LEVELS – A Whole New Level

By LevelsHealth & Fitness

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LEVELS – A Whole New Level episodes

October 25, 2021 #34 – Growth experiments & playbooks (Wiz Abdulla & Ben Grynol)
Growth at an early-stage startup involves running series of experiments to learn about a hypothesis. Growth is not based a specific playbook, or a prescriptive plan that people can transfer from one company to the next. Rather, growth experiments are based on an amalgamation of insights from differing areas of a business, and even within the world.

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Wiz Abdulla, an investor in Levels, understands growth experiments at their foundation. Often, he has portfolio companies reach out to him for help about ways in which they can start ramping up growth within their companies.
So, what better way to give people insight about Levels' "book of plays" than to have a conversation about the way that we think about growth experiments.
Levels helps you see how food affects your health, empowering you with the tools needed to achieve health goals and improve healthspan. Levels Members gain access to the Levels app and continuous glucose monitors (CGMs), providing real-time feedback on how diet and lifestyle choices impact your metabolic health.
Look for new shows every month on A Whole New Level, where we have in-depth conversations with thought leaders about metabolic health.
(01:16) - There is no one size fits all growth playbook
(06:32) - The dangers of following a prescriptive playbook
(09:00) - The 3 principles of growth
(13:14) - The 4 pillars of growth at Levels
(20:57) - How to think about growth investments
(24:22) - Acquiring more customers might not be the answer
(26:21) - How can you get creative like Casey Neistat
(32:57) - How the Levels Culture project came about
(38 :49) - Launching the Coke Challenge experiment
(39:49) - Iterating on experiments to unlock new growth
(43:54) - The importance of being data informed vs data driven
Transcripts & Show Notes
1 hr 11 min
October 21, 2021#33 – Inbox zero & time management (Sam Corcos, Casey Means & Ben Grynol)
Inbox zero – it's taken the email world by storm and has been popularized by startups, like Superhuman. But, everyone seems to have their own process for managing emails and prioritizing tasks. Sometimes, this is due to the vertical or industry that a person works within. Other times, it's because entire companies have specific ways of approaching work.

Sign Up to Get Your Free Ultimate Guide to Glucose: ⁠https://levels.link/wnl

For the Levels team, we value three factors deeply when it comes to communication:
Discussing initiatives asynchronously

Documenting projects thoroughly

Closing the loop voraciously
Levels helps you see how food affects your health, empowering you with the tools needed to achieve health goals and improve healthspan. Levels Members gain access to the Levels app and continuous glucose monitors (CGMs), providing real-time feedback on how diet and lifestyle choices impact your metabolic health.
Look for new shows every month on A Whole New Level, where we have in-depth conversations with thought leaders about metabolic health.
(03:26) - Why Sam is a proponent of inbox zero
(04:25) - Reducing anxiety through inbox zero
(06:00) - Transitioning from the medical field to a fast paced startup
(09:12) - Transitioning to a new process for task management
(11:31) - The impact of closing the loop
(13:47) - How to force constraints on what you can accomplish every day
(16:33) - Ben's biggest learnings from calendaring
(20:09) - Working in Threads and a need for reminders
(22:59) -Learning specific skills for inbox management
(25:51) - Superhuman as a tool for flow state
(28:42) - The role of leadership: removing blockers from others
(32:25) - Being clear on who has the ball
(35:38) - Increasing visibility for deadlines in remote teams
(45:00) - Adapting to moving into a leadership role
(57:09) - Recommendations for better communication
Transcripts & Show Notes
1 hr 1 min
October 18, 2021 #32 – Personal Socrates (Marc Champagne & Mike Haney)
Marc Champagne started out his career in the corporate world. After a decade of working in roles across sales, analytics, and product management, he took a leap and started a company – KYO – a journalling app, which ended up reaching nearly 87M people.

Sign Up to Get Your Free Ultimate Guide to Glucose: https://levels⁠.⁠link/wnl

Eventually, the company shut down and Marc was left thinking about what he wanted from his life. After an introspective period of asking himself questions, he decided to become a Mental Fitness Strategist, which led him down the path of becoming a podcaster (Behind the Human), and author (Personal Socrates).
Levels helps you see how food affects your health, empowering you with the tools needed to achieve health goals and improve healthspan. Levels Members gain access to the Levels app and continuous glucose monitors (CGMs), providing real-time feedback on how diet and lifestyle choices impact your metabolic health.
Look for new shows every month on A Whole New Level, where we have in-depth conversations with thought leaders about metabolic health.
(09:06) - If everyone is trained the same, how can you stand out?
(12:47) - Escaping the autopilot of entering higher education
(16:22) - The birth of KYO with a clickable PDF
(20:22) - The emotional toll of sunsetting KYO
(25:19) - Finding a way back
(26:44) - Pausing the loop by one small step at a time
(30:14) - Why write a book when there are so many digital options
(43:58) - Increasing self awareness to avoid negative choices
Transcripts & Show Notes
Marc Champagne – behindthehuman.com
56 min
October 14, 2021 #31 – The future of hardware for continuous glucose monitoring (Josh Clemente & Ben Grynol)
As a company focused on metabolic health and continuous glucose monitoring, it's important for Levels to be on the forefront of technology. For our team, it means that we must understand what's possible – today and in the future. And, there's no one better to talk to about the subject than Josh Clemente – Co-founder of Levels.

Sign Up to Get Your Free Ultimate Guide to Glucose: ⁠https://levels.link/wnl

Josh is a Mechanical Engineer by training, and spent many years at SpaceX putting rockets into the air. He has an innate connection to engineering, manufacturing and technology, so diving deep into conversations about hardware comes naturally.
Levels helps you see how food affects your health, empowering you with the tools needed to achieve health goals and improve healthspan. Levels Members gain access to the Levels app and continuous glucose monitors (CGMs), providing real-time feedback on how diet and lifestyle choices impact your metabolic health.
Look for new shows every month on A Whole New Level, where we have in-depth conversations with thought leaders about metabolic health.
(13:37) - Adding value by layering technology
(16:24) - Adapting a therapeutic device to measure glucose in everyday life
(18:57) - The importance of a device that can handle movement
(20:43) - The potential for measuring multiple factors of metabolic health
(23:43) - Should you measure interstitial or arterial glucose
(27:20) - The rise of Aptamers
(28:36) - The benefits of Aptamers over existing monitoring technology
(32:16) - The downsides of any invasive monitoring device
(49:22) - Building a platform on a noninvasive sensor is kind of like unlimited nuclear fusion
Transcripts & Show Notes
53 min
October 11, 2021 #30 – Who let Colonel Mustard into the mansion? (Dr. Robert Lustig & Dr. Casey Means)
In September of 2021, Dr. Robert Lustig participated in a Book Club with the Levels Community, where he discussed his latest book – Metabolical.
For the session, Dr. Casey Means, Co-founder & Chief Medical Officer of Levels hosted an interview with Dr. Lustig, which was then followed by a Q&A with the Levels Community.

Sign Up to Get Your Free Ultimate Guide to Glucose: ⁠https://levels.link/wnl

Dr. Lustig is an Advisor to Levels, author of six books, including Fat Chance, Hacking of the American Mind, and Metabolical. Additionally, he’s Professor Emeritus of Pediatrics, Division of Endocrinology at the University of California, San Francisco.
You can find more information about Dr. Lustig’s work at robertlustig.com.
Levels helps you see how food affects your health, empowering you with the tools needed to achieve health goals and improve healthspan. Levels Members gain access to the Levels app and continuous glucose monitors (CGMs), providing real-time feedback on how diet and lifestyle choices impact your metabolic health.
Look for new shows every month on A Whole New Level, where we have in-depth conversations with thought leaders about metabolic health.
(00:06) - We teach Clue not systems biology in medical school
(08:24) - Challenging the status quo with science to make progress
(11:53) - Public health crisis are leaving the medical profession damaged
(14:11) - For science to advance new ideas must be allowed to grow
(21:14) - Working upstream vs downstream to solve problems
(26:01) - The system that promotes processed foods has to change
(30:34) - Processed fuel or poison?
Transcripts & Show Notes
34 min
October 07, 2021 #29 – Mental models and heuristics – shortcuts to be more productive (Sam Corcos & Ben Grynol)
Mental models allow us to take shortcuts when makings decisions. The heuristics that create the foundation of mental models can be stacked on top of each other to form new mental models, when solving problems. Some mental models are quick and easy – others are more complex. For Sam Corcos, co-founder and CEO of Levels, it's no surprise that he has many mental models – for pretty much every situation in life and business.

Sign Up to Get Your Free Ultimate Guide to Glucose: https://levels.link/wnl

Levels helps you see how food affects your health, empowering you with the tools needed to achieve health goals and improve healthspan. Levels Members gain access to the Levels app and continuous glucose monitors (CGMs), providing real-time feedback on how diet and lifestyle choices impact your metabolic health.
Look for new shows every month on A Whole New Level, where we have in-depth conversations with thought leaders about metabolic health.
(00:06) - Helping people to build defensibility vs a moat
(03:54) - Mental models for prioritization
(06:48) - Seeing the forest for the trees
(10:22) - The innovators dilemma for successful companies
(16:04) - How much data is too much data
(22:31) - Build your startup like the Mongols built their empire
(25:10) - Killing ideas might be hard but essential
(41:38) - Speed wins in startups
(43:18) - Focusing on input metrics helps provide leading indicators
(45:59) - The difference between one and two way doors
(53:21) - Designing for loud failures
(01:03:13) - Focusing on your core competencies
Transcripts & Show Notes
1 hr 7 min
October 04, 2021 #28 – Ecosystems & platforms – a deep dive into tech (David Rosenthal & Ben Grynol)
When most companies start, they are single-threaded companies. More specifically, companies start with one product or revenue stream and evolve. Amazon is a great example of a company that has built an ecosystem. The company started as an e-commerce site for selling books, and now has a number of inter-related businesses that make up the entire Amazon ecosystem.

Sign Up to Get Your Free Ultimate Guide to Glucose: ⁠https://levels.link/wnl⁠

Netflix is an example of a company that started as a single-threaded company and has, for the most part, remained that way since its inception.
As we build Levels, we often think about the way that our company will evolve – will it be an ecosystem for health, or will we remain focused on monitoring glucose? In this episode, David Rosenthal, (VC and Host of Acquired Podcast), dives deep into what it takes to build an ecosystem around a company.
Levels helps you see how food affects your health, empowering you with the tools needed to achieve health goals and improve healthspan. Levels Members gain access to the Levels app and continuous glucose monitors (CGMs), providing real-time feedback on how diet and lifestyle choices impact your metabolic health.
Look for new shows every month on A Whole New Level, where we have in-depth conversations with thought leaders about metabolic health.
LINKS
Listen to the Acquired Podcast
Join the Acquired Slack Community
David Rosenthal on Twitter
Ben Gilbert on Twitter

(07:31) - Why you can't model the stock market
(12:35) - Why you don't want to be 23andMe
(13:29) - The importance of optionality in marketplaces
(15:34) - The evolution of eBay as an ecosystem
(25:47) - The dangers of platform risk
(36:39) - Can you start out building a platform
(46:54) - To go enterprise or focus on community
(01:05:08) - Letting emergent behavior drive platform direction
Transcripts & Show Notes
1 hr 15 min
September 30, 2021 #27 – Principles of effective communication (Michael Mizrahi & Sam Corcos)
Communication and communication platforms – specifically in a work setting – can lead to increased productivity, or can unfold as a distraction mechanism for urgency. Unfortunately, for most companies, the latter is often true.

Sign Up to Get Your Free Ultimate Guide to Glucose: ⁠https://levels.link/wnl

In a world of constant connection and notifications, the expectation around professional communication is often positioned as "the faster, the better". However, is it the platforms or the way in which teams use specific platforms which encourages and enables this behaviour to take place?
The entire Levels team values deep work and asynchronous communication, and we're constantly trying to get better at it as we scale our team. Sam Corcos, co-founder and CEO of Levels, and Miz (Michael Mizrahi), Head of Operations, spent time thinking about platforms that would encourage a healthy communication cadence, and productive communication etiquette for our team.
Levels helps you see how food affects your health, empowering you with the tools needed to achieve health goals and improve healthspan. Levels Members gain access to the Levels app and continuous glucose monitors (CGMs), providing real-time feedback on how diet and lifestyle choices impact your metabolic health.
Look for new shows every month on A Whole New Level, where we have in-depth conversations with thought leaders about metabolic health.
(03:29) - Modern communication tools are designed to be addictive
(04:06) - Traditional communication tools often lead to burnout
(10:31) - Avoiding a culture of shoulder taps
(10:50) - Not all text based communication is equally asynchronous
(12:28) - Using tools to wean the body off notification dopamine
(13:30) - Communication systems should be needs based
(15:18) - Setting clear expectations for response times
(23:33) - Why we banned Slack
(28:01) - Switching tools in search of a better way
(44:40) - How the future workforce will communicate
Transcripts & Show Notes
49 min
September 27, 2021 #26 – Nutrition & Kids – A parent's perspective (Kelly LeVeque & Ben Grynol)
For parents, feeding kids a balanced diet can feel like an uphill battle. People are surrounded by fast, convenient and highly processed food items, which can make the idea of 'meal time' easier to get through. But, these short-term choices can have long term health implications – especially for children.

Sign Up to Get Your Free Ultimate Guide to Glucose: ⁠https://levels.link/wnl

When kids are provided with the right foundation for the way to think about food and the choices in front of them, it can be easier to start them down the right path at an early age.
Kelly LeVeque – nutritionist, author, podcaster, and an investor in Levels – takes the time to set a healthy foundation for her children. And, by 'controlling the controllable' – what she chooses to expose them to – getting her kids to eat a balanced diet is part of their routine.
For more info about Kelly, her content and her courses, check out: https://kellyleveque.com/
Levels helps you see how food affects your health, empowering you with the tools needed to achieve health goals and improve healthspan. Levels Members gain access to the Levels app and continuous glucose monitors (CGMs), providing real-time feedback on how diet and lifestyle choices impact your metabolic health.
Look for new shows every month on A Whole New Level, where we have in-depth conversations with thought leaders about metabolic health.
(06:51) - Start by controlling what you can
(11:17) - Set boundaries for your children's diet
(13:15) - Don't hold back from adult conversations
(14:30) - Practice delayed gratification
(19:49) - Aim for a well-rounded food day
(25:48) - You can still be a fun mom without sugar
(34:03) - Rethink sandwiches as a staple
(39:31) - Don't fall for marketing tactics
(47:02) - Teach kids what healthy looks and feel like
Transcripts & Show Notes
Watch the Video – https://youtu.be/G-mt2OqjDVE
51 min
September 23, 2021#25 – Understanding predictive markers of metabolic dysfunction (Dr. Sara Gottfried & Dr. Casey Means)
Dr. Sara Gottfried – a pioneer in health, research, and education – has seen more than 25,000 patients over the past two decades. She's a physician scientist, who graduated from Harvard Medical School and MIT, and completed her Residency at the University of California, San Francisco.

Sign Up to Get Your Free Ultimate Guide to Glucose: ⁠https://levels.link/wnl

Dr. Gottfried is the Director of Precision Medicine at The Marcus Institute of Integrative Health, at Thomas Jefferson University, where she specializes in identifying the underlying causes of her patient's conditions to achieve lasting health transformation, not just symptom management.
Dr. Gottfried has published five books, including multiple New York Times bestsellers, such as The Hormone Cure, The Hormone Reset Diet, and Younger. Her latest book has just been published, Women Food and Hormones.

In this episode, Dr. Casey Means, Co-founder and Chief Medical Officer of Levels, and Dr. Gottfried covered a number of topics from her new book.
LINKS
New insights from continuous glucose monitoring into the route to diabetes

Proposed guidelines to evaluate scientific validity and evidence for genotype-based dietary advice

Michael Snyder

Marcus Institute of Integrative Health

Sara Gottfried
Levels helps you see how food affects your health, empowering you with the tools needed to achieve health goals and improve healthspan. Levels Members gain access to the Levels app and continuous glucose monitors (CGMs), providing real-time feedback on how diet and lifestyle choices impact your metabolic health.
Look for new shows every month on A Whole New Level, where we have in-depth conversations with thought leaders about metabolic health.
(04:11) - The vital role of metabolism
(08:15) - Metabolic data should be democratized
(11:12) - Women and the keto diet
(12:50) - Women are considered "too complicated"
(18:38) - Every person needs a unique diet
(22:40) - Diet shouldn't be like politics
(26:53) - The ideal fasting length
(33:22) - The role of testosterone
(40:02) - Physicians should not be gatekeepers to health
(01:02:40) - The relationship between genes and our environment
Transcripts & Show Notes
Watch the Video – https://youtu.be/QZUpJCNOpfY
1 hr 24 min

About LEVELS – A Whole New Level

From the publisher's feed

Levels helps you understand your metabolic health with personalized data, expert guidance, and tools that connect your daily choices to measurable changes in your body. Our goal is to help you make better decisions about food, exercise, sleep, and long-term health.