The lifelong pursuit of wellbeing

0:11Hello and welcome to the Entrepreneurs on Monocle Radio, the show all about inspiring people, innovative companies, and fresh ideas in global business. I'm Chris Lord, guest host in Stepping In for our Tom Edwards, who's a little under the weather this week. And it's ironic because in a cruel twist of fate, today's programme is all about the lifelong pursuit of wellbeing. Wellness, from the critical first steps to ensuring comfort and vitality in later years. First up, we'll meet the CEO of the Baby Formula Company, helping families enjoy healthy, happy times in babyhood and infancy. By definition of disruption, you've got to change the way things are working in its place.

0:55There was lots of learnings along the way, but it's part of our journey and now we just wear that badge. And later, we'll head to a medical spa in Italy that promises solutions for living better and longer. Along this corridor are located the medical clinics where for most of today my health will be analysed. This is The Entrepreneurs with me, Chris Lord.

1:25You're listening to The Entrepreneurs. Now, Laura Modi is the co-founder and CEO of Bobbi, an organic infant formula company that she started in 2018. Bobbie set up shop in the basement of her home in San Francisco after a successful career in leadership roles at Airbnb and Google. The business was born from Laura's personal frustration with the lack of high-quality trusted formula options for parents, options that are free from judgment, fully transparent and supportive of every feeding journey. Within a year of its official launch, Bobbie became the fastest-growing infant formula company to enter the US market since the 1980s.

2:05Tom Edwards caught up with Laura to hear how she overcame the inherent challenges that come with an often stigmatised product, and how you set about disrupting such an industry. She began by telling us about the start of the journey. I always say this now, where if I went back and it was just the product that I wasn't happy with, I don't know if I would have gotten into this. It was the fact that the product needed to be up-leveled and changed. We needed to hold it to a higher bar. But coupled with the fact that it was heavily stigmatized and that the cultural narrative around it was pretty negative, that there wasn't acceptance of this widely used product.

2:45The silent majority of those that were turning to formula felt guilty, ashamed, embarrassed. So it needed a pretty big cultural change, probably more so than the product itself. Now, new parents in particular are rightly obsessive about the quality and the efficacy of products, but they also want to feel they're using something that maybe helps make a stronger family unit. If mum's happier and less stressed, the family unit is better. It's not just these old absolutes, you know, breast is best and so on. If everyone's happy, that's better for everyone, including baby. So how do you set about making sure you sort of bake that narrative, Laura, into your products as well.

3:24It's not easy, presumably. No, it's not. And, you know, it's also it's one of those products that you do have to be somewhat careful about as well, because everyone's feeding journey is very different. You know, a lot of people are actually combo feeding and they're doing both. So on one side, you want to be able to show that formula can shine on its own, while at the same time, never alienating, also breastfeeding and breast milk, by which I also believe is dynamic. It is liquid gold. It's more personal than anything you'll ever, ever come across. And yet, just because it happens to be best doesn't mean that everyone can do it.

4:06But it's a very challenging narrative to make sure that you land well. How do you make sure that you're making people feel seen and recognized, feel supported, and at the same time not alienated in some of their other choices. I actually think the secret sauce of really nailing how do you approach changing culture and changing narratives, I also think just comes down to representation. And every single person who was at that storyboarding session determining how our voice would show up, how bold we were going to be, how we are for all feeding journeys. Every single person around the table was feeding their own baby in all different ways.

4:48We were representing the modern parent in many ways. Yeah, I love that. And, you know, once you've done it a few times, you know, there is no one size fits all. I think that's safe to say. And now, Laura, you mentioned the scrutiny of products for babies, young children. And of course, Bobby's had its own challenges on that front, right? We go back to 2019, the FDA issues, which to my mind seems slightly out of step with where you were and what you were trying to do as a business. But as it turned out, one might say as a result of that, in fact, well, you did, you secured new partners and backers, perhaps because of the dexterity with which you handled it.

5:26So, well, I wouldn't ask, was it a good thing in the end? But do you think that despite the scrutiny and the setbacks, actually, it did help you to make a business that was even better and even more future-proof? I now look at that moment as a badge of honour. It probably goes down as, you know, the first chapter of the heroine journey of Bobby. You cannot disrupt any industry without having some rebel moments. And also, by definition of disruption, you've got to change the way things are working in its place. So, yeah, we had to kind of take a path less travelled. that path wasn't really seen as the best path according to the FDA and we had to course correct there was lots of learnings along the way but I don't play hindsight very much you know what it's part of our journey and now we just wear that badge let's talk about the hero product we know you overcame setbacks along the way but you now have I think I'm right in saying the fastest growing infant formula company in the US.

6:27Congratulations for that. Tell me about how you did this by integrating the European approach to formula, if you like, on the other side of the pond. Yeah, it was about designing both the recipe and our choice of ingredients in many ways to mimic that, very similar to European formulas. And the inspiration behind a lot of it was, you know, back eight, 10 years ago, which I can't even believe I'm saying it was that far away, there was a huge black market for European infant formula here in the US. Parents were packing suitcases full of European formulas and bringing them over to the US. And I remember even before I had a kid hearing about this thinking, that's wild.

7:09I mean, you're really, you're essentially talking about milk, people putting milk in suitcases because they wanted something of higher standard from somewhere else, or at least the belief it was. and they were willing to pay a markup and have it shipped in 5 ,000 miles away. That's obscene. You know, whenever there's a black market, there's often an opportunity to disrupt itself as well. So in large part, I think the entering into the market with our flagship product was to say, hey, by the way, that quality and those standards and that recipe can also be something we can make here at home in the US.

7:47One should not have to fly product milk in from 5 ,000 miles away just to get that quality. And that has been the focus, you know, local supply chains, fewer miles to travel, but the quality that everyone was using on the black market. You know, this is one of those businesses where the acid test is consumer endorsement, right? And mums, dads, families, everyone that you speak to when they're using the product and it's working for them. Tell me what that's like, Laura, because I guess for all the gold standards that can be applied by watchdogs or regulators, there must be an almost sort of unmatchable significant moment when someone comes to you and says, look, this made this really tough time easier.

8:31Or, you know, I finally feel like I'm doing a better job feeding my baby. Can you put into words for us, Laura, what's that like to hear that? You know, I mean, I feel even speechless just even hearing you ask the question, because there is nothing more rewarding than getting those reactions, those love letters that demonstrate your impact. You can see your growth going up in a chart, but nothing compares to that love letter. That love letter that says, my baby was finally able to digest your product, finally pooped for the first time in two weeks. I've been able to sleep. Just the love and reaction then to our brand and our message and the fact that we've given them peace of mind for putting out a safe, high quality product.

9:16I mean, truly nothing beats it. Nothing. We have a Slack channel in the company called Bobby Love Letters. And every day, you know, whether it's customer service or through social media DMs, the team will go in and add new love letters that come through. And I don't use letter lightly. These aren't, you know, two sentence quotes saying, I love your product. These are long, declarations of parents being besotted with finding Bobby. It's one of the best parts about doing this job. Where can this journey go, Laura, do you think? Why stop at being number three? Could you be number one? Can you sort of take this product to the masses?

9:57I know you've already made commitments about trying to deliver lower prices, for example, really shaking up the whole marketplace. But where does the story go next? Infant Formula is not like any other product. I went into it in many ways as an activist mother myself. I looked at this product and I saw so many problems with the way it was being sold, created by large pharmaceutical companies, government contracts to bid over states. And in many ways, it wasn't just the product, it was the entire ecosystem around it that needed to change, including accessibility for everyone. I really want to underscore that because we need to develop a high quality product that has the highest level of safety and nutrition.

10:43And it should not just be accessed by those of a certain income level at a premium end. We should be able to get to the place where this high quality nutrition is affordable and accessed by all. Now, obviously, I say that, but as a CEO, you're also dealing with the balance sheet of trying to deliver on that quality and the cost of what it takes. So one of the commitments we made a few years ago was we needed to figure out a way to reduce our costs without ever compromising on quality. And one of the ways you do that is by fully integrating your business. So we bought a manufacturing facility. It cost a little penny, but in two short years later, after fully investing and integrating it, we were then able to start seeing that the cost of making the product, because we owned end-to-end production, end-to-end quality, we actually got to see some cost improvements.

11:37We actually made a very deliberate decision at the end of last year to pass those cost savings over to our customers in hopes, really, to make it more accessible. Now, as a female founder and a self-described activist mother, what have you made of these recent pronouncements about this need for masculine energy in the boardroom? I mean, presumably you're as depressed as we all were to hear that. But do you sort of think, Laura, actually, look, I've got the experience directly with a really brilliant business that actually it flies in the face of all that kind of thing? Yeah. Oy yoy yoy. Where do I start?

12:14Yeah, I'll tell you a funny story, actually. Speaking of masculinity, I was in a conversation with someone there last week just about kind of this rise of masculinity. And someone at the table subtly turned and she goes, well, there's nothing more masculine than having a baby. I just, both I loved the visual and I loved the reminder for everyone in the room on just, and, you know, I think more as a metaphor for what masculinity is being defined as. And then you think what we as mothers and what we're trailblazing in and what we're, you know, are fighting for. Yeah, maybe there is nothing more masculine than that.

12:51But here's how I feel. I, maybe this has been over the years of building Bobby and also going through things like a national shortage. You know, women's rights being questioned, fighting for things like paid family leave, which is just shocking that we still don't have. my belief is that the society by which you live in and the culture around you it'll constantly change constantly but no matter what happens the power of mothers and the power of communities who care so deeply about something can fight through that and I think the next few years is just fuel for those communities and the power of mothers to rise to something greater.

13:37When you're talking to your four kids about your work, Laura, well, probably not the 10-month-old, not just yet, perhaps, when they say, what do you do? What do you do, mummy? What do you tell them? So hold on. I'm Irish, so I storytell everything. So let me take you to a story. It was sometime last year I was at a board meeting in San Francisco. I live in DC. And I decided to call home on FaceTime to the nanny to say hi to the kids on my way to the board meeting. and on the phone and my mom, or not my mom, Mary, my eldest daughter, she was like, mom, where are you? And I was like, Mary, you know, I'm working.

14:14I'm sorry. I'll be home in a few days, but you know what I do? I feed babies. And she sighs and she goes, but mommy, we're your babies. Come home and feed us. And my heart broke. I was like, oh, she got it. But my God, did she hit the heart strings. Anyway, fast forward a few days later, I go home and I go into her and she must have been thinking about it. It must have played on her. And she turns to me. She goes, mommy, those babies are so lucky to have you. And it's just such a reminder. I mean, obviously they know milk. They see me feed their siblings. We talk about formula a lot. I bring them to Target to see the can on the shelf.

14:57Mary likes to call herself the founder because she came up with the name. And so they get it. They get it. But still, there's trade-offs. It's very hard to build a company like this and also not make trade-offs in your life, which are very hard. Laura, as the leader of this business, how do you sort of marry up the challenges of just dealing with, you know, today's problems, having to be across those, with keeping across the key strategic considerations five, ten years from now? Look, I hope in the next three to five years, we're feeding 10 to 15 percent of babies here in the U.S. And with the ability to continue to grow.

15:38Now, I do want to underscore, I often get asked the questions like, well, why not more? Why not grow your sites on something bigger? And, you know, one of the things we've noticed, and especially for an industry and products like this, is that concentration is not great. Choice is really important. And if there's anything this industry can do, which I really hope to be part of that change and impact, is we need to see policies get introduced that invite more Bobbies into the world, more manufacturers, more innovation. And yes, I think Bobbies' growth and expansion can be in the world of other products and we can expand beyond that.

16:14But I think for the world of infant formula, I want to see it turned upside down and properly reformed where families really have choice. That was Laura Modi, the CEO and co-founder of Bobby, talking to Tom Edwards. You can find out more by heading to HiBobby.com.

16:42From first steps to making strides towards longevity, a longer life, it's become something of a buzzword, driving the growth of a trillion-dollar wellness industry. In Italy, home to one of the world's so-called blue zones, those regions of the world where people somehow just seem to live longer, healthier lives, the award-winning Lucia Magnani Health Clinic is embracing technology. By combining advanced medical diagnostics with historic thermal waters, it aims to enhance quality of life. But could it even extend lifespans? Giorgia Scaturo sent us this report. Surrounded by velvety green hills just at the foot of the Apennines, Castro Caroterme is one of the most exquisite Italian thermal capitals just an hour from Bologna.

17:33This Salsoyodic spring has been renowned for centuries for its therapeutic waters. Now, this medieval town is at the forefront of innovative scientific formulas to make our lives better and longer. We are here standing in front of the imposing Lucia Magnani Health Clinic, a 19th century's architecture with rational geometries reminiscent of the fascist era. Benito Mussolini was in fact born only a few miles from this thermal complex, where he used to take his family and collaborators. Today, in this sophisticated medical centre and luxury grand hotel, longevity is taken a step further. Let's get in.

18:17Good morning. Welcome to the Ciamagnani Health Clinic. My name is Laura Muccioli. I am an angel and I will be supporting you on your journey discovering longevity. Laura described herself as an angel. In fact, this is what reads on her tag. It's already a good beginning. Inside this award-winning MediWellness Resort is a sanctuary of elegance, relaxation and medical knowledge. Supported by the Italian healthcare holding GVM, for the past 15 years Lucia Magnani has been developing her unique long-life formula that combines pampering treatments, AI fitness and nutrition methods with specialised medical examinations.

19:01It's very early in the morning and I'm now heading to reception to start my anti-aging test, the beginning of my long-life formula treatments. Hello, good morning. Today we start with antioxidative stress. I will take you to the room. Along this corridor are located medical clinics where for most of today my health will be analysed. Here we have the profile blood test, nutrition and posture, thyroid, ultrasound, eco-colour Doppler. I will test the innovative scientific longevity formula that was developed by Lucia Magnani. Oh, and here is the doctor herself. It all starts with an in-depth health check-up, says Lucia Magnani, a biochemist turned entrepreneur.

19:56Our main enemy is oxidative stress, which she explains is an excess of free radicals in our bodies that damages ourselves and causes premature aging.

20:12So here, in a clinic, they're focusing on how to fight oxidative stress, an imbalance that can also lower our immune system.

20:23The formula is complemented with a personalized diet, exercise and regenerating beauty treatments and massages.

20:36The King technology here is a sophisticated magnetic resonance machine to predict our chances to develop silent illnesses like cancer or heart attacks in the next five years. I'm inside the Diagnostic Prevention and Predictions Centre and I'm about to test a new predictive full-body MRI scan.

21:06This new technology of MRI tests will last for about an hour. To describe it as a giant white donut, my help as I am going in. OK? Sure. I'm just out of this sophisticated and very loud tunnel. It feels like being in a Star Wars movie, except lying down. But the question is, what can this machine predict? We use DWI, Diffusion Weighted Imaging, that it's very sensitive to the variation of the movement of the water molecules in the tissue. And it is very important to understand if we have some kind of hypercellularity, that is the first kind of problem in the cancer. What's the novelty of this method of diagnostics?

21:55You don't have some kind of radiation because we use the similar radiofrequency used in a phone, for example. we don't have some kind of ionization radiation, for example, as in X-ray or in CT traditional methods. This is very safe for the patient. Medical tech is only the most recent development in Castrocaro, where the path of longevity is gentle and relaxing. Still scented on the original magic waters, they smell like rotten eggs but have therapeutic powers. They are called throughout the history, the magic waters, because of the mineral principles and the beneficial principles on the health, on the body, on the venous and lymphatic system.

22:43The minerals inside this water are mostly sulfur, sodium iodide, chloride and bromide. The smell comes from these components. A waterfall of thermal water springs from two monoliths of black granite to stand at the centre of this exquisite art-decor swimming pool, stylish mosaics and black marbles. And here is the wow factor. The water in the pool is bright green for the presence of chlorophyll-rich microalgae that have a beneficial effect on the skin that in fact feels very velvety.

23:22Longevity is now a trendy word and with estimates that by 2050 the global population over 60 will double to 2 billion, long living is both a challenge for healthcare systems and an opportunity for the global awareness economy. A business valued nearly$6 trillion in 2022, projected to grow to over$8 trillion by 2027. But here, Dr Marco De Angelis is ringing a longevity alert. There's a problem in the sense of living longer. is worse in the sense that we are going to live for a longer time, but with a longer period being ill. This is not good. So what can we do? We are too much confident on technology, on science.

24:08That can help to understand better what's going on in our body, but we are too confident on it. I have to work on my old age when I'm young. We start with a drink. It's one infused with apple, blueberry. ginger and meat. I'm Yolanda Bertarelli, and I'm a member of the scientific staff here at the Lucia Magnani Health Clinic. What is the most powerful weapon to fight aging? Maintain an equilibrium between antioxidants and free radicals. So in every kind of food, we have different kinds of antioxidants. It's important to eat a small amount of every kind of antioxidant every day. I'm sneaking into the kitchen and here's the chef.

24:59Hello. Hello. My name is Marco Culejo. I cook for Long Life Formula. What are we cooking today? The artichoke, carrot soup. This is lentils with some rosemary and olive oil, but it looks really little as a portion. OK. 60 di polpo. Un altro 10 di risotto. This is grams. Grams, yes. So 10 grams of rice? Exactly. And you're not going to be hungry after 10 grams of rice opening? No, because if you eat in disorder, you don't have hungry when you finish.

25:43Technology meets traditional well-being in perfect harmony here. And at the end of our longevity journey, we of course ask Lucia Magnani to share a secret for a long-lasting life. To live longer we must live better and what is very important is a slower mode of living. Where taking care of ourselves is part of our daily routine. Sounds utopic in the real frenetic world? For sure it's not easy to jump off a fast merry-go-round, she says. but all of us can have a more balanced management of our lives with prevention, diet, exercise. We must never forget about ourselves. Non dobbiamo dimenticarci di noi stessi.

26:37For Monaco Radio in Castro Caroterme and Terra del Sole, I am Giorgia Scaturro. My thanks to Giorgia there for that report from Italy. You can find out more by heading to luciamagnanihealthclinic.it.