This Wellness Program Allows Employees to Choose Their Own Path
Spotlight with Chris Cutter, Founder & CEO of LifeDojo
Building Habits that Last
LifeDojo is a 12-week habit-change program that is disrupting the traditional corporate wellness model by empowering the user to design their own path to wellbeing. Built for desktop, Android, and iOS to provide employees on- demand access to their own evidence-based change program and personal coach, this technology is drastically increasing engagement and measurable long-term results. Thirty-two behavior change programs are organized into 4 themes, allowing employees, patients, or consumers to choose their direction, the method used to achieve their goal, which apps to use as tools, how often
to engage, and which personal coach will guide them. Mastering stress, mental resilience, healthy eating, and fitness programs are included in the customized plan for change. LifeDojo is demonstrating 4.4x ROI by reducing costs, improving productivity, and leading 45% of employees to meaningful behavior change that lasts 6 months or more.
We had a chance to catch up with Chris Cutter, founder & CEO of LifeDojo, on the success of LifeDojo, his Health Moonshot Mission and his predictions for the future earlier this year. Read more for our full interview and watch Chris present live from the StartUp Health Festival below!
SPOTLIGHT: Chris Cutter, Founder & CEO of LifeDojo
What’s the heartbeat of LifeDojo right now?
This year was about going global. We’re in 13 countries. Our global distribution partners or sales partners operate in 80 countries. Within the U.S. we’ve been able to show that we can get the trifecta in population health: high enrollment, sustained engagements and long-term behavior change. Getting to the point where our program works on desk- top, tablet, and mobile allows us to reach more people in more places.
What makes your approach to behavior change unique?
My background is in public health. I’ve worked in the chaos of population health, and I think there is a fundamental misunderstanding coming out of the medical community about how you do behavior change for the majority of people. Other tech companies are trying to put behavior change in a pill.
They’re trying to create a program where if you take these 40 steps in this order and you change these specific behaviors, then we’re going to be able to change you. The problem with that is it only appeals to the one or two percent of people that are already motivated and it really turns off people that are ambivalent about change. But because it’s so appealing to the medical community, this notion that you can have a predictable 50-step pattern for anyone to change, they keep funding it.
I’ve worked in low-income communities where over 50 percent of the population is obese. The moment you say to them, “Well, what do you think is going to work?” they come up with stuff you never would have thought. And then you say: I’m here to help and to support you in whatever you think the pathway is. So it’s basically empowerment versus paternalism.
Our solution says, “What topic have you always wanted to change? Have you always wanted to reduce your stress levels? Have you always wanted to eat healthier? Have you always wanted to be more mentally resilient?” So they pick a theme. Let’s say they choose stress: They’re presented with the eight evidence- based ways to reduce stress. There’s only about eight that are evidence- based. Then it asks, “How many days a week do you think you can fit that in?” They choose from five different coaches. The coaches are trained in person centered coaching, which is 90 percent questions, ten percent statements. Very different than traditional coaching, which is 90 percent statements and advice and ten percent questions.
By the Numbers
- 74% of employees complete all 12 weeks of their program
- 156 institutions have implemented LifeDojo programs to improve the physical and mental health of their populations.
- Enterprise Clients Include: Goodyear, Rogers Communications, Komoto Healthcare
You’re a unique example of someone coming out of the social work world and into the tech startup world. How did that uniquely position you for the work that you’re doing?
Coming from public health and social work, particularly in high-risk communities where we were on the ground going into public housing in dangerous neighborhoods in New York, you get past all of the theory and you get to the raw reality of people’s lives. You get into the nuances. When somebody walking down the street that works in a health-tech company sees somebody really over- weight, their first thought is, “If they only took a program, or if they only worked harder or were more disciplined it would fix them.” When I see that person walking down the street in those communities, I think of the thin walls in their room that disallows them from sleeping. I think of the fact that their mother, grandmother, sister and brother eat deep fried food three times a day. I think of how cheap hamburgers are. I think of all that stuff that makes it pretty much impossible for that person to not be overweight. That’s a very different way of thinking about behavior change. There is no pill or program I can give them. They have to be guided through the process of asking, “How do I change these environmental things?”
How do those insights transition to more privileged communities?
We just did a co-presentation with one of our customers at the Silicon Valley Employers’ Forum. The talk was about the mental health rate, the depression and anxiety rate, and the burnout rate. Silicon Valley is at the same rate as some of the worst communities in the U.S. That’s why people are burning out. They’re getting paid more but it doesn’t matter because they’re lonely and depressed. It’s a dog-eat-dog world and they’re expected to work 70 hours a week and they have no resilience tools.
I know a lot of social workers and people in public health who want to do good, but not many of them end up starting health-tech companies. So what was it in your experience or in your DNA that made you this individual?
Fundamental to my own world view and my convictions around what drives me, why I worked in really dangerous communities with gangs, is tied to a very deep-seated passion that every single person should have the surroundings and the environment to maximize who they are.
“I’ve always been driven by this frustration and impatience. Are we really this far behind where we could be? We could be so much further along as a society if we just gave everybody a better chance. So much of it comes down to mental and physical health.” — Chris Cutter, LifeDojo
What would healthcare look like in 10 or 15 years if there was really strong adoption of this program? What do you hope to see?
The vision is to give every single person this platform and a personal coach. Seventy-three percent of Americans create New Year’s resolutions every year, so it’s a natural drive of people to want to change. If you give them this tool where they can choose anything, that is going to significantly improve the physical and mental health of the entire population.
Once we prove that out, the economics of preventive health have been solved. No longer do you wait until someone’s sick to serve them as a healthcare organization. You are incentivized in trying to get outcome- based care, value-based care going. We can find a way to do it economically and yet get the same outcomes. We’ve ‘Uberified’ coaching.
We’ve significantly reduced the cost of this to the point where a healthcare organization like Kaiser could give this to every single person in their membership and it would financially make sense. So the Moonshot is that there is an opportunity for the faulty software of human beings to finally get fixed, but we have to reach everybody.
So it’s really about scaling this to become the universal behavior change app and that’s why we’re called LifeDojo. In a Dojo in martial arts it takes about eight years to get your black belt in karate or jujitsu. It takes a lot of focus and discipline, and you do one thing at a time. Our platform’s the same way.
The vision is a 12-week, universally applicable behavior change model. No matter what habit you choose, this system and approach — with your choice and input — gets you to behavior change.
A version of this article appears in print in the StartUp Health Magazine, Issue 1, on page 32–33, with the headline: This Wellness Program Allows Employees to Choose Their Own Path
