Josh Clemente — Unlocking Health and Lessons Learned From Elon Musk at SpaceX

“Unfortunately, humans today are operating on an open-loop system, where every action you take is without feedback"— Josh Clemente

A mechanical engineer and CrossFit-L2 trainer Josh Clemente (@joshuasforrest) is the founder and president of the breakthrough company for health, wellness, and fitness, Levels. Josh shapes the future by helping you gain insight on your metabolic health through personalized data. The life journey he takes us on starts with his work at SpaceX, and tells of inspiring stories, challenges and success. Here are some of the topics we discuss:

• Why curiosity and courage will lead you to success. Josh talks about his life journey from FBI to Space X
• What ignited the spark in him to take the wellness journey
• He opens about his personal struggles and solutions
• He talks about his work at Levels, how it all started and kept getting better
• Why everyday decisions have an impact on your health
• Josh talks about the holistic wellness approach with the help of bio-wearables
• How insights from data can be used for a greater good

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Show Notes

• 0:30 - The time when Josh was building assault machines for the FBI
• 3:00 - Story of how Josh got a job at SpaceX
• 7:13 - What are the lessons learned from FBI and Space X that Josh applied to his personal and professional life?
• 9:32 - How Josh is applying Elon Muck's first principles to build Levels?
• 13:07 - Why is there a stigma around using technology in the health industry?
• 15:58 - A high stakes work with tight deadlines redirecting him to holistic wellness, and a new look at life
• 21:12 - Hurdles and problems Josh faced in moving from Space X to Levels
• 24:56 - The secret behind a great team. How do people connect to deliver impressive results and scalable solutions?
• 27:42 - How Josh got comfortable working with people better and smarter than him and why he thinks it is necessary to work with people who are smarter than you?
• 29:19 - What mistakes you can learn from Josh and people working on Levels
• 32:00 - The power of never giving up and settling for being practical rather than passionate
• 36:18 - Original conversations on the straightforward road to success with Sam, his co-founder at Levels
• 38:07 - The process of building a network in health and wellness
• 41:02 - The process behind building a product like Levels and how to actually use data to take some actions.
• 43:09 - Example of a surprising product decision that led to changing actions for the users
• 46:27 - Learnings and insights by studying data on metabolism.
• 51:49 - Prevention as a purpose of medicine by being in control of your health based on data and the future implications of it.
• 55:04 - What is the line regarding the amount of data people should have to make an informed decision and not create panic in their heads
• 57:22 - The future of bio-wearables in all walks of life
• 61:04 - How are homeschooling and building teams correlated?
• 61:06 - The funny story behind his nickname GQ

Tweetable Quotes

“We want LeBron James in a game wearing the Level's logo because that demonstrates this is not a technology that you need to be embarrassed of.  It's a tech that you're wearing to be the best you can be and to completely take control of your lifestyle.” - Josh Clemente

“When was the last time you used your own health information to make a decision? The answer is inevitably never” - Josh Clemente

“I just thought I need better information. I have no objective data that is guiding my decisions every day. And that's just crazy. I mean, who knows if I'm getting healthier or less healthy every single day.” - Josh Clemente

“As I got deeper and deeper into the data, it was just crazy how straight forward the connections were between glucose dysfunction, insulin dysfunction, and like all of the chronic illnesses that the US and in all developing countries are rampantly, sort of causing mortality.” - Josh Clemente

“Having a large dataset is not useful, but having really targeted insights built on huge amounts of data is” - Josh Clemente

“If you want to do something and  you don't understand why something is done, the way that it is, start from the basic principles, don't get caught up in any of the fluff and distraction of what someone else has done” - Josh Clemente

About Our Guest

A mechanical engineer and CrossFit-L2 trainer Josh Clemente (@joshuasforrest) is the founder and president of the breakthrough company for health, wellness, and fitness, Levels. Josh shapes the future by helping you gain insight on your metabolic health through personalized data. The life journey he takes us on starts with his work at SpaceX, and tells of inspiring stories, challenges and success.

In 2019, Josh founded Levels, continuing his personal quest in the professional health sphere. In 2010, he left SpaceX after almost 6 years in the role of Lead Life Support Systems Engineer. Defining the future of nutrition technology and metabolic fitness, and focusing on health as the road to happiness, Josh truly shows us what it means to follow our passion.