Let's talk about what's actually happening in GLP-1 telehealth. Because someone has to.
I've partnered with four telehealth companies. I've watched the space explode, implode, and everything in between. And I'm tired of creators being the villain in a story they didn't write.
GLP1 telehealth companies advertise. You’ve seen them on TV. You’ve heard them on the radio. Some of them run real campaigns with real budgets. They are not hiding in the shadows.
But here’s what those ads can’t do. They can’t sit in your DMs at 10pm and answer your questions. They can’t cry on camera about a plateau and make you feel less alone. They can’t say “I’m in this with you” and actually mean it. That’s what creators do. And that’s exactly why these companies don’t just run ads. They come find us.
Influencer marketing converts better than any radio spot. It’s more trusted, more personal, and more effective. These companies know that. So they build their growth strategy on our stories, our faces, our audiences. We are not a backup plan. We are the plan.
They chose us strategically because we convert better than any ad they could buy. And that choice comes with responsibility they aren’t owning.
I’ve been on this journey since March 2023. I’ve lost over 75 pounds. I still have weight to lose. I am not a doctor, I am not a coach, and I have never once pretended to be. What I am is someone who is living this, in real time, and sharing it honestly.
So when someone slides into my comments to tell me I “shouldn’t be talking about medication because I’m not a doctor,” I have a question for them. Where are you leaving that comment on the telehealth company’s page? The one that prescribed the medication? The one running the TV commercial? Because I don’t see you there.
The creator gets the scrutiny. The company gets the customer. That’s the double standard nobody wants to talk about. And I’m talking about it.
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My honest arc. Because you deserve to know where I’m coming from.
When I got my first telehealth partnership I was genuinely excited. I mean, someone wanted to pay me to talk about something I was already living every single day. It felt like validation. Like proof that my story was worth something.
I was also pretty naive about what that arrangement actually meant.
I didn’t fully understand that I was signing up to be someone’s marketing strategy. I thought it was more of a mutual thing, like they believed in my journey and I believed in their product and we’d just kind of grow together. And in the beginning it felt that way. The people I talked to seemed to care. The communication was good. I felt like I was part of something.
Then things shifted. The people I’d built a relationship with moved on. The energy changed. And I found myself still posting, still showing up, still honoring a contract, but the feeling behind it was different. I was trying to stay authentic while also meeting obligations that no longer felt aligned with where I was.
I want to be careful here because there are things I genuinely cannot get into publicly. But what I can say is that I started paying attention to what was happening around me in the broader space. Conversations were happening. Questions were being raised. And I realized that my audience’s trust is not something I can afford to take lightly, no matter what a contract says.
So I made changes. More than once.
And right now, where I am today, I am genuinely happy with the telehealth I work with. That didn’t happen by accident. It happened because I got clearer about what I was actually looking for and stopped saying yes to things just because they showed up in my inbox with an offer.
I’m telling you all of this because I want you to understand that the version of me writing this article is not the version who signed her first partnership. I’ve earned these opinions.
The double standard. And I’m not letting it go.
Let me say this as plainly as I can.
The same people who question whether creators should be talking about GLP1 medications are not showing up in the comments of the telehealth company’s Instagram asking why a stranger on the internet prescribed them a medication after a five minute intake form. They are not questioning the radio ad. They are not side-eyeing the TV commercial.
They are coming for the creator. The visible one. The one with a face and a comment section and a story that’s easy to poke holes in if you’re looking for reasons not to trust her.
And here’s what makes me the most frustrated about that. The telehealth company is the one with the prescribing authority. The telehealth company is the one collecting the monthly subscription. The telehealth company is the one making the medical decisions. The creator is just the one saying “here’s what happened to me.”
How did we get to a place where the patient sharing her experience is more scrutinized than the business profiting from that experience?
I’ll tell you how. Because creators are accessible. We have comments open. We respond to DMs. We are human and visible and easy to challenge in a way that a faceless company simply is not. That accessibility, the very thing that makes us trustworthy to the people who love us, also makes us a target.
That is not okay. And more people in this space need to say so out loud.
Not all telehealths are villains. I mean that.
I want to be really clear about something before I go any further. I am not here to tear down an entire industry.
GLP1 medications have genuinely changed lives. Mine included. The telehealth model has made access to these medications possible for women who would never have gotten a prescription through a traditional doctor’s visit. That matters. That is real and it is worth protecting.
There are companies in this space that are doing it right. Companies that actually care about patient outcomes, that have real clinical oversight, that treat their creators like partners instead of performance metrics. They exist. I know because I work with one of them.
But not all telehealth is created equal. And that’s the part that gets lost when this conversation happens, because people either defend the entire industry or condemn it, and the nuance disappears completely.
Some of these companies are genuinely trying to do right by their patients. Some of them are chasing a trend. Some of them launched six months ago and will be gone by next year. Some of them have real licensed providers reviewing every case. Some of them have intake processes so thin it would make your head spin.
The problem is that from the outside they can all look the same. A clean website, a before and after, an influencer you recognize. It is genuinely hard to tell the difference if you don’t know what you’re looking for.
And that’s not the patient’s fault. That’s a landscape problem.
The flooding is real. And nobody is helping you navigate it.
Here is what my inbox looks like on any given week. Multiple emails from telehealth companies I have never heard of. New names, new logos, new “revolutionary approaches” to GLP1 care. Some of them have clearly just launched. Some of them I genuinely cannot find any information about outside of their own website.
And they all want me to promote them.
I can’t imagine what it feels like to be a patient trying to choose in this environment. You’re already overwhelmed. You’re already doing research on a medication that feels complicated and a little scary. And now there are fifteen companies all claiming to be the best option, all with creators vouching for them, and no real way to compare.
That’s a real problem. It’s not a creator problem. It’s not even really a patient problem. It’s what happens when a market grows faster than its standards do.
New companies are going to keep launching. The FDA situation around compounded medications is still evolving. The landscape is going to keep shifting. And if nobody is helping the patient understand how to evaluate what they’re looking at, the confusion is only going to get worse.
That’s actually a big part of why I write what I write. Not to sell you on any one company. To help you think more clearly about all of them.
Before you call someone a sellout, read their contract.
Something I want to say clearly, because I think it gets missed. When you see a creator who seems like they’re pushing a telehealth brand harder than feels natural, there’s a chance they’re not being fake. There’s a chance they have a contract with deliverables and a deadline and they are trying to keep both their integrity and their agreement intact at the same time.
Those two things can be true simultaneously. A genuine story and a business obligation. I know because I’ve been there.
These companies also play favorites. Some creators get the inner circle treatment, the group chats, the early access, the extra support. Others get an affiliate link and a generic email. And when the company decides to elevate certain voices over others, it creates a dynamic that has nothing to do with who is actually serving their audience the best. It has everything to do with who is performing the best for the company’s numbers.
And when those numbers aren’t there? You get dropped. Full stop. That’s not a partnership. That’s an affiliate link with relationship language attached to it.
They market it as a partnership. They treat it like a transaction. And we get blamed for the confusion.
Here’s where I land. And where I hope you do too.
If you’ve made it this far, here’s what I want you to walk away with.
The woman who has been on this medication for two years and shows up every week to share her honest experience is not your enemy. She is not trying to scam you. She has affiliate links, yes. She has partnerships, yes. So does every creator in every space who has figured out how to make content creation sustainable. That is not evidence of dishonesty. That is just how this works.
What you should be asking is not “does she have a partnership” but “does she actually live this.” Does she talk about the hard weeks, not just the good ones. Does she share the plateaus and the frustrations and the moments where she questioned everything. Does she treat you like a real person who deserves real information.
That’s the bar. And a lot of the creators in this space, the ones getting dragged for having affiliate links, are clearing it every single week.
I’m still here. Three years in, still losing, still navigating, still showing up. Not because it’s always easy or because the partnerships have always been perfect or because this space hasn’t sometimes made me want to close my laptop and walk away.
Because this community is real. Because the women in it are real. And because someone needs to say the things that other people are too careful to say.
That’s what I’m here for.
This Friday, paid subscribers are getting the full behind the scenes breakdown. The red flags I missed in past partnerships and what they looked like in real time. What I actually look for now before saying yes to anyone. The questions you should be asking before signing up with any telehealth company. And what a real influencer contract actually looks like, what to watch for, and what I wish someone had told me before I signed my first one.
If you’ve ever wondered whether your telehealth provider is the right one, or whether the creator promoting them actually knows what they’re talking about, Friday’s post is for you.
Soon let's talk about the peptide space, the girl eating 10mg of nicotine a day for 'health benefits,' and why your feed has basically become the wild west of wellness.
I’m currently running a promotion for my paid posts… you can get your first year for only $29 (that’s 70% OFF) rn. It ends on May 1st. So join soon.
see you next time,
You speak my language, girl! And I am on name-brand Mounjaro! I had to dip into the compounded world during 2023-2024 to augment the 7.5/10/12.5mg Mounjaro that I *could* get so I could get up to the prescribed 15mg.
When this whole thing is over and done with, I have things to say. Because I am not compounding at the moment, I don't have the respected critical voice you have as you are still in there. But, yes, as a retired midwife who has been in the medical world for over 40 years... I have things to say.
Thank you for speaking up and for goodness' sake, people are weird. You know that. You do your thing. Your success (personal and business) is your voice. And it is a ringing, positive voice. Keep going!