February 23, 2024 • 25 mins
When Russ Sosimo shares the poignant memory of a young girl's seizure turning point, it's a moment that encapsulates the transformative journey we embark on in our latest conversation. I, Dylan Burke, am honored to sit with Russ, the maverick behind Hemp Synogistics and iSpeak AI, as he details his evolution from the home security sector to the cutting-edge worlds of cannabis and technology. His story isn't just about professional transitions; it's a heartfelt testament to the power of purpose-driven entrepreneurship and the impact one can make by tuning into the needs of those around us and harnessing innovative solutions.
Venture with us into the digital realm where artificial intelligence becomes a silent partner in the success stories of small business owners. Imagine a tool so adept that it turns hours of mundane tasks into a symphony of productivity, much like the miraculous revival of Forrest Gump's shrimping business. In a narrative that mirrors the electrician whose business was revolutionized by AI, Russ illustrates how this burgeoning technology is reshaping the way we engage customers and manage our businesses. With the AI market on a meteoric rise, this episode is a glimpse into a future where entrepreneurs are equipped with the digital prowess to elevate their operations and their lives to unheard-of heights.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Hey everyone.
Welcome back to the growingLean podcast sponsored by Lean
Discovery Group.
This is your host, dylan Burke,also known as Deej.
I'm happy to be here today withRuss Sosimo, founder and CMO at
Hemp Synogistics, as well asfounder and CEO at iSpeak AI.
Welcome, russ.
What's happening?
(00:23):
Yeah, I'm super excited tointerview you.
This is going to be great.
So, firstly, could you tell usabout your history and
background and how you ended upin the businesses you're in
today?
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Yeah, it's funny.
Well, I was thinking about theother day the things that led up
to where I am in life, and it'sfunny because I was always
doing something marketing-wiseor brand-building-wise whether
it was running for president,starting a basketball team with
the school that didn't have it,starting a hockey team, doing a
(01:03):
fake podcast for that, pressconferences for that hockey team
I was always doing somethinglike that.
Here my father started acompany called Guardian
Protection Services out of hisparents' garage and grew that to
be the largest privately heldhome security company in the
nation.
So I got a first-row seat tothat.
My whole life as the oldest son, I was very inquisitive, really
(01:28):
always wanted to run my ownbusiness.
That's all we knew.
So here my father's securitycompany had just brought on a
new technology in which I sawthe Razor, the future with this
thing.
It was the first Bluetoothbased security system, and it
might sound boring now because,everything's video camera and
(01:49):
it's like lick and stickwherever you want.
But this was the first of itskind and somebody without any
experience could install thisthing in an hour.
And it was.
You didn't have to run a truck,you didn't have to pay an
installer.
A female sales rep couldactually go install this right
afterwards, which was unheard of.
So I asked the company if Icould take one of the
(02:11):
installation trucks and tear theinside of it out and build a
moving security system, becausewe didn't have internet that was
mobile and this thing had to goover internet.
So I had to build a mobileinternet device that could drive
around and do demonstrations ofa security system for people in
their neighborhoods.
And we did it.
And I got the taste of likebuilding something for the first
(02:32):
time from scratch, from an ideathat no one had ever done
before.
And I did it and I cared it out.
And you know, at&t was involvedand Kiasera Wi-Fi was involved.
We had to do things to actuallyget something to talk to the
internet mobile.
But when they didn't have that,so it was.
I saw that anything'sachievable and I also got a
(02:55):
taste of technology, so Idecided to jump into data and
technology at that point and gota team of technicians and put
together a house in Californiawith you know it was a startup
house and kept them fed, keptthem on a common goal and moving
forward on a software that wehad all based around it, a huge
database that we could leverageto churn marketing you know, do
(03:20):
marketing through and churnmoney out of.
And that ended up that's stillin business.
My brother owns it now.
But while I was out inCalifornia I started this
company.
I saw marijuana and I saw howit was perceived in California.
It was very different than itwas where I was from and here I
had moved the tech company backfrom California and within a
year or two maybe I had exposureto a girl that had 10,000
(03:45):
seizures a year, 10 years old,literally.
You know, hundreds of thousandsof seizures a month almost.
And what happened was this girlat a fundraiser that I was at
to help raise money for hermedicine.
She had what's called a grandmall seizure, where they seize
and they go down and her headhit the concrete and it was one
(04:08):
of the scariest things I've everseen and half the party left
scared to death.
Half the party was there, fineand you could see on my
background psychology, I couldsee how desensitized the one
group was because they were justused to it.
Here was the most frighteningthing that I, or half this party
had seen and we all left as theambulance showed up.
We left and about two weekslater my business partner called
(04:30):
me and he said hey, I want youto know.
They just sent Hannah, the 11year old girl, home from the
hospital.
Her organs are shutting down.
They've given her 14 days tolive.
They said start hospice, justmake her life comfortable.
You have to find her.
This oil that everyone keepstalking about, this marijuana
oil.
And I basically got on a phonecall and called everyone around
(04:51):
the country that I could andeventually, being I was
introduced to a researcher, tolocal university not local a
couple of states over that endedup custom compounding this for
this girl, sending it to thefamily.
And this girl had about 11 daysleft on this death sentence.
She was on her side, immobileFor a couple of days.
She had a feeding tube in andhere her mother put one grain of
(05:13):
rice sized drop of thiscannabis oil in her mouth and
within seven minutes she was upand within half an hour.
She had so much energy they hadto put a helmet on her, and
that was 2014.
And now she's almost 19 yearsold, I think, and she's
communicating better than shetypically ever would.
(05:33):
Her quality of life is muchbetter than it ever was and
she's off a lot of the drugsthat she was on all because this
plant saved her life.
And it was at that moment.
I said cannabis is where I wantto be and I went out and I want
to license in cannabis inPennsylvania.
I won one in West Virginia verycompetitive states and that led
me into a biotech company thatI now run called Hemp Center
(05:56):
Gistics.
That does basically molecularencapsulation of hemp molecules
so that we have betterbioavailability, better delivery
methods and it works better inthe system.
And from there I also juststarted iSpeakAI, which we can
get into any one of them butthat is kind of how things
evolved with me is that I got ataste of it, I saw it, I went
out and built, I learned andthen redid it, and you get
(06:18):
smarter and sharper every time.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
Wow, that is quite the introduction story there.
That's amazing.
That story with that girl isthat's crazy.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Yeah, it's actually.
It's really.
I mean it's touching.
And I forgot to mention westarted a nonprofit to go out
and educate because of thesituation we were in and we had
a chance to take a situationthat we saved somebody and say,
look, the mother's here with us.
All these other mothers arehere.
Their kids need it.
Look what it's doing for people.
(06:52):
And here this nonprofit wentout and did about 50 different
events across three differentstates.
In fact I even presented out inSwitzerland.
They call me Dr Sursasma, whichis hilarious because I'm not a
doctor.
So, but you get you do some coolstuff.
If you get out there and reallyyou know get moving with things
, you'd be surprised what youcan achieve.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
Yeah, yeah, a hundred percent.
And the cannabis oil thing is.
But it's close to home for meas well, because I my roommate
that I used to live with abouttwo years ago he started a lab
similar to yours where they domicro emulsified cannabis I'm
not sure if that's the rightterminology.
Yep, right now, yeah, yeah.
(07:34):
So is that like similar to whatyou do?
And do you?
Do you bring in your own flowerand process it, or do you do it
on behalf of clients?
Speaker 2 (07:44):
So think of it this way If you were to walk into a
supplement factory right now,like you know the capsules that
were used to buying at any kindof grocery store or vitamin shop
all you see is wall to wallpowders, just boxes of powder.
You don't see liquid.
In fact they don't even putliquid on the machine to clean
the machines.
(08:05):
So this oil based plant has tobe turned into a powder.
The industry doesn't realize ityet because a lot of the
industry just wants to smoke itand vape it, and that's fine,
but it should be ingested.
So you know, going in a formthat is easy to use in
manufacturing, easy to dose,easy to measure, doesn't taste
(08:28):
bad.
Much like the aspirin you'reused to taking is in a form that
is word eventually got becausethat's the best way to put it
into these things.
You're not grabbing you know,white willow bark, that's this
much or compressing it orsqueezing it or juicing it.
No, it's extracting thatmolecule and putting it in it to
get that exact standardizeddose.
That's.
(08:48):
We're going to start to seemore and more of that.
But ultimately, yeah, mycompany takes it from its
distilled situation where it'sin an oil and then we do these
things in a lab to turn theminto a powder.
But what's different than,probably, than what your buddies
are doing?
They're probably just doing amicroemulsion or a nano.
What we're doing is we have apatent on a technology.
(09:10):
Ok, now I'll explain it.
When you take a gummy and chewit let's say it has 10
milligrams of CBD or THC orwhatever your body is programmed
to sense how much chemicals,how many chemicals are in it or
what the composition is.
When there's too much chemicals, it starts to send out enzymes
to destroy those chemicals as adefense mechanism.
So in case you eat a poisonousplant, you survive and it does a
(09:33):
really good job.
It destroys 96% of thecannabinoids on the way down.
So when you ingest 10milligrams, you really only get
about half a milligram.
What my technology does is wetake a helix structure,
polysaccharide so imagine, likea slinky.
We unravel it in the lab, wecoerce the CBD and THC, CBN,
whatever you want inside of this.
Then we close it back up.
(09:54):
Now what happens when youingest it?
Your body doesn't see a toxicchemical it's see, or what it
perceives as toxic chemical.
It sees fruits, vegetables anddifferent things it's used to
and it treats it as such and itlets it go all the way down into
your lower gut where you wantit to land, and then amylase, a
natural enzyme that you havedown there, works like a lock
(10:15):
and key with this thing, breaksit open and out like a Trojan
horse, come the cannabinoids andyou get them all under your
system.
So that's what we do.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
That's amazing, it's insane.
And are you strictly medicinalor is it recreational?
Speaker 2 (10:30):
as well.
Yeah, we do it for whoeverwants it.
We basically provide a serviceto convert their stuff to a more
usable, more bioavailable form.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
Okay, so, for instance, you could put like a
pinch of this powder in yourmorning coffee, for example, or
if maybe not in the morning, ifit's recreational.
But yeah, exactly.
And do you have a scientificdegree or qualification?
Speaker 2 (10:56):
My, psychology, psychology.
But the thing is I'm reallyinquisitive and really where
this all came to me was when Istarted the Medical Cannabis
Society and was the first guy onthe podium talking about this
stuff.
You start to pull out of theaudience the people that are
very interested.
And when I'm speaking todoctors and researchers and
getting paid to speak at thespectroscopy convention or the
(11:18):
Pennsylvania banking conference,because I was the first guy, I
start to hear all the problemsfrom those industry leaders and
because I was that almost API inthe cannabis, I was able to
start to pull together teams.
I mean I was even working withJohns Hopkins on software.
You know it was amazing what Iwas able to gain access to
because I was at that, thathigher point when it came to my
(11:41):
state and prepared.
But yeah, psychology, a lot ofpeople asked me from a doctor.
I said no, they say you're ascientist.
I said no, I got a psych degree.
I know how to go, how thoseguys think and talk, so I could
regurgitate it.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
well, Okay, amazing.
Well, it's obviously done verywell for you.
Thank you To get here and howlong exactly has the business
been operational?
Speaker 2 (12:04):
Hampton logistics has been operational since 2019.
Yeah, since 2019.
It's really been a really toughthree years for hemp and
cannabis.
It's starting to level out, butthose, those industries have
been hurt.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
Yeah, I'm sure.
And how have you adapted?
For instance, how did you adaptto the pandemic in terms of
business operations?
Speaker 2 (12:29):
I mean we had.
We started building ourfacility in the middle of the
pandemic.
The pandemic hit.
The state governor saidnobody's allowed to work unless
you're a life sustainingbusiness.
So we had a fight to gain lifesustaining business
certification, while we alsowent and found a new location
(12:50):
and moved our whole entireoperation to something somewhere
that was already up and readyto go, as opposed to something
we had to build.
So we had to do a lot ofbobbing and weaving and then
people were at home.
So we had to change to a retailmodel and so we started
creating and formulatingproducts as opposed to just
focusing on ingredients, becausethe big players, the big food
manufacturers Nestle's, conag orFoods they decided they weren't
(13:13):
going to make a move on thisuntil it's federally legal.
So we're in a really crappy spotfor three years and now, at the
end of it, the people that alljumped into this growing
industry, that diluted it, arenow falling back out.
So it's starting to level out.
It's starting to.
It's getting better.
For those that made it through,it's like Forrest Gump If
(13:35):
you've ever seen the movie whenhe buys the shrimping boat and
he goes out he's not catchingany shrimp because there's tons
of the shrimpers, and then thehurricane comes and wipes him
out.
Well, I've been talking aboutthis hurricane coming, because
we knew it was only a matter oftime.
Well, it came this year, so2024 is going to be really good
for him.
Speaker 1 (13:51):
Also for AI?
Okay, amazing.
Yeah, I was about to ask you ifyou if you're making use of
these, how much you're makinguse of AI, because I see you did
on sin that, yeah, I mean, I'lltell you, I'll give you a
really cool story, okay, and itplays within what I had been
talking about how I kind of seethese things.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
So here I cracked social media, I started to
realize what my industry wantedto see and started getting
30,000 views on posts, and whathappened was I started to get
too many inbound requests forinformation to me, leads,
requests for meetings, whatever.
So I went to Carnegie Mellonand I grabbed two developers and
I said listen, I think today Ican do this.
(14:32):
I wanted to be able tocommunicate as me on LinkedIn
after I make a post and 60inbound requests come in.
I want it to do all the microcommunications weed out the
people that are trying to sellme something.
I don't want make a meetingwith the real me for the people
I do want I get on the meeting.
Every one of my meetings endswith I got to give you samples
of my technology.
So at the end of the meeting, Iwant AI to understand the order
(14:54):
where the samples are going andsend it to the lab and Then
send it to something.
It's gonna measure it and thenprint out a shipping label so
that my lab just puts it on athing and it's done, shipped out
and in three weeks we build itand it changed my life.
I realized 70% more of my dayand that's where I started to
focus on problems from myfriends.
(15:16):
And now we've built Differentthings that can do things that
you would never imagine that ahuman or a computer I'm sorry
that a computer could do, andthe humans that now own these
bots are trying to figure outwhat to do with their time.
It's a weird place to be.
It's hard to even explain and Iyou look at the AI market
Supposed to be about twotrillion, depending on what
(15:37):
you're looking at.
Two trillion by 2030.
That's a lot of money.
That's that's like Apple'smarket cap.
So that means that all yourfriends they're gonna be
spending on AI what they do onApple products.
That's why knowing that, askthem where they're spending
their AI money.
Now they don't know.
So you know you have anopportunity there if you have
the right team and right productand you know what you're doing
(15:59):
To grab that, that market sharenow and it's, it's here.
I mean, I use it for everythingin my life, right, and it's
it's.
I've learned to talk to it tothe point that my psych degree
plays really well as a commandprompt generator To speak to a
computer.
So it's, it's, it's awesome.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
That's wild.
Is that I speak AI?
Is that what you're referring?
I speak AI.
Yep, okay, and is thatcommercially available, or is
that it is?
Speaker 2 (16:28):
I mean, yeah, so we yeah, I'll give you an idea.
I have a buddy that's anelectrician.
He he said he doesn't want todo his social posts anymore,
which is a lot like these smallbusiness owners under and little
small business.
They have to do all thesethings accounting, bookie, book.
I said what do you want it todo?
Rich?
He said I just wanted to do myposts.
I Said alright and I took it astep further.
I know he gets a Vowpack leadfrom some magazine that he has
(16:50):
to use, so once that Vowpacklead comes from that person's
email it, the bot now reachesout to him and says rich, I got
it.
I now know what the offer isfor the week.
Let me give you here's theseven posts I want to make,
based on the parameters thatRuss and the team taught me.
Do you like it or not?
He just comes back, respondsyes or no.
Usually yes.
It goes in and it just startsposting his stuff on a schedule
(17:14):
After his approval on all hissocial networks.
From that's how he doesn't evendo anything.
He's answers.
He just says yes.
Now it saves him two hours aday.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
And how accurate is it in communicating like the
person that's meant to becommunicating like?
Speaker 2 (17:32):
it's better than him.
It's better than him, and thereason is is because a he's slow
.
All right, people are havingthe same conversation with him
over and over again.
For instance, there he's anelectrician, they're calling
about an electric while it'sgone bad, that he's just gonna
troubleshoot and not make anymoney off.
Well, now we can integrate notonly a chatbot through text
that'll do that, but we canintegrate a AI robot voice
(17:57):
that's trained to do it off thesame brain.
So now he doesn't have to worryabout the answer in the phone
anymore.
That can schedule meeting somuch, like the one I built for
my company that will filter.
This would filter the peoplethat need troubleshooting.
Take the people that needescalated and then people that
need to schedule.
So they'd go into three bucketsand now again, his time and his
wife's time now are cut downimmensely, because something
(18:19):
that's better than them on timeevery time and just trained to
what it's supposed to do Nevercalls off work.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
That's.
That's not.
How much does it cost to getset up on something like that?
Speaker 2 (18:35):
Right now we're doing it cheap to build the brand
Because I got hungry kids thatare willing to work.
But I mean, if you look at whatthe market rate is right now
and this is across the boardfrom Germany, because I've
called them all and shop themall To get something done that
you want done, you would youwould say this is a to be and
(18:55):
they're gonna go in and Tell youwhat needs to happen and say,
here you go, and you're gonnacome back and say I can't, I'll
pay you to do it and it's, it's,it's at that point.
It's gonna cost something likea few thousand dollars.
Now if you say you want tobuild a rocket ship for you,
that's obviously gonna be more.
You wanted to start doing yoursocial media and you know little
things that you do every dayand the way I start the meetings
(19:17):
with people's, what are yousick of doing over and over
again every day that you youdon't want to do?
And you'll see, because peopleare like, oh, my god, I can't
stand doing this and I can'tstand doing this, and that's
where you say, okay, if we canget rid of that, that's one
thing.
You want it to do.
You know what else like this.
And then what I realize a lotof people don't believe that it
can do it until they see it Doit.
And then they're like then it'sskies the limit.
(19:37):
Like I want to do.
I'll give you an example mymother.
I said, mom, if you could havea, I do anything for you.
What would you ever do?
She said you know the familyDVDs that I'd converted from
eight millimeter to VHS to nowDVD.
I can't find a company onlineit does it that converts them to
itunes.
I brought into my car and getCarnegie Mellon kids, handed him
a DVD drive which was new tothem, handed the DVDs and 12
(20:03):
minutes later he had writtenthis, the script and the
software that now all you haveto do is pop the DVD in and push
the up button.
It does it all tags, it puts iton the, the media.
We need it to be on.
And Now I have a service tosell to all the DVD companies
that took eight track and VHS,the DVD, and they don't have
another option to take it to thenext level.
(20:25):
So, or a tedious option, Ishould say so it's neat, it's
wild, to see what, what can bebuilt once this stuff's going
because there's a human.
Now you have more time to thinkfurther ahead and it's it's a
neat place to be.
Speaker 1 (20:39):
Yeah, hundred percent , and that is.
That's Exactly what we do atlean discovery group.
We automate manual workflowsthat people don't like doing.
Yeah, and it's.
It's super interesting to seeand people are shocked.
They're just, they don'tunderstand what's possible, and
(20:59):
pretty much anything's possible,which is it's a wild place to
be it's neat, right, because, asa site guy is, you're talking
about these new things likecannabis, right?
Speaker 2 (21:10):
Like I'm used to talking about things,
psychedelics.
Well, ai is one of those thingsthat they don't you see what's
happening as you like a rats ina skinner box.
I'm watching them as I'mtalking to them and I know that
they're not really graspingeverything, and one of the
things I say that's why I use mymom as an example.
Mom, anything, forget, likewhat the computer can do, forget
what a video game, because Iknow that's where your head's at
(21:31):
when I phone could do what doyou want done?
That's not getting done.
She's like, oh, you know, letme think outside the box.
And that was something.
No, granted, it's something wewould think.
Obviously I can do, but shecouldn't find anybody to do that
in the work.
There's two letters seem to beenough to her ever think out of
the box.
But who would have thought thatI could just be on a meeting
and just say what I want andthen just hang up the phone and
(21:54):
AI text me and says hey, let'smake sure this order is right.
That you said on the phone andI'm gonna go ahead and do all
the work.
It's an awesome time To be ahuman, yeah that's.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
It's amazing.
I'm so excited to see what whatwe do with this technology
that's available now.
Speaker 2 (22:10):
It's yeah, man, it's cool, you guys are on top of it
quick.
I mean it's, it's the I thinkit's the guys that had the
marketing background that coulduse the word presses of the
world Right right now.
They're gonna be the ones thatget to jump in on the agency
model, because it's a little toohard for your typical you know
(22:31):
even jack of all trades businessowner to jump into that level
of automation.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
Yeah, exactly, exactly, and I've just checked
the time.
We are a bit over.
I got carried away there, butI've really enjoyed chatting to
you.
I want to ask you before we goif we met again in, let's say,
two years time and everything'sgone right in both of your
businesses?
What do those businesses looklike?
Speaker 2 (22:59):
Sold to somebody else , and I'm in Costa Rica on a
psychedelic retreat that I'vebuilt to help people heal
mentally.
That's amazing.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
That's the first time I've heard that one.
I love that.
Yeah, awesome and exactly whatI'm doing, okay, perfect and
what?
Speaker 2 (23:12):
advice would you like to give to other business?
Speaker 1 (23:14):
owners looking to succeed in there's ever changing
technological world.
I.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
You're gonna take a step out with a plan your plan
and you're gonna get punched inthe face and it's not gonna be
the initial plan that you wentout with.
Most of the time, get up andkeep going, because you're gonna
learn from that.
You're gonna get knocked offyour horse again.
You're gonna learn from that.
You're gonna have all thesescars but at the end of the day,
as long as you persevere,you're gonna get further than
(23:48):
most people can get.
And it's because of those upsand downs and those scars and
falling down that not everyone'san entrepreneur.
But you gotta have the mentalwherewithal to know to get
through that.
And as a guy that's done thisnow a lot, you know, as I'm
bringing these Carnegie Mellonkids in and teaching them the
ways of business, going into it,saying, guys, this isn't gonna
(24:11):
be our model in six months.
It's just not.
So don't get too set on it, itwill change.
I'm not that naive that I thinkthat I'm right the first time
out of the gate anymore, becauseI'm not.
We're gonna learn so much moreand it's wild to see these
things evolve in weeks andmonths and that happens.
And just know that you're gonnaget knocked down.
(24:33):
Things are gonna change.
Just keep going and you'll endup doing all right, if you can
persevere 100%.
Speaker 1 (24:39):
Thank you so much, russ, and thanks for your time
today.
What's the best way for peopleto reach out to Russ, to Sosimo,
if you have any.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
LinkedIn Yep, get me on LinkedIn.
I'm active there and I checkeverything.
Speaker 1 (24:52):
Amazing.
Thank you so much Russ.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
Well, a bot does, but one of the some me or my bot
will get to you.
Speaker 1 (24:58):
Amazing, Awesome.
Thanks so much.
Speaker 2 (25:01):
Good talking to you, Dylan.
I'll see you brother.
Hey everyone.
Welcome back to the growingLean podcast sponsored by Lean
Discovery Group.
This is your host, dylan Burke,also known as Deej.
I'm happy to be here today withRuss Sosimo, founder and CMO at
Hemp Synogistics, as well asfounder and CEO at iSpeak AI.
Welcome, russ.
What's happening?
(00:23):
Yeah, I'm super excited tointerview you.
This is going to be great.
So, firstly, could you tell usabout your history and
background and how you ended upin the businesses you're in
today?
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Yeah, it's funny.
Well, I was thinking about theother day the things that led up
to where I am in life, and it'sfunny because I was always
doing something marketing-wiseor brand-building-wise whether
it was running for president,starting a basketball team with
the school that didn't have it,starting a hockey team, doing a
(01:03):
fake podcast for that, pressconferences for that hockey team
I was always doing somethinglike that.
Here my father started acompany called Guardian
Protection Services out of hisparents' garage and grew that to
be the largest privately heldhome security company in the
nation.
So I got a first-row seat tothat.
My whole life as the oldest son, I was very inquisitive, really
(01:28):
always wanted to run my ownbusiness.
That's all we knew.
So here my father's securitycompany had just brought on a
new technology in which I sawthe Razor, the future with this
thing.
It was the first Bluetoothbased security system, and it
might sound boring now because,everything's video camera and
(01:49):
it's like lick and stickwherever you want.
But this was the first of itskind and somebody without any
experience could install thisthing in an hour.
And it was.
You didn't have to run a truck,you didn't have to pay an
installer.
A female sales rep couldactually go install this right
afterwards, which was unheard of.
So I asked the company if Icould take one of the
(02:11):
installation trucks and tear theinside of it out and build a
moving security system, becausewe didn't have internet that was
mobile and this thing had to goover internet.
So I had to build a mobileinternet device that could drive
around and do demonstrations ofa security system for people in
their neighborhoods.
And we did it.
And I got the taste of likebuilding something for the first
(02:32):
time from scratch, from an ideathat no one had ever done
before.
And I did it and I cared it out.
And you know, at&t was involvedand Kiasera Wi-Fi was involved.
We had to do things to actuallyget something to talk to the
internet mobile.
But when they didn't have that,so it was.
I saw that anything'sachievable and I also got a
(02:55):
taste of technology, so Idecided to jump into data and
technology at that point and gota team of technicians and put
together a house in Californiawith you know it was a startup
house and kept them fed, keptthem on a common goal and moving
forward on a software that wehad all based around it, a huge
database that we could leverageto churn marketing you know, do
(03:20):
marketing through and churnmoney out of.
And that ended up that's stillin business.
My brother owns it now.
But while I was out inCalifornia I started this
company.
I saw marijuana and I saw howit was perceived in California.
It was very different than itwas where I was from and here I
had moved the tech company backfrom California and within a
year or two maybe I had exposureto a girl that had 10,000
(03:45):
seizures a year, 10 years old,literally.
You know, hundreds of thousandsof seizures a month almost.
And what happened was this girlat a fundraiser that I was at
to help raise money for hermedicine.
She had what's called a grandmall seizure, where they seize
and they go down and her headhit the concrete and it was one
(04:08):
of the scariest things I've everseen and half the party left
scared to death.
Half the party was there, fineand you could see on my
background psychology, I couldsee how desensitized the one
group was because they were justused to it.
Here was the most frighteningthing that I, or half this party
had seen and we all left as theambulance showed up.
We left and about two weekslater my business partner called
(04:30):
me and he said hey, I want youto know.
They just sent Hannah, the 11year old girl, home from the
hospital.
Her organs are shutting down.
They've given her 14 days tolive.
They said start hospice, justmake her life comfortable.
You have to find her.
This oil that everyone keepstalking about, this marijuana
oil.
And I basically got on a phonecall and called everyone around
(04:51):
the country that I could andeventually, being I was
introduced to a researcher, tolocal university not local a
couple of states over that endedup custom compounding this for
this girl, sending it to thefamily.
And this girl had about 11 daysleft on this death sentence.
She was on her side, immobileFor a couple of days.
She had a feeding tube in andhere her mother put one grain of
(05:13):
rice sized drop of thiscannabis oil in her mouth and
within seven minutes she was upand within half an hour.
She had so much energy they hadto put a helmet on her, and
that was 2014.
And now she's almost 19 yearsold, I think, and she's
communicating better than shetypically ever would.
(05:33):
Her quality of life is muchbetter than it ever was and
she's off a lot of the drugsthat she was on all because this
plant saved her life.
And it was at that moment.
I said cannabis is where I wantto be and I went out and I want
to license in cannabis inPennsylvania.
I won one in West Virginia verycompetitive states and that led
me into a biotech company thatI now run called Hemp Center
(05:56):
Gistics.
That does basically molecularencapsulation of hemp molecules
so that we have betterbioavailability, better delivery
methods and it works better inthe system.
And from there I also juststarted iSpeakAI, which we can
get into any one of them butthat is kind of how things
evolved with me is that I got ataste of it, I saw it, I went
out and built, I learned andthen redid it, and you get
(06:18):
smarter and sharper every time.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
Wow, that is quite the introduction story there.
That's amazing.
That story with that girl isthat's crazy.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Yeah, it's actually.
It's really.
I mean it's touching.
And I forgot to mention westarted a nonprofit to go out
and educate because of thesituation we were in and we had
a chance to take a situationthat we saved somebody and say,
look, the mother's here with us.
All these other mothers arehere.
Their kids need it.
Look what it's doing for people.
(06:52):
And here this nonprofit wentout and did about 50 different
events across three differentstates.
In fact I even presented out inSwitzerland.
They call me Dr Sursasma, whichis hilarious because I'm not a
doctor.
So, but you get you do some coolstuff.
If you get out there and reallyyou know get moving with things
, you'd be surprised what youcan achieve.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
Yeah, yeah, a hundred percent.
And the cannabis oil thing is.
But it's close to home for meas well, because I my roommate
that I used to live with abouttwo years ago he started a lab
similar to yours where they domicro emulsified cannabis I'm
not sure if that's the rightterminology.
Yep, right now, yeah, yeah.
(07:34):
So is that like similar to whatyou do?
And do you?
Do you bring in your own flowerand process it, or do you do it
on behalf of clients?
Speaker 2 (07:44):
So think of it this way If you were to walk into a
supplement factory right now,like you know the capsules that
were used to buying at any kindof grocery store or vitamin shop
all you see is wall to wallpowders, just boxes of powder.
You don't see liquid.
In fact they don't even putliquid on the machine to clean
the machines.
(08:05):
So this oil based plant has tobe turned into a powder.
The industry doesn't realize ityet because a lot of the
industry just wants to smoke itand vape it, and that's fine,
but it should be ingested.
So you know, going in a formthat is easy to use in
manufacturing, easy to dose,easy to measure, doesn't taste
(08:28):
bad.
Much like the aspirin you'reused to taking is in a form that
is word eventually got becausethat's the best way to put it
into these things.
You're not grabbing you know,white willow bark, that's this
much or compressing it orsqueezing it or juicing it.
No, it's extracting thatmolecule and putting it in it to
get that exact standardizeddose.
That's.
(08:48):
We're going to start to seemore and more of that.
But ultimately, yeah, mycompany takes it from its
distilled situation where it'sin an oil and then we do these
things in a lab to turn theminto a powder.
But what's different than,probably, than what your buddies
are doing?
They're probably just doing amicroemulsion or a nano.
What we're doing is we have apatent on a technology.
(09:10):
Ok, now I'll explain it.
When you take a gummy and chewit let's say it has 10
milligrams of CBD or THC orwhatever your body is programmed
to sense how much chemicals,how many chemicals are in it or
what the composition is.
When there's too much chemicals, it starts to send out enzymes
to destroy those chemicals as adefense mechanism.
So in case you eat a poisonousplant, you survive and it does a
(09:33):
really good job.
It destroys 96% of thecannabinoids on the way down.
So when you ingest 10milligrams, you really only get
about half a milligram.
What my technology does is wetake a helix structure,
polysaccharide so imagine, likea slinky.
We unravel it in the lab, wecoerce the CBD and THC, CBN,
whatever you want inside of this.
Then we close it back up.
(09:54):
Now what happens when youingest it?
Your body doesn't see a toxicchemical it's see, or what it
perceives as toxic chemical.
It sees fruits, vegetables anddifferent things it's used to
and it treats it as such and itlets it go all the way down into
your lower gut where you wantit to land, and then amylase, a
natural enzyme that you havedown there, works like a lock
(10:15):
and key with this thing, breaksit open and out like a Trojan
horse, come the cannabinoids andyou get them all under your
system.
So that's what we do.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
That's amazing, it's insane.
And are you strictly medicinalor is it recreational?
Speaker 2 (10:30):
as well.
Yeah, we do it for whoeverwants it.
We basically provide a serviceto convert their stuff to a more
usable, more bioavailable form.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
Okay, so, for instance, you could put like a
pinch of this powder in yourmorning coffee, for example, or
if maybe not in the morning, ifit's recreational.
But yeah, exactly.
And do you have a scientificdegree or qualification?
Speaker 2 (10:56):
My, psychology, psychology.
But the thing is I'm reallyinquisitive and really where
this all came to me was when Istarted the Medical Cannabis
Society and was the first guy onthe podium talking about this
stuff.
You start to pull out of theaudience the people that are
very interested.
And when I'm speaking todoctors and researchers and
getting paid to speak at thespectroscopy convention or the
(11:18):
Pennsylvania banking conference,because I was the first guy, I
start to hear all the problemsfrom those industry leaders and
because I was that almost API inthe cannabis, I was able to
start to pull together teams.
I mean I was even working withJohns Hopkins on software.
You know it was amazing what Iwas able to gain access to
because I was at that, thathigher point when it came to my
(11:41):
state and prepared.
But yeah, psychology, a lot ofpeople asked me from a doctor.
I said no, they say you're ascientist.
I said no, I got a psych degree.
I know how to go, how thoseguys think and talk, so I could
regurgitate it.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
well, Okay, amazing.
Well, it's obviously done verywell for you.
Thank you To get here and howlong exactly has the business
been operational?
Speaker 2 (12:04):
Hampton logistics has been operational since 2019.
Yeah, since 2019.
It's really been a really toughthree years for hemp and
cannabis.
It's starting to level out, butthose, those industries have
been hurt.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
Yeah, I'm sure.
And how have you adapted?
For instance, how did you adaptto the pandemic in terms of
business operations?
Speaker 2 (12:29):
I mean we had.
We started building ourfacility in the middle of the
pandemic.
The pandemic hit.
The state governor saidnobody's allowed to work unless
you're a life sustainingbusiness.
So we had a fight to gain lifesustaining business
certification, while we alsowent and found a new location
(12:50):
and moved our whole entireoperation to something somewhere
that was already up and readyto go, as opposed to something
we had to build.
So we had to do a lot ofbobbing and weaving and then
people were at home.
So we had to change to a retailmodel and so we started
creating and formulatingproducts as opposed to just
focusing on ingredients, becausethe big players, the big food
manufacturers Nestle's, conag orFoods they decided they weren't
(13:13):
going to make a move on thisuntil it's federally legal.
So we're in a really crappy spotfor three years and now, at the
end of it, the people that alljumped into this growing
industry, that diluted it, arenow falling back out.
So it's starting to level out.
It's starting to.
It's getting better.
For those that made it through,it's like Forrest Gump If
(13:35):
you've ever seen the movie whenhe buys the shrimping boat and
he goes out he's not catchingany shrimp because there's tons
of the shrimpers, and then thehurricane comes and wipes him
out.
Well, I've been talking aboutthis hurricane coming, because
we knew it was only a matter oftime.
Well, it came this year, so2024 is going to be really good
for him.
Speaker 1 (13:51):
Also for AI?
Okay, amazing.
Yeah, I was about to ask you ifyou if you're making use of
these, how much you're makinguse of AI, because I see you did
on sin that, yeah, I mean, I'lltell you, I'll give you a
really cool story, okay, and itplays within what I had been
talking about how I kind of seethese things.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
So here I cracked social media, I started to
realize what my industry wantedto see and started getting
30,000 views on posts, and whathappened was I started to get
too many inbound requests forinformation to me, leads,
requests for meetings, whatever.
So I went to Carnegie Mellonand I grabbed two developers and
I said listen, I think today Ican do this.
(14:32):
I wanted to be able tocommunicate as me on LinkedIn
after I make a post and 60inbound requests come in.
I want it to do all the microcommunications weed out the
people that are trying to sellme something.
I don't want make a meetingwith the real me for the people
I do want I get on the meeting.
Every one of my meetings endswith I got to give you samples
of my technology.
So at the end of the meeting, Iwant AI to understand the order
(14:54):
where the samples are going andsend it to the lab and Then
send it to something.
It's gonna measure it and thenprint out a shipping label so
that my lab just puts it on athing and it's done, shipped out
and in three weeks we build itand it changed my life.
I realized 70% more of my dayand that's where I started to
focus on problems from myfriends.
(15:16):
And now we've built Differentthings that can do things that
you would never imagine that ahuman or a computer I'm sorry
that a computer could do, andthe humans that now own these
bots are trying to figure outwhat to do with their time.
It's a weird place to be.
It's hard to even explain and Iyou look at the AI market
Supposed to be about twotrillion, depending on what
(15:37):
you're looking at.
Two trillion by 2030.
That's a lot of money.
That's that's like Apple'smarket cap.
So that means that all yourfriends they're gonna be
spending on AI what they do onApple products.
That's why knowing that, askthem where they're spending
their AI money.
Now they don't know.
So you know you have anopportunity there if you have
the right team and right productand you know what you're doing
(15:59):
To grab that, that market sharenow and it's, it's here.
I mean, I use it for everythingin my life, right, and it's
it's.
I've learned to talk to it tothe point that my psych degree
plays really well as a commandprompt generator To speak to a
computer.
So it's, it's, it's awesome.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
That's wild.
Is that I speak AI?
Is that what you're referring?
I speak AI.
Yep, okay, and is thatcommercially available, or is
that it is?
Speaker 2 (16:28):
I mean, yeah, so we yeah, I'll give you an idea.
I have a buddy that's anelectrician.
He he said he doesn't want todo his social posts anymore,
which is a lot like these smallbusiness owners under and little
small business.
They have to do all thesethings accounting, bookie, book.
I said what do you want it todo?
Rich?
He said I just wanted to do myposts.
I Said alright and I took it astep further.
I know he gets a Vowpack leadfrom some magazine that he has
(16:50):
to use, so once that Vowpacklead comes from that person's
email it, the bot now reachesout to him and says rich, I got
it.
I now know what the offer isfor the week.
Let me give you here's theseven posts I want to make,
based on the parameters thatRuss and the team taught me.
Do you like it or not?
He just comes back, respondsyes or no.
Usually yes.
It goes in and it just startsposting his stuff on a schedule
(17:14):
After his approval on all hissocial networks.
From that's how he doesn't evendo anything.
He's answers.
He just says yes.
Now it saves him two hours aday.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
And how accurate is it in communicating like the
person that's meant to becommunicating like?
Speaker 2 (17:32):
it's better than him.
It's better than him, and thereason is is because a he's slow
.
All right, people are havingthe same conversation with him
over and over again.
For instance, there he's anelectrician, they're calling
about an electric while it'sgone bad, that he's just gonna
troubleshoot and not make anymoney off.
Well, now we can integrate notonly a chatbot through text
that'll do that, but we canintegrate a AI robot voice
(17:57):
that's trained to do it off thesame brain.
So now he doesn't have to worryabout the answer in the phone
anymore.
That can schedule meeting somuch, like the one I built for
my company that will filter.
This would filter the peoplethat need troubleshooting.
Take the people that needescalated and then people that
need to schedule.
So they'd go into three bucketsand now again, his time and his
wife's time now are cut downimmensely, because something
(18:19):
that's better than them on timeevery time and just trained to
what it's supposed to do Nevercalls off work.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
That's.
That's not.
How much does it cost to getset up on something like that?
Speaker 2 (18:35):
Right now we're doing it cheap to build the brand
Because I got hungry kids thatare willing to work.
But I mean, if you look at whatthe market rate is right now
and this is across the boardfrom Germany, because I've
called them all and shop themall To get something done that
you want done, you would youwould say this is a to be and
(18:55):
they're gonna go in and Tell youwhat needs to happen and say,
here you go, and you're gonnacome back and say I can't, I'll
pay you to do it and it's, it's,it's at that point.
It's gonna cost something likea few thousand dollars.
Now if you say you want tobuild a rocket ship for you,
that's obviously gonna be more.
You wanted to start doing yoursocial media and you know little
things that you do every dayand the way I start the meetings
(19:17):
with people's, what are yousick of doing over and over
again every day that you youdon't want to do?
And you'll see, because peopleare like, oh, my god, I can't
stand doing this and I can'tstand doing this, and that's
where you say, okay, if we canget rid of that, that's one
thing.
You want it to do.
You know what else like this.
And then what I realize a lotof people don't believe that it
can do it until they see it Doit.
And then they're like then it'sskies the limit.
(19:37):
Like I want to do.
I'll give you an example mymother.
I said, mom, if you could havea, I do anything for you.
What would you ever do?
She said you know the familyDVDs that I'd converted from
eight millimeter to VHS to nowDVD.
I can't find a company onlineit does it that converts them to
itunes.
I brought into my car and getCarnegie Mellon kids, handed him
a DVD drive which was new tothem, handed the DVDs and 12
(20:03):
minutes later he had writtenthis, the script and the
software that now all you haveto do is pop the DVD in and push
the up button.
It does it all tags, it puts iton the, the media.
We need it to be on.
And Now I have a service tosell to all the DVD companies
that took eight track and VHS,the DVD, and they don't have
another option to take it to thenext level.
(20:25):
So, or a tedious option, Ishould say so it's neat, it's
wild, to see what, what can bebuilt once this stuff's going
because there's a human.
Now you have more time to thinkfurther ahead and it's it's a
neat place to be.
Speaker 1 (20:39):
Yeah, hundred percent , and that is.
That's Exactly what we do atlean discovery group.
We automate manual workflowsthat people don't like doing.
Yeah, and it's.
It's super interesting to seeand people are shocked.
They're just, they don'tunderstand what's possible, and
(20:59):
pretty much anything's possible,which is it's a wild place to
be it's neat, right, because, asa site guy is, you're talking
about these new things likecannabis, right?
Speaker 2 (21:10):
Like I'm used to talking about things,
psychedelics.
Well, ai is one of those thingsthat they don't you see what's
happening as you like a rats ina skinner box.
I'm watching them as I'mtalking to them and I know that
they're not really graspingeverything, and one of the
things I say that's why I use mymom as an example.
Mom, anything, forget, likewhat the computer can do, forget
what a video game, because Iknow that's where your head's at
(21:31):
when I phone could do what doyou want done?
That's not getting done.
She's like, oh, you know, letme think outside the box.
And that was something.
No, granted, it's something wewould think.
Obviously I can do, but shecouldn't find anybody to do that
in the work.
There's two letters seem to beenough to her ever think out of
the box.
But who would have thought thatI could just be on a meeting
and just say what I want andthen just hang up the phone and
(21:54):
AI text me and says hey, let'smake sure this order is right.
That you said on the phone andI'm gonna go ahead and do all
the work.
It's an awesome time To be ahuman, yeah that's.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
It's amazing.
I'm so excited to see what whatwe do with this technology
that's available now.
Speaker 2 (22:10):
It's yeah, man, it's cool, you guys are on top of it
quick.
I mean it's, it's the I thinkit's the guys that had the
marketing background that coulduse the word presses of the
world Right right now.
They're gonna be the ones thatget to jump in on the agency
model, because it's a little toohard for your typical you know
(22:31):
even jack of all trades businessowner to jump into that level
of automation.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
Yeah, exactly, exactly, and I've just checked
the time.
We are a bit over.
I got carried away there, butI've really enjoyed chatting to
you.
I want to ask you before we goif we met again in, let's say,
two years time and everything'sgone right in both of your
businesses?
What do those businesses looklike?
Speaker 2 (22:59):
Sold to somebody else , and I'm in Costa Rica on a
psychedelic retreat that I'vebuilt to help people heal
mentally.
That's amazing.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
That's the first time I've heard that one.
I love that.
Yeah, awesome and exactly whatI'm doing, okay, perfect and
what?
Speaker 2 (23:12):
advice would you like to give to other business?
Speaker 1 (23:14):
owners looking to succeed in there's ever changing
technological world.
I.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
You're gonna take a step out with a plan your plan
and you're gonna get punched inthe face and it's not gonna be
the initial plan that you wentout with.
Most of the time, get up andkeep going, because you're gonna
learn from that.
You're gonna get knocked offyour horse again.
You're gonna learn from that.
You're gonna have all thesescars but at the end of the day,
as long as you persevere,you're gonna get further than
(23:48):
most people can get.
And it's because of those upsand downs and those scars and
falling down that not everyone'san entrepreneur.
But you gotta have the mentalwherewithal to know to get
through that.
And as a guy that's done thisnow a lot, you know, as I'm
bringing these Carnegie Mellonkids in and teaching them the
ways of business, going into it,saying, guys, this isn't gonna
(24:11):
be our model in six months.
It's just not.
So don't get too set on it, itwill change.
I'm not that naive that I thinkthat I'm right the first time
out of the gate anymore, becauseI'm not.
We're gonna learn so much moreand it's wild to see these
things evolve in weeks andmonths and that happens.
And just know that you're gonnaget knocked down.
(24:33):
Things are gonna change.
Just keep going and you'll endup doing all right, if you can
persevere 100%.
Speaker 1 (24:39):
Thank you so much, russ, and thanks for your time
today.
What's the best way for peopleto reach out to Russ, to Sosimo,
if you have any.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
LinkedIn Yep, get me on LinkedIn.
I'm active there and I checkeverything.
Speaker 1 (24:52):
Amazing.
Thank you so much Russ.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
Well, a bot does, but one of the some me or my bot
will get to you.
Speaker 1 (24:58):
Amazing, Awesome.
Thanks so much.
Speaker 2 (25:01):
Good talking to you, Dylan.
I'll see you brother.
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