of stuff. Then personally, been trying to dodge Covid this week. My wife has it and I now think that I got it. I don’t know. But anyway, so there’s that. Anyway, hopefully we get over it soon.
Josh Clemente (52:28):
Best of luck avoiding it and quick recovery, Cami. Let’s see, Alan?
Alan McLean (52:35):
Okay, yeah, so my Levels front, it’s been a really good vibe lately just on the design side and product side. I think you can always tell things are going well when you’re working on things and you don’t know really whose idea it was. You’re just all working really tightly and you’re like, it’s our idea, it’s our thing. So just want to call out to Moz and Taylor and Brett and David on just working together in a really organic and awesome way. So that’s my Levels update. Then personal side, it’s just New York has that sort of warm and wet feeling to it, which sounds gross, but when you walk around and there’s all kinds of people everywhere and it’s like lots of energy, it’s actually a pretty magical thing. So enjoying that.
Josh Clemente (53:24):
Love that. That’s one way to put the humidity. Ben?
Ben Grynol (53:35):
Yeah, Justin’s not lying when it’s hot here and sunny, it is smoking, and when it’s cold, it is freezing, so nice to be outside. Professionally, super stoked on liftoff. It’s just very cool, it feels very much like everyone sort of has a shovel and there are all these little piles of dirt, and JM is gluing it all together. So watching all these pieces come together, it’s just so cool to sort of dive into all these different parts of liftoff, like the email stuffs, there’s web stuffs. There’s all these little things and you see these micro projects going on, it just feels really cool to have that cohesion as a team, so love that.
(54:16):
Personally, so Theo started phase two of this trial that he’s in and it looks like it’s pretty intense just with drug delivery over the first six months. So we’re going to spend basically all of July in Edmonton. We’re going to go live there for a little while and that will be that. So yeah, it’s going to be very cool. So looking forward to it and just feels interesting to be undertaking research professionally and part of research personally. It’s like a very, I don’t know, weird feeling, cool feeling. I don’t really know how to explain it. But anyway, very excited for him and for everything ahead, so that’s it.
Josh Clemente (54:58):
Sending the best to Theo, it’s amazing to watch. Really hoping for obviously a great result with the trial. All right, I’ll wrap things up. I mean, just this week I have had a couple moments of just gratitude, probably is the best term, but the burnout conversation with Haney and Tom, the Confidence is Earned session with everyone where it was so organic. Most of these all-hands meetings that would be maybe a corollary in other companies are just bland and it’s like one to many, and it’s most people are just kind of tuned out, video off, but everyone was stepping up and sharing and interacting and it was just great. Then the charge towards liftoff is so cool to see. Firing on all cylinders, million views on YouTube. We called that shot. Digital focus on YouTube called that shot and are just hitting it, and it’s so cool to see that sort of thing happen. I can’t wait to see the same with general availability.
(56:05):
Then of course hanging out with Taylor this morning, jumping off bridges, that sort of stuff lights a fire in me, so I’m feeling energized. With that, I went a minute over, sorry, but we’re crushing it with the timing on these meetings. Thanks everybody. Check out the async updates for sure and have a wonderful weekend, even if it’s chill for most of us.