LEVELS – Inside the Company

According to our Member Charlette Plinneke, Levels helped her find a better quality of life, discover what foods work best for her, and use CGM data to support her food and lifestyle changes. 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 moni...

When you come into any new job position, it can be hard to go against your years of experience and be open-minded to change. But here’s how to change your (or someone else’s) “no” to “yes” by being open to experimentation, embracing discomfort, and assuming good outcomes. Levels helps you see how food affects your health, empowering you with the tools needed to achieve health goals and improve hea...

At a startup, or any company for that matter, you have the choice to keep the business strategy and culture private… or you can build in public. Building in public inspires an environment of transparency and confidence for investors, employee recruitment, and customers. Levels’ Head of Success Mike DiDonato met with CEO Sam Corcos to discuss the benefits of Levels’ policy of building in public: It...

Burnout looks different for everyone. It can be a universal experience in a startup environment because it’s easy to let your work become your full identity. Levels Head of Operations Michael ‘Miz’ Mizrahi wrote a detailed memo on burnout to help start the discussion around the topic so we can do our best to avoid it. In this episode, Ben Grynol chatted with Miz about what exactly might cause burn...

Levels Head of Growth, Ben Grynol, chatted with Co-Founder and CEO, Sam Corcos, and Head of Operations, Michael 'Miz' Mizrahi, about how we all scale our time at Levels to be effective team members. We achieve this with Executive Assistants (EAs) from a company called, Athena. They dived into how we delegate and outsource tasks to Athena and why they are an important part of our company. 🎙...

In this episode, Sam Corcos & Maz Brumand from Levels join Vinay Hiremath, Co-Founder & CTO of Loom, to discuss the importance of aligning responsibility with authority in leadership roles. They emphasize the need for a performance management culture that holds people accountable for their decisions and actions. The team also talks about the dynamics of influence without authority and how...

In this episode, Sam Corcos, Co-Founder and CEO of Levels, and Zac Henderson, Head of Legal, discuss the importance of collaborative escalation in resolving disagreements effectively. They note that sometimes departments within a company have goals that are somewhat in conflict with each other. It's about finding the middle ground and figuring out what decision needs to be made by someone not...

In this episode, Levels' CEO Sam Corcos, Head of Design Alan McLean, and Head of Mobile Engineering Hui Lu discuss the importance of urgency in startups and organizations. They explain that while urgency is critical to building a successful startup, it's often mistaken for anxiety or panic. They explore the difference between urgency and prioritization, emphasizing the importance of distin...

In this episode, Ben Grynol and Zac Henderson discuss the importance of working with executive assistants (EAs) for effective time management. They emphasize the significance of communication and trust when delegating tasks to an EA. EAs are a leverage point to save time and brain space, and the ability to save time is the most powerful aspect of working with an EA. A good EA should be able to ada...

In this episode, Tom Griffin, Hui Lu, and Josh Clemente discuss the importance of treating people like adults as a cultural value. They define this as trusting employees' judgment and allowing them to navigate their work independently without paternalistic oversight. Trust and transparency build strong relationships, while autonomy allows employees to manage their time and work output. Balanci...

In this episode, Levels Editorial Director, Mike Haney, speaks with Stephanie Nickitas, a former professional tennis player, CrossFit gym owner, and coach, about her journey to achieving optimal health through consistency and nutrition. Stephanie shares her insights on the importance of consistency, mechanics, and intensity in CrossFit, and how focusing on her metabolic health has helped her achie...

In this episode, Josh Clemente, the Founder of Levels, and Sam Corcos, the Co-Founder and CEO of Levels, discuss the concept of leadership, effective decision meetings, and why everyone should exhibit leadership qualities regardless of their title or position in the company. They explore the difference between a leader and someone who shows leadership, and why the distinction between the two can c...

Multitasking is not a productive way to spend a workday. At Levels, we work hard to protect everyone’s time so they can accomplish their goals. Listen as Ben Grynol chats with Sam Corcos and Michael ‘Miz’ Mizrahi about the pitfalls of context-switching at work. They talked about distractions while working remotely and the best ways to prevent context switching, especially in an asynchronous work e...

Company culture is hard to get right. And the further along your company is, the harder it becomes to make any significant changes to the culture. If you want to build a team that can work together well, culture building has to be intentional. In this episode, Tim Kendall, one of our investors and one of the earliest employees of Facebook, and Sam Corcos discuss building company culture, incentive...

Nutritionist Dulce Dagda joins Dr. Lauren Kelley-Chew to discuss the importance of finding the right approach to nutrition and health. Dulce shares her journey into the field and explains how she helps improve the health of the elderly through nutrition and health promotion. Dulce started her podcast and YouTube channel to share her knowledge on fitness, healthy tips, and biohacking with the Spani...

Successful companies need to hire employees who are invested in the long-term outcomes and future of the business, rather than their own short-term gains. But in order to find people you can trust to work toward the company’s best interests, you need to instill a sense of integrity into your company’s culture. In this episode, Ben Grynol and Michael Mizrahi discuss the importance of acting in the...

Writing is a complex process that allows you to explore your thoughts on a deeper level because it calls for a different kind of focus and concentration. In this episode, Sam Corcos chatted with “The Writing Guy” David Perell about the best approaches for when, where, and why to use writing in certain forms of communication. They talked about the mental barriers to writing, especially when it requ...

When you work in multiple startups—especially when you’re in a leadership or CEO role—there’s a lot to learn as you progress through life as a founder on the C-Suite level. Here’s what Julien Smith, co-founder and CEO of Practice, a business management platform for coaches, and Levels CEO Sam Corcos have learned over the years from leading startups, from product intuition to leaning into your core...

When establishing a company from the ground up in a remote-first environment, values and culture serve as the fundamental basis upon which everything else is built. In this episode, Sam Corcos talked with Darren Murph, Head of Remote at GitLab Inc. to discuss their take on building and scaling remote teams. Levels helps you see how food affects your health, empowering you with the tools needed to...

For the majority of her adult life, Mo Jeans didn’t pay attention to her health until she read a book that prompted her to make dietary changes and pay more attention to how the foods she eats affect how she feels. From there, Mo got her certification in functional medicine and became interested in using a CGM to help her monitor her sudden lack of blood sugar stability as she entered perimenopaus...

Burnout is real. But it can often be alleviated by working smarter, not harder. Startups can be very demanding of their employees—so how do you go into an exciting world full of pivots and hard work without burning out or compromising your mental health? Alex Lieberman, Co-Founder and Executive Chairman of Morning Brew, is all about pursuing efficiency and enabling team members to work in the ways...

In the corporate world, there’s a very strict hierarchy of professional services in departments like legal and finance. But at Levels and other startups, things are very different. Head of Legal, Zac Henderson, and Senior Finance Manager Ryley Walker discuss: The differences between corporate vs. startup for professional services The Levels values of short toes and assuming positive intent Being a...

The productivity and email world is obsessed with the “inbox zero” phenomenon, but everyone has their own process for managing emails and prioritizing tasks. Sometimes, it’s due to the vertical or industry a person works in, and other times it’s because companies have different cultures and values they talk about when it comes to approaching work and communications. The Levels team values these 3...

Listen as Levels Member Carl Banks outlines the healthy approach that he takes around food—outlining his new dietary approach from the last few years, using daily CGM data to inform what he eats and what he does, and using that data to help him pay attention and not obsess. Listen as Carl discusses with Mike Haney his background in biophysics, his take on the social structures that deter people fr...

When is it okay to delegate tasks to executive assistants (EAs)? At Levels, all team members have access to a pool of EAs through the company Athena, but it can be difficult to assess whether tasks delegated to EAs are appropriate. In this conversation, CEO Sam Corcos and Head of People Ops Michael ‘Miz’ Mizrahi explore the boundaries of delegating personal tasks, document when it’s not okay to ut...