#99 – Making meaningful change in the community (Mac Conwell & Ben Grynol)

It can be a challenge to reach the communities you most want to impact. How do you know you’re taking the right steps and making the right connections? It doesn’t have to happen overnight or with one big initiative. You just have to work consistently with the communities. In this episode, Levels Head of Growth, Ben Grynol, sat down with one of our investors and Co-Founder of RareBreed Ventures, McKeever “Mac” Conwell. They chatted about the idea of reaching communities that are most impacted by poor metabolic health and what we can do collectively as a society to ensure we’re taking the right steps to reach them.

15:08 – Looking for opportunity

Opportunity is everywhere, as long as you know what to look for. Many of the limits we deal with we put on ourselves.

He exposed me to this idea we as software engineers were builders. We could build products that could solve problems that people would pay for. Being an entrepreneur exposed me to the world of opportunity. I didn’t realize just how many things you could do in the world and how many limits we put on ourselves. The ways that people can make money, there are so many ways to make money that you would never consider. Or the idea of when you go to school, nobody ever explained to me why Ivy League schools were so different or so important. Nobody explained to me that I should apply to Ivy League schools.

18:37 – Inform your community

If you want to reach the community with your product, you need to find a way to get information directly to people.

Having folks that you can highlight and put up and let people see that’s possible I think is important, but I think as a society as a whole, it’s really the lack of this information being disseminated into all communities. And really what that means is that this information needs to become part of culture or part of pop culture. If you want to disseminate a prevailing theory, you push it out through pop culture, you push it out through… Or you have a very direct edict to share the information. All of us remember the commercial ‘this is your brain on drugs.’ That commercial became a pop cultural moment, because you just saw it so much. And it was so in your face. Well, let’s flip that around and say we have some campaign around metabolic health, some campaign around talent, a campaign around different types of jobs, a campaign around how you get a high paying job even if you only have a high school degree, a high school diploma. Where do we have the artists, the athletes, the individuals who when they do things become pop cultural moments to then share what they’re doing.

23:50 – Change has to come from both ends

Change can’t just come from the top down or the bottom up. If you truly want to make changes, you can’t just focus on one.

Change has to go from top-down and bottom-up. I don’t think either one works well in a vacuum. I think you have folks doing the work at both ends helps you get to a point where you get to meet in the middle. And so the idea of you can go into a local barber shop and if you want a discount, you can get a discount on your haircut if you get your blood pressure taken and get your glucose taken. Just so you know. And if they have on the wall here’s healthy levels, here’s dangerous levels, you might find out that you might have diabetes because you took your glucose level at the barber shop. That’s wild. Or I think there was a barber shop in Chicago where they were giving young kids discounts if they would read a book out loud while getting their haircut, promoting literacy. Those kind of things are happening in institutions that are integral to a community, because everybody goes to the barber shop, everybody goes to hairstylists. And so something like that’s an easy way to meet people where they are and an unusual place.

25:11 – Reimagine how people interact with products

You can’t just disseminate health information and products through the doctor’s office. You have to give people other opportunities to interact with that knowledge.

We need to reimagine how our communities interact with the products around us, especially the products that promote education and health. It can’t just be in your doctor’s office and it can’t just be at school, because we already know that’s not getting us where we need to be. There’s already a disconnect, so what are the gaps where we can fill in? And there are so many startups making so many products and so many tools. There are so many of these box kits that you can get in the mail where it’s like, “Take a drop of your blood or take a urine sample and mail it in, and we’ll send you back results.” Before the only way you could ever get this was from your doctor. Imagine if you come into your barber shop and they got five things you can do, check your colon, check your mineral levels and vitamin levels, check your glucose and your A1C, check your blood pressure, get that all done in one time. Now you’re talking about barber shops becoming health and wellness centers.

30:06 – Startups break the rules

Startups have the opportunity to re-examine the way things are done and make changes. They don’t have to follow the rules—they can break them.

I think that’s the advantage that startups have, is the ability to be part of the re-imagining of how we share this information with communities, how we help communities, how we impact communities. Because the startups, literally what startups do is they break rules. Things you used to only do in your doctor’s office, you can now get in a mail-order kit. That’s insane. The idea of you used to have to prick your thumb to get blood to check your glucose levels, you now can put a device on your arm that’s just constantly checking it. And then you can put a data layer on top of it to give you real analysis of that. And as that gets smarter over time, you’re going to start to be able to check all these different things that are happening in your body. There exists a world where you’re going to be able to watch one of these smart device watches on your arm, and you’re constantly going to be able to check where your body is and how your body responds to the environment around you. The idea you’ll be able to tell the difference of how your body responds when you’re at home versus when you’re in your office will be incredible.

37:19 – Bring in creative people

If you want to come up with creative solutions, you need to work with creative people. They can help you reach audiences you never dreamed of.

Come up with creative ideas and solutions, and really probably having a small think tank like, “Hey, let’s get 10 smart people in the room or in a Zoom, and let’s just talk through creative things of how we could do.” Or do what the government does sometimes, get a couple writers. Get a room of four writers or five writers, write up just stories of how you think communities could use this. Become as creative as you want to be. Just think of the kind of ideas and thoughts and stories you would come up with. This is the kind of thing the governments use sometimes when they’re trying to figure out what are ways that other governments might plot against us. They’ll get a bunch of writers. They have writers come up with stories because they’re going to come up with the wildest, most craziest, off the wall things. But that’s where you get some really gems of like, “Oh, that is a blind spot we had,” or “That is security risk we had.” Well, let’s flip that on its head, how can we use the same kind of ideas to support communities, to grow communities? It’s just all about being creative. It’s all about being different. It’s all about meeting communities where they are and where are the pockets of money in these communities that can support products, even when they’re out of their financial reach.

41:44 – Create open access to jobs

If you want people in your community to work for you, you have to allow those communities access to open jobs.

Be more intentional and deliberate by allowing these communities access to open jobs. Open jobs and then also resources on how they can be trained or get to the point where they could do those jobs. You don’t need to spend four years in college to work in the HR department. You don’t need to spend four years in college to be a social media expert. You don’t need to spend four years in college to be a compliance expert. You don’t need to spend four years in college to be a software engineer, that’s what you’ve learned from all the boot camps. Imagine if you take the… Because in every city they have these organizations that help train up those in the community with different hard skills and soft skills. What if you work with those communities, like say, “Hey, we have a need for these type of engineers or these type of positions. Here’s some resources. We would love you to add this to your coursework.”

44:56 – Share resources with community leaders

If you share job opportunities more broadly with community activists and educators, then people will know what skills your company is looking for.

Making sure that those opportunities are shared far more broadly, whether it’s through folks like me or having even liaisons whose job that’s just what their job is to do. And then also sharing resources with those community activists and evangelist and educators to say, “Hey, share these resources with your communities, help them learn these skills. This is the next wave. We’re not going to have all the construction jobs and administrative jobs going forward. And even if you going to have administrative jobs, what an executive administrator was 10 years ago, looks vastly different today. Here are the things and skills they need to know.” It’s not about knowing Excel, they need to know Salesforce. They need to know Workday. Now you need to work on PeopleSoft. Let’s help the community get there.

49:00 – Widening the net

The prominence of remote work has given people access to jobs anywhere in the country. Companies are no longer limited to the people who live in the same city, or even the same state.

As remote work becomes more prominent, now I have access to any job in the country that I can do from my home or I can do from a virtual office. That completely democratizes access for work and the type of work. It used to be, yes, if you’re a startup, we want you to start your company in San Francisco because this is where the concentration of talent is. This is where concentration of money is. This is where concentration of talent is. It’s no longer true. This is where concentration of money is, but talent can be dispersed. And you can find the best talent anywhere. I find an amazing coder at Idaho, he can code all night long from Idaho. I don’t care as long as he’s getting done the work we need done. And then we have the ability to get on a Zoom call and be able to interact. And then maybe once a quarter will fly him out to the office and so we can actually have some face time and grow as a team. That changes the idea of talent.

McKeever Conwell (00:06):

The idea you take a company that’s so community based and connect it with a company that’s health based, that becomes a really powerful tool for changing lives. And there’s probably hundreds of other potential partnerships with things that could happen where just introducing people to metabolic health and then taking the next step of, okay, now you’ve been introduced to it, here’s how you can improve it, here’s how you can monitor it. Oh, here’s a device that you could use that could be significantly impactful in monitoring. That becomes really powerful.

Ben Grynol (00:52):

I’m Ben Grynol, part of the early startup team here at Levels. We’re building tech that helps people to understand their metabolic health, and this is your front row seat to everything we do. This is a whole new level. As part of our mission to educate the world about metabolic health, well, there’s a lot of surface area to cover. It’s very much a global epidemic that reaches every corner of the world, every community that we surround ourselves with. So for Mac Conwell, Mac is co-founder and one of the general partners at RareBreed Ventures. He’s also an investor in Levels. And Mac’s thesis with RareBreed is to invest in underrepresented founders. Well, there’s very much an analog in the way that we can think about metabolic health, metabolic health education, and metabolic health awareness, getting further reach into some of the underrepresented communities that are most impacted by poor metabolic health or metabolic syndrome.

Ben Grynol (02:02):

So Mac and I sat down, and we deconstructed this idea of how to reach the communities that are most impacted by our mission. What are some of the ways that we, not just as a company but as a society, can work together to reach more of these communities? And what are some of the things that we can do collectively to ensure that we’re taking the right steps? It doesn’t happen overnight. It doesn’t happen with one big initiative. It is very much incremental, and it needs to be done in a calculated manner. It’s a matter of working with the communities and providing the right conditions for everybody to learn, for everybody to get exposure to some of these concepts.

Ben Grynol (02:41):

Now pulling it back to RareBreed, this is analogous to very much the talent ecosystem and funding entrepreneurship startups. Well for underrepresented talent, underrepresented communities, it’s important to create the conditions so that there’s more awareness. There are more role models very much like Mac that are saying, “Hey, there are opportunities, and here’s the way that you can pursue them. It’s not impossible. It’s not unreachable. And here are reasons why. Here’s the infrastructure to do it, and I’m here to help.” It was a great conversation to sit down with Mac and learn more about his perspective on the ways in which we can work together to make meaningful change in the world. Here’s where we kick things off.

Ben Grynol (03:27):

So couple things to focus on, it’d be good to go through your backstory as a founder, talk about that journey and the path to what you’re doing now with RareBreed. But I think there are three big pillars to dive into, and that’s this idea of access and opportunity as it pertains to health and wellness funding and talent opportunities. Because they end up being analogs for a lot of the same reasons, and so it’d be good to chat through your lens on it and how everyone can work towards creating more opportunity for underrepresented communities, underrepresented founders, and basically everything that you’re doing from a capital allocation perspective. So with that said, let’s go all the way back to the first time that you remember being exposed to what you know now as metabolic health. Were there things growing up that you look back at and you’re like, “Wow, that really has led to these downstream implications of what you’re seeing now transpire as poor metabolic health within your community.”

McKeever Conwell (04:39):

Yeah, the first time I was exposed to the idea of metabolic health was probably when I was diagnosed as diabetic. And even then I don’t know if they used that term or if that was a thing as much as it was when I started learning more and diving into it and trying to educate myself. The crazy part about it was I was in my thirties. I grew up where whatever mom made for dinner was it, pasta, breads, your carbs, your starches, all that. And at the same time, I came from a family, on both sides of my family, being a diabetic was a normal thing. Don’t know how much of that was contribute to genetics or to the food we eat, but I wouldn’t be surprised [inaudible 00:05:30] the food we eat. And so becoming aware of my health was always surface level of what’s your weight, counting calories.

McKeever Conwell (05:41):

And even then somebody who’s large, I’ve been large my entire life just about, since I was about eight or 10, I’ve been a heavy-set individual. I’ve had bouts with weight loss and yo-yoing in weight. But when I found out I was diabetic, I started to really try to get serious with it. But it can be difficult because diets suck, you try all these different programs and supplements and things and it can be hard. For me, it’s been hard. But it’s something that I’m trying to get better at and smarter at. And I think the real cool thing about Levels is it gives you a real time gauge. It’s not just pricking your finger and seeing what your glucose level is in the moment, but connecting it to the foods you eat, connecting it to what you’re doing almost like a video game. I’m now wanting to always manage to get those right numbers. I’m always trying to hit my numbers. And I have an opportunity to see what things in my life, what things in my diet help me hit those numbers. So that’s been really incredible.

Ben Grynol (06:54):

So when you’re growing up, you’re exposed to all these things that gave you this lens, now that looking back you’re like, “Oh, that has led to this.” What are some of the analogs when you think about your first journey as a founder? So what led you to that, where you said, “Hey, I want to go be a founder.” The irrational thing that everybody does and goes, “I’m going to go try this thing,” which is the right thing to do, but what was it that led you initially to be a founder and then to be a founder again and then to get on the other side of the table where you said, “Hey, instead of building, I’m going to go and help people to get funding to do all of the building, to have these access to opportunities.” What was it that initially led you down that path?

McKeever Conwell (07:42):

It’s all serendipity. Life is about these moments and connections you make. And so when I was in school, I got an internship with the Department of Defense and I was in this program. And within that program, so the student program, I met this gentleman by name of Patrick Jackson, great friend of mine, who was the first person I ever met who was obsessed with becoming the black Mark Zuckerberg. That’s what he wanted to be. And so for context, this internship I was in was nothing but electrical engineering and computer science major. So it was a bunch of engineering geeks. And this dude was hell bent on being the first black, big startup founder. And granted, we didn’t call it being startup founder, we didn’t have the language for it. And so I got to watch him, for context, iPhone comes out in 07, he makes his first iPhone app in 08. He’s one of the early pioneers in app building. It’s kind of crazy to think of.

McKeever Conwell (08:45):

We watched him make these apps and start making money. And then one day he tells us he’s quitting his job, his wife is pregnant, he’s moving to San Francisco because some guys who used to work at Google gave him some money to build more apps. We didn’t realize he was leaving to go to San Francisco to start a startup, and that he had got money from VCs. We had no concept of what those terms were or what he was doing. But all we saw was here’s a good friend of ours who has the same skill as us, and he’s able to build products that can make money. And it’s like, “Well, we can do that.” So really my foray into being a founder was just… The starting part was me and two of my best friends decided to start a website that we thought could make money while we slept.

McKeever Conwell (09:30):

We built this product with no customers. We’re like, “Okay, well, how do we get customers?” I was like, “Well, when need do more marketing? Well, we don’t have money for marketing, where do we get money? Well, there’s these people called investors who give you money that if you use their money, you can get the marketing, get customers, and all this.” And so that starts us down the pathway of taking this cool website that we had built and realizing, “Oh, this is a business. We should treat it like that.” And so then it just kind of spun out of control from there. Just building a cool website at night to oh, we need to put effort into this and make it more. And I wake up one day and now I’m the CEO of a startup, and I’m trying to get into accelerators, I’m trying to pitch to investors, and I’m learning all this stuff. We didn’t know any of this stuff was. And so we kind of stumbled into it.

McKeever Conwell (10:15):

And so that’s how the first company happened, and we ran that for four and a half years, we were lucky enough to sell it off, sell the IP of that company off. And through that four and a half years, we go through two accelerators, we live in San Francisco for a while, and we learn all of it. My first company was like going back to school. It’s like going to school, learning how this works. And I had the bug, when the first company ended, went straight to building my second one. And the second one was not successful. But that was my foray, and then I didn’t realize what I was getting into. If I knew then what I know now, I don’t know if I’d ever done it. Being a founder is so hard, you through so much. I didn’t know that going in, we were just fumbling around the dark and just fumbling over stuff. And we just got there. And so that was how I got to be a founder. The genesis of it was really ignorance.

McKeever Conwell (11:15):

And then breaking in the venture was unique in that I thought I could do venture, and I thought venture was interesting, but I didn’t have a pathway. I dropped out of college my junior year. So my third year of school, I drop out. I then go on to be a engineer for the government. I then start these two startups. I don’t have a college degree or a finance background. But venture’s interesting. After my second company, I end up getting a job at a marketing firm running their technical team, which was not exciting, not what I wanted to do. And after being there for a year, I quit because they got a client I didn’t agree with ethically, so I just quit on principle. Had no plans, didn’t know what I was going to do.

McKeever Conwell (12:01):

And I quit on a Friday, and the very next Monday, I got this email from the state of Maryland, it’s this community-wide email from the state of Maryland saying they were hiring a new fund manager for their state-run fund. And I called one mentor who I knew worked at that organization, asked him if he thought I could do it or I thought I might have a shot. He gave me the most bare minimum bit of encouragement you can give, “Well, try new things, we’re looking at a lot of people, no reasons for you not to apply.” And then I ended up writing my first ever cover letter and applied to that job. And it was the only job I applied for. So I just knew I was going to get it because I’m a crazy person. And four and a half months later, I did. I broke into venture by accident. I broke into entrepreneurship by accident. These were not things I had expected or even planned. And man, what a great ride it’s been.

Ben Grynol (12:59):

One of the things that’s interesting is going back to having the model, having your friend that you looked up to, having somebody that gave you the lens into what’s this thing and can it be done? If you didn’t have that… People’s experience becomes a byproduct of what they’re surrounded by, and so without that, what do you think things would look like as far as if you didn’t have that example that put forth, “Hey, I can do that too. I’m no different, I can do that. There’s actually a way.” It’s kind of you need the insight to be like, “Whoa, I didn’t even know this thing existed.” What do you think that would look like if there wasn’t that foundation there?

Ben Grynol (13:46):

The reason I ask is right now everything that you are doing with RareBreed, everything that you’re doing working with founders and just being helpful, generally just being helpful, you’re setting an example for other people. You’re leading by example and you’re setting this foundation for other people to be like, “I can do this too. I’ve got the insight this is possible.” So how much do you think that played a role in the influence in you actually becoming a founder, you getting into VC? Do you think it was a critical path?

McKeever Conwell (14:17):

Yeah, I don’t think it happens if I don’t. At the time, I was working in these government contracting companies. I had already started to bump up against the top end range I could make as a mid-level or even senior level software engineer. And those organizations, I was starting to plan on like, “Okay, how do I progress in my career?” The next steps of progressing my career were to break into management, which I was starting to do, become a project manager and then start to move more into business development and bringing in business to these organizations, that’s where the money is made. So I’d have just did the corporate job thing and spent 20 years at a Northrop or a Booz Allen or an Accenture, something like that and did relatively okay for myself.

McKeever Conwell (15:05):

But I wouldn’t have been exposed to so much, because he exposed me to this idea we as software engineers were builders. We could build products that could solve problems that people would pay for. Being an entrepreneur, exposed me to the world of opportunity. I didn’t realize just how many things you could do in the world and how many limits we put on ourselves. The ways that people can make money, there are so many ways to make money that you would never consider. Or the idea of when you go to school, nobody ever explained to me why Ivy League schools were so different or so important. Nobody explained to me that I should apply to Ivy League schools.

McKeever Conwell (15:51):

Let’s forget Ivy League schools, nobody told me I could apply to University of Tokyo or to Oxford. Think about it, what is the thing that holds you back from doing any of that? Nothing, there’s literally nothing stopping you from applying. Or the idea of like, “I want to go spend two years and work in Singapore.” I’m a software engineer, I work anywhere. But I didn’t have the even concept to think on that level until I became an entrepreneur and I’m meeting people who all they do is spend their time thinking about wild and crazy things, doing wild and crazy things, coming from wild and crazy backgrounds. It’s like, “Wow, that’s interesting. You can do that? That’s a thing? You can live there. You’re going to try and change the world about doing what?”

McKeever Conwell (16:39):

And so that was probably the most amazing thing was just being exposed. And so yeah, that’s what it is. It’s really just getting the exposure in life and that’s… Where I’m coming from, growing up in Baltimore, I wasn’t getting that exposure. Those weren’t things that people in my community talked about. And I was supposed to be one of the smartest among us. I went to the best engineering schools, and I was always in the best classes. Even when I went to college, I was an honor student in college. Nobody was talking to me about those type of opportunities, those type of things. Nobody was explaining to me how the world could work. And so yeah, being exposed to things really changes the world. It really changes your world. Same thing for health, being exposed to the different types of things that affect your health and why change your outlook on life.

Ben Grynol (17:28):

How can we as a society start to break down this disparity that exists? Everyone’s working towards idea of let’s create more access to opportunity, let’s create more access to knowledge, let’s break it down so that there aren’t these walls, where you don’t know the opportunity didn’t exist. Until you saw it, you were like, “Oh yeah, me too, I can do that,” but you needed that nugget. So as a society, what can we do to break down these walls and to eliminate the disparity with access and opportunity when it comes to things like health and wellness, when it comes to things like talent, when it comes to things like funding? Is it setting up more examples like you where you become a catalyst for change? But what else can we do as a society to work collectively towards breaking down disparity? Because it’s such a barrier.

McKeever Conwell (18:33):

It’s a huge barrier. And I think the way you get there, I mean, one having folks that you can highlight and put up and let people see that’s possible I think is important, but I think as a society as a whole, it’s really the lack of this information being disseminated into all communities. And really what that means is that this information needs to become part of culture or part of pop culture. If you want to disseminate a prevailing theory, you push it out through pop culture, you push it out through… Or you have a very direct edict to share the information. All of us remember the commercial this is your brain on drugs. That commercial became a pop cultural moment, because you just saw it so much. And it was so in your face.

McKeever Conwell (19:32):

Well, let’s flip that around and say we have some kind of campaign around metabolic health, some kind of campaign around talent, a campaign around different types of jobs, a campaign around how you get a high paying job even if you only have a high school degree, a high school diploma. Where do we have the artists, the athletes, the individuals who when they do things become pop cultural moments to then share what they’re doing. The fact that Serena Williams has Serena Ventures, there’s going to be a lot of her fans, who may not even be sports fans but who are fans of her, namely black women and women in general, who are going to learn about venture capital because she has a venture fund. And so then what does it look like with Serena’s next tournament she wears a outfit that has Serena Ventures on it? Or even better has Serena Ventures on it, and also Seven Seven Six on it, which is her husband’s venture fund. All right.

McKeever Conwell (20:46):

Those kind of things lead to now Serena’s on Good Morning America talking about being a VC. Now people are going to learn what it means to be a venture capitalist, what being a VC is. It may feel unattainable because Serena’s the greatest tennis player of all time. So now it’s like, “Okay, I got to become the greatest tennis player of all time to be in this world.” But at least now you’re talking about the world, you’re talking about what it is. And then what if there’s a campaign talking about here are all these up and coming investors who are talking about asset classes. The idea of learning about asset classes when you’re young are in pop culture. Well, now we start breaking down barriers and meeting people where they’re at.

McKeever Conwell (21:33):

And that’s the biggest thing. What I’ve learned is that people who are exposed to these types of information from their home communities, then take that on and know what their options are in the future. And those who come from communities where we don’t communicate about these things, well, then you never have a shot because you never know it exists. And so how do we get all these different communities sharing this information? You got to meet them where they are.

Ben Grynol (22:02):

I love that. And you highlighted this example earlier about the idea of spreading education and we’ll call it education and attention importance with things like health metrics. So understanding what your blood pressure is. And what’s happening in Baltimore right now, and I don’t know if it’s happening in… I’ll make an assumption, it is happening in other cities, but where people can go into barber shops and they’ll get a discount on their haircut if they get, I think, it was the blood pressure and I can’t remember the other one, but if they get certain health metrics taken. So that becomes the starting point, the foundation of meeting people where they are.

Ben Grynol (22:45):

That is the bridge into these micro-communities where you say, “Cool, let’s actually play devil’s advocate on the this is your brain on drugs.” That’s sort of this macro campaign that we just assume like, “Hey, this works. Everybody sees this, and it resonates with everyone.” But the counter example is saying instead of giving these blanket strategies and saying this is going to work, this is going to resonate with this community whether it’s women who are going through menopause or young black men, very different in the approach of how you might think about that. And so that example you gave of how barber shops being integral to the black community are a catalyst for providing the first steps of becoming, of highlighting the importance of health and wellness. It’s such a cool example of meeting people where they are.

McKeever Conwell (23:47):

I think so. For me, when I think about change, change has to go from top-down and bottom-up. I don’t think either one works well in a vacuum. I think you have folks doing the work at both ends helps you get to a point where you get to meet in the middle. And so the idea of you can go into a local barber shop and if you want a discount, you can get a discount on your haircut if you get your blood pressure taken and get your glucose taken. Just so you know. And if they have on the wall here’s healthy levels, here’s dangerous levels, you might find out that you might have diabetes because you took your glucose level at the barber shop. That’s wild. Or I think there was a barber shop in Chicago where they were giving young kids discounts if they would read a book out loud while getting their haircut, promoting literacy. Those kind of things are happening in institutions that are integral to a community, because everybody goes to the barber shop, everybody goes to hairstylist.

McKeever Conwell (24:55):

And so something like that’s an easy way to meet people where they are and an unusual place. And so I love seeing things like that. And I think we’ll see more creative things like that in the future. I think we need to reimagine how our communities interact with the products around us, especially the products that promote education and health. It can’t just be in your doctor’s office and it can’t just be at school, because we already know that’s not getting us where we need to be. There’s already a disconnect, so what are the gaps where we can fill in? And there are so many startups making so many products and so many tools. There are so many of these box kits that you can get in the mail where it’s like, “Take a drop of your blood or take a urine sample and mail it in, and we’ll send you back results.” Before the only way you could ever get this from your doctor.

McKeever Conwell (25:52):

Imagine if you come into your barber shop and they got five things you can do, check your colon, check your mineral levels and vitamin levels, check your glucose and your A1C, check your blood pressure, get that all done in one time. Now you’re talking about barber shops becoming health and wellness centers. You got to tell kids like, “Hey, if you want to go to the movie theaters, if you want a discount to the movie, go take these five health checks.” That’s interesting. I remember reading an article about in Germany you could pay to get on the train or they have machines where I think if you did so many jumping jacks or so many pushups, you get a free ride. Imagine how many people will be getting free rides in New York. It’s like, “Hey, do 10 squats and you get a free ticket.” There’d be a lot of people doing a lot of squats every day. Just promoting healthy living without even thinking about it, those kind of things can be powerful.

Ben Grynol (27:02):

Yeah. It’s the idea of using behavioral economics where possible, but also to change habits, to make behavior change over time. But it’s also this idea of you, everything you are doing, you are conduit of trust. You provide an element of trust that people go, “Yeah, I’m going to listen to that.” You’re a model, and I think the same thing goes with the barber shop. So let’s use the, like you said, doctor’s office and schools. Maybe schools a little bit more because if you’re in school and you… Let’s make some assumptions, somebody’s in school, there’s a teacher that they look up to that is truly influential in their life. And they see that person as a role model, they see that person on a daily basis. That is a different relationship than maybe a health practitioner that’s like you see that person once a year for five to 10 minutes. The relationships can be so different, so the level of trust.

Ben Grynol (28:06):

But the idea with the barber shops, whether it’s reading a book, whether it’s checking glucose levels and taking blood pressure, and then everything you are doing too with entrepreneurs and funding, it’s this element of being the conduit of trust. And I think sometimes there’s a misconception in approach that people say, “Great, we’re going to go educate ‘people’. We’re going to go educate people in general. And the way we’re going to reach people, anyone in society, is we’re going to come up with a bunch of material and we’re just going to push it out through assume just using digital platforms. For now, we’re just going to push it out and it’s going to be the silver bullet. There you go, here’s the material.” And the problem is that it’s not that effective because let’s take different groups of people. So we’re trying to educate people in an older demographic, well, pushing out content through digital channels might not reach those people because they’re not spending a ton of time. Regardless of breaking down different segmentation, just saying people in older demographics might not use technology as much you might not be reaching them.

Ben Grynol (29:14):

The same thing goes once you start to segment into different communities, and that’s why the barber shop idea or using these pillars as conduit of trust to reach people where they are, to meet them where they are, is such an interesting model to think about how community can be so impactful in helping to spread a message, whether it has to do with being a founder or wanting to be an entrepreneur or understanding, as you mentioned with Serena, understanding that there’s this world called venture capital and I can access it too. There’s some 13-year-old girl that looks up to Serena right now and is like, “What? I’ve never heard of this, what?” And it changes the trajectory of her life. That is very interesting to think how we can use community to make meaningful change over time.

McKeever Conwell (30:02):

Absolutely. And I think that’s the big thing. And I think that’s the advantage that startups have, is the ability to be part of the re-imagining of how we share this information with communities, how we help communities, how we impact communities. Because the startups, literally what startups do is they break rules. Things you used to only do in your doctor’s office, you can now get in a mail order kit. That’s insane. The idea of you used to have to prick your thumb to get blood to check your glucose levels, you now can put a device on your arm that’s just constantly checking it. And then you can put a data layer on top of it to give you real analysis of that. And as that gets smarter over time, you’re going to start to be able to check all these different things that are happening in your body.

McKeever Conwell (30:52):

There exists a world where you’re going to be able to watch one of these smart device watches on your arm, and you’re constantly going to be able to check where your body is and how your body responds to the environment around you. The idea you be able to tell the difference of how your body responds when you’re at home versus when you’re in your office will be incredible. We’ve heard stories of people being in offices where there’s mold or asbestos and not knowing for years. What if you had a device in your arm that was like, “Every time I come to work, my blood pressure gets elevated. Every time I get to work, I got these things going off in my body that don’t make sense.” That’s the kind of level of information we’ve never had before. And Levels as being part of that wave, and that’s why I’m so excited for what you’re building.

Ben Grynol (31:38):

Yeah. It’s the same idea we use often. Imagine you had to go to the back of your car, you go to the back quarter panel, you’re like, “I’m just going to have a look inside to see how much gas is in the tank.” Nevermind all the other sensors in your dashboard that’s like, oh man, the engine failure, the parking brakes on. We have sensors, our vehicles, all of these things, all these devices that we’re around at all times are giving us constant feedback. But our bodies, it’s just sort of this black box of anonymous stuff happening in there. No one really knows. It’s like, “Am I okay? Well, I went to the doctor and got my knee hit with that little knee hammer, and I’m okay, that’s what I was told.” Just ended up being totally hyperbolic about it. But the idea that we don’t really know what’s going on at all times is wild to think.

Ben Grynol (32:33):

One of the things to dig into is with access one of the challenges that any new category or new piece of technology has is access from a price point. So when DVD players came out, when flat TVs came out, they were whatever it was, 10 grand, 20 grand, just an absurd amount of money. And right now we’re sitting in this place where Levels is inaccessible to many people because of the price point, not just Levels, sorry, CGM as a piece of hardware, it’s incredibly expensive. $199 a month for CGMs is expensive. The goal is to help people understand how food affects their health and to give them that level of insight. But when price point becomes the barrier and then you start to break it down to different communities, where within the US, the black community is the community that’s affected the most by metabolic syndrome. And so you go, “Wow,” you start to have a larger gap because of things like average disposable income. And again, it gets back to this idea of disparity.

Ben Grynol (33:49):

So what are some things that we, again, back to society and as a company, what are some things that we can do to start on that path of education in addition to things that are already going on organically like the barber shop initiatives? How can we provide the level of education, provide the level of insight, start to provide more access so that we can achieve our mission? Which is helping people to get healthier, helping people to make meaningful behavior change. It doesn’t have to do with, “Oh great, we have a whole bunch of people using CGM,” that’s not the goal, it’s so people can go like, “Man, Skittles? What? I’m not eating that again, that’s insane.” Because they saw some data or they read an article or whatever it was. But that’s our goal. Not to dunk on Skittles, but we kind of have to. See, total digression. Skittles is the worst “food” if you want to call it that in our entire data set as far as metabolic response on average. So, anyway.

McKeever Conwell (34:51):

Interesting. What I would say is part of that is time. As companies start off, they very much start off with a premium product and work your way down. As you’re solving for whether or not the product work, how well it work, you’re also solving for materials, and over time those materials get cheaper. It’s how Tesla goes from the Roadster to the Model 3. It takes time to do that. The other thing though is in the meantime, is working with community organizations that have the means to subsidize some of this. Every city and every individual community has their go-to philanthropy organizations that care very deeply about things in the city. And those things are typically around health, education, and wealth creation or job creation. Those are four pillars you can find a nonprofit in every single city across the country that they care about.

McKeever Conwell (35:51):

And it’s partnering with those organizations to subsidize or doing campaign with community organizations like the Urban League or the NAACP or with even large meetups, let’s say, lesbians who tech. Being able to be part of these organizations where you sponsor or the organizations subsidize these products for members of their community, and especially as we move into an era of community-driven marketing, we’re seeing so many of these startups, especially in the Web3 space where everything’s community driven. It’s all about the community. Well, then how do you help your community? Or maybe it’s partnering with the Dow, where there’s some community based Dow out there where for every member of the Dow, they’ll also get one of these devices. This is a health-minded Dow. One of the things we’re going to do for everybody who participates up to a certain level, you will get one of these devices to help you better understand your own… Things like that, creative things like that become interesting.

McKeever Conwell (36:58):

You start your own program like, “Hey, if you’re a barber shop or if you are a hairstylist, we will give you X amount of these devices to give out every month as a way to, almost like the TOMS model, for every two or three devices we sell, we’re going to give one to a community to use for one of these community based projects.” Things like that, come up with creative ideas and solutions, and really probably having a small think tank like, “Hey, let’s get 10 smart people in the room or in a Zoom, and let’s just talk through creative things of how we could do.” Or do what the government does sometimes, get a couple writers. Get a room of four writers or five writers, write up just stories of how you think communities could use this. Become as creative as you want to be. Just think of the kind of ideas and thoughts and stories you would come up with.

McKeever Conwell (37:52):

This is the kind of thing the governments use sometimes when they’re trying to figure out what are ways that other governments might plot against us. They’ll get a bunch of writers. They have writers come up with stories because they’re going to come up with the wildest, most craziest, off the wall things. But that’s where you get some really gems of like, “Oh, that is a blind spot we had,” or “That is security risk we had.” Well, let’s flip that on its head, how can we use the same kind of ideas to support communities, to grow communities? It’s just all about being creative. It’s all about being different. It’s all about meeting communities where they are and where are the pockets of money in these communities that can support products, even when they’re out of their financial reach.

Ben Grynol (38:35):

I love the way you’re framing it too, the idea of working with, I think that’s a big challenge as sometimes the intent is there, so people have great intent and they’ll say, “Cool, it doesn’t matter, we’re going to work with whatever community.” Let’s use was the lesbians in tech, that was one of the examples you gave. We want to do whatever it is, and then people start to ideate. And they come up with this grand plan and they’re like, “The big reveal, here it is.” But they failed to work with the community to design it from the ground up. And so they missed the lens on exactly what you’re saying. Without talking to you bringing up something like the barber shop initiative, the naive thing to do is to go behind closed doors and start ideating with a bunch of writers, and then you present this plan and it’s like, “Oh man, if you tweak it this way, flip it on its head, here’s a different approach.” It’s like you miss that step.

Ben Grynol (39:37):

There are so many ways that… Let’s riff on the barber shop idea as an example, how can tech companies work together? Well, again, totally riffing on it, Levels partners with Squire because Squire already has the infrastructure in the barber shops. They’ve got the level of trust, they’ve got the buy-in, and then you can do the… Maybe it’s not the CGM model where it’s buy one, get one, but you break it down a further level and say, “What is accessible?” Well, doing finger pricks like the same way that barber shops are currently doing. It’s a very interesting model to say these are micro steps that we’re taking to create more visibility into this mission, this education.

McKeever Conwell (40:18):

Absolutely. And the way you framed it, what if Levels partnered with Squire? That could be incredible. I’m not saying that’s something that has to happen or we’re saying it’s going to happen or anything, but the idea of you take a company that’s so community based and connect it with a company that’s health based, that have becomes a really powerful tool for changing lives essentially. And there’s probably hundreds of other potential partnerships or things that could happen where just introducing people to metabolic health. And then taking the next step of like, “Okay, now you’ve been introduced to it, here’s how you can improve it, here’s how you can monitor it. Oh, here’s a device that you could use that could be significantly impactful in monitoring it.” That becomes really powerful.

Ben Grynol (41:15):

Let’s talk about this last aspect that, again, it comes down to there’s disparity, but there’s also ways of creating more access and opportunity from a talent perspective. What can we do? What can companies do in general to create more opportunities for underrepresented communities?

McKeever Conwell (41:44):

Be more intentional and deliberate by allowing these communities access to open jobs. Open jobs and then also resources on how they can be trained or get to the point where they could do those jobs. You don’t need to spend four years in college to work in the HR department. You don’t need to spend four years in college to be a social media expert. You don’t need to spend four years in college to be a compliance expert. You don’t need to spend four years in college to be a software engineer, that’s what you’ve learned from all the boot camps. Imagine if you take the… Because in every city they have these organizations that help train up those in the community with different hard skills and soft skills. What if you work with those communities, like say, “Hey, we have a need for these type of engineers or these type of positions. Here’s some resources. We would love you to add this to your coursework.”

McKeever Conwell (42:51):

Be more hands off as an organization, as a company, because you still got to grow, you got to do what you do. Allow people from different means and different economic backgrounds to now have the opportunity to gain a skill and get a job at a pre-IPO company. Getting a job at a pre-IPO company literally helps families create generational wealth. But typically the only way you learn about those types of jobs is if you’re already in the circles or you’ve already worked at one of these companies before or you have a friend who works in one of these companies. We have companies in our portfolio where their first hires of color came from my personal network. Well, the only reason those individuals got a chance to even know to apply to those companies is because I told them to. These companies just putting out their job boards, which typically go through their investor network or their social media network, never gets to the communities that I come from. Because the communities I come from, going back to what we talked about earlier, don’t socialize the idea of working at these companies.

McKeever Conwell (44:02):

We hear Facebook and Google. We don’t hear about Level Health or Main Street or Rebundle or any of the companies in our portfolio that are doing incredible work that I know plenty of people who are more than qualified to work at, but they just have their corporate day jobs or they don’t have access or the potential to own stock or own equity in the businesses they’re working for. So all they have is their 401k. Being an employee at Levels pre-IPO, you’re going to get some stock options along with a great salary, along with post-IPO you get to say, “Hey, I was one of the first X amount employees at this company. I watched it grow from a hundred employees to a thousand employees, and I’m happy to help another company get there.” That puts you in a completely different stratosphere as you go and progress in your career. And so one is making sure that those opportunities are shared far more broadly, whether it’s through folks like me or having even liaisons whose job that’s just what their job is to do.

McKeever Conwell (45:06):

And then also sharing resources with those community activists and evangelist and educators to say, “Hey, share these resources with your communities, help them learn these skills. This is the next wave. We’re not going to have all the construction jobs and administrative jobs going forward. And even if you going to have administrative jobs, what an executive administrator was 10 years ago, looks vastly different today. Here are the things and skills they need to know.” It’s not about knowing Excel, they need to know Salesforce. They need to know Workday. Now you need to work on PeopleSoft. Let’s help the community get there.

Ben Grynol (45:52):

Yeah. I think it’s a matter of the nod. Sometimes people just need the reassurance to be like, “Yeah, you can do this too.” As you said, it’s like people know of, they know of Facebook or know of Google or know of… If somebody’s into tech, they might know of Main Street. They might know of these companies that are earlier and not as prominent. But they need the nod to be like, “Yeah, you can do this too.” Is there anything stopping you? Go apply. Kind of like you got the nod from your friend that was like it was a nod in the sense of, “Yeah, do it. Just do it. There’s literally nothing stopping you.” And you’re like, as soon as you ask yourself, you’re like, “I guess, yeah, there really isn’t anything stopping me.” So it’s the nod and the reassurance that gives people the nudge in the right direction.

Ben Grynol (46:45):

And it’s one of those things that with that cue, that starts to spread because, as you said, somebody goes and they work at a company that they go from they’re in the first 20 employees and the company goes to of 500 and they saw all of these different growth paths. And then they can go and they can help other people. And they become the model to help other people learn and say, “Yeah, you can do it too.” It’s such a important foundation that we can’t miss. The other important thing that’s happening from a societal perspective is the outlook on remote work. Somebody can be outside the valley, but let’s drill down even further, so there’s all of these different tiers. So we’ve got the tier one cities like the New Yorks and the, we’ll call it the bay area, we’ve got all that maybe lean into tech a little bit more. And then we start to get Buffalo and Baltimore and Philly, we get all of these other cities and you can drill down one more layer. What’s stopping somebody in East St. Louis from being a knowledge worker? Literally zero.

Ben Grynol (47:52):

But the challenge becomes the nod. The challenge becomes they need, and the reason I use East St. Louis is one of my friends is from there originally, and he lives in Atlanta now, but when he goes back, he’s kind of the guy that everyone’s like, “Well, I can’t be that guy.” And he tells all his friends and he’s like, “There’s no reason you can’t, there’s literally no reason you can’t. Just because I don’t live here anymore doesn’t mean I’m any different. We all grew up together.” And so he’s trying to spread that message to his friends that you can do anything you want. And now removing geography as a constraint makes such an impact, and it’s a matter of spreading a message within communities from the ground up so that it can get further and wider.

McKeever Conwell (48:44):

Yeah. It completely changes the paradigms and things, especially it used to be, “Hey, I have access to the opportunities within hour drive of my house.” Anything beyond that, I can’t do. So now as remote work becomes more prominent, now I have access to any job in the country that I can do from my home or I can do from a virtual office. That completely democratizes access for work and the type of work. It used to be, yes, if you’re a startup, we want you to start your company in San Francisco because this is where the concentration of talent is. This is where concentration of money is. This is where concentration of talent is. It’s no longer true. This is where concentration of money is, but talent can be dispersed. And you can find the best talent anywhere. I find an amazing coder at Idaho, he can code all night long from Idaho.

McKeever Conwell (49:43):

I don’t care as long as he’s getting done the work we need done. And then we have the ability to get on a Zoom call and be able to interact. And then maybe once a quarter will fly him out to the office and so we can actually have some face time and grow as a team. That changes the idea of talent. That also changes the idea for startups and companies where they start, not having to move. If you start in your local community but you realize the talent that you’re looking for isn’t local, if you have a hard time getting people to move to you, you no longer have to pick up and move to where the talent is. You can be like, “Okay, look, if you don’t want to live where we are in East St. Louis, that’s okay. You can stay wherever it is that you are, and we can still get this work done.” That’s something that we weren’t able to do before and now we’re able to do it in mass. So I’m excited for the future.

Ben Grynol (50:35):

You got a new painting back there since last time we talked.

McKeever Conwell (50:44):

I do.

Ben Grynol (50:44):

I think it’s nice.

McKeever Conwell (50:47):

It’s from a local Baltimore artist.

Ben Grynol (50:49):

Nice, very cool, very cool.

McKeever Conwell (50:51):

Everything Baltimore around here.

Ben Grynol (50:53):

Yeah, dude.