#66 - Are Some Diabetes Programs Betting on You to Fail?

A “money-back guarantee” diabetes program sounds like it should give you confidence… until you notice the hidden incentive: if you don’t hit your goals, they keep your money. 

That question kicked off a candid discussion about why type 2 diabetes behavior change is less about finding new information and more about building implementation, accountability, and real support that leads to remission-level results. 

In this episode, we discuss:
 
 • Why six weeks can be a misleading timeframe for A1C and medication reduction goals
 • The difference between information and implementation and why most people already know the basics
 • How “skin in the game” drives focus and follow-through
 • Why accountability is less about policing and more about hard questions
 • How low-cost fitness and health programs can rely on low engagement to work as a business model
  

If you have been struggling choosing the approach that gives you the best chance of success, better metabolic health, and a real return on investment compared to years of rising meds and complications, then this episode is for you.

Ready to take control of your health and stop settling for “managed” diabetes?
    Grab your earbuds and listen in.

Brian & Cory
   Diabetes Remission Partners

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Transcript

A Different Story About Type 2

SPEAKER_00 0:02

If you have type 2 diabetes and you're tired of being told it's chronic and something you'll just have to manage forever, if your illness needs control but your medication that keeps growing or stays the same, then you know deep down you're capable of more than it, you're in the right place. This is the Diabetes Remission Roadmap Podcast for Brian Bitcher and Corey Jenks, two pharmacists who spent over two decades inside healthcare. And we started this show because we got tired of watching capable people stuck getting managed instead of rebuilt. Here's what most people aren't told. Type 2 diabetes isn't just a blood sugar problem, it's a muscle and energy storage problem. When your body loses strength and metabolic flexibility, blood sugar arises. And you can rebuild that. On this show, we break the script to say more meds are inevitable, you're destined to just manage, remission is impossible, and instead we teach you how to build muscle, eat in a way that keeps you full, and regain control of your health again. No extremes, no shame, just practical strategy to help you move toward remission and lead your health again. Let's

The Money Back Program Question

SPEAKER_00 0:58

get to work.

SPEAKER_01 0:58

Welcome back to another edition of the Diabetes Remission Roadmap Podcast. Brian and I are coordinating and styling in red. And if you are not watching us on YouTube, then you are missing out on the wonderful contradiction between our red shirts and our blue eyes. Good day, Brian. Good day, Corey. All right. Brian, let's just get into it because full transparency, we host this podcast and we also have a coaching program for type 2 diabetes. People pay us money to help them lower their blood sugar and get off medicines. And we actually had a recent call with someone who had been interested in our program and said, I think I'd love your program, but I want to go with this other one because it was a few hundred dollars for six weeks. And if they hit all their goals, they got their money back. What's your thought about this? There's a bet happening here. I'm gonna tee you up. Hopefully, the bet, it's almost like they're betting on them to fail.

SPEAKER_00 1:48

It sounds like it. Yeah, it's if you don't hit your goals, then we get to keep your money. So there is one positive thing going there is that there is something on the line, like there's an investment on the line that hopefully gets him to actually follow through on his commitments and hit his goals. Now, I don't know what his goals were, I'm not really up to date on that, but six weeks is also not a lot of time to hit the kind of goals we're trying to get people to hit, which is reducing medications.

SPEAKER_01 2:13

Although we've had some people reduce some in a little as four weeks, but there's no magic number like it'll be two weeks, four weeks, six weeks, but six weeks you think of an A1C, a SMC is three-month blood sugar average. So six weeks is just half of that. And yeah, we've seen blood sugars drop within a within a week of starting our program because of what people commit to doing.

SPEAKER_00 2:33

Yeah. I was saying another thing I don't like about this is it's gonna get him to do a bunch of change in a little bit of a period of time, potentially drastic compared to his lifestyle and his baseline. And yeah, so he might have that immediate intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation to do these things, intrinsic meaning just coming from within. Actually, it's probably more extrinsic because it's financially involved. And so there's probably even less intrinsic motivation being drawn out of him to help him understand why he's actually doing this. He's just, I see some numbers, maybe I don't like my blood sugar's high, threat of medication going up. So let me just invest in this program or bet on myself, not even really investing in the program. I'm not sure what kind of support they also provide him. They're just like, okay, here you go, we'll take your money, and then you're on your own to actually make this to implement this. I've again not keen on those details, but that would be a red flag for me if I was putting this money on the line, and then they're like, they're happy to take it if I fail, but they is there like a return on interest if I actually complete my goals? Do they pay me? Like, or is this just like I'm putting $200 out there and if I don't do it, it's gone.

SPEAKER_01 3:41

Like speaking of $200, it's not as an insignificant sum of money, or $300 or whatever this was.

Information Is Cheap Implementation Wins

SPEAKER_01 3:47

But I think the reality we want to acknowledge is that information is cheap. Our podcast costs zero dollars to listen to, and because oftentimes people already know that eating a lot of sugar is not good for blood sugar, right? You know that in some ways moving your body helps blood sugar, right? This is not secret information, and people know that they air quote should do things. The problem isn't the information, it's the implementation.

SPEAKER_00 4:11

It's always implementation. Yeah, but people are always like on our pre-call assessments I don't have the information. I'm like, gonna call that out every time. It the information is readily available. You do have the information, it's just you're not implementing it. And that comes down to how do you personalize the information for yourself, and then that's where you get the implementation. So, again, with this whole betting on himself to succeed, I yeah, I be really curious than how it turns out for him.

SPEAKER_01 4:43

I think that placing a bet on yourself is good because skin in the game does matter. Because when you do invest in yourself, money is attention. When you invest a lot of money in something, when you buy a house, you put a lot of effort into that house. When you buy a car, you take better care of it than if you're given a car. Who amongst us grew up with kids who were given very nice cars in high school and wrecked them, left them a mess. I certainly had family members who were given vehicles and I got them when they were done with them, and I had a lot of cleanup to do, right? So when you have skin in the game, you put more effort into it. You're more committed, you're more engaged. There is this episode, it's about it's about diabetes programs, but it really is about how we can change our behavior.

SPEAKER_00 5:25

Yeah. I think this is applicable to a lot of things in life. If you are invested in something, you are going to pay more attention to it. And that's where I like to say, show me your bank account, show me your calendar or your screen time, and I'll tell you what your priorities are. What apps are you spending time on, and I'll tell you what your priorities are. Because behold, I don't have time. Excuse can go out the window real quick when you show screen time and you're like spending hours on a certain app or whatnot.

SPEAKER_01 5:52

And we're not saying that being on social media or watching movies is bad. If that's what you value, I just bought another baseball glove because I'm back to playing slow pitch softball and I love the art and craftsmanship of baseball gloves. And calling myself up, Ryan, I have not restrung that catches me yet. But I did sit down and cut out some of the laces and started doing it as soon as and then my kids came home and interrupted me. So I have not got to it, but I did buy another glove because I appreciate the craftsmanship. There's nothing wrong with spending time on money what you value, but if it's coming at the expense of something as critical as your health, then it's time for an audit. Like right now in the background, hopefully you can't hear it, but we're expanding our bookshelf because we value reading in our house. My parents just moved to a new house and they're getting an extra TV. I love my parents and they love watching TV. And at this stage in the life, that's what they like. In our stage of life, we have five people in the house and one TV. They have two and they have four TVs. It's a person to TV ratio.

SPEAKER_00 6:42

What's that? Well, that's a good one.

SPEAKER_01 6:43

It's a yeah, but and we're not saying, I'm not saying one's good or bad. I love my parents and they love what they spend their time on, and that's fine. But when you are trying to invest in yourself, you need to make sure that you have some skin in the game,

Accountability And Hard Questions

SPEAKER_01 6:58

I think. And moving along with that, who's gonna hold you accountable? Who's gonna call you out and say, what is your screen time? Because that accountability can be really uncomfortable, but it's what's so powerful. And I think that's what a great program is going to do is going to make you uncomfortable to make you realize what you're doing is not getting you where you want to be.

SPEAKER_00 7:16

Yeah. And better than accountability, I think it's gonna be asking hard questions because I tell us to people too like, I'm I can't literally hold you accountable to doing your workouts. I'm not gonna be at your house. I'm not gonna say, hey, come here and do this workout. Not the best that gets is like you have that personal trainer relationship and they're at the gym, but they that person still can't get you to show up. Once you're there, they're gonna guide you through it. And that's what we provide the structure for accountability. And really, I like to think like we help people learn how to be more accountable to themselves because that's a quality we really look for, is like people who are ready and wanting to hold themselves accountable to a higher standard, because that's what this is all about. It's not about coming in. If you're coming into with to a situation and you have type 2 diabetes, to some degree, you have to level up who you are as a person because you have to transform into a higher level version of yourself so that you're someone who does not necessarily have type 2 diabetes that requires medications. And so, yeah, I think that's a big part of this.

SPEAKER_01 8:25

Yeah, and to give an example from my own life, like I'm very regular with my workouts, but I joined a gym and do a weekly workout with a coach, and I can tell you that the amount of weight that I push up and around and things I do and how much I push myself is more than I would do on my own. So I'm accountable to myself because I show up at 5 a.m. to do this workout. But I think having that support and the accountability and someone asking the uncomfortable question of, hey, can you put a little bit more weight on there? That is what helps you level up even more. So, like it's being accountable to yourself, but also having the support and someone who is detached from you personally, because we've seen the like my wife's gonna coach me. I'm like, okay, good luck, have fun at divorce court. But someone who's able to ask those uncomfortable questions to push you beyond who you are, to, as you say, level up who you are as a person and your health.

SPEAKER_00 9:14

Yeah, that's what I think it's about. People want accountability, but they actually need someone who's gonna ask them the hard questions, help them level up through the answers, through them answering those questions themselves, and giving the guidance to help them figure out a way to answer those

Low Cost Models And Low Engagement

SPEAKER_00 9:29

questions.

SPEAKER_01 9:29

And so next point I want to touch on is that this is a little uncomfortable, but I think Brian, you have an example from the gym industry to maybe drive this home is that programs that are we'll call them cheaper or less expensive often rely on low engagement. And this is not to be mean or malicious, but if you have a low price, you're gonna have low commitment, low follow-through, they often run together. And all the time the entity is collecting the money from the people.

SPEAKER_00 9:57

Yeah. We didn't want to be one thing. So this was a partner recently when we tried to, I met with someone through the app we delivered like the program for, and they're like, you could have a lower tier thing, but I don't want to become the next planet fitness because their model is like $10 a month, and they have, I think they bank on some crazy, like 90% of the people members are not going very regularly at all, if at all. And it's because they have such a low barrier of entry, $10 a month, maybe more now, I'm not sure. But it's still around that $10 a month, maybe $20 now. But it's basically low resistance, low barrier of entry, high resistance, high degree of difficulty to get out of it because they make you come in person to actually cancel your membership. So that's like easy in, hard out. And that's their model. They're basically taking money from people and not helping them. Online programs, online courses, they function a lot of the same way. People go in, and not saying that people that create these have bad intentions, but we've always been taught from mentors, business mentors, like that when you do that, you are gonna not help people as much. Our business mentors are always like, Do you want to help people transform? Okay, then that's the online course, the something ridiculous. Like 50% of people don't even log in. They once they purchase it, they don't even log in. And then like even fewer even finish. Versus when you get into a cohort-based model, basically group-based model, the completion rate goes as high as 90%. So yeah, something like 50% of people never start, 20% never log in at all. It's just really profoundly depressing, like this whole online education model, which is very abundant now. You can log in, you can find a course for anything. I took a speed reading course during the pandemic, and that actually was nice. I did finish it, but I don't really do many of these online courses otherwise.

SPEAKER_01 11:56

Thinking of another model where people don't always show up and follow through.

Real ROI Of Coaching And Health

SPEAKER_01 12:01

I want to call it our traditional healthcare model. You talk about skin in the game, you have a third-party payer oftentimes, so you're not paying the true cost. The doctors, if you get better or you don't get better, they're still getting paid. Whether you get better or not, you're still paying for your medications, you're still going to those appointments. So that's another sort of like low skin in the game. I wouldn't call it low price because there's a lot of very high prices in our healthcare system and terrible value. But I think that as you said, like our goal is to help people truly transform. It's amazing the emails we get from the listeners of the podcast who take the information and run with it. And that's great. And there are some people who take the information and end up working with us and they do great. And you talk about we want people to transform. We're here because we've seen the attrition, the sadness, the slow demise of people in their lives who are suffering with type 2 diabetes in the standard model, and we're sick of it. And if we just wanted to create some cheap online course, that's no worse than what we were doing before. I want people to come in, get committed, and which you pay attention to. And like full disclosure, like we talked at the beginning about a few hundred dollar investment for this certain program. We do charge more than that because behavior change is hard. Coaching takes time, developing a program that works takes time, and that support matters. And so really what we want to deliver is transformations, and I believe that we do that, Brian.

SPEAKER_00 13:24

Yeah. If I had a goal, it would be a dream would be a hundred percent of listeners either so either portion of them do it on their own and they get the result, or the other portion are like, we like you enough that I like you enough that I'm gonna ask for your help because I'm struggling to do this on my own. That would be like my dream. Every one of these listeners is on their road to remission, like we call it the road to remission, improving their metabolic health, reversing energy toxicity, reducing their need for diabetes medications, and thereby a lot of other medications that come as a result of having a metabolic disease. And that would be the dream, wouldn't it?

SPEAKER_01 14:02

Yeah, yeah. And that's that's we're living the dream. We're getting to do this. And so if you're listening, you're like, hey, I want a little more information about how we can help you, follow, follow the link in the show description to book a call with us. And if you're like, I don't want to work with you guys, keep giving me free content. Hey, keep listening, head to our YouTube page, head to our Instagram. We're here to give you the information. If you're an implementer, awesome. This is not the contest to see who we could like the most. Our goal is to help you transform. And everyone, as Ryan says, everyone has their own road that they're gonna take, and everyone's road's gonna look different, and some need a little more guidance than others. And that's totally okay. But if you are looking for a transformation in the program, one of the things that we hear from a lot of our clients is you Google diabetes help, and all of a sudden you are getting bombarded with advertisements from programs online to help you. And when you're evaluating them, I don't think that we want to ask the real question, isn't how cheap can I do this? It's what actually gives me the best chance of succeeding. Because if you pay cheap prices for years and you're paying for medicines and complications, it actually isn't cheaper. But if you're able to pay once and fix it, that's worth every penny.

SPEAKER_00 15:11

Yeah. Brian, yeah, return on the investment there. I'm not sure. It'd be hard to calculate that. One remission save one. It's like what's the yeah, the return on that investment is hard to measure.

SPEAKER_01 15:23

Yeah, it's monetary and beyond money. We're not here to throw shade at other programs. Everyone has their own path in life, their own approach to things. Brian and I have just particularly found this one that we like, and we've seen the transformation, and it just energizes us. We've gone from being burnt-out pharmacists to thriving and excited to get up every day to see how we can help even more to create, to fill the gap that our healthcare system is lacking in because of its model. Brian, that's I think that that's everything, right? Yeah, that's everything to me. All right.

Subscribe Share Review And Disclaimer

SPEAKER_01 15:53

If you enjoyed this, make sure to subscribe to the podcast. We would love a review. Ratings and reviews help other people find the show. And we want many others. And 50% of people of adults in America have diabetes or prediabetes. So there's plenty of people who would benefit from listening to this. So share it with somebody. Head over to our YouTube channel. We're putting videos out there regularly as well. And until next time, Brian, keep it simple and do what works.

SPEAKER_00 16:20

If this episode gave you clarity or hope, share it with one friend who's been stuck in the diabetes trap. That's how this mission grows. One person, one family, one story at a time. And if you haven't yet, leaving a quick review helps more people find the show and realize they're not stuck with meds forever. It takes less than a minute and it means the world to us. Thanks for being here, and thanks for being part of this movement toward freedom. Thanks for listening to the Diabetes Remission Roadmap. The ideas discussed here are for general informational purposes only and do not constitute medical or nutritional advice. We are pharmacists, but we're not your personal health care providers. Always consult your own physician or qualified clinician before changing medications, exercise routines, or nutrition plans. Results vary, and what works for one person may not work for another.