Episode 109- Unpacking Longevity: Bridging Biotech and Tradition – Kas Bordier, Biotech and Medtech Entrepreneur

Welcome to Building While Flying, a Sasha Group podcast where we interview business leaders about how they tackle challenges, stay resilient, and navigate ever changing skies. 

 born in communist Poland Cas Bordier story is one of tenacity and determination from nearly not making it at birth. Growing up with a sister with epilepsy and being raised by a single mom, pulling all the weight, she’s faced more than her fair share of challenges, but she’s turned those trials into fuel for her journey.

Now as an m MIT trained healthtech nerd, longevity expert in biotech and healthtech entrepreneur, she’s made health and vitality not just the coolest but attainable thing by commercializing the latest health innovations. Cass isn’t just staying ahead of the game. She’s empowering you to take control of your own health.

You’re not just watching from the sidelines. You’re on the front line with every breakthrough. And if that wasn’t enough, she’s also a helicopter pilot in training, living proof that the sky isn’t the limit, it’s just the beginning. 

Welcome to the Building While Flying podcast. I’m your host, Joe Qr, and today we’re joined by a special guest, longevity and health tech nerd Cas Bordier. Cas. How are you today? Oh, hi Joe. I am very well. I am very happy to be speaking to you again. Hi.

You’re my one of my favorite people recently to talk to, so I really appreciate that. That’s an honor coming from somebody as esteemed as yourself. We like to talk about how obviously the name building Law Flying, it kind of connotates a lot of balls in the air or juggling things as an entrepreneur or as a solopreneur.

It hasn’t always been. So smooth sailing to get to where you’re at right now. I know we’ve talked about this in the past, but our audience really needs to be introduced to you properly. So why don’t we talk about the very beginning of kind of what, what formed you and started getting you into this space where you wanted to focus on L Longevity.

Why don’t you rewind back and tell us about the beginnings? Yes. Whew. Often when I’m asked this question I, I run quickly to not easy beginning and then fast forward I’m doing what I’m doing, but I think it’s important that I share which I actually don’t share a lot but I feel is the right moment.

I also have the right host, so thank you for that. So very briefly, for those who don’t know me, I was born in the eighties in Poland. I almost didn’t make it at birth. I was raised by an incredible superhuman mom who was a single mom to me and my sister. Both my sister and I had a lot of health challenges and eighties in Poland in the.

Eastern Europe for those familiar with the timing and the history was a crazy time still under Soviet rain, right? We’re still in Soviet. A hundred percent correct. So I am a child of a cold war. And it was really, this very interesting dynamic that I was raised within that at home we had very little, but I had a lot of love and there was a lot of.

Strength. My mom was a, is strong, powerful woman, but outside of our home, basically life and my country was in flux. Everything was changing. It was like a, I would say one big tornado of social and governmental change. And it was really where Poland was going from communist time into democracy time.

And as much as, it’s amazing that obviously. We did transition. That transition was not easy. There was a lot of challenges, there was a lot of uncertainty, there was a lot of anger. Hey, welcome to the beginning of me. Interesting time to say the least. And I love the reference you made to the title of the podcast.

Cause whenever I listen to new episodes, it really brings me back a little bit too. My upbringing when I think Building, While, Flying, it’s literally my life. It’s this feeling that you really wanna make it happen, but it’s scary. You don’t know where you’re gonna land. And so the early days for me was really resilience adaptability.

And I think what is really important when people come together we have collective action of human beings that really drive the change. And I almost feel. It’s a privilege that I can do what I’m doing because I’m really standing on the shoulder of people who allow me to study abroad allowed me to leave the country because for some of you who are listening, when I was a kid, living a country was not a given.

You needed to get a permission and most of us just couldn’t do it. So that’s the early days that shaped me to say the least. I love that reference on Standing on the Shoulders. I think somebody wrote a book called Standing on the Shoulders of Giants at one point just the title of that book just leads me to believe, man, some of the most successful people in the world did not get there by themselves, so I love that reference.

All right. I know just a little bit about your background. You went. Into kind of western society from there. At some point you broke free of the Eastern block and you decided to really invest in yourself through education. Walk us through that a little bit. What was the culture Shock like coming from Soviet Poland into I believe you went to Vienna first and then you made Yes. Your way over to London for your career, right? Yes, absolutely. It’s very interesting cuz geographically Poland and Austria are very close, yet mentally it was a different world. So I was one of the lucky ones that once the country opened up I could get a scholarship and study in Vienna.

So my nerdiness really paid off already. And that just, it is a little bit like, honestly I was on a different planet. It wasn’t a little bit different reality. It was like a different planet. I saw how people. Were living their life, that there was a ongoing happiness and kind of fulfillment was possible, which is not what I saw growing up.

And that, that just gave me a little bit of a perspective of what’s possible. And I’m just so freaking grateful. But again, I’ve credited back to the people who really felt very strongly For freedom so that I could actually make that happen. And so Vienna was amazing already and I studied with international crowd and I got exposed to just some incredible people.

And living in the dorms, that experience on its own was quite incredible Learning English while trying to finish a degree in that language was another one, but it was a fun to do. But hey, we made it and we meaning. always refer we as me, my mom, and my sister, cuz I truly believe I wouldn’t be where I am if it wasn’t for them.

So I wanna give them credit. And so yeah, I give Michelle thank you. And so oh I’m happily in Vienna. Thanks for moving. Super nice. And then I get the just amazing job opportunity to go to London and literally, it took me one conversation with my mom. Have a conversation with my sister cuz my mom is the one that needs needs to be comfortable with my choices for me.

And my mom said, look, you almost didn’t make it at birth. Everything that you’re doing now is a privilege. So if you have that opportunity, you go and you make the best out of it. So there you have my incredible mom spoke and I said, okay I’m out. So I went to London and. London was just another one of those things that opened my eyes to what’s possible, opened my eyes to, London is a beautiful mix of so many different nationalities, cultures, religions, and somehow all of it worked well when I was there.

I know. With Brexit things changed probably a little bit, but it was just an incredible example of when people come together, great things happen. And even though they were scary, it was still a beautiful timing. For me. Now, what I wanted to mention cuz that’s highly linked to what I’m doing currently, so I was in London.

My work was just going through the roof. I was traveling the world, working with incredible people. Yet, I did not learn my lesson about my health that, as I mentioned, almost didn’t make it at birth. And so health was a uphill battle. But then I was, okay, I’m in London. My work is going up up. And literally my health goes directly opposite.

Everything is declining, and suddenly I found myself. Not being able to get up having super low energy needed to excuse myself from meetings because I just did not have energy. And that led me to seeing a lot of doctors, a lot of testing, a lot of trying and chewing things. And unfortunately nobody could really gimme an answer.

They said on the surface, you are okay. But my body felt no count. Were not okay. And that really set me more physiological. Or was it more mental? Was it like burnout or stress or what do you suspect it was that kind of led you to have this epiphany, your awakening? Yeah, great question. I think it was mixed of everything.

So the first thing was really my body felt like it was giving up on me.  I just didn’t have the strength. I didn’t have energy, I wasn’t, I was losing tremendous amount of weight in a very unhealthy way. But I think all of it was also exacerbated by the level of stress. I absolutely did not pay attention to my mental health.

I thought all of it is for people who are uh, well off and they go to see therapy. So I kind of thought it’s not for me. And I just didn’t know any better. But it was definitely the mix of very crazy lifestyle, not knowing basic stuff that now I know and I’m thinking, I can’t believe I didn’t know that.

And then not really appreciating that when this body. It’s not operating well. None of my big dreams, none of my. The people I’m working with, my family, no one will benefit if I break down and because I hate letting people down. That just set me up on my beautiful health journey from not only discovering my own stuff, what works for me, learning from the best people I could find and trying things.

But also at the same time, building businesses in health investing in healthcare entrepreneurs. Cuz I was just so freakishly impressed Before we get into the healthcare stuff, before you started breaking down physically, you had a tremendous career in the finance space.

So why don’t you tell us a little bit about how, what you learned from your days before your body started to give out. What. What were you brought from finance into healthcare? Like what what made you want to in invest in that space? And do you accredit any of your time in the finance space for giving you the power and the leeway to be able to invest in the healthcare space?

So talk to us a little about finance and your history with that. Yes, I absolutely credit my finance time for the fact that I’m doing what I’m doing. And very simply, I was working in finance. Part of the investment mandate that I was taking care of was investing in healthcare companies.

So suddenly you learn a lot what works, what doesn’t work that it takes a village literally to bring anything to market. And it’s a bumpy ride. But it’s possible. So as a finance person and investor I felt like I was sitting on the sidelines. And one day I had my typical quarterly review with one of the founders of the companies we invested in.

And it was a tense conversation, to say the least. So I didn’t like the results. He hated the questions I was asking, and he basically said, look, you will never understand the pressure under. When you’re trying to build something that everybody says, it’s impossible, but I have a higher calling that I, I just want to at least give it a go.

But you will never get that as an investor. And I can tell you, I I, I went quiet. I literally apologized to him because he was spot on. I did not understand the pressure he was on that I did not understand. Psychologically how tricky that is. But one thing I did understand was that you need literally a big team of people to bring things from an idea to when we can actually be giving a treatment.

And I thought if I can play a tiny bit in that long process, then I think it’s a life well lived. So I took everything I knew in finance and business building. And started building biotech company an incredibly incredible journey as well. Now, you could have chosen a lot of things to invest in as a person that had looked as an outsider into the healthcare space.

Why in particular did you choose longevity specifically? Was it because everything else seems so reactionary and this is something that seems so burgeoning and new. Give us a little bit of a sense in what made you interested in longevity specifically? Yes. So I should start with the fact that I really do not love the word longevity.

I think it carries a little bit of a wrong connotation. So I apologize. Same with anti-aging. There’s nothing wrong with aging, so I just wanna caveat that. But once we establish this Joe, it was for me, the journey was, okay, I now understand that my body is the most important. Fuel that can either fuel my dreams or stop my dreams.

And so as I was going into all those different scientific discoveries and medical ideas, longevity was the one part that really made sense to me because it looks at your life, not in a six months timeframe. A one new timeframe said, okay, if I wanna be a kickass a hundred year old, How do I need to live my life from now all the way and kind of a building a plan backwards.

So that was the only the only part of the healthcare puzzles that really made sense to me. And it really just became a lot about being super proactive, understanding where you are in your health and, and trying kind of a bit by bit. Decode who I am, where I am at, and then building my lifestyle around.

So it really serves my health for a very long time, not just until the next health screening. And this is gonna sound like a weird question, but I believe you believe that longevity and focusing on your health in a very holistic manner. Is the right thing to do for, the betterment of your body and the betterment of your mind and your soul and your spirit and all that kind of stuff.

I’m the same way. I believe in the same things. Why do you think the establishment does not think that way? Like, why do you think we have to go through life paying into these healthcare systems that seem hell bent on just fixing our problems and not necessarily getting ahead of our problems?

I love that you’re basically asking me now to, to throw under the bus, the entire healthcare system, but yes. Let’s give it a go Look, there are really two things that I would like to say on that subject. First. The current healthcare system is incredible when something acute happens to you.

So you break a leg you need a surgery that is urgent, that system is perfectly designed to help and we still need that. And it’s been like that for the last almost a hundred years. So it’s a little bit of a old way of looking at things. And now as we are learning more and more about what it takes to.

Be healthy and stay healthy and really live a long and fulfilled life. We’re learning that it’s much more about looking forward with proper tools that help you understand how not to be sick. In a simplistic way, I say the current system is a sick care system. You go and see your doctor when you’re sick and I would love for us to really convert that into.

What then healthcare looks like. How can I care for my health? So I don’t have to see doctor. Only when I’m sick can I go to see my doctor and say, Hey, my dear doctor, I feel great. My energy’s amazing. How do I, what should I do for this to stay? And that unfortunately is still a ongoing battle.

So that’s something that seems like if we’re gonna have success in convincing more established institutions to think that way. We’ve gotta train people from the ground up at a much younger age to care more about their health in advance of problems. Do you see that happening in our lifetimes some of the skepticism that I have with the current institutions and, big pharma, big medicine, all that kind of stuff, is that it seems like we’re circling back and some of these luxury products that we use for anti-aging and longevity are really using. Really great ingredients that are healthy and natural and organic and things that were used in medicine before big medicine came along.

So I think it’s super ironic that the higher end of the spectrum when it comes to, the most premium care and premium. Forward thinking products is cycling back to stuff that, that was all widely known by, lesser civilizations before all this stuff started happening a hundred years ago.

So I don’t mean to put you on the spot. I definitely don’t want you to throw your whole entire industry under the bus. are you hopeful that this will be solved in our lifetime? That we’ll be able to train people from a much younger age to think like you do? I think, Joe, you absolutely nailed it, I think what has to happen is that shift that I take responsibility for my own health, and when we start thinking like this and we become more of a copilot, Alongside our doctor when it comes to our health. Yes, things can change. But it’s a bumpy ride, and most rooms, when I say I’m in healthcare, the energy goes, ugh.

And I get that. I used to be that person like, do not tell me about healthcare because I’m thinking broken bones, people not being well and all the rest of it. And I think it will take a little bit to shift the narrative. But I also, I must say, and I feel it in younger generation, when I when I speak to them, when they.

Suddenly there was more and more people in their early twenties who decided not to drink alcohol. When I was in my twenties, that was like the cool thing to do. Suddenly it’s not same with smoking. Suddenly it’s not. And they really realize that in order to get an edge in life, this machinery that we have, that we are given, we need to really take care of it.

I’m hopeful. Do I think it’s easy and a given? Absolutely not. But I’m hoping that through conversations like this, if we can shift a little bit to a millimeter shift for people to start thinking about it differently. Very good. Call out cuz when I was in my twenties it was more of a watch out if somebody wasn’t drinking than if they, you know, than they were. It was very de-stigmatized to be into alcohol, drugs and stuff like that. Nowadays, gen Z doesn’t even touch the stuff practically. So there has been some shifts that that we can’t necessarily forget about. So that is very, a hundred percent. go Gen Z. Yes. You have to save the future of health.

One thing I wanted to mention cuz you, you made a very valid point about the fact that it seems like the very expensive treatments currently, the origin of it goes back a hundred  ago. And I tell you a very interesting situation. For those who don’t know, I spend my life between Singapore and London.

Being very much polished, I live across two continents and when I first moved to Asia 10 years ago, I was blown away how similar traditional Chinese medicine that is really highly regarded in that part of the world, how similar that is, the approach to the latest findings in the biotechnology space of the western world because Chinese medicine is all about, We work as a one system.

You don’t go and have an eye doctor. The doctor says your eye is connected to the rest of your body. If you break your arm is connected to the rest of your body. And they really something that now we think, obviously they knew it years back. So you’re right. There’s something very interesting that we go backwards and just look what worked.

And yes, every time I talk about T C M, traditional Chinese medicine, People say, ah, but it’s not proven, hasn’t been tested. And I said okay. It hasn’t been tested in a traditional Western way, but we cannot really say it doesn’t work because you have literally millions of people that have been using it for.

Thousands of years at that stage, and is, most of it is nothing chemical in it. It’s more acupuncture, much more real lining energy, which is non-invasive. Hey, how cool is that? And it just work. Then for every person that is skeptical, I can introduce at least 10 people. That I know on a daily basis you need to be dominating on TikTok because I keep getting confused with all this content about like Northern Pakistani tribes that live till they’re 160 cuz they’re eating apricot seeds and doing apricot seed oil and stuff like that.

And I’m like, should I be on Amazon buying apricot seed oil? I need you to be on there doing duets and stitches saying, no, this is bullshit. Or yes, this is awesome. But yeah, look. If there are things that Mother Earth gives us from natural perspective, and it’s worked and it’s been handed down for 20 generations, that’s enough research for me.

I don’t necessarily Absolutely, Panel in some lab somewhere in Europe or America to validate whether or not it’s gonna work. But yeah. So anyway, when you do become that influencer on TikTok and you’re starting to evaluate all these TikTok hoaxes or old wives tales I look forward to following you for that.

Yes. Oh, that’s gonna be an interesting one. Interesting one. Cause you know, the one thing I also wanted to mention is that the world is also changing. I feel. More and more people. I talk with a lot of C-suite execs and they really are now realizing that what gives them an edge in life is that like your health and your energy.

And I have a very good friend who assess, look, high energy people will attract high level of opportunity, high level of relationships, low energy people will not attract. High level opportunities or relationships and it’s a bit of a harsh reality, but when you really look back and you look at the surroundings and just people how often they live their life, that’s really true.

So I’m just inviting everybody to start thinking that health is your foundation of everything else you’re doing in life. And it doesn’t have to be complicated. Doesn’t have to be scary, doesn’t have to be boring. Cuz trust me, I’ve had. Plenty of boring stuff that I’ve tested, and one thing that made it sustainable for me and for a lot of people around me is that we made it fun.

We made it interesting. We made it. So it fits our life. You don’t have to overnight become pal matching 12 hour day meditating mind. Unless that’s your jam, then by all means. But you can really just do few little changes and get the right information and test on yourself, and that will already take you a long way and it will be a beautiful ride.

Great. So cas forty.com cas, is there any social media you wanna plug for the audience or any other messaging you wanna give to the Building While Flying audience? Yes. First I’m really grateful. Thank you so much for having me here, Joe. I love you. You know that one of the big perks when I say From about being, doing what I’m doing is that I’m meeting people like you.

So thank you. Yes. And for the audience, for those who are more serious, not just curious I have a small gift for you. It’s absolutely free. If you can just go on my Instagram, it’s at ca bordia and you DM me. Building, While, Flying or B W F you’ll immediately get a free PDF and it’s no BS guide.

How to Win Your Day. Because when you set yourself up in a day, everything else flows very nicely. For those who are interested, I welcome you and just find me my website, Instagram Twitter. I’m here to help. Alright, thank you. Thank you so much, 

  📍  📍  📍  📍  📍  📍 Thanks for joining us for Building While Flying today. I hope you learned as much as we did. We’ll meet you right back here next time for another flight.