Creating engagement in a world of ever changing attention (Ali Spagnola & Ben Grynol)

Levels Head of Growth, Ben Grynol, sat down with long-time Levels friend and content creator, Ali Spagnola, to discuss how she strikes a balance with her content in order to serve the ever-changing audiences and algorithms of social media.

Find a like-minded community

Ali said that while she didn’t think moving to LA would enrich her career, it absolutely did because she was soon surrounded by other people in the creative field.

I ended up getting a manager here. I thought even my once a month trips, I could consolidate all the work that I would do the whole month in that a couple of days and that yeah, that was wrong. I got here and realized that yeah, it does make a big difference being just in this community and around other people doing what you do. In Pittsburgh even, my voice coach is like, “Okay, you haven’t talked to anyone since I saw you a week ago. Can you just start reading your mail to your cat or something because you need to interact?” I started taking improv classes and things like that. But really, it was a big difference to just be surrounded by people in the same field and realizing that this was a real path.

Learn how you recharge

Ironically, Ali said that she’s outgoing online but reserved in real life.

I do get drained by social things. Even though I love doing it, there’s a limit. And then I need to go recharge by being alone. So, yeah, it’s interesting. People are surprised to hear that I consider myself an introvert. But I think a lot of YouTubers in general are. It takes a special kind of weirdo to want to be in your room with a camera by yourself and make something.

Find the content “sweet spot”

When deciding what content to create, Ali balances three areas, including personal interest and her audience.

I feel like you’ve named the triangle where there’s three points, and I need to balance them all, polarity, self-serving, and serving my audience-slash-the-algorithm. And I need to be able to strike a balance, if it’s not going to just intrinsically, passionately motivate me to complete, then I won’t do it. But also, if I can’t think of a thumbnail and a title for that to be super clickable on YouTube, I won’t do it. So, it really is finding that thing that will work for my audience, but also that I’m super stoked to do.

Tailor content to each platform

When content is created for one platform and posted to another, the audience can immediately recognize that it doesn’t belong.

If I can’t grip someone in the first three seconds of TikTok, then it’s not a good TikTok or I need to rearrange the way the story is told or put some sort of teaser there to make them stick around to the end. for each platform, even if I’m reformatting something from YouTube for TikTok, you have to think about what the language is there and then speak TikTok. If something was made not for TikTok and there wasn’t that thought put into it, it’s immediately clear just on intuition level and people will scroll away.

Experimenting with fitness

Ali creates lots of fitness content where she conducts biohacking experiments, often using Levels.

For my fitness channel, things are a little different. The way I set up what I’m going to make is what am I interested in? What do I want to experiment with? That channel came about because I was already doing these things, these biohacks on myself. And I was like, I could turn a camera on and hopefully, someone would find it interesting. Luckily, some people have. I was curious, just in general just having that kind of load on Halloween night, what does it do to you. And then, saw when I was ordering on Amazon, because of course I’m not going to leave my house. I’m just like, “I’m going to stay here and keep working, have some Reese’s cups delivered,” and saw the keto cups. And I was like, “Huh, can’t wait to show everyone how stupid these are.” And then I just get a spike from them to purchase. And then, the video was born. And then I was completely wrong.

Don’t engage with trolls

Trolls are everywhere, and Ali has found that engaging with them is always a losing battle.

Ignoring the trolls is much easier than ignoring the nice people, of course. But there is that drive to want to be like, no, here’s why defend yourself or tell them they’re wrong, or, yeah, it really does feel like defense every time I want to respond to a mean comment. It’s like, “Well, okay, but my hair was a mess because X,” whatever. But then, you do that, and then they come back with something even more absurd. And now you’re in a battle and you’re never going to win. You’re never going to keep responding to the point where you’ve shown them that they’re not a nice person and they should start being nice. Like you said, there’s no battle to be won.

Sleep and metabolic health

Ali is considering pulling an all-nighter in order to show her followers the metabolic results.

I’ve wanted to for a while a video on sleep and how it affects your metabolic health. But just sitting in front of a camera saying, “Hey, sleep makes a big difference. You should get as well rested as I am today,” is not as illustrative as me not sleeping for a whole night and seeing really how wacky that graph gets on Levels. And that’s one that’s been in the bank for a while that I have yet to pull the trigger on because I do not want to pull an all-nighter. At this point, I cannot handle it because I know what it’s like to be well rested and how effective I am and how my body works so much better.

Function at your highest level

Some people assume they can get away with poor sleep or a poor diet. But the truth is that they are holding themselves back from optimal performance.

I want to talk to people that are continually getting four hours and think they’re functioning fine. Example is Christine, who’s in a lot of my videos. This is her gym, too. When I first met her, she was getting four or five hours a night and she’s like, “Yeah, that’s just how I function. I’m pretty good at not getting a lot of sleep and I feel fine.” And I’m like, “You don’t realize that your baseline is garbage.” And she now sleeps seven, eight hours a night and has made that change and it is really effective. But living at lower levels, I think people think that they’re functioning at their highest level and they’re not.

Unpack your meal choices

Ali has made some helpful discoveries while using Levels, such as the fact that oatmeal was not serving her well.

It seems like the potential is incredible. And just from a human perspective, I thought I was eating the right thing by having oatmeal every day. And if we can unlock more of these things, saying, that’s actually a poor choice. And it could be something equal and just as delicious, but be sending me on the right path. Because now that information is out there, then that seems fantastic to me. I would love to be able to optimize in that way because I’m getting all of this information in real time…for years, I was I guess spiking to basically diabetic levels because it seems that I even have some sort of sensitivity to oats that it was that bad. And I had no idea. And I didn’t feel that my physical awareness was not attuned enough. And I did need that immediate graph feedback for me to realize that, “Oh, this is not serving me.” And there are better things specifically for me that will work.

Ali Spagnola:

There are three points and I need to balance them all: polarity, self-serving and serving my audience/the algorithm. And I need to be able to strike a balance. I mean, if it’s not going to just intrinsically, passionately motivated me to complete, then I won’t do it. But also, if I can’t think of a thumbnail and a title for that to be super clickable on YouTube, I won’t do it. So, it really is finding that thing that will work for my audience, but also that I’m super stoked to do.

Ben Grynol:

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.

Ben Grynol:

When creating content, you can design for education, you can design for absurdity, if you want to call it that, you can design for concept, all these things that you think might land across different platforms, that being YouTube or TikTok, Instagram, or even Twitter. And for Ali Spagnola, Ali’s very much an astute content creator who is active across all different platforms.

Ben Grynol:

She’s a friend of Levels, and she makes all these different YouTube videos. Some are about metabolic health and Levels and others are about things like her most recent one where she made a bust, a real sculpture of her head out of candy corn. Yes, it sounds absurd. But that’s sort of Ali’s personality when it comes to content creation. She tries to think of things that will be creative and interesting to share with the world.

Ben Grynol:

And so, we sat down. We talked about her process for content creation and what she thinks about when going through this process. We even gone into some of the insights behind her own metabolic health in the way that she thinks about fueling, exercise, sleep, and all of these things that go into maintaining balanced glucose levels. We even gone a little bit into business, juicing, creating companies, why some of the incentives might not be right for certain companies, and what the narration is for what we’ve learned as a society. And so, we sat down, had a very fun conversation. Here’s where we kicked it off.

Ben Grynol:

We got lots of ground to cover, lots and lots of ground to cover. But why don’t we go all the way back? Let’s go back to Pittsburgh. We know Pittsburgh is sort of the starting point. And now, you’re all the way out west.

Ali Spagnola:

Yeah.

Ben Grynol:

Take us there.

Ali Spagnola:

Sure. That’s where I grew up. It’s my hometown. It’s what I thought when there was no better. And I mean, I moved to LA and realize that it’s also awesome here. But yeah, I grew up there. I went to college there. I lived there after college for quite a while. So, it took a minute for me to just go all Hollywood. And actually, when I lived there, I was thinking to myself, I’m going to have a TED Talk that’s about how the world is globalized via the internet and you never have to relocate for your job. You can just create online and it’s awesome. And then I moved here and I was like, “Oh, no, that’s very wrong.” And I have no TED Talk because-

Ben Grynol:

So, what was the process for it? Was it just because of everything you were exposed to growing up where you’re like, I have to go to sort of the heart of it? Is that what led you down that path?

Ali Spagnola:

Right. So, being in LA and growing an online business, I was thinking I didn’t need to. I did because I was increasingly going there maybe once a month to play show. I ended up getting a manager here. I thought even my once a month trips, I could consolidate all the work that I would do the whole month in that a couple of days and that yeah, that was wrong. I got here and realize that yeah, it does make a big difference being just in this community and around other people doing what you do.

Ali Spagnola:

In Pittsburgh even, my voice coach is like, “Okay, you haven’t talked to anyone since I saw you a week ago. Can you just start reading your mail to your cat or something because you need to interact?” I started taking improv classes and things like that. But really, it was a big difference to just be surrounded by people in the same field and realizing that this was a real path.

Ben Grynol:

Yeah, because you’re in one sense in a certain community, you might be an outlier. And then in another community, you’re not necessarily from a talent perspective, middle of the bell curve, but middle of the bell curve as far as interest go. Everybody’s interested in similar things. And so, you’re surrounded by a cluster. And that allows you to be exposed to different conversations, different opportunities.

Ben Grynol:

And there is, in some aspects, there is a sense of need to go to clustered environments or clustered geographies. The irony is that with knowledge work, if you are a developer, let’s say, you can kind of do it anywhere, especially now with this outlook on remote work. So, lots of change, but it’s just so different I think in the world of being a content creator or in some type of talent, role, talent community versus something that’s knowledge work based.

Ali Spagnola:

Interesting. Yeah. And then some people ascribe to the idea that it’s where you find your energy. That’s the way that you should categorize yourself. I recharge by, like you said, focusing on work being alone. And I do get drained by social things. Even though I love doing it, there’s a limit. And then I need to go recharge by being alone. So, yeah, it’s interesting. People are surprised to hear that I consider myself an introvert. But I think a lot of YouTubers in general are. It takes a special kind of weirdo to want to be in your room with a camera by yourself and make something.

Ben Grynol:

Yeah, and the way you put yourself out there in your content is so expressive. So, look at your website. It’s hilarious how you’re like, “I’m writing in third person about myself and I recognize how ridiculous this might sound, but I’m the only one reading it.” Those are all these things where somebody is like, “Oh, Ali is so funny. She’s so outgoing.” But in your mind, you might think of yourself differently. Right?

Ali Spagnola:

Right. Exactly.

Ben Grynol:

When you’re thinking about creating content for the world, because you’re active on so many platforms, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, YouTube, platforms I probably don’t even know about, Facebook.

Ali Spagnola:

Not Pinterest. Man, I’m falling behind.

Ben Grynol:

Oh, you’re falling behind. You got to put your … I discovered your same breakfast every day feed on Instagram.

Ali Spagnola:

Oh, man.

Ben Grynol:

You got to put that on Pinterest. So, when you think about content, because you put out some of the most out there content, like it is insanely creative, not just from the execution perspective, but from the concept, the ideation perspective. Latest one, let’s use the candy corn, that’s what it’s called, the candy corn bust. How do you start to think about that? Is it a matter of starting from the point of hilarity? Or what do you think about when you’re doing that? And then are you designing it for yourself? Are you designing for the audience? Because there are all these different factors and incentives in how you might execute it.

Ali Spagnola:

Yeah, I feel like you’ve named the triangle where there’s three points, and I need to balance them all, polarity, self-serving, and serving my audience slash the algorithm. And I need to be able to strike a balance, if it’s not going to just intrinsically, passionately motivate me to complete, then I won’t do it. But also, if I can’t think of a thumbnail and a title for that to be super clickable on YouTube, I won’t do it. So, it really is finding that thing that will work for my audience, but also that I’m super stoked to do.

Ben Grynol:

If you remove YouTube from the equation and you’re thinking about other platforms, like remove the thumbnail altogether and you’re thinking about doing something for the talk. Sure you have to do something that has some level of insanity or hilarity to get the algorithm going there. But you’re not focused on thumbnail. So, do you think about it differently when creating content for specific platforms as opposed to derivative where you chop it up and still distribute it?

Ali Spagnola:

Right. So, yes, of course. There are different parameters, but they all are the similar kind of, if X doesn’t work, you can’t do it. So, if I can’t grip someone in the first three seconds of TikTok, then it’s not a good TikTok or I need to rearrange the way the story is told or put some sort of teaser there to make them stick around to the end.

Ali Spagnola:

So, yeah, for each platform, even if I’m reformatting something from YouTube for TikTok, you have to think about what the language is there and then speak TikTok. If something was made not for TikTok and there wasn’t that thought put into it, it’s immediately clear just on intuition level and people will scroll away.

Ben Grynol:

Yeah. And you can see it on TikTok, where people create content specifically for some aspects of the algo, where they’re like, “Oh, I’m going for rewatch on this one.” They’re just trying to get points on rewatch. Some people do that. And it’s going to be a totally different piece of content than something that is widely shared. Mind you, something that is widely shared is often will have a high rewatch rate. Something ridiculous for somebody, I laugh because I’ve seen so many of them like they’re looking get their phone and they bike into a parked car and they kind of fall off. It’s like kind of a funny Dumb and Dumber looking accident.

Ben Grynol:

But it’s like, that’s an easy rewatch, because you want to see the person spill off their bike. That is TikTok. And it’s very different in the way the algorithm is going to serve that up to other people versus YouTube, given Shorts are performing differently now, but that just would not perform the same way as far as being a two-minute video on YouTube. People aren’t going to go and discover that or find that the same way. At least not now with the way video works.

Ali Spagnola:

Completely.

Ben Grynol:

So, when you’ve got the creative process, how do you think about execution for ideas? You come up with something absurd like the candy corn thing, is it a good concept like subjectively you’re like, “Man, I think this one’s going to land.” And then you go and do it? Or do you have a pipeline for all these ideas as sort of like a chicken scratch pad where you just sort of keep the ideas and then pick them as needed?

Ali Spagnola:

Yeah, I have a huge Evernote document of half-baked things and stuff that is not really there yet, or things that would require more of a team or figuring out how to lifecast my head. But then sometimes, it’s the 10th hole kind of thing. And I’ve got to do this for Halloween. So, I just go for it, execute. And like this one had come to me … Well, it started out as I know that the idea that candy corn isn’t food. Hey, metabolic health. I was like, “This stuff should not be eaten. But I bet I could make something really cool out of it.”

Ali Spagnola:

And it just sort of moved from there. Oh, I don’t want to see the candy corns. I don’t want to glue them all together. It’ll still say candy corn too much to me. I would like to change it to a different medium. And so, then, it evolved from there, how absurd can I get and course making myself and then seeing myself biting my own ear off in the thumbnail. I was like, “Okay, that works.” Now, I just got to figure out how to lifecast my head into a food safe mold somehow. And then, there are more problem solving happens.

Ben Grynol:

Nice. Yeah, it’s hilarious. I mean, I would guess that the content that is, we’ll call it grabbing content. Like grabbing in the sense of you’re hacking attention with something like the candy corn bust, because it’s so absurd. It’s never heard of it, never thought about anything like that before. But the metabolic health content, you seem to take a different lens, where it’s very much educational. It’s educational for the audience, but also for yourself. Let’s say the keto cup, one that, you just did the peanut butter cup one, is a great example where you’re like, I’m not sure what the outcome is going to be.

Ali Spagnola:

Yeah, I was completely wrong about the outcome, actually. But yeah, for my fitness channel, things are a little different. The way I set up what I’m going to make is what am I interested in? What do I want to experiment with? That channel came about because I was already doing these things, these biohacks on myself. And I was like, I could turn a camera on and hopefully, someone would find it interesting. Luckily, some people have.

Ali Spagnola:

But yeah, I was curious, just in general just having that kind of load on Halloween night, what does it do to you. And then, saw when I was ordering on Amazon, because of course I’m not going to leave my house. I’m just like, “I’m going to stay here and keep working, have some Reese’s cups delivered,” and saw the keto cups. And I was like, “Huh, can’t wait to show everyone how stupid these are.” And then I just get a spike from them to purchase. And then, the video was born. And then I was completely wrong.

Ben Grynol:

Yeah, and those are the important things that are surprising too, because there are just certain things that people should not eat. I mean, this is again, a bit of a rant.

Ali Spagnola:

Yes. It’s a podcast, rant, please.

Ben Grynol:

It’s absurd that certain things are illegal. I’m being so hyperbolic about this and extreme, but certain things should just be illegal. It should just be illegal to have certain amounts of sugar in certain foods. They’re just things that how are people supposed to eat those keto cups that you ate, versus the ones that were 19 cents apiece. Of course, they’re going for the poor choice, and there’s zero nutritional value to those things.

Ben Grynol:

And so, people, when they start using Levels or they start paying attention to their own health in a deeper way, a more focused way, I think the heuristic is deprivation. They’re like, “I have to change my life and deprive myself of all things that I’ve ever enjoyed in my life. This is so difficult.” And when you open up people’s eyes to be like, “No, no, you just have to make the right choices. And you have to know which ones you’re making and why.”

Ben Grynol:

That was a great example of the thing that is readily available and pushed upon us, that being those that certain brand of delicious treat that they might be, those peanut butter cups, those are just a suboptimal choice to the other ones. It’s like you can still make positive choices and you can still balance everything well, but you just have to know what you’re choosing and why. And that’s always the hardest thing as people are trying to adapt what they’ve done because society has pushed certain things or certain beliefs upon us that it’s okay to drink a Coke every day.

Ben Grynol:

It’s like, no, that’s just not okay, ever. Please don’t do that. That’s just not very good for you. And there are other choices. So, it’s the more content that exists in the world that shows people the differences, the better off that everyone will be. It’s all about education.

Ali Spagnola:

Agree. Yeah, removing that misinformation. One of the most remarkable things that I learned was, okay, have your salad with your oil and vinegar before a meal instead of opening with carbs, just the order in which I’m eating things, which from a deprivation standpoint you were talking about is nothing at all. I’m still eating the same thing. But the fact that I reorder it and it makes a difference on my health is incredible. The amount of change I have to make is so small for the amount of difference that it makes on my metabolic health.

Ben Grynol:

Not just the order, but the way in which a person chooses to eat. And I’m laughing because if I choose to eat like a Neanderthal in the morning and I grab a fistful of blueberries, and they just eat them all at once, versus having them with my eggs in the morning and eating some eggs and some blueberries versus grabbing a pile of them and shoving them all in my mouth, I see there’s a very different metabolic response to that, because people aren’t supposed to eat like Neanderthals despite trying the hardest not to.

Ali Spagnola:

You’re going to make paleo community mad.

Ben Grynol:

That in itself, we’re not eating things in large quantities very fast. And it doesn’t mean take tiny morsels and just feed yourself. It’s just, the faster you eat, like if you eat a meal over the course of 20 minutes or half an hour versus six minute I shoved food in my mouth as quick as I could, you’re going to have a different metabolic response. And these are all things that are hard to wrap our minds around. But the more that you do things, like creating content around, hey, look what happens when you do X, Y, and Z, it’s very relatable because it feels fun and it’s not necessarily coming from an academic lens.

Ben Grynol:

It’s like, “Hey, I’m a person, and I’m just trying to live my life making candy corn things.” No, but you’re trying to make it so that it feels what happens when you take a walk after ice cream. Does it help? You should still eat the ice cream. It’s so important as more people around the world become educated about metabolic health.

Ali Spagnola:

Yeah, and you say these things are hard to wrap your head around, but they’re not. Because what you guys are doing, I can see it happening on my body in real time. That’s a part of the reason why I’ve made so many Levels videos is because it’s so easy to tell that story. And you guys make it so easy to show people the difference that it makes. So, it’s getting better. Thanks for making it simple.

Ben Grynol:

When you think about all the people, so all these people are watching your content across different platforms. There’s a sense of engagement. I would guess it people reach out and they’re like, “Great, Ali. I have a question about one, two and three.” How do you manage those that engagement? Because it can be a never-ending firehose of information.

Ben Grynol:

And that in itself makes a person, and I’m speaking on behalf of friends who are content creators that have significant profiles across different platforms where you’re like, oh, you can see firsthand, they’re like, this burns me out when I get too much inbound. But it also is part of the reason you’re making the content is because you want to reach people. So, how do you think about that aspect of engagement in managing that connection with everyone?

Ali Spagnola:

Yeah, there was a point where I had to set some boundaries and not respond to one on one. And the way that I frame it in my own brain, because it is hard. You want to make that connection, then I make work because I want people to feel valued and get something out of it. And then that, if someone emails you personally, that’s a direct example of that. But the way that I sort of allow myself to not get back to it because it is draining and it’s holding me back from growth if I’m spending my time on that, is that yes, I will be growing more if I’m working on something else.

Ali Spagnola:

And if I’m working on something that would be a YouTube video that can reach that person and then thousands of other people, that’s where I should be spending my time. So, like I said, I sort of at one point realized I had to put a hard wall boundary and only make the things that could reach more people versus one email response.

Ben Grynol:

Yeah. And I would imagine, there’s also a point where once you hit a certain profile on certain platforms, it comes with the territory where there are always going to be people that have certain things to say and not all those things are positive, right?

Ali Spagnola:

What?

Ben Grynol:

Yeah. It’s never happened before. So, as soon as you get into that territory, it’s a slippery slope of not wanting to respond, but also wanting to respond. And so, figuring out the way to remove yourself from saying, “I’m not even going to pay attention to any of this stimuli because it can just occupy real estate in your mind for free in perpetuity until you let it go.” That being, again, some friends who might get trolling comments because they’re on YouTube, they’ve just stopped looking at comments are like, “I can’t look at these things because commenting on the way my hair looked that day is not helping me at all to make more videos.”

Ben Grynol:

And instead of being creative, it puts your mind in a different place. So, it’s something that, I think, from a personal standpoint, people have to be conscious of, but also from a company standpoint, you just don’t want to get into the territory of there’s no battle to be won and it’s not a positive place to be.

Ali Spagnola:

Yeah, that’s what I think about all the time. I mean, ignoring the trolls is much easier than ignoring the nice people, of course. But there is that drive to want to be like, no, here’s why defend yourself or tell them they’re wrong, or, yeah, it really does feel like defense every time I want to respond to a mean comment. It’s like, “Well, okay, but my hair was a mess because X,” whatever.

Ali Spagnola:

But then, you do that, and then they come back with something even more absurd. And now you’re in a battle and you’re never going to win. You’re never going to keep responding to the point where you’ve shown them that they’re not a nice person and they should start being nice. Like you said, there’s no battle to be won.

Ben Grynol:

So, when you think about creating new types of content, what are some things on that, like on the Evernote pad, what are some things that you haven’t tried yet that you want to try? Especially from the metabolic health standpoint, what are some things where you’ve seen insights for your yourself and you’re like, “I have to create a video around it.” But sometimes having the concept is half of it, where it’s like, just having the sandwich isn’t good enough. You need it to be the eight-foot sub from Subway.

Ali Spagnola:

Right. I’ve wanted to for a while a video on sleep and how it affects your metabolic health. But just sitting in front of a camera saying, “Hey, sleep makes a big difference. You should get as well rested as I am today,” is not as illustrative as me not sleeping for a whole night and seeing really how wacky that graph gets on Levels. And that’s one that’s been in the bank for a while that I have yet to pull the trigger on because I do not want to pull an all-nighter. At this point, I cannot handle it because I know what it’s like to be well rested and how effective I am and how my body works so much better.

Ben Grynol:

Sleep is such a hard one to because intuitively, people might know, they might know because they’ve read information. And they might see. But when they see that information in the morning, it’s a lot harder to associate until you go to extremes, being fully sleep deprived. Like you pull an all-nighter versus you just got a little bit less sleep. Was there variability because of what people ate? Unless you’re benchmarking it and you run the experiment on yourself, it’s hard for people to truly understand. I mean, myself included, I’ll look and I’ll have more variability in the day or I’ll be sitting a little bit higher.

Ben Grynol:

And it’s like, the mind doesn’t go back to, “Well, here was my sleep,” even if you’re wearing WHOOP and you’re doing all these other things, you know. You’re like, I know that I need to get more or I got to get more sleep so that I sit at more balanced levels.

Ben Grynol:

But until you have those extreme examples, it’s harder to sometimes say, “Holy smokes, that is a drastic impact of how big of a difference it makes.” It’s easy to see with peanut butter cups because that’s relatively, we’ll call it relatively enjoyable. It’s easy to see the technique side by side. The sleep thing is nobody wants to feel terrible for a day, feel like they’ve got a hangover because of lack of sleep. Right?

Ali Spagnola:

Yeah. And I honestly want to talk to the people that aren’t even at your level where they maybe got a little less sleep today, I want to talk to people that are continually getting four hours and think they’re functioning fine. Example is Christine, who’s in a lot of my videos. This is her gym, too. When I first met her, she was getting four or five hours a night and she’s like, “Yeah, that’s just how I function. I’m pretty good at not getting a lot of sleep and I feel fine.”

Ali Spagnola:

And I’m like, “You don’t realize that your baseline is garbage.” And she now sleeps seven, eight hours a night and has made that change and it is really effective. But living at lower levels, I think people think that they’re functioning at their highest level and they’re not.

Ben Grynol:

Yeah, my hand is in the air for the lower amounts of sleep on a regular basis. I’m not saying it as a flex. I’m saying it as a ridiculous thing that I’ve done for way too long and I have to get better at it. But once you start to sleep more than you notice the differences, you say, “Holy, this is what it feels like. This is much more enjoyable state to navigate the world as opposed to being a nauseated zombie that goes around with arms in the air.”

Ben Grynol:

Having that insight is something that I think all wearable companies that are participating in this, we’ll call this frontier, or this forward movement of giving people biometric data that being eat, sleep, that being WHOOP, that being Oura, there is so much insight that people are starting to get and they’re starting to take ownership over their own health because they’ve got feedback to say, wow, this is what happens when I have, let’s use a sleep-related wearable.

Ben Grynol:

“Oh, if I have one drink prior to bed, one drink with dinner, everybody’s going to metabolize things differently. But my sleep quality is drastically different.” And then you can see the next day, your metabolic response is going to be different. So, a lot of these insights are so important for people to get, but you need content to spread awareness.

Ali Spagnola:

Yeah. And it’s interesting, because we should be able to feel these things. But we’re relying somewhat on devices now to tell us what we’re feeling, and then I guess come back to that interoception and then realize, “Oh, wait, I do feel significantly crappier. I shouldn’t have that drink.”

Ben Grynol:

A lot of it is a steady state, too. So, it’s like, if a person, let’s just use, I don’t know what the average person would consume for alcohol. But let’s just say Billy McGee, a person named Billy McGee consumes three glasses of wine throughout a week. And Billy’s oscillating between this feeling of that and sleep and exercise and all these things that go into it and having whatever in his diet. Billy might not have the insight that his baseline of the way he feels is due to all of these inputs, lack of exercise, lack of sleep, three glasses of wine.

Ben Grynol:

And again, it’s not about being prescriptive about do or don’t do this thing. It’s just like, sometimes people’s baseline is so bad compared to what it can be, because they don’t have the mechanism to give them the feedback, that being data, something hard that they can look at and go, “Oh, I get it now. I didn’t do that one thing, I didn’t have three glasses of wine last week,” take it or leave it.

Ben Grynol:

Everyone will metabolize things differently. Everyone has to do what is right for them. But that person doesn’t have that, they start sleeping better. They start seeing metabolic response, they’re like, “Wait, pretty sure I feel better.”

Ben Grynol:

And then you only notice how bad you feel because four weeks later, you have the one glass of wine and you’re like, “Man, I don’t feel very good today. What is going on?” And you’re like, “Oh, this is my body. My body’s telling me to be careful about when I consume certain things, how I consume them, my lifestyle choices, not exercising or being sedentary and just watching, binging Netflix shows all night and eating popcorn. That’s why I feel bad in the morning.” People need that insight or the lens to start to identify these pinpoints and make meaningful changes to their behavior.

Ali Spagnola:

For sure. Yeah, I talk about this on my videos a lot. It’s hidden data. It’s secret, but it’s there the whole time and you guys are unlocking what already exists and what can make a big difference if you just can see it.

Ben Grynol:

When you’re creating these videos that are relatable, let’s use popcorn. I don’t think you’ve done a popcorn one. There’s lots of them.

Ali Spagnola:

For Levels specifically, people make videos about-

Ben Grynol:

No, I’m just making popcorn up right now. But I think you did something popcorn related, not Levels related, but some crazy popcorn stuff. But popcorn is such a common thing for potato chips. People have these things with, especially let’s use popcorn because it seems the healthier alternative to eating potato chips.

Ben Grynol:

People will have that with, “We’ll sit down and we’ll watch Netflix all night. And then we’ll go to bed.” And they’ll have a big bowl of popcorn and they don’t realize how much it impacts the oscillation in their sleep. They wake up and they’re sitting at certain levels. But assume they’re not wearing a CGM where they can see this data.

Ben Grynol:

It’s like, the reason you feel groggy today is because you crushed a whole bowl of popcorn at 9:00 PM last night. Nobody is thinking, and I’m just generalizing. But people in general aren’t thinking, “Wait, am I groggy this morning because of the popcorn?” They think it’s like, “Oh, I didn’t sleep that well. Oh, I’m really stressed or I’m really burnt out.”

Ben Grynol:

And this could be true. These could be factors that are creating this feeling. But the pinpoint to your point is, “Oh, wait, it’s just that popcorn? That’s the thing, that thing I do every night?” That’s where the videos that you’re making that are relatable to people’s average behavior are such good takeaways.

Ali Spagnola:

Oh, yeah. Thank you. I’m glad that you appreciate. Yeah, it has been interesting to kind of go through all of this. And it’s not just Levels. You keep talking about all these other data points that we’re getting. I’m curious about from a Levels standpoint, I know that you’re importing sort of sleep and wake time and giving kind of a sleep report now. If you can talk about it, how does Levels see themselves connecting with this other biometric data moving down the road?

Ben Grynol:

As far as insight related to those other data points?

Ali Spagnola:

Yeah. I mean, because it really is this web of information. It’s not in a chamber by itself that your sleep and your glucose and your DNA perhaps or what your micronutrients were that day or whatever, it’s all connected. So, is there some sort of trajectory for you all to make more connections like that?

Ben Grynol:

Yeah, well, we did a, it was an internal, we’ll call co-internal, it was an internal study, where we were all research participants in, it was a Levels and group thing. It was, again, just an ad hoc thing that each of our teams did, not the entire team, but some members of WHOOP and some members of Levels. And we all wore both devices for 30 days. And then, that gave us a big enough data set to say, what happens when you’ve got certain input criteria, you’ve got enough data to say, is there a correlation between X and Y. We were able to take that data set, do some analysis on it.

Ben Grynol:

And what we could see is, yes, there are very strong correlations between lack of sleep and poor metabolic response the next day. So, the more that we can start to find correlation between the two, it’s not a direct integration that we have right now. But the more that we can understand this from a health and wellness perspective, the better off everyone is in both companies being able to create content around it, being able to educate people, being able to think about what product features do we need to create and how do we need to develop things moving forward so that people can get the most value out of wearable devices.

Ben Grynol:

I mean, wearables are just a massive category. And to go down the rabbit hole of what we call bio-observability is it’s bonkers that your car has all these sensors in it. Your car can tell you when you’re running out of gas or when you need an oil change. It’s not just like, you have to guess, “Is my gas okay? Well, I opened the tank.” If you didn’t have a light, “I opened the tank and it looked full. I think I’ve driven this far.”

Ben Grynol:

That’s basically our body right now is we just don’t have a lot of insight into what’s actually going on. We do these annual checkups with the doctor and maybe they’ll take a blood panel, maybe they’ll check your blood pressure, maybe they’ll do whatever it is, and they’re like, “Looking good, Ali. See you in a year.”

Ben Grynol:

It’s such an absurd thing to think that single point in time is what we extrapolate for our own health and wellness. And so, this concept of bio-observability is something that we’re trying to unlock the black box of the body and say, “Why do we not have sensors that give us constant feedback about our current state?”

Ben Grynol:

If you have that, could you create predictive models of what might happen under certain conditions. If somebody sees certain data over a certain number of days, the probability of outcome X, Y and Z is probably pretty high or low. The more we can unlock this and the more that health tech companies can unlock these insights for people, the better off we all will be as far as health span and lifespan goes.

Ali Spagnola:

Yeah, I mean, it seems like the potential is incredible. And just from a human perspective, I thought I was eating the right thing by having oatmeal every day. And if we can unlock more of these things, saying, that’s actually a poor choice. And it could be something equal and just as delicious, but be sending me on the right path. Because now that information is out there, then that seems fantastic to me. I would love to be able to optimize in that way because I’m getting all of this information in real time.

Ben Grynol:

What was the first big insight that you had when you started using a CGM?

Ali Spagnola:

Yeah, that was I think the second video I made was doing a bunch of tests of things in isolation. That was supposed to be the first video and then I realized, “Whoa, there’s so much happening here. I just need to explain what Levels is and metabolic health is in one video and then test carbs and isolation for a second video.”

Ali Spagnola:

But yeah, that was pretty crazy to me that I was eating oat bran every day, sometimes twice a day, and that’s because I thought I was making the smart choice. It’s lower on the glycemic index. It’s really high in fiber. I mean, I’m not as much of a fan of that as pasta. But the Italian in me had to take a backseat for my health, of course.

Ali Spagnola:

And for years, I was I guess spiking to basically diabetic levels because it seems that I even have some sort of sensitivity to oats that it was that bad. And I had no idea. And I didn’t feel that my physical awareness was not attuned enough. And I did need that immediate graph feedback for me to realize that, “Oh, this is not serving me.” And there are better things specifically for me that will work. And then to realize that oatmeal could be really great for someone else. And the idea of prescribing a diet or universally everyone is just so stupid, and yet, so pervasively done still was that was pretty remarkable for me.

Ben Grynol:

Have you seen major differences as far as even adapting your workout routine? Because you exercise rigorously. And there are certain things that will change where it’s like, “Oh, your metabolic response is just going to be different if you exercise a lot versus not at all on a day. Of course, you’re going to have a different response.

Ben Grynol:

But have there been things where you’ve seen like, okay, I know, I can have this one thing that given your lifestyle choices, that being that exercise and fitness is such a big part of your life. Are there certain things that you’ve seen where you’re like, “I can maintain this relationship with whatever it is, past or without, making major changes, but just going about it in a different way?

Ali Spagnola:

Yeah, I certainly now think about food as fueling before and after around my activity versus just the separate thing throughout the day, they are interconnected. What’s been really cool is high intensity intervals. My goodness, I never want to go back to not seeing that spike, while I’m working out. It is so cool and motivating in a way to gamify intense cardio in the way that you can gamify lifting weights with an actual number that you write down and improve it.

Ali Spagnola:

I never had that with cardio. I mean, I guess you can get better at sprinting or something. But it is really motivating to see that spike and want it to get higher and see how hard you can push yourself and then come at it again, a couple days later when you’ve recovered. I see that if I do get that spike for intervals in earlier on in the day, my body can tolerate things better later, which is surprising because you think you dumped all this glucose in your blood to use it. But that is actually really effective in helping you use it later, too.

Ben Grynol:

Yeah, and there are certain things, too, using wearables, if you have other wearables, too, and you can start to look at the way that your CGM data looks as compared to something that you might see with WHOOP or Oura and you go, “Wow,” you know that your output level, how much you exerted if you’re doing high intensity interval training or just something even running really hard with cardio, you can see what your output was and you can go, “Wow, this is my metabolic response to your liver dumping all the glycogen into your bloodstream so that it can be used as fuel.” It’s a fuel source. So, it’s such an interesting thing to see.

Ben Grynol:

And it’s also counterintuitive in the fact that the heuristic for seeing a spike on CGM data is, oh my goodness, this isn’t good. But it’s completely different when you’re talking about exercise. A lot of people like Gabe Mendoza, who’s active in the Facebook group, Mike Didonato, whom you know they are very adamant about fasted workouts. Everything they do is fasted and they play around a lot with fueling to see what’s their response going to be if they fuel prior to workout versus refueling post workout. And that in itself gives such a different metabolic response.

Ben Grynol:

So, it’s cool to see how different things have different outcomes for different people given all the other factors of diet, sleep, exercise, stress levels, environmental factors go on and on. There are so many compounding factors that affect your metabolic response.

Ali Spagnola:

Yeah, I’m definitely … Well, was in that fasted camp for four years. I refuse to eat before a workout but I would fast, overnight fast not just not eat before working out, but truly want to be fueled only by what was already my body and recently changed, I don’t know, four weeks ago started playing around with fueling before the workout and it’s cool because before Levels, I felt like I was just sort of guessing. I’ll just commit to doing this change for a long time and see if my body responds how I feel, how I look, how my workouts go. But now I can tell right away what that is doing to me on my glucose.

Ben Grynol:

So, what was it that made you change?

Ali Spagnola:

Well, I’ve started focusing more on adding muscle mass versus losing fat. So, I don’t want to be in that catabolic state as much. So, I’m trying to go more anabolic and tell my body, “Hey, pack on muscle right now.” So, I don’t know, it’s been interesting. I certainly have to make some tweaks because I’m seeing a gain of shake before my workout may fuel me well, but also get a spike. So, yeah, it might not be that just drinking a bunch of carbs and protein is the best way to go about it.

Ben Grynol:

Yeah, also playing around with even things like quantity. That’s the counterintuitive thing with you see it a lot with long distance endurance athletes, where-

Ali Spagnola:

They need those gels.

Ben Grynol:

The gels, right, or I can’t remember, there was I think it was actually some comedian in LA and he started juicing. He was on Tom Segura’s podcast, he was talking about it, one of his friends started juicing. And he was juicing for an extended period of time and he went to his doctor after six or nine months and he’s like, “I’m so healthy.” His doctor is like, “Man, you’re prediabetic. You’re A1c is off the charts now.” And it’s just because he had replaced basically all of his food, everything he was doing with juicing three times a day, so he’s just dumping, especially if you’re consuming certain types of juices.

Ben Grynol:

We can classify the category, the proper noun capital J juices as being like, having something that is kale and spinach and lemon classifies as a juice, but it is going to give you a very different response than having something that’s apple, carrot and strawberry or whatever, banana people might put in there. If you have that three times a day, it’s very different than something that you are getting from vegetables versus fruit.

Ali Spagnola:

Yeah, totally. That’s another one on my content list where the title is just using is stupid, and then I show you why.

Ben Grynol:

But that’s an interesting one. Because again, we have been, let’s use the word indoctrinated, a little bit. Marketing is a beautiful thing in marketing is also insanely evil. In some ways when the narration and the storytelling behind what we should do is completely broken, I don’t think people do it out of ill intent. It’s just we hear from somebody we trust, juicing is really good for you. And so, then we go and we start Ali and Ben’s Hipster Juice Company, Inc, and we have no idea what we’re doing is actually there are different ways of approaching it that are going to be more beneficial.

Ben Grynol:

So, then we start putting out all this media and we create all this great content across different platforms about how juicing is the future and how good it is for you. And people just buy into it. So, we’ve got this mismanaged heuristic or this narrative in society that certain things are good for us. That being, take the gels for endurance athletes. They might be okay, but don’t just crush handfuls of them.

Ben Grynol:

Protein shakes, well, they’re doing you a disservice if the second ingredient is, again, bad marketing is organic corn syrup, something where you’re like, “Well, it’s organic and it’s only the second ingredient. And it’s corn. So, corn is a vegetable. It’s got to be healthy.” We don’t know. We don’t know.

Ben Grynol:

And so, it can take people down these really bad paths. And I think juicing is exactly one of those things where Josh tells a story. It was maybe the third episode we did the juice cart is called. And he talks about the first investor pitch that was done. He went to a juice cart outside of this investor building before going to pitch and he had no idea. He was like, it’s healthy. It’s apple, carrot, and I can’t remember what else was in it, apple, carrot or lemon or something.

Ben Grynol:

So, then goes and he scans. And he goes to show the data. And he felt like he was looking at a dream. He was looking at this data trying to show them he was supposed to be this epitome of health and wellness. And he had just given this pitch of how people can manage their own health and wellness better by having data. He’s staring at this thing that says whatever number it did, I think he was over 200. He didn’t know what to do. He just had the health drink.

Ben Grynol:

So, that in itself is such a good example of where we have to be careful, because juicing is great. When you are having certain juices like kale and spinach and whatever it is with, we’ll call it managed fruit in there. But if you have the whole thing that’s mango, banana, strawberry, orange juice, throw an apple in there, throw carrots, that is not going to be very healthy for you to have for 30 days straight, you’re going on a juice cleanse. You’re actually coming out of that cleanse uncleanse.

Ali Spagnola:

Yeah. I can disagree with that, that juicing is good if it’s done correctly. No you should masticate. I don’t know why you want this blender to do the chewing for you. That’s just going to even mess with your response to the food. So, you might as well eat it like we were supposed to. Oh, right, like a Neanderthal, but not that fast.

Ben Grynol:

Hey, there’s nothing wrong with eating like a Neanderthal.

Ali Spagnola:

So, you’re saying that you don’t think it’s malintent that we’ve arrived at this point, this pervasive misinformation? Yeah, how did we get here? I mean, I guess it’s just been a bunch of stumbling accidents, or is it really money driven that people are trying to take advantage of others? I’m just asking your opinion here.

Ben Grynol:

I will quote JM, one of our lovely, lovely teammates that the cereal industry is capitalism gone wrong. That is sort of the outlook on it. There has been a narrative with certain things. It’s easy for us to all agree that Lucky Charms and marketing Lucky Charms to anyone, never mind kids, is not ideal in any sense.

Ben Grynol:

But other things that we think are healthy like juices, or let’s use protein shakes, juices, everything that is in the organic aisle, everything that’s organic, and everything that’s got this story behind it, some of it is just misinformation. And people aren’t spreading that information with ill intent. It’s just that they don’t have the lens through which to say, “Oh, here is why there are better choices for you.” And so, that’s part of it.

Ben Grynol:

The other part is there is an incentive when there’s opportunity. And so, the incentive is capitalism, which is fine. But the incentive is if society wants a certain thing and you have the will and the drive to go and do it, that being juices and they are popularized, you can go start a company. So, people are incentivized to start doing things that they don’t know any different with them. Nobody is going out and starting baby food companies that are just sugar pouches because they’re like, I’m going to pump this baby up full of glucose. I don’t think that’s the intent.

Ben Grynol:

It’s just that we’ve been told that what you do is you feed your baby mashed up apples, that’s what you do. That’s what we’ve done for 50 years. So, keep doing it and just make better packaging. That’s going to be the better outcome. I think that’s where all the incentives come from. People aren’t acting with ill intent. People are acting with what they believe to be a better option.

Ali Spagnola:

Right. And I’m hoping that the true better option is still not deincentivize in some way. There’s no reason that we would not want to tell people the truth for monetary reasons.

Ben Grynol:

That gets into Dr. Lustig’s book Metabolical, big everything, big sugar, big food. There are other things going on behind the scenes.

Ali Spagnola:

You guys keep talking about that one. I definitely need to check it out.

Ben Grynol:

Oh, if you don’t have it, we got to send you a copy.

Ali Spagnola:

Yeah.

Ben Grynol:

You don’t have it yet? We’ve only got hard copies.

Ali Spagnola:

Honestly, I’ll just get the audiobook because I will listen to Dr. Lustig while I’m lifting and probably fasted.

Ben Grynol:

Good. It’s a longer book, but it’s super good. There’s a lot of eye-opening things in it and there are things where he doesn’t like when we call him Dr. Lustig. There are things that it’s hilarious because we’re all … Everyone thinks I’m a conspiracy theorist and it’s just that he’s telling truth about things that people don’t want to hear the truth about, so it’s quite funny.

Ali Spagnola:

Interesting. Do you guys heavily edit? I imagine you’re very hands on.

Ben Grynol:

Very hands on, but the conversations we leave them unedited. The nature of the podcast is a bit nerdy. It’s supposed to feel like Seinfeld in the sense where our company is an ensemble cast, somewhat designed it this way so that your favorite character might be George’s mom, even though she’s a minor character in the story. She’s not one of the four main ones. But you still know who George’s mom is if you watch the show, because George’s mom has been on a bunch of episodes.

Ben Grynol:

And so, we’ve got that were Casey hosts now and again, Sam does, Haney does. We’ve got one coming up with Tom. Miz, too. The way people have got that way is they’ve all come on, they’ve been introduced. And then when I can hand it off and be like, “Oh, I’m not in this one.” And it’s not weird because people have heard Miz three times.

Ali Spagnola:

Oh yeah.

Ben Grynol:

And ironically, it’s been the best recruiting tool because people like, “Oh, I feel like I know the entire team already.” And you’re like, “We didn’t design this. It just has happened.” So, it’s pretty cool.

Ali Spagnola:

Yeah.