The Levels Revolution: How One Startup Made Glucose Monitoring Cool for Healthy People

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Howdy marketer! 

A Stanford-trained surgeon quits her surgical residency, straps a diabetes monitor to her arm despite not having diabetes, and co-founded a company that convinces Silicon Valley executives to do the same. 

It sounds like a weird episode of Black Mirror, but it's the actual origin story of Levels Health.

Dr. Casey Means was four years into her head and neck surgery training when she had a revelation. 

While treating conditions rooted in chronic inflammation - sinusitis, thyroiditis, laryngitis - she realized that medicine was just putting band-aids on bullet wounds. 

So, she left her residency about four years in, focusing instead on preventive care. 

Also, Josh Clemente faced challenges with accessing healthcare tools for non-diabetics. So, in 2019, he teamed up with Casey Means, Andrew Connor, David Flinner, and Sam Corcos to build Levels Health. 

Levels was a complete rejection of how we think about health in America through real-time data and personal insights.

Today's Treasure Trove

• What is Levels?

• Content Marketing Strategy

• The Distribution Machine

• The Bigger Lesson

• Wrap Up

What is Levels?

Levels Health makes software that works with continuous glucose monitors to help people (mostly non-diabetics) understand how their food choices affect their blood sugar levels.

Quick Stats:
Instagram: 221K followers
X: 41.6K followers
YouTube: 315K subscribers
LinkedIn: 23K followers

The smartest thing Levels did was never call it a medical device. While everyone else saw continuous glucose monitors as diabetes management tools, they saw lifestyle accessories for people obsessed with optimization. 

Think about their target customer. These are people who already track their sleep, step count, heart rate, and probably have apps measuring everything from their meditation streaks to their coffee intake. 

They were already primed for another data stream. Levels just had to convince them that glucose was the missing piece.

And they weren't targeting sick people trying to get healthy. They were targeting healthy people trying to get perfect. That has completely different motivations.

Content Marketing Strategy

Before Levels had figured out their software, they started building a waitlist.

They made getting access feel exclusive. By the time they were ready to launch publicly, 40,000+ people were waiting to give them money. That's social proof at scale.

Their early users became evangelists. When someone posts a photo of their Levels sensor, they're signaling that they're the kind of person who optimizes everything, who has access to cutting-edge health tech, who's serious about peak performance. It's social currency.

Levels also focused on education through content. 

Their blog became the go-to resource for metabolic health. Their podcasts featured actual scientists explaining complex concepts in accessible ways. 

This approach solved a fundamental problem: how do you convince healthy people they need to track something they've never thought about? 

You don't start with the product. 

You start with the problem they didn't know they had.

They educated people into awareness of metabolic health, then offered the tool to actually track it.

And the blogs don’t have CTAs at the bottom. 

The goal is purely education. Perhaps the most counterintuitive part of their approach: they actively avoid traditional growth tactics, focusing on retention over acquisition.

Levels runs more like a media company than a traditional startup. Their internal strategy revolves around what they call "editorial" - a dedicated content operation focused purely on metabolic health education.  

The content strategy is deceptively simple: educate first, convert never. 

At least not directly. 

Even to the extent that when members give testimonials that praise Levels directly, the editorial team removes those mentions, to not feel salesy. 

This vision turns traditional marketing metrics upside down. Success isn't measured by how many blog readers convert to customers, but by how many people learn about metabolic health regardless of whether they ever buy anything.

It's a bet that education creates a rising tide that lifts all boats - including their business.

The Distribution Machine

While the editorial team focuses on creation, the growth team handles distribution across multiple channels. 

Each platform serves a different purpose:

• Instagram: Purely metabolic health education content from the blog

• LinkedIn: Company culture content and professional thought leadership

• YouTube: Video versions of written content and member stories

• Twitter: Mix of educational content and company culture

• Pinterest: Recipe content and meal planning guides

The key insight is treating different platforms as either "content channels" or "distribution channels." 

Instagram requires creating new visual content around blog topics. LinkedIn just needs the blog posts distributed with simple captions.

The Bigger Lesson

Levels proves that in certain categories, the best marketing strategy might be no marketing strategy at all. At least not in the traditional sense.

Instead of optimizing for conversions, they optimized for trust. Instead of focusing on features and benefits, they focused on education and understanding. Instead of interrupting people with ads, they invited people into learning.

The result is a business model where customers essentially sell themselves, content creators become advocates without being paid directly, and educational content becomes the primary growth engine.

It's not a strategy every company can replicate. It requires genuine expertise, long-term thinking, and the discipline to avoid short-term revenue tactics. 

But for companies with something genuinely valuable to teach, it might be the most powerful marketing strategy there is.

Wrap Up

Levels’ marketing worked because it wasn't really marketing. It was community building, education, and cultural creation wrapped in a business model. 

For any brand trying to build premium positioning around data, optimization, or wellness, the Levels playbook offers a roadmap. 

But the execution requires genuine commitment to providing value, building trust, and creating experiences worth sharing.

✌️,

Tom from Marketer Gems