The Lifesaving Inventor, Joe Landolina - CEO & Co-founder of Cresilon, Inc - The Dave Crenshaw Success Show

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Joe Landolina (00:00):
When I learned how to walk, I was told by him,
the best way to learn chemistryis to mix some things together,
and if anything blows up, don'ttell my parents. And so it gave
me an incredibly early startinto the world of chemistry.

Dave Crenshaw (00:13):
In this episode, you'll get to know Joe
landolina, the lifesavinginventor, and you'll hear the
story of how his scientificcuriosity and being a fan of
Batman led him to create a ninefigure medical device business.
I'm Dave Crenshaw, and this ismy success Show. Welcome back,

(00:37):
friends to the Dave CrenshawSuccess Show. This is where I
interview some of the mostsuccessful people I've met in my
life's journeys, and I'm on amission to find universal
principles of success, thingsyou can apply in your life right
now to make you more successful.
I started this show as sort of alegacy project. I wanted to
create something that would helpmy children succeed. And as it's

(00:58):
gone along, I realized you wouldlike to learn along with them,
so I've invited you to join uson the ride. If you're not
familiar with me, I'm a bestselling author. I speak around
the world to Fortune 500companies, and I've taught
millions of people how to besuccessful through my online
courses, particularly onLinkedIn. Learning with this

(01:18):
show, I wanted to do something alittle bit different, and I
wanted to interview people whohave multifaceted success, not
just career or financialsuccess, but but they're well
rounded, and they have balancein their life. And by the way,
if you know someone like that,someone who's highly successful
and has multifaceted success,feel free to send your
suggestion to us at guest atDave crenshaw.com now, before we

(01:41):
get into today's episode, I'dlike you to do something, and
this is for yourself. I wouldlike you to listen for something
you can do. So as you hear myguest story, I want you to be
thinking about what's somethingI can do today, what's something
I can do this week, not monthsfrom now, not a year from now,

(02:02):
but right now. And my guesttoday was introduced to me by a
previous guest, Mike Blumenfeld,who's a coach and consultant in
New York City. And boy, when Iheard Joe's story, I just had to
have him on the show. He's gotsuch a fascinating mind, such a
such a brilliant business thathe's created that's saving the
lives right now of animals, andvery soon in the near future,

(02:25):
will be saving the lives ofhumans. Joe landolina is the CEO
and co founder of cresolonIncorporated while experimenting
with natural materials in thelab, he developed an adhesive,
hemostatic gel composed of plantbased polymers that could
support the natural clottingprocess. Joe and his partner

(02:46):
Isaac Miller founded theBrooklyn based medical device
company cresolon Incorporated torefine and manufacture the gel
technology he invented.
Together, their goal is toimprove wound care and advance
the standard of medicaltreatment. Joe lives in

(03:07):
Brooklyn, New York with his wifeand their 90 pound German
Shepherd. Joe, thank you. Thankyou so much for being on the
show. Of course, Dave, thank

you so much for having me

so we have a mutual friend, actually, someone
else who's been on the show, whois Mike Blumenfeld. He's now 90
years old, and has been anamazing mentor for a lot of
people. When I my son and I satdown with him, we were at a
prison event, and afterward, wehad a dinner, and he started
telling me your story, and I wasblown away by your story. It's

(03:39):
truly remarkable. So I've beenexcited for quite a while to
talk to you about this.

Yeah, well, thank you so much for having me on and
I'm so excited to be able toshare the story here.

My understanding it started when you were young
you had access to a lab. Is thatcorrect?

Exactly? My childhood was a little bit
unorthodox in that mygrandfather was a pharmaceutical
executive, and in retirement, hestarted a vineyard in upstate
New York, and so he was one ofthe first commercial vineyards
in New York State. And helearned lab safety. In the 60s.
He fitted his lab out withequipment that he borrowed from

(04:14):
his previous employer, and so itwas a well overpowered lab. And
when I learned how to walk, Iwas told by him, the best way to
learn chemistry is to mix somethings together, and if anything
blows up, don't tell my parents.
And so it gave me an incrediblyearly start into the world of
chemistry, from the age of 1011,12 years old.

You know, that's interesting, as you say, that my
grandfather was a doctor, and hewas fascinated with chemistry,
and I learned a lot of chemistryconcepts from my grandfather.
Now it didn't stick. I didn't doanything in that field, but my
recollection from that was thatI found it experienced so many
amazing experiences with mygrandfather, and I got really

(04:59):
close to him. Through that isthat your experience as well. I
was super

lucky. My parents were relatively young when they
had me, and so I was raisedbasically by my four
grandparents that were all stillalive and incredibly active when
I was a kid, and that includesmy grandfather, and so he would
pick me up every single morningto walk me to the school bus,
and then he'd pick me up fromthe school bus when it came back
at the end of the day, and bringme into the lab and play chess

(05:25):
together and solve massiveproblems. And so, in a way, I
was a bit of his experiment.

He's teaching you how to experiment while using
you as the experiment as well,exactly. So talk to me a little
bit about what some of thoseearly experiments were like, I
mean, you say you just mixthings together. That sounds a
little Cavalier. It seems like,let's just throw stuff together.
I'm assuming he also wasteaching you safety at the same

(05:52):
time. So

you might be a little bit overestimating the
way that I was taught chemistry.
But that being said, a lot of itwas just understanding how to
mix things together, acids andbases and other types of early
reactions. And as I got a littlebit more adventurous with my
chemical experiments and startedto get the attention of my

(06:14):
parents, they urged me to findsafer chemistries. And in their
mind, plant based chemistrieswere the safest and so
interesting. I grew up on abunch of property, and so with
vineyard, they gave me a patchof land that I could grow things
myself on. And so I bought anumber of Eastern medicine books
and herbal medicine books. Andso a lot of my earliest exposure

(06:35):
into chemistry was actuallylooking at traditional herbal
recipes and things that youcould grow or find in forage in
nature, and then bring back intothe lab and do extractions on
and as I got a little bit older,that led to me eventually doing
some summer research when I was14 or 15 years old at Columbia

(06:56):
University. That reallysolidified that. But in the
early days, it was just what Ihad access to, so there really
wasn't anything on the internet,and it was just university
libraries and whatever youthought in encyclopedia,

the interesting thing that you're saying there
to me is you're talking aboutwhat foraging for the materials.
So what does that look like?
Like you're just picking upleaves and stuff, or was it more
guided through the what you werelearning in the books that you
were studying?

Well, so what's interesting is, I mean, I the
thing that piqued my interest inthe very beginning was that you
can find certain compounds, likesalicylic acid, which is the
precursor to aspirin, is found,I believe, if I remember
correctly, in a flower calledQueen Anne's lace, which grows
rampantly here in the Northeast,and it's that cluster of little,
tiny white flowers that grow infields. And so things like that

(07:49):
were fascinating to me, thatthese modern innovations could
be found growing in one'sbackyard. And so I went down a
really deep rabbit hole ofseeing what I could find in
nature and seeing how I canextract and again, there's not
much more that you can do oreven verify that the experiments
that I was doing were correct,but it was fascinating retracing
the steps of scientists that hadcome beforehand

and maybe educate me and my audience for a little
bit. Most of the medicines thatwe have, most of the
advancements that we have, aregrounded in something that was
found in nature. It's just morerefined, right? It's getting
distilled down to the essencethat gives us only the medical
result that we want. Is thatcorrect? Exactly,

an overwhelming number of drugs and medications
started with some naturalsource,

and you mentioned that you were studying at
Columbia when you were 1415 sowere you ahead of the curve in
terms of what normally wouldhappen for a child in high
school studying?

So I was lucky that I maybe it was the immense
of problems in the chest from anearly age, I ended up getting
relatively advanced, and so Iwas a year ahead in high school,
and was able to take what becamea trilingual diploma in high
school, so English and Frenchand Spanish. But at the time,
and I'm not sure if this programstill runs, but Columbia had a

(09:15):
summer research program that wasdedicated specifically for high
school students, and and Iapplied into that was accepted,
and that was my first exposureinto true tissue engineering.

And you mentioned that your parents were
supportive of this and yourgrandparents were involved. Were
there any other mentors that youstarted to develop during this
time that were guiding theexperiments that you were doing
and your interest in things?

I was lucky that I had such an active group of
parents and grandparents thatthey I was trying to follow in
their footsteps. All of mygrandparents and both of my
parents are entrepreneurs, notin the pharmaceutical industry,
except for my grandfather, whohad left it, but still, they
started their own businesses,and I'd seen them go through the
trials and tribulations.
Conversations of buildingsomething from the ground up.

(10:01):
And then when I got into theacademic world or into these
research programs and seeingscientists solving real world
problems, as a young kid, Ialways wanted to be a surgeon,
and so at that age, I realizedthat I can make an impact by
studying first the engineeringof how we deliver these drugs or
how we create these compoundsthat can affect human life or

(10:24):
save a human life. So

your parents were entrepreneurs. How were they
teaching you whatentrepreneurship was about?
Because I know that's a big partof your career right now. Was it
just through observation andtheir example that you learned
entrepreneurial lessons, or werethey actually teaching you
principles and saying, you know,in the future, here's something

(10:49):
to keep in mind. It was

a bit of both.
And so it was both throughobservation, allowing me to go
and shadow them while they weredoing what they were doing or
going about their their day, butalso allowing me to take on real
projects within their businessesfrom a very young age, and it
was incredibly helpful. So theyhad you working in the business.
They had me working I wasbasically an unpaid intern, but
everything from being able to bea boom mic operator on the set

(11:15):
of a TV show being filmed tobeing able to price and market
my own vintage of wine. I wasvery lucky growing up that I had
the opportunity to dive into alot of things that most people
don't get access to until muchlater in life. That's

fantastic that they were giving you those those
opportunities to learn thosethings, and as you did that, did
you become less and lessinterested in being a surgeon
and a doctor, or were you stillwanting to pursue that path as
you started to proceed on tocollege? Let's say,

oh, so I held on to that goal of being a surgeon
until the very last possiblemoment. Okay,

all right, and tell me if I'm wrong. I remember
Mike telling me a story of ahappy accident that occurred in
the lab that sort of became theAlpha moment of cresolon. Is
that accurate?

It is. And so I'd completed my summer of research
at Columbia, and the work that Iwas doing there was using an
algae based scaffold to sobasically, this structure made
of algae that you can take stemcells and use that scaffold to
help differentiate or convertthe stem cells into a target

(12:35):
tissue. And in this case, it wascartilage. And I thought that
was the coolest thing that I'veever seen and having access to
the lab that I had, I decided,You know what, I'm gonna go home
and I'm gonna make my owncartilage. And so I went out, we
had two ponds that were in frontof the vineyard, and I raked up
a bunch of algae, and I did anextraction of polymers out of

(12:56):
this, and I tried to put ascaffold together, and obviously
it failed miserably. I camenowhere near what I was trying
to do, but what I noticed atthat point was that the material
that I made, this gel, wouldstick to skin, and it wouldn't
let go until I wanted it to. Andone of the many jobs that my dad
had was that he was a municipalpolice lieutenant and a

(13:18):
paramedic in our community, andso I knew that stopping bleeding
was a massive challenge, andthat there wasn't really a great
solution for that. And so I hadthis idea at that time, which
was, what if you can use amaterial like the one that I had
discovered to stabilize apatient as you move them from
point A to point B? I wasn'tthinking about actually creating

(13:39):
a clot, but just more soplugging up a bullet wound to
get that patient to a hospitalwhere the patient could be
triggered by a surgeon, and thatbecame the precursor to this
invention, but

you weren't able to do really anything with it in
that moment, or didn't know howto apply it in the beginning.
Correct? My understanding wasthere was a moment in college
where a teacher gave you anassignment that sort of moved
things forward. Could you tellthat story?

Yeah, of course.
I mean, so it was two things,one after another. And so during
freshman orientation week, atthe time, they took all of the
engineers and they sent us up toRoscoe, New York. They called
the New Student campingexperience. And so they locked
us in cabins to bond with them,with one another, because
engineers, theoretically aregoing to make friends on their
own,

and we're gonna make you become friends. We're
gonna put you in enclosed space.
That's great, exactly.

And so part of that was this a sign where they
broke you up into groups and youhad and they had you make a
solution or something to help asuperhero of your choosing. And
my my group was assigned Batman,and I've been playing with this
material. And so I thought, Youknow what? If you could use this
as a way to ensnare a bad guy?
And that got me thinking aboutother uses for it. And so when I
got back to campus, there was aposter for a business plan.

(14:57):
Competition. And in my mind, Iwasn't looking to start a
business. I was looking tofinish my engineering degree,
get into a good med school,become assertion. But I thought
that having the opportunity togo through this program, if you
got far enough in, they had whatthey called a mini MBA, and so
you could take classes at thebusiness school. And I thought

(15:19):
that would help round me out,because at the time, I was an
engineer's engineer, and so Icould barely balance a
checkbook, or much less put a Pand L together. And so I entered
with this idea, and I met my cofounder, and I realized that
ensnaring bad guys may not beexactly the biggest market. And
so I reverted back to theoriginal concept, which was

(15:40):
stopping a bullet wound frombleeding, even though we didn't
quite know how that would allcome together. And we ended up
winning at the engineeringschool, and we took second place
at the business school, but thatgave us just enough funding,
just enough exposure, justenough context to realize that
this was something worthpursuing.

Well, I'm a simple man. You tell me a story
that involves Batman, andinstantly I like it. But from a
practical standpoint, what Ilove is how you're bringing up
your MBA, or that mini MBA, andhow that sets you up for
success, not just with theengineering side of things, but
with the entrepreneurship sideof things. How much in your

(16:22):
future career, has that traininghelped? Has that MBA training
helped with the things thatyou've been doing now? So

just to be very clear, what they call a mini MBA
was effectively a half semesterof hyper condensed business
classes designed to getentrepreneurs up over the
hurdle. So just a taste of it,just a taste, but it was
critical. I think that theskills that you learned there
were incredibly important tounderstand, not only how to

(16:51):
build the processes or thefoundation onto which a business
can be built, but also how tocommunicate that to whether it's
investors, to customers, to theworld in general. It helped pull
me from the engineering world orthe technical world alone, and
into a more well rounded role.

You know, I asked that question. For those who
have listened to most of theepisodes of this podcast, this
is a recurring theme, is thebackground in business will help
you in whatever it is thatyou're attempting to do. In
fact, I had that conversationwith my daughter last week.
She's an excellent fictionwriter. She's already written a
novel and a half, and we weretalking about school, and we

(17:31):
say, I say to her, you can go toschool. I'll help you with that,
but you must study business aspart of it. And I think the
background that you had fromyour parents and that education
that you picked up through yourcollege years is incredibly
influential in the success thatyou're having now. It really is
okay. So you had that moment youwon that business plan. There

(17:54):
are a lot of great stories likethat where someone wins a
business plan competition andyet doesn't turn it into an
actual business. So where didyou go from there? How did
things start to evolve intoactually creating a company
built around this technology?

That's an absolutely great point. And so
we exited that business plancompetition with a wonderful
idea, but no product. And so theproduct that we had, or the
invention that we had wasn't yetproven. And so we had a really
good idea, a really good hunchthat it could work, but we
hadn't gotten through thosemotions yet. And we were kids. I

(18:35):
was 17 years old when I startedthis business. My co founder,
Isaac, I think, was 19 or 20,and not to mention I was doing a
combined bachelor's and master'sprogram in engineering in four
years, and I was still afreshman. And so we had a lot to
go through in order to convertthis from what was a really

(18:55):
great idea that was able to wina business plan competition to
something that could actually beused in a patient. And that that
took from the founding of thebusiness in 2010 to roughly 2015
when the product was quote,unquote, ready, it became this
very interesting pathway of ofiterating the product, because

(19:19):
usually INMED device or in lifesciences world, when you find a
drug, or when you're looking fora product like this, you start
what's called target first,right? And so if curing cancer
is the objective, you look atsome sort of pathway and you
say, here's a receptor that I'mgoing to target, and I'm going
to make drugs that fit thattarget. And you know what you're

(19:40):
trying to do with this. Westarted with, we basically
started with the material. Westarted with something that we
had a really good hunch that itwould do something better than
anything else. And as we startedtesting it, we realized that 25%
of the time it would do thingsthat the world had never seen.
The 75% of the time it would donothing, and we had no idea why.
Yeah. And so it was this almostinverted innovation curve where

(20:03):
we had to learn about our ownmaterial in order to help
improve

it. So five years, that's a really long time
to run a business, and I'massuming you're generating no
revenue during that time. So forthose who are unfamiliar. How
does that work? How do you keepthe paying the bills while
you're developing things? Wereyou using venture capital? Or

(20:29):
where did that come from? Thesupport for that

so the beauty of that period of time was that it
was almost entirelybootstrapped. So I graduated in
2014 and we raised our a round amonth later. But during that
initial phase, it was prizewinnings and under $300,000 of
angel investment, friends andfamily type money that we

(20:53):
brought in that was mainly backended into 20 the end of 2013
beginning of 2014 and so we werereally scrappy. Effectively, I
took out a student loan to helppay for an apartment that we
were in. He did the same. Weconverted the kitchen into a
lab, and very likely should nothave done that, but we were
doing research, and our livingroom became the office for our

(21:15):
team, and we had lab space thatwas donated to us by a few
friendly scientists who saw whatwe were doing and just wanted to
be helpful, and so we wereincredibly, incredibly scrappy
in what we did.

You know, there's a lot of value in those student
years of being able to get helpand assistance and support from
people that you wouldn'tnormally get. I experienced the
same thing, really, in mycareer, when I started as a
business coach, and there were afew people who took pity on me
or enjoyed the experience ofmentoring someone who is young,

(21:49):
and I think that's important totake advantage of that in those
years while you still can,because when you're 3031, you
already have your business. Notas many people are like here,
let me just help you out andgive give you lab equipment that
doesn't happen like thatexactly.

It doesn't and so we were incredibly lucky that,
as we were starting this, we hadthe safety net of being in
school, because it wasn't likewe had to leave our jobs to
start this. And these types ofinnovations are in life
sciences. It takes forever. Imean, even after 2015 It was
another five years before wesold our first product. Wow,

you mentioned your partner, Isaac. How did you
two meet? How did you form thatbusiness partnership?

So we met at a business plan or at the matchup
for the stern Business PlanCompetition at NYU. And Isaac,
at the time, was a junior at NYUSchool of Business in
international business, but weneeded a CFO, and so he changed
his major to finance, and therest was history. Wow.

So he discovered what he was going to do for a
career as a result of thatcompetition as well, in

a way. And so it was. We gave a presentation
there, and we had professors, wehad doctors, we had lawyers come
up to us and offer to help foundthe business. And then there was
Isaac, who had no experience,but just had a passion for what
we were doing. I realized thathe, at the very least, knew as
little as I did, but was ascurious as I was, and so it was

(23:16):
a really helpful partnershipfrom the beginning.

So talk to me about what didn't work during
those years as you weredeveloping the product. Because,
I mean, you're saying four tofive years to develop the
product, then another five yearsbefore you sold the product. So
let's talk about those nine to10 years. What were mistakes
that you made, lessons that youlearned while you were

(23:40):
developing this product,

a lot of it came around just not knowing what we
didn't know. And so on one hand,I'll say that that naivete
helped move us forward. I thinkif you had told us as undergrads
that this would be a 10 yearprocess and that we'd need to
raise into the nine figures ofventure capital in order to get
this over the finish line, wewould have considered it

(24:05):
impossible, and perhaps evengiven up on it. And so there's a
strong benefit to taking itpiece by piece. But the first
challenge was getting theproduct to work, and that was
difficult for me, because it wasreally, it was a solo challenge
in a way, the way that ourproduct works, not to go too
technical, is that it shouldn'twork. It's almost like mixing

(24:26):
oil and water together andexpecting them to stay
emulsified or to stay together.
And so I just assumed that I wasa bad chemist, and that's where
most of the innovation camefrom. Is that I just kept trying
to mix two things together or dotwo things that were seemingly
impossible, but in not realizingthat, I found the solution
there. But once we got theproduct at the end, there became

(24:48):
the challenge of making it. Andyou just assume that there exist
experts out in the world thatcan help you with that. And so
the goal in 2014 In 2015 was tobe a virtual company. And so if
you the space that I'm callingin from today, this is our
original site. It's an old 1930schoolhouse that we found on

(25:08):
Craigslist and we rented forjust under $4,000 a month back
in 2013 when we found it. And sothis is not your typical biotech
headquarters and and obviouslywe've graduated since then to
larger and fancier facilities,but this site was never intended
to hold more than five people.
The goal here was to have asimple lab where we could do

(25:30):
research, and we assumed thateverything else would be done
virtually. We would bring inconsultants to help the
regulatory process. We wouldbring in contract manufacturers
to do the manufacturing contractlabs, the testing, and then we'd
just work with the distributor,or sell the business to a
partner, and they would do allof the sales. And it turned out
that what we had was so novel wecouldn't do any of that. And so

(25:52):
I remember, it was ChristmasEve, 2014 I was faced with this
dilemma, which was, either shutthe business down or try to do
it ourselves, for formanufacturing, because there was
no one in the world that had theexpertise to do this
manufacturing. Everyone told usit was impossible, and the only
place that was open at that timewas a clean room manufacturer

(26:13):
out on the West Coast. And Icalled them, and I spent $14,000
on a clean room, and it showedup a few months later, and
Crestline became what's now theonly manufacturer of sterile
products or of medical productsin New York City. And so just to
show a little, we know ourmanufacturing here was on the
second floor. We have noelevator. And so I ordered this.

(26:36):
I assumed that a clean roomwould come in boxes. It didn't.
It came in a single crate thesize of a Volkswagen, and we had
to have an interviewee sit onthe curb and make sure that none
of our neighbors walked awaywith the copper wiring inside of
our clean room while wedisassembled it on Third Avenue
in Brooklyn and carried itupstairs piece by piece. But
that summer, we became amanufacturer. We started doing

(26:58):
it ourselves.

I love that again. That illustrates sort of
that bootstrap mentality andthat blissful ignorance about
how hard things you're going tobe, and you just keep going with
it. So you graduated fromcollege, you got funding. So in
that case, where did thatfunding come from to move the
company to a higher level.

So that was also a bit unorthodox, which is that
in my senior year of college, Ifilmed this video of the product
working. It was maybe anotherexample of being scrappy, and
something that I tell to otherentrepreneurs, which is, if you
can visually show what yourvalue proposition is for the
world, as much as possible, wegot that down to a 25 second

(27:43):
GIF, no audio, no text, which isa steak that I bought from a
butcher, fresh blood that Ibought from a butcher and an
aquarium pump, where we pumpedit for the steak. You put the
product on it, stops itinstantly. And everyone can tell
what we do and why it'simportant and why it's better
than competition. And that videowent viral. It had over 140
million views on it. Wow. We hadabout 15% of the US market in

(28:08):
Animal Health try to buy theproduct at that point. And we
had over 8000 investors reachout to invest in the business.
And so Whoa, we were able to puttogether a really amazing cohort
of investors in that a roundthat had some VCs in it, but
they were primarilyentrepreneurs themselves, and
those investors ended upreinvesting throughout the life

(28:30):
of the business. And so itwasn't always the easiest path,
and in fact, it was maybe moredifficult in a lot of ways, but
we did it our own way, and wefound people who truly
understood, supported and werepatient with the growth of the
business, because everything inlife sciences, but everything in
entrepreneurship in particular,takes longer than you expect and
costs a little bit more than youexpect. I

just want to briefly highlight that, which is
the power of video, the power ofshowing what something can do.
You could write a business plan,you could fill it up with
pictures, and you can give aPowerPoint presentation, but
there's nothing like actuallyseeing the product in action,

(29:09):
seeing what you do in action.
And I think too few businessesrely on video in a lot of
different ways. They could useit to help grow the business,
help sell better, and yet Istill think, even in the YouTube
era, it's underutilized toconvince people I agree
wholeheartedly. Okay, so let'sstart to move forward. You're

(29:31):
starting to grow the company.
You've got funding from theseinvestors. How many employees
did you have at the point whenyou first sold your first
product. So

the first sale was five years after that point,
and so there was a big resetright in the middle. And so we
raised funding, and then werealized that we were on the
wrong track and had to go backto the drawing board. But at the
time of first sale, we had maybe65 and. Employees. Wow, but
that's the hallmark of biotech,which is that everything has to

(30:04):
be at scale in order to doanything.

That would imply, to me, that there is a pretty
strong risk tolerance inbiotech. There's the
understanding that, you knowwhat, we're going to have to
invest in this for five years ormore before we start seeing
money back. So I'm assuming thatthe people who are investing in
this, the venture capitalist,they're very, very comfortable
with a long timeline, correct?

And one of the benefits that kresilon had to be
frank, was that we had earlieraccess to revenue than most
biotechs, because we used theanimal health market or
veterinary care as an early onramp to revenue, and

I'm assuming they also provided you with
mentorship, with guidance, withconsulting to help with that
growth. What does that look likefor someone who hasn't
experienced it?

So I think again, one of the biggest learnings
there was that we expected thatyou can very easily find experts
in your own field, and I thinkthat the biggest lesson that we
learned was that especially whenyou're doing something novel,
there's no one that comes inwith the playbook that applies
directly to your business. Andthat was a big disappointment

(31:14):
when we first learned it, but italso really helped us understand
how important it is to have ateam, to have a diversity of
thought and ideas andbackgrounds around you, where
it's not just about having themost experienced individuals or
the best consultants or thehighest paid consultants. It's
about having a blend ofexperience and a blend of

(31:36):
passion and creativity andability to understand that the
playbook that you come out orcome into a business with is not
the playbook that you need tooperate the business, and it's
about working together andcollaborating to write it
yourself.

Can you think of a story that illustrates that
principle of the blend ofexperience and passion with the
group that you had where youwere able to achieve something
that you could not have withoutthat.

So so that's how we got over this, this hurdle.
And so when we built thismanufacturing facility that was
just above my office here, itwas a 10 foot by 10 foot
manufacturing site whereeverything was being done
manually. And then we gotinundated with orders from over
15% of the market, we hadsomething like 4500 orders come

(32:24):
in for a product, and werealized it was irresponsible to
do what we said we were going todo out of this site. We had to
go back to the drawing board. Wehad to raise more capital, and
it was difficult, because ourproduct looks like hummus in a
syringe, and but it has to bemade like a vaccine. And so
there are lots of people who canmake hummus and lots of people
who can make vaccines. Can makevaccines, but no one that was

(32:44):
maybe dumb enough to try to dothem at the same time. And so
everything had to be customized.
And so we we assembled a teamof, effectively, kids that came
up with the business, or recentgraduates who just were whip
smart and curious and willing toput in the time, and we brought
in individuals who had worked inindustry, so someone who worked

(33:05):
at a major healthcare company,overseeing their wound closure
team and so very similar to whatwe do here at cre salon, and
somebody who built one of thelargest factories on the west
coast for pharmaceuticals, andanother person who operated the
quality program for one of thelargest vaccine manufacturing
sites. And I think the mostelucidating thing was that no

(33:27):
one, no one person, had thesolution for us. It was about
collaboration, and the ideasthat were had were always
compromises between the mostexperienced people in the room,
and those started with us rightout of undergrad, because you
need creative solutions, and youneed those creative solutions to
be realistic and vetted, andthey need to fit in in the
regulatory landscape, because atthe end of the day, that's

(33:48):
critical in life sciences. Soactually, the woman who was the
head of quality for the bigvaccine plant, she retired, she
was the first retirement fromcreslon, and she recently for
Mike bloomfield's birthdayparty, came back into town and
had the opportunity to see theplant. It was just so amazing to
see that process, because we hadno idea if this could work. And
obviously those of us who hadn'tworked in the industry were a

(34:09):
bit more optimistic than theones who had, but we got it
done, and it was incollaboration.

So you just mentioned Mike again. We
mentioned him at the beginning,could you just talk to us a
little bit about the role thatMike Blumenfeld played in your
success as a mentor and someoneto talk to throughout this
maybe, maybe start with how youwould meet, because I heard that
story recently, like, how wouldyou get together and have

(34:37):
conversations with them? Andwhat were those conversations
like?

Sure. And so first I just want to say that
it's like I said before that,with consultants, with advisors.
When a business grows thisdrastically, it's nearly
impossible to have a single setof advisors or consultants that
take the whole journey, or thatlast the whole journey, or
become or stay relevant thewhole journey. That's a great
point. And the. Most amazingthing about Mike is that we met

(35:03):
him during the NYU business plancompetition in 2010 he was
assigned to us. He was one offour mentors that were assigned
to the business, and we hit itoff. And following that
competition, Mike and I starteda cadence where every Wednesday
morning we have breakfasttogether, and so we've done that
for the better part of 14 years.
Wow. And the thing with Mike isthat he's a people driven

(35:24):
leader, and the value in that isthat people never change, right?
That the fact that people comefirst in a business is the same
if you're two people in a room,in a dorm room, starting a
company, or if you're 100 peopleacross multiple sites operating
globally, it's still relevant.
And so having mike there withboth his wealth of experience,

(35:48):
his brutal honesty, where Ialways joke that Mike knows
exactly which question you don'twant to answer at any given
time, he asks that question forthe sake of it, just to get you
to confront the elephant in theroom. And it's really amazing.
And beyond that, what Mike hasdone selflessly has been over
the years, as we've identifiedyoung talent within our

(36:09):
organizations, we've given themcoaching with Mike. And so Mike
not only has met with me, buthe's also coached about a dozen
of our young leaders, a goodnumber of which have stayed with
cressel on and moved up. Butthere are others. And I mean,
Mike's party a few weeks ago wasa great testament to this, where
we had ex kresilon employeesthat are now in leadership roles

(36:30):
and other companies across theindustry, across the world, fly
into New York to come andcelebrate Mike because of the
coaching and mentorship andadvisement that he gave to them
during their time here atkreslo. That

highlights something that I believe
strongly in in my coaching andconsulting, which is the true
test of leadership is how wellyou create other leaders. And it
sounds like Mike was successfulwith that, and that you're
successful with that in creatingother leaders. If they stay with
your company, great, if they goto someone else's company,
great. But that's such apowerful path to grow a

(37:06):
business. Would you agree

completely it's critical, and I think it gets
overlooked too often. And thething that I always say is that
companies like or startups growexponentially, or the
expectation is that you growexponentially, and people, by
default, do not growexponentially. But I believe
it's the responsibility of aleader to afford the opportunity

(37:29):
of exponential growth. And so ifthat employee opts in, you
should load them up with as muchdevelopment as you can, as many
opportunities as you can, to beable to ride that wave. I mean,
a great example of that is my myvice president of quality and
regulatory started with us as anintern. He was the guy who lived
across the hall from us in thedorms, and he's now coming on 11

(37:53):
or 12 years with the business,and he's put in the effort, and
he's become a leader, makingleaders of

his own, the hardest part of any startup is
the first sale is the firstperson to say, here's a check,
here's my credit card, whateverit is, invoice me, I'm buying
this. What was that first salelike? How did that come up? Come

(38:20):
about.

Oh, it's a hilarious story, because our
first launch so after 2015 ittook us another five years to
commission the facility and getit into regulatory compliance.
And so that meant that ourlaunch date for vetted gel was
october 2020. During, I think,was the delta wave of covid, so
we were in the middle ofeffectively full lockdown. But

(38:42):
as an essential business, wewere operating, and our
customers, as veterinaryclinics, were also essential,
and they were operating, but youcouldn't get into the clinics.
So our first sales happened inparking lots, in stairwells,
over zoom calls. And so it was.
It was dystopian in a way, butwe got it done. That's

crazy. I didn't even think about that. The
timeline on that that that'swhen it occurred. Did it help
that there was it a particulardemand where there was higher
demand for this, or was thatjust sort of coincidental to
selling your product?

I mean, that was one of the most interesting
things as well is that we hadhuge pre order lists for vetted
gel but sometimes, when lifegets in the way, like a global
pandemic, all of our customersare also business owners, and
that's one of the that's one ofmy favorite things about the
animal health industry, is thatour average customer is a small
business owner, and so ifthey're not in surgery, doing

(39:39):
What they do, saving pets lives,they're not in business. And so
understanding that, even ifthere's interest in the product,
and they love the concept,converting that into an actual
sale, to get the time, to getthem to train and to change
their behaviors when everythingelse is stripped away, and so
that there are no moreconferences. There's no more
opening the front door andtalking to the receptionist.

(40:00):
First, it was a reallyinteresting and unexpected
challenge

you mentioned so that this is saving pets lives.
So is there a path, or have youalready reached the path of it
helping save human lives? Whereare you at in that process? The

veterinal product has been amazing to see. It's we
just surpassed 50,000 pet livessaved in 30 countries across the
world on that product line. Sowe received FDA clearance for
human use last year. We alsohave another product which is
designed for massive hemorrhage.
So think military use, emergencymedicine and trauma care, things

(40:35):
like gunshot wounds, stabbings,motor vehicle accidents. The
original idea that we startedBatman, exactly. And so that
product is not yet approved byFDA, but is pending approval,
and we're gearing up for launchon that. And so that should be
happening, hopefully relativelysoon. If you

don't mind me asking, if you're not
comfortable with this question,we don't have to keep it, but
what is the current valuation ofcrest salon? We're

very proud to say that it's significant. It's well
into the nine figures. Wow.

That's amazing. I mean, really, to see that start
of that path of your grandfatherteaching you to mix things
together, to well, you're mixingthings together, and you've
created such a beautifulbusiness around it, that's
fantastic. Congratulations. Andyou're just at the beginning of
this process, right? We are, andyou were fairly recently

(41:29):
married. Is that right? Exactly?
My

wife and I were married about a year and a half
ago, but we've been together for12 years, and so it was really
just a formality at the end ofthe day.

Can you talk a little bit about how you two
support each other in thatrelationship?

So it's been a really amazing partnership. I'm
incredibly lucky in that my wifeis also an engineer. We met in
school. She's also an operatorthat runs a relatively large
business in the chemicalindustry. So it's been a really
interesting support curve,where, as we've grown through
our respective careers, we'vebeen able to lean on one another

(42:07):
as partners, and so it's beenincredibly helpful. Where, being
in the CEO chair, even having cofounders and a leadership team
and advisors and investors, it'shelpful to have one singular
person that you can count on asa partner at the end of the day,
I have that in my wife. Couldyou give us just a

little insight into how that works? Is it
conversations that you're havingwith each other? Is it sometimes
picking up the slack at home?
What's on a practicalstandpoint? How does that work?

So we're both engineers, and so everything
ideally runs very efficiently.
And so we have everything fromwe have a shared spreadsheet
that goes through exactly wheresupport is needed to make sure
that nothing falls through thecracks. We do formal check ins
that we put on the calendar,which may sound way too
corporate, but at the very leastwith I travel 200 nights a year.
She travels 200 nights a yearseparately, and so making sure

(43:00):
that we have time to focus onourselves and make sure that
we're doing what's needed to bedone is incredibly important as
well. And she always describesherself as both my biggest
cheerleader and my biggestcritic, which is that we can
always count on one another togive honest, direct feedback,
and that's important becausethat doesn't always come from
the rest of our circles. Yeah,and

that works for you, because I know sometimes
people do not want that kind ofbrutal honesty from their
spouse. In fact, I'd say that'spretty rare that you guys do
that, but it works. I

think at least in our case, it's necessary. We
have to. It makes it a loteasier to operate with all of
our cards on the table at anygiven time.

What do you see ahead for the future, Joe?
What's five years out for thebusiness today, we're

saving lives as our mission, but we're saving
lives in the veterinaryindustry. We're very soon going
to move and extend that missioninto saving human lives, which
is something we're incrediblyexcited about. And so looking
over the next five years,there's a lot of growth ahead.
With cre salon as amanufacturer, we have our own
sales forces, and so there's alot of growth to be done in

(44:13):
order to support that mission,but having a product that is
launched in trauma care, wherewe should be seeing this in
ambulances, in military, inhospitals, in fire and police,
so we can get product to thosewho need it most, and then
eventually moving this into theinto the or in humans. Oh,

(44:34):
that's

amazing. I'm thrilled. I mean, you're, you're
clearly at the beginning of thecurve of this business and where
it's going to go five years, 10years, I think that's going to
be a really remarkable story anda fun ride for you and your
team. So thank you for sharingthat with us. So Joe, this is
something we do at the end ofevery episode. I want to help

(44:57):
someone who's listening to thisbe. Do something. I think it's
easy to be inspired by yourstory and to be educated about
what you've done. The real powercomes from when someone takes
action. So what I'm going to donow, Joe is I'm going to pull
out three possible actions thatstood out to me, something

(45:17):
someone can do this week to makeyour success story a part of
their success story. So I'mgoing to call out three specific
actions, and then I'd like youat the end to share one of
yours. Sound good, of course.
Okay, so the first thing I'mgoing to go all the way back to
the very, very beginning, aboutyour grandfather saying, What's
the best way to learn chemistry,mix things together. And I think

(45:41):
that that is a great principlefor any life and any career.
Just try things. Just tryexperiments. Take some risks. If
it doesn't work out, that'sfine. So maybe, if you're
listening to this and you'relike, Hey, there's this idea
that I've been thinking, Ishould try, just give it a try,
and if it doesn't work, that'sokay, because the process of

(46:05):
experimentation has value. Whatyou learn about yourself, what
you learn about your career oryour interest, is going to have
value, even if that experimentdoesn't work out, like Bob Ross
said, you know, have happylittle accidents. Joe,
certainly, his whole business isbuilt on sort of a happy
accident, right? The next onethat goes back to something we

(46:27):
talked about early is takeadvantage of being a student, or
if you're not a student, takeadvantage of being a novice, and
ask for help. People will helpyou. People with more
experience, with more knowledge,will be willing to mentor you if
you ask for it and are humbleabout it. I think too many

(46:48):
people are afraid to show thatthey lack the knowledge, when,
in fact, showing that ishelpful. And I don't think
people are curious enough or askenough questions, and they're
missing out on the value ofworking with a mentor and
getting help from someone. Andthen, more recently, you talked
about how you've built a team ofdiversity of thought and

(47:13):
background, where they'reblending experience and passion,
and how that's helped youovercome, perhaps a lack of
knowledge or a lack of someonewho has the expertise to help
you, but you've found the truth.
You've found the best pathforward by having a team of

(47:33):
people who have worked togetherto do that. And I would say to
someone listening to this, howcould you add a little bit more
of diversity and thought andbackground to your team, or
perhaps even to your life, andjust say, hey, I want to
associate with people who havebackgrounds that are different
than mine, and how that can leadyou to finding a good answer. So

(47:57):
just kind of spread out a littlebit and meet some new people. So
those are three actions from me,Joe. What's one that stands out
to you? So

one that's been incredibly helpful? We actually,
we didn't speak about it today,but it's transparency, and
especially transparency withinyour own team and within your
own circles. And I, when Istarted, I thought that the CEO
had to act as the filter to keepall of the craziness from the
world and all of the ups anddowns and volatility that we see
in a business away from the teamso the team can focus. And I one

(48:29):
day, started admitting my ownfailures, admitting my own
worries and concerns, and beingtransparent with people in my
life about the things that werestressing me out of the things
that I had outside of my owncontrol. And I realized that it
closed the gap between myselfand the people in my circles,
right? It allowed people to stepin and help where they could
help, when, otherwise I didn'teven realize that they were

(48:51):
capable of stepping in to help.

Yeah, well, it means you're saying that too.
I'm hearing the application as aleader, even when you're in
charge, even when you'resupposed to have all the
answers, being candid andsaying, maybe I don't have the
answers, but you can help mefind it exactly that's
fantastic, Joe, this has been adelight to talk with you and to
get to know you. And thank youso much. Hopefully, sometime the

(49:14):
next time out, I'm out in NewYork, we can grab a bite
together and meet in person. Butthank you so much for being
generous with your time. Ofcourse, Dave, thank

you so much for having me on it's great meeting
as well. And

if people want to continue to follow your journey,
learn about salon. Where wouldyou suggest they go?

So our website, cresolon.com, has most updates
about the business. They couldalso look me up on LinkedIn, or
look the company up on LinkedInat Joe. Adele to WordPress along
Fantastic.

Thank you Joe, and thank you everyone for
listening. Remember, it's notjust about the knowledge that
you gained or the inspirationthat you received. It's about
the action that you take. So doone thing, do one thing today or
this week, and you'll makeJoe's. Success Story, a part of
your success story. Thanks forlistening.

Darci Crenshaw (50:06):
You've been listening to the Dave Crenshaw
Success Show, hosted by my dad,Dave Crenshaw, and produced by
invaluable incorporatingresearch and assistant
production by Victoria bidez,Sound Editing by Nick Wright,
voiceover by me Darci Crenshaw,and the music is by Ryan Brady
via Pon five licensing, pleasesubscribe to the Dave Crenshaw

(50:29):
success show on Apple podcastsSpotify, wherever you like to
get your podcasts. If you have asuggestion for someone my dad
might like to interview, pleasesend it to guests at Dave
crenshaw.com and please don'tforget to leave us a five star
review. See you next time you.

All Episodes

The Lifesaving Inventor, Joe Landolina - CEO & Co-founder of Cresilon, Inc

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

Stuff You Should Know

24/7 News: The Latest

The Joe Rogan Experience

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}The Lifesaving Inventor, Joe Landolina - CEO & Co-founder of Cresilon, Inc