Experience Strategy Podcast: The Future of Behavior Change: How Suggestic is Transforming Wellness Journeys

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In this episode of The Experience Strategy Podcast, we are thrilled to chat with Victor Chapela, co-founder and CEO of Suggestic, who shared how they are leveraging AI and data to dramatically rethink the intersection of lifestyle journeys and wellness. Tune in to this episode for Victor’s key insights: 

• Focusing on what people can do realistically do vs. what they should do to minimize friction

• Tapping into extrinsic motivation by allowing people to share progress.

• Using AI interfaces like LLMs as a universal UI to collect data, model behaviors, and provide personalized guidance. 

• The power of making something extremely difficult much easier to drive adoption and impact. 

This conversation exemplifies the importance of centering journeys on an individual’s unique goals and solutions, and provides a valuable model for using AI responsibly to enable personalized behavior change - leaving us energized about the implications for experience strategy across different industries.

Voiceover: [00:00:00] Welcome to the experience strategy podcast, where we talk to customers and experts about how to create products and services that feel like time well spent. And now here are your hosts experience nerds, Dave Norton and Aransas Savas. 

Aransas: Welcome to the experience strategy podcast. I'm Aransas Savas

Dave: And I'm Dave Norton.

Aransas: And Dave, today we are joined by the co founder and CEO of It's our friend, Victor Ciappella, who we've already had some really wonderful conversations with about where our work intersects. And we're so excited to introduce you to Victor and his work today because it really excites us. The way this team is rethinking the intersection of journeys and wellness with A lot of [00:01:00] really powerful data and intention.

So Victor, thank you so much for being here with us today. 

Victor: Thank you so much our nices and, and nice. And thank you for having me. 

Aransas: Tell us a little about Suggestic just to start for our audience. 

Victor: Well, Suggestic really was born out of this idea of how could we match AI and human. cognition in relation to food.

So it was, that was like the inception. And then it was kind of like a figuring out how we could. Create the most impact. So we tried first through directly with the health care sector and we found that food was not a very good place to that that didn't match very well with health care. There's no real business model for nutrition apart from nutritionists or dietitians.

Um, so we went direct to consumer for a while. And then what we [00:02:00] realize is that the best place where we could have the most value is by creating a platform that could then service all these different brands and all these different companies in delivering their own health and wellness offerings. So that's what we've been doing.

And I would say that what started off as an AI for the biology of what we should change, like which food we should eat, which things were best for each person's body has really over the course of years has completely migrated to a lifestyle. What is easiest for each person to do? And what we, I think that if there's one in insight that we got after all this time is that.

Really, what defines health optimization is not what you should be doing or eating when it comes to lifestyle, it's what you can do [00:03:00] 

Aransas: and eat.

Victor: And if you can really reframe the way people interact with their life, I think that that is fundamentally what allows people to thrive. Improve their behavior or improve their habits and it comes down to matching their existing lifestyle.

So that's what the transition has been today. We, we have like a full platform to support what we call health journeys, which is everything from personalizing that guiding people through the journey and giving them all the convenience necessary to actually achieve those end results. 

Aransas: I think it's such a smart shift from a behavior change standpoint.

And that's when I wrote down your two from, I wrote it down from biohacking to behavior change, because what you've essentially done is taken a very behavioral approach to it, which Dave, I I'm curious about what you were just going to say, but [00:04:00] what I hear in this is. Very much aligned with the shift we are recommending to so many of our clients, which is to go from a milestone based customer journey to a modes based customer journey, because what's a mode, it's a mindset and a set of behaviors.

Again, what are people doing? What are they authentically willing and able and, and what do they authentically desire to do versus what do we think they should do? Because it's good for you, which inevitably creates.

Dave: You know, I was going to say, Victor, your presentation in the collaboratives was so fascinating to me.

That was one of the best presentations that we've had this year because it was amazing to watch how, I think one of the things that you said that really struck me was when you said that we have the ability to know exactly what. they need based on their DNA at any [00:05:00] given moment, uh, in terms of nutrition.

We can, we can figure that piece out. But what we have a much harder time figuring out is their circumstances. The situation, the way that they're thinking, what's going on around them, you know, this is something that we've been talking about so much on the podcast and so much in the collaboratives. It's about the, when it's about the situation that the person finds themselves in and how do we help them navigate that situation?

And our answers to your point, our research on modes shows that the, That's one of the ways that people manage their own behavior. They say, I'm going to get into this mode and then I'm going to get out of it. It gives them permission to get in, get out. Um, so, so I just found that really, really fascinating.

That final [00:06:00] shift that you talked about of being, yes, we know exactly what their body could use right now. But what we need to know is their circumstances, their situation, uh, the mode that they're in. 

Aransas: And I think that's what holds a lot of companies back, right? It's easier to prescribe than it is to be responsive.

And so from prescription to personalization, what has Suggestic done to get the data they need from customers to provide a more responsive and meaningful. 

Victor: So we started creating a platform that was, had, we were copying what everyone else was doing, which basically is a lot of what the platform is, which is assuming that there was one unified journey for everyone, that there was the best way to eat, [00:07:00] and therefore you, we should all be either vegan or keto or intermittent fasting or whatever.

And the reality is people are not. Even if any one of those dietary, uh, options were the best, absolute best, people are not shopping for the absolute best. They're shopping for the relative best. And the relative best is whatever matches their existing lifestyle. Because if, if you enjoy your meat and, and your family eats meat every day and I tell you, you'll save your life, but you have to go raw vegan, you'll say, no way it's like my wife would never accept that I would

die a few years earlier, which is a common response. Go in extremes and the opposite is true. Like if you're a vegan and they want you to eat meat for, [00:08:00] and even if it's a choice in the case of vegans, many times it's a choice around beliefs or around, uh, cruelty or saving the planet. Even then, eating meat is so out of the question that it's not, even if it were a good way to improve their health and that it doesn't stop in eating.

It actually, the way we've. Realize that personalization had to happen is there's two main insights. I think that that are very interesting from the wellness perspective. The first insight that I was. Counterintuitive for us, um, is that what we need to personalize to the most is lifestyle itself. So think of it as we have a baseline, which is our current lifestyle and everything we do.

If we can predict it, because that's the way our mind works. That's the way our body works is. We're trying to predict what [00:09:00] we're doing. We gain satisfaction from predicting. And we get stress from uncertainty. So basically all our, what we call our lifestyle is just this series of nested predictions where we're predicting what we will do next and what we will feel and what we'll be like and how we will sleep.

And these predictions. Are very hard to change because change in them requires me going through an uncertain period going through. I don't know what's going to happen. And it creates anxiety. It creates all types of friction. So we've seen that behavior change is. The process of going from your baseline, which is what you always do, the things you always eat, the things you, the exercise you do or don't do, and, and slowly moving that with iterations of small things that are [00:10:00] easy for you.

So, the easy for you has 2 components. It's easy for you either because it's very close to your baseline. Let's say that you already are going to the gym three times a week and you're told to do cardio for 10 minutes, three times a week. So it's super easy. Okay, no problem. I'll just add that to my routine, either leave 10 minutes early or do 10 minutes less of whatever else I was doing.

So that is easy to add, but if you're doing zero exercise and they tell you to do 10 minutes of cardio every three times a week, it's like, Oh my goodness, where do I fit that in? It doesn't go before or after my shower, before or after breakfast, before or after dinner, like, it's just like, where, so many decisions to make.

It's like the uncertainty of that is how, like, how do I fit 10 minutes of, it's not a lot, but it's, where do I fit it in? Can I walk? Can I run? Can I, it's just like the level of complexity of that for a given individual, the friction [00:11:00] is very high. So one aspect is the friction itself. Of moving away from your existing lifestyle.

The second aspect which is fundamental in, in the friction side of things is, believe it or not, the social friction. Like, it's, like, if I want to go vegan but my wife loves meat, there's no way I'm gonna, and I've, I've lived through that because there was a moment in which I couldn't eat gluten and dairy and she, kind of like, she, it wouldn't compute.

It took us years to get to a point in which now she doesn't eat gluten and dairy neither. So it's, but it was like, imagine the progression because for her it was a choice. It was, but it ended up being like, we, we, we eat gluten and dairy free at home, mainly because me, my son and my daughter cannot eat gluten and dairy.

So it's kind of like for her, it was like, okay, so she's a tipping point.

Victor: Yeah. But it's easier once that becomes a behavior. Now she generally doesn't eat gluten dairy. So it's, it's a, the social friction is huge [00:12:00] and it's, it's, if you have buddies that like eating or like, uh, drinking or like, so, and you want to change that behavior.

For instance, a friend of our, of mine was trying to, he was drinking wine every day and sometimes he would finish a full bottle and then he was like, I need to cut down on that. And the way he found a way to cut down on that is Sunday through Thursday he doesn't drink wine. 

Aransas: Very specific. Yeah, 

Victor: so it's like, so the social components is still there.

He now drinks wine Fridays and Saturdays, and he's prepares a good meal. He's there with friends. So, wine still has the social components. It used to have, but now he's cut down and that's much easier for them than actually reducing the amount of wine or changing the habit itself. So this, the friction at the social level is an important consideration.

And then there's a 3rd part. Yeah. Which has to do with the friction that is more coming from [00:13:00] our body. Uh than from anything else like in the form of pain in the form of Nausea, like i'm talking about side effects of tlp1 for instance, that's friction And but it's a friction that can lead you to stop using the medication if if you if it's something constant that you can't manage and but it's also things like carb cravings like you can have all the All the psychological help you want, but if you have a bodily carved cravings where you really crave it because you're feeling you start feeling the energy and the you can't even think of another thing, you go and do that.

So that's 1 of the insights is that if we think of lifestyle as a baseline, and we think of moving away from that baseline as friction. How do you minimize the friction to accomplish the highest, uh, the highest, uh, impact in terms of your health and your weight loss goals or whatever it is. And that is part of the [00:14:00] equation.

And then a very interesting other side, I don't know if you've read BJ Fogg and his idea around prompts that are either very easy or you’re very motivated.

Victor: So easiness is. We can equate to this lifestyle easy is anything that is already in my lifestyle or very close to, uh, which is predictable for me and for my body. And so we are all happy with that. The other aspect is motivation. And I think that we're 1 place where I diverge from BJ Fox view is he thinks it's intrinsic.

Like, 1 day, we're like, yeah, go. And probably 1 day, you're feeling like intrinsic motivation. But I have come to realize. Through all the different companies we work with literally hundreds of companies creating different types of diet Like diet and nutrition and wellness Changes is that it's extrinsic.[00:15:00] 

It's we are in the process of being motivated We're thinking about the way others will perceive us. We're thinking about how they will We're even daydreaming What they will say Once we lose weight or once we do this and so we're basically being motivated By the future social value or status I will gain from what I'm doing.

And that basically breaks down the whole equation of wellness into a very clear line. Things that increase my status or increase the things will increase the way people think about me or praise me or acknowledge my efforts. And those things that they won't, and if you notice things below that, let's call it neutral status line things under that neutral status line are things like a disease.

Like, if I have diabetes. They won't think higher of me than nobody will. [00:16:00] Actually, they will be sorry for me and I'll be ashamed. So those types of feelings are under the line and I don't want to put any effort any. So motivation is zero. It's actually negative. I don't want to the best thing I can do from a.

Game theory perspective is not tell anyone so therefore I end up in this in this space where I just don't tell him I'm diabetic or pre diabetic and I just keep on going and I don't take the status hit. Whereas, if I'm exercising, if I'm meditating, and I have losing weight, if I'm visually, if I'm doing longevity or biohacking or anything that increases my social, the way people perceive me.

Then I'm bragging about it, or even if not, I'm talking about it and I'm relating that to others and I want others to see the progress I've made. So that kind of divides health care where I want somebody else to prescribe me something, give me a pill, surgery, whatever, [00:17:00] do the least effort possible. To those things where I'm willing to make an effort, where I'm willing to, to, which is wellness.

So I think that that line, that division, that other aspect of what I'm motivated to do is things that other people will appreciate. What I'm not motivated to do are things that.  

Dave: People will actually be sorry for that's an interesting way to kind of use BJ fogs model, you know, I, I hadn't ever thought about it that way where the healthcare industry is really about managing D motivators in, in many ways.

And, uh, the wellness industry is about managing motivators in many ways. That's fascinating. A little spin on fogs model. Which I really like. 

Aransas: So one of the things I'm still really curious about from an application standpoint is how [00:18:00] you get the right inputs from your customer to guide them in a motivational way and how you adapt the, adapt based on their behaviors and changing mindset.

Victor: The way, um, you get the motivation from the customers is there was something that the, because I told you these were two insights that we had the insight around motivation came from realizing that health coaches were so much better than content or any AI or anything you could do. Because they created accountability and when I was thinking about what accountability really was is I don't want to be ashamed of not doing what I told you I would do and I want to be proud of telling you that I did what I told you I would do [00:19:00] and it's all about the social relationship with your coach.

And so when you think about it, it's, there's no way you can have an AI that does that for you because an AI, like if you, like, even if it's like, if imagine an AI starting to tell you, Hey, how come you didn't do what you said, you were like, Oh, I don't care. I'll just stop using it. It's a machine. Like, it has, I'm not ashamed with a computer or an AI or any, because they won't, I'm not, and if, and to have an AI that could do that.

Yeah. You would actually ha have to have a perfect, you. You would have to believe the AI was sentient at a level equivalent to another human being. Mm-Hmm. . And have a relationship with that AI equivalent to like, I don't want my friends, my mom, my doctor, spouse to my doctor, my coach, to think less of me.

So I think that, uh, [00:20:00] as a result, the, the one thing you can do when you create tools like this is that's why it groups will work very well, accountability bodies, uh, like doing things in conjunction, having a human coach. And so basically what you want to do with technology is make that available for others.

And there's different things that motivate different people. Some people like think of the, like the, the most successful apps. Anything above the line, anything wellness have if it's for men, men like competing. So we all want to know are, am I in the 1 percent or, um, and people will. Like even take screenshots of their Strava and post them on LinkedIn.

I've seen that more than once. It's like, you're bragging about like, Oh yeah. Like I was doing, uh, this very, very long, uh, run today. Like, [00:21:00] so hire me.

Victor: Like, no, no, it's not about hiring. It's, it's about like, 

Aransas: no, it is no, it's about status and power. 

Victor: Just bragging about your, it's like, I just did more exercise than any one of you could.

Um, and, and then you see a completely different, um, like Instagram is much more, see how, um, my diet is going, see how my, like I'm looking and it's, it's like. And it's just different ways of the same thing. You're trying to show people that, that you are, have a healthy or a better lifestyle or a higher status through the things you do and you wear and you, and, and, and that is, um, now why that is important because status is in those apps, either as a leaderboard, it's a gamification is a status.

Modifier we like a [00:22:00] gamification is nothing but comparing you with others and it's gamifying and giving you rewards And but it's if you think about it the dopamine rush you get for getting extra points It's never going to be the same as the dopamine rush you get for eating a big steak with fries. So, it doesn't matter how much points you give me.

If I have a steak with fries in front of me, I'll eat it. So, so it's, if you like steak and fries, whatever is your favorite food. 

Aransas: That does sound good now. 

Victor: But the main thing being is you can never gamify someone out of eating things. Or gamify and now exercise itself generates its own endorphins and dopamine and things.

So, so in, in many cases, exercise when at a certain level, it basically generates a lot of the stimulation that you need to continue doing the exercise. So it's kind of slightly different, but at the end of the day, what you see is what you want to do and manage through behavior change [00:23:00] through an app. Is first, how do you pick, help people pick those things that are easiest so they start having success and how do you help them share that with those people who care in a way that doesn't come through like bragging but allows them to get the social feedback going to increase the motivation to do it slightly harder things.

And we've all seen people who started off losing weight and ended up running marathons. That progression that ladder. I get additional stimulation from the outside world. And I change my identity, which is also very, very strong. Once you re identify from, um, overweight to, um, a runner, all of a sudden your identity inertia will keep you running as opposed to overweight.

Aransas: Like it's, it's just like, yeah, there's a social component there as well to identity. 

Victor: Exactly. And, and it's self. You're trying to, [00:24:00] because you, you have a model of others, but you also have a model of yourself and the way you think about yourself. So you're, you're, you're doing both. 

Dave: You know, one of the things that I, I love about our conversation today is it has direct relevance to one of the things that we've been talking about when it comes to journey work, which is the journey is about what the individual is going through, not what the company is doing to the individual.

So the journey is about the job that the individual is trying to get done and it's individualized. So each individual has a different journey that they're going on. Not one universal ideal journey. that we're trying to address, but their particular journey that's kind of based on their circumstances.

And I love Victor this, and I've never heard anyone say this, this way, but, uh, Rancis, tell me if this is kind of [00:25:00] common, but this is what, when you say, this is what your body needs, your body does, your body. So you're, you're, you're, You're taking away the, there's the ideal body type and the not ideal body type.

And instead saying, you know, your body kind of, this is what your body needs, which again makes it very much about the individual. And so what we as experienced strategists need to be doing is understanding that there are, there's variability. There's a lot of variability in what people are going to go through in our job when we're designing the journey is to allow for that variability, but still help to guide them towards their goal, not our goal, their goal.

And that's even true for purchase journeys. I think they have a goal. [00:26:00] For buying, we need to guide them towards their goal for buying. I think it seems obvious when it comes to wellbeing, that we want to help them support their purpose. But sometimes our listeners are like, yeah, but I sell stuff. And I think in that case, it's still the same.

Objective. We want to sell. We want to sell. In fact, I just wrote a long piece on buying modes that people get into, and I'm convinced that we can help people make that buying experience much more ideal for them. whatever that looks like and get them kind of out of crisis buying and things like that. So i'm seeing some some connections and some positive things and this is a This is part of the reason why I love the work that you do aransas around behavior change Um, a lot of the things that are going on in wellness and in behavior change [00:27:00] are principles that should be applied to experience strategy Specifically, and sometimes I think folks that are on the behavior change side of things think that there's things that are missing out in terms of design thinking and so forth, but they have a lot actually to contribute to the conversation.

Uh, uh, when it comes to the basic things that we do, like journey work. 

Aransas: And I think the predictability factor that Victor brought up is so important to this conversation, right? So our habits may be predictable, and yet humans as a whole are fairly unpredictable and have a fairly low awareness of their habits.

And, uh, initially not great at predicting their own behaviors. But I, I think what we're getting to with Suggestic is. 

Victor: But it's so interesting. We, I think it's an. And unawareness, as you say, [00:28:00] because, and we can drive awareness. 

Victor: Most people can predict you better than you can predict yourself. Sometimes. 

Aransas: Well, and I think we need to raise awareness, right?

Of these patterns. And that's where reflection becomes such a big piece of this. So when I asked you about adaptation, I was really curious about how your coaches and your tools are adapting based on behaviors and. Improved understanding of the patterns, there's 2 ways to go about this.

Victor: I think that what we've been doing more recently is all around.

We've always been a, not always, but we, I was telling you about the platform we have, which is really a platform for people to build journeys on top of it. But the most advanced pieces we are building right now, which is the behavior change mechanism, is specifically for weight loss and more specifically [00:29:00] around GLP 1, because that is If you think about it, it's the most, is it the first, I don't know if it's the first, but it's the most impactful medicine for behavior change because it basically suppresses your hunger or reduces your hunger, which is a huge driver.

Um, and go back to this whole idea of one thing that you realize. Is that we have two types of affect, two types of sensations or emotions or feelings that basically kind of capture our attention and lead us in one way or another. And some of them are to maintain our humus, that homeostasis, like, think of it as hunger, cold, warmth, um, even things like anger and our role in keeping my body protected.

And once I have hunger or I'm thirsty. I was once thirsty. I didn't have water and we were walking [00:30:00] for like, kind of lost in the forest for a day and we had no water. And the only thing I could think about was water. It was like water, water, a Coke with ice, but water, mostly water. So it was very interesting how, how you're, you're hijacked by this internal, but then the other one is the complex emotions.

And they all have to do not with the body not with our health it's with status Which is the health that you can see you want nobody wants to have acne. Nobody wants to be overweight Nobody wants to have like anything visible. But apart from that if it's invisible, it's mostly Not part of the, I want to maintain or increase my status.

So I think that those two drivers are one is a natural selection and the other one is sexual selection. And those two are our main drivers in life. And we have like different tool sets inside of us. To bring our awareness and focus our attention on those things that [00:31:00] either because we're thirsty and we need water or because there's an opportunity to increase my status and or, or there's a risk to my, the way people will see me and those things.

Bring my attention and really make changes and some are very short term, which is more to maintain my homeostasis, which include. So once you've know those two things. Adaptiveness has to do with creating a model of the person's lifestyle and those triggers around which things they are doing or not doing.

And then helping the person navigate through that. So we, we found there's 1 side of that. We're modeling with, there's a whole, um, I would call it science, science based.

Mathematical neurological [00:32:00] theory called active inference or the free energy principle, which basically from Carl Fristons, which is the most published, most cited neuroscientist in the world. He basically has been working on. How our brain and our body works in relation to to the world. And it's basically this prediction machine, and it's trying to minimize surprise.

And that basically is true at a short term level at a, like a habit level of of my homeostatic person. And it's also true at a social level, and I'm trying to maintain this balance or social. Stasis, if you want to make up a word of how do I interact with the world and those two things are the main drivers.

What we're doing is we're modeling that for each individual views and active inference principles so that we can then influence it with these minimum [00:33:00] lifestyle tweaks. That help people, so there is a dynamic component. It's, I would argue it's not a scripted way of doing it, but once you have that, even having that engine, the, the thing that was not possible to ever have done before is that we didn't have a way to communicate with people and that's where LLMs and this new AI that has come out has been so instrumental.

Because think of LLMs as a universal user interface, it can talk with anyone, it can understand anyone, it can then convert that for us into data that we can put into a database, we can see which, like, we can not only get sentiments, but we can get specific Things people said and remember those and remember which habits are nested within other habits.

Why did you, why was it that you didn't drink water today? Oh, because I was flying all day and I just forgot my water bottle. And [00:34:00] okay. So then next time you're flying, remember to bring your water bottle. 

Aransas: Great learning. 

Victor: Yeah. And so it's kind of like a, kind of a, a, a way in which you now have a user interface, which is.

AI that allows you to collect the data to create a, a second tier or underlying baseline of an AI that is modeling user behavior and then helping people tweak that behavior into. So, I think that that is the future of behavior science. That's where we're investing in. And that is, as I said, we are applying that specifically to GLP 1, mainly because there's so much need right now and you can not only help increase weight loss, but also minimize side effects and tweak lifestyle as you go to actually help people get off the medication, wean off and maintain that weight loss that they achieved.

Aransas: It's [00:35:00] self efficacy, right? So if you can get them to understand what makes it harder, what makes it easier to behave in the way they want to behave, then you create the self efficacy so that they can develop the confidence and the competence to be successful long term. 

Dave: For the purposes of those that don't know.

Aransas: Uh, LLM 

Dave: Explain what an LMN is and also a GLP one large language model. I think, okay.

Victor: Yeah. LLM comes from large language models. It's what is behind chat GPT kind of is behind, uh, most of the different new, um, AI based explosion that we've seen generative AI. 

Dave: Perfect. 

Victor: And GLP one, GLP one based medicines are weight loss medications that Allow people to suppress hunger and reduce insulin production.

So it basically helps people lose weight. It started with diabetic that people [00:36:00] with diabetes and it moved now through, uh, like everything from a Zempik to we, we go V and all other. Sure. 

Aransas: Yeah. It's been, I think it's, it's a really interesting time for both of these. And I hadn't, Really thought about how these two sort of had such explosive growth simultaneously until this exact moment.

They were, they both existed. They were both accessible. You know, people have been using JLP ones for diabetes for quite some time and off, uh, off label for weight loss over the past five to 10 years. Really, you know, it was a trend at Weight Watchers that we started watching on the upper east side, women specifically who could afford it, um, quite a while back.

But. But it was almost simultaneous that they became household names and, um, really changed the shape of, of two pretty different areas, uh, in the same time. 

Dave: No pun intended. 

Aransas: Yeah. I hadn't thought of the timeline on that until the [00:37:00] second. 

Victor: I found it fascinating. Actually. The whole market in 2020 was 500 million.

The market this year is going to surpass 5 billion and the market for 2030 is going to surpass 130, 150 billion, depending on who you ask. So it's growing at a hundred X, actually faster than a hundred X growth in 10 years. So it's, it's, it's, uh, it's, uh, And why? Because I think it addresses so many things at such a, a fundamental level.

Our market, our industries, our companies without any, I don't think nobody starts saying I'll make people sick. It's just like, I want to make my food products cheaper. I want to make them, I 

Aransas: want to make more money, the 

Victor: shelf time longer. I want to make things, yeah. Um, [00:38:00] grow faster and all those things, those chemicals, those foods, those, and I want people to repeat eating my food.

So we ended up creating basically habit forming and not even I would like compulsory eating food that basically it makes our body believe we need more. Because every time we have a blood sugar spike, when it's coming down very fast, that's when we feel cravings. It's not because it's a relative, like it's a, if you think, think of it as a slope, it's the faster it's coming down, the more cravings we'll have.

So every time we spike our blood sugar levels every morning with orange juice or carbs, and it's coming down, then We have another like noon, we need more carbs and then it's coming down and we need a midnight, a mid afternoon snack. And then when it's coming down and then we need dinner and then it's coming down and then we need a snack before bed.

And every time it's coming down, we're getting more and more carbs, which is [00:39:00] pushing our insulin levels, pushing our, so that became an addictive behavior for most people in our culture. And that is beyond it's, it's again, we're going back to the most fundamental layer. Where it's, we're hungry, and it overrides our mind and our willpower, everything.

We're hungry, we go to the fridge, we eat whatever is there. I get, if it's ice cream, more of the, that, that's even best, better. 

Aransas: Right, because that's more pleasure. Of course. Yeah. 

Victor: And not because ice cream is bad inherently, actually it could be not as bad, but it's, it's this dry. 

Aransas: There's actually some nutritional value there.

Victor: So basically what, what, what happened is our industry may, became very good. Our food industry became very good at making highly addictive, uh, ice cream. Food that has been incrementally as you layer all those bad [00:40:00] foods one on top of the other. It's not one Individually, it's all of them combined that they've made us Addicted to all types of bad things and as you extrapolate that over time The only way to go against that is by having a medicine that actually Allows us to get out of that vicious circle and for it, take a step back and be able to not feel that craving and I think that that's a wonderful thing about GOP ones.

With all the controversy that they may or may not be is that it actually will help so many people do a fundamental change in their, in their life and lifestyle, which will extend their lifespan and their health span and do so many good things for everyone. So, so I think it's, it's a great opportunity. I do see it as a well deserved boom.

And I, I do think it'll have, it will have side effects. No, no wonder. And I [00:41:00] actually not going to wonder, I'm sure they will have some side effects because people will abuse it. At the end of the day, I've learned not to try to play God with our bodies. We don't know enough either. Supplements are like, it's, I don't think there's one way of eating.

I've tried it many. There's no one way that is the unique best way. I think every single piece can be taken. So I think a good way, as you've noticed, I'm a little bit of a geek for all these things. So, so if you haven't noticed. 

Aransas: Same. 

Victor: We need to eat well, but well is not the average. It's not eating the same thing with the exact number of vitamins, protein, minerals, whatever, every day.

It's really the amplitude is very important. We need to shock our body in the same way when we do exercise. It's not about just walking all day long. It's about doing intensive exercise or, or carrying heavy things. You shock the body one way or another and you let it rest. And [00:42:00] that's the same with, you need to fast as much as you need to sometimes indulge in those changes in your body, give you resilience and allow you to improve.

to improve your metabolism. And I think that the problem we have is we overeat and we never stop eating. And then we, there's zero resilience. We're just pushing the upper bound forward as opposed to allowing the full spectrum of everything to, to happen in our body. 

Aransas: And yet, we find that hard to follow, that lesson hard to follow with how we charge our iPhones.

And, I mean, that's infinitely less complex than our bodies. I, I think, you know, it was funny when you, when you started that, I, I was, again, going back to this idea of, uh, GLP 1s and large language models. Spiking, uh, simultaneously. And the one thing you can say about both of these and why they have been so massively successful is because they made [00:43:00] something hard, easier.

Period. I mean, and there's, there's much, much more around both of them for sure, but at the core of it, they made something extremely difficult, much easier. Correct. And that's why so much of our work is focused on time well spent and creating value through powerful uses of people's time investment. 

Victor: But even, even in your case, uh, you, you, you work a lot around the psychology.

I think that there's a, another aspect is not only making it easier. Yes, it makes it easier, but it also has to do with expectations. AI is the only thing we've always expected to work better than what it does. 

Aransas: Fair. 

Victor: When we used to talk with Siri or Alexa, like, 

Aransas: it was so disappointing. 

Victor: I caught myself swearing at the, uh, the machine several times because it's like, how come, like I'm explaining in plain English, like, Like, it's not that difficult, whereas now the LLMs are actually above and beyond what we expected.

Aransas: Some. I don't feel that way about [00:44:00] ChatGPT. I feel like, oh, what a disappointment, but I go to Claude and I'm like, I, I said to somebody today, I was like, I want to have a conversation with Claude all the time and be like, you're doing such a great job because it's exceeding my expectations to your point.

Victor: And the GLP one is the same. It basically for the first time like promises around weight loss drugs have been around for a long time. And this was the first time in which people and I've spoken to many people on GOP ones and it's like. I don't get hungry. I lose weight. No effort. And actually I can, I can exercise more.

There's like all these side effects of being having more willpower. And I would argue it's probably not as much. I don't know. Let me start by saying, but I would argue that probably is not as much a metabolic problem or process, but the fact that you're being successful at one thing. thing and people are [00:45:00] telling you how successful you are kind of frees up all this willpower to now I'll start running as well and I'll start exercising and I'll start.

Aransas: Yeah, I think that's a Really good point. 

Victor: Go to bed earlier, whatever it is. There are behaviors that are changing thanks to GLP 1s. And I don't know how, what the biology, biological triggers of that could be, because it's really working at the pancreas level. So it doesn't make sense for me, at least, that it would have a behavior change.

Quality, but it is true that they found all these correlations, not only with health things like heart disease and, and such things as, as diabetes, but also with, um. Smoke and cessation and compulsive gambling and other things that. 

Aransas: I think you're right. It's, it's about freeing up that reserve of willpower.

And like there was, there's so much shame that comes from not doing what we [00:46:00] think we should be doing. And that's exhausting. And so if we can free up some space at a biologic level to allow people to feel successful, both based on their intrinsic feedback and their extrinsic, I think you're, you're absolutely right that it, it gives us.

new energy with which to do things that may feel only tangentially related. Victor, this is such an exciting conversation and I think there's a lot of big lessons in here for experienced strategists in general, not just, um, in, in our favorite category here. And, um, so I want us to try to really quickly summarize some of the big takeaways that we think are here.

for experienced strategists who are working in other categories. And I think the, the key and the most valuable is really listening to your customer, understanding what they want and what makes it harder and easier for them to be [00:47:00] successful and directly. offering guidance, support, feedback based on what matters to them versus what matters to most or should be working for them.

Victor: Yeah. I think that, and, and I think that I would, I would add that what matters to most, and this is strange because you can't, I'm, I'm telling you we work in health and wellness and. The biggest categories in health and wellness are weight loss, cosmetics, things that have nothing to do with or are indirectly, but it's not.

Longevity itself is not, but it's basically those things that are visible and that by others, so it really comes back to where social creatures and we want to be seen and we want to be acknowledged and [00:48:00] especially if we're making an effort and so a lot of our spend a lot of how we relate. So basically in the GLP one space, what we're doing for the businesses that are working with us is increasing their LTV, like, because people stay longer and people lose more weight and are happier and it's like a win win for everyone.

But that is the fundamental piece here is helping people do what they want is, I think, and giving them what they need, which is basically sometimes what they need is not what they think they need is what do they need to get to that end goal? And that's the product of services. I'll be more willing to pay for it.

Aransas: It's, this is exactly why Dave and I think that every single one of our clients across every single category need to integrate coaching models into their business and into their experience strategy. And it's something I'm so passionate about and something, you know, we've been thrilled to do for teams in finance and healthcare and [00:49:00] retail and tech and.

The proof points are there and there, there is no large language model alone. That's going to get underneath that. We need to ask the right questions at the right time and provide meaningful responses to those questions. 

Victor: Exactly. And, and if I can add it, that's exactly why we are so excited to work with you because this is only like the LLMs do not know what should be happening and, and, and AI can say whatever 

Aransas: it should be happening.

They don't know what is, 

Victor: yeah, exactly. So they don't have a model of the person. They have a model of language. That's it. So what you can bring to this equation is what do people really want? How can you help drive the, that engagement and how can you help people achieve the results they want? And that is really listening mostly to the psychology side of it.

I think it, as, [00:50:00] as I was saying before we started the call, I think it's 90 percent psychology, 10 percent biology.

Aransas: Agree. And even more specifically, it's motivation and human behavior. Correct. Well, thank you so much, Victor. So excited to continue these conversations through our work together and to support clients in all categories and benefiting from these insights. Dave, thank you. Victor, thank you, audience, those of you listening, we so appreciate your support of this show.

Please give us a like, a follow, a rating, and a review. It'll help us reach more experienced strategists and do more good in the world. You can find us over at stonemantle. co where you can listen to every single episode in our catalog, uh, as well as access many of the tools and frameworks that you've heard about on this episode and others.

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