From Security to Cannabis to AI: Russ Cercosimo's Journey to Purpose-Driven Entrepreneurship

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.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:03

Hey everyone. Welcome back to the growing Lean podcast sponsored by Lean Discovery Group. This is your host, dylan Burke, also known as Deej. I'm happy to be here today with Russ Sosimo, founder and CMO at Hemp Synogistics, as well as founder and CEO at iSpeak AI. Welcome, russ. What's happening? Yeah, I'm super excited to interview you. This is going to be great. So, firstly, could you tell us about your history and background and how you ended up in the businesses you're in today?

Speaker 2: 0:38

Yeah, it's funny. Well, I was thinking about the other day the things that led up to where I am in life, and it's funny because I was always doing something marketing-wise or 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 fake podcast for that, press conferences for that hockey team I was always doing something like that. Here my father started a company called Guardian Protection Services out of his parents' garage and grew that to be the largest privately held home security company in the nation. So I got a first-row seat to that. My whole life as the oldest son, I was very inquisitive, really always wanted to run my own business. That's all we knew. So here my father's security company had just brought on a new technology in which I saw the Razor, the future with this thing. It was the first Bluetooth based security system, and it might sound boring now because, everything's video camera and it's like lick and stick wherever you want.

Speaker 2: 1:51

But this was the first of its kind and somebody without any experience could install this thing 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 could actually go install this right afterwards, which was unheard of. So I asked the company if I could take one of the installation trucks and tear the inside of it out and build a moving security system, because we didn't have internet that was mobile and this thing had to go over internet. So I had to build a mobile internet device that could drive around and do demonstrations of a security system for people in their neighborhoods. And we did it. And I got the taste of like building something for the first time from scratch, from an idea that no one had ever done before. And I did it and I cared it out. And you know, at&t was involved and Kiasera Wi-Fi was involved. We had to do things to actually get something to talk to the internet mobile. But when they didn't have that, so it was. I saw that anything's achievable and I also got a taste of technology, so I decided to jump into data and technology at that point and got a team of technicians and put together a house in California with you know it was a startup house and kept them fed, kept them on a common goal and moving forward on a software that we had all based around it, a huge database that we could leverage to churn marketing you know, do marketing through and churn money out of. And that ended up that's still in business. My brother owns it now.

Speaker 2: 3:25

But while I was out in California I started this company. I saw marijuana and I saw how it was perceived in California. It was very different than it was where I was from and here I had moved the tech company back from California and within a year or two maybe I had exposure to a girl that had 10,000 seizures a year, 10 years old, literally. You know, hundreds of thousands of seizures a month almost. And what happened was this girl at a fundraiser that I was at to help raise money for her medicine. She had what's called a grand mall seizure, where they seize and they go down and her head hit the concrete and it was one of the scariest things I've ever seen and half the party left scared to death. Half the party was there, fine and you could see on my background psychology, I could see how desensitized the one group was because they were just used to it. Here was the most frightening thing that I, or half this party had seen and we all left as the ambulance showed up.

Speaker 2: 4:27

We left and about two weeks later my business partner called me and he said hey, I want you to know. They just sent Hannah, the 11 year old girl, home from the hospital. Her organs are shutting down. They've given her 14 days to live. They said start hospice, just make her life comfortable. You have to find her.

Speaker 2: 4:44

This oil that everyone keeps talking about, this marijuana oil. And I basically got on a phone call and called everyone around the country that I could and eventually, being I was introduced to a researcher, to local university not local a couple of states over that ended up custom compounding this for this girl, sending it to the family. And this girl had about 11 days left on this death sentence. She was on her side, immobile For a couple of days. She had a feeding tube in and here her mother put one grain of rice sized drop of this cannabis oil in her mouth and within seven minutes she was up and within half an hour. She had so much energy they had to put a helmet on her, and that was 2014. And now she's almost 19 years old, I think, and she's communicating better than she typically ever would. Her quality of life is much better than it ever was and she's off a lot of the drugs that she was on all because this plant saved her life.

Speaker 2: 5:42

And it was at that moment. I said cannabis is where I want to be and I went out and I want to license in cannabis in Pennsylvania. I won one in West Virginia very competitive states and that led me into a biotech company that I now run called Hemp Center Gistics. That does basically molecular encapsulation of hemp molecules so that we have better bioavailability, better delivery methods and it works better in the system. And from there I also just started iSpeakAI, which we can get into any one of them but that is kind of how things evolved with me is that I got a taste of it, I saw it, I went out and built, I learned and then redid it, and you get smarter and sharper every time.

Speaker 1: 6:22

Wow, that is quite the introduction story there. That's amazing. That story with that girl is that's crazy.

Speaker 2: 6:31

Yeah, it's actually. It's really. I mean it's touching. And I forgot to mention we started a nonprofit to go out and educate because of the situation we were in and we had a chance to take a situation that we saved somebody and say, look, the mother's here with us. All these other mothers are here. Their kids need it. Look what it's doing for people. And here this nonprofit went out and did about 50 different events across three different states. In fact I even presented out in Switzerland. They call me Dr Sursasma, which is hilarious because I'm not a doctor.

Speaker 2: 7:05

So, but you get you do some cool stuff. If you get out there and really you know get moving with things, you'd be surprised what you can achieve.

Speaker 1: 7:13

Yeah, yeah, a hundred percent. And the cannabis oil thing is. But it's close to home for me as well, because I my roommate that I used to live with about two years ago he started a lab similar to yours where they do micro emulsified cannabis I'm not sure if that's the right terminology. Yep, right now, yeah, yeah. So is that like similar to what you do? And do you? Do you bring in your own flower and process it, or do you do it on behalf of clients?

Speaker 2: 7:44

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 kind of grocery store or vitamin shop all you see is wall to wall powders, just boxes of powder. You don't see liquid. In fact they don't even put liquid on the machine to clean the machines. So this oil based plant has to be turned into a powder. The industry doesn't realize it yet because a lot of the industry just wants to smoke it and vape it, and that's fine, but it should be ingested. So you know, going in a form that is easy to use in manufacturing, easy to dose, easy to measure, doesn't taste bad. Much like the aspirin you're used to taking is in a form that is word eventually got because that'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 or squeezing it or juicing it. No, it's extracting that molecule and putting it in it to get that exact standardized dose. That's. We're going to start to see more and more of that. But ultimately, yeah, my company takes it from its distilled situation where it's in an oil and then we do these things in a lab to turn them into a powder. But what's different than, probably, than what your buddies are doing? They're probably just doing a microemulsion or a nano. What we're doing is we have a patent on a technology.

Speaker 2: 9:10

Ok, now I'll explain it. When you take a gummy and chew it let's say it has 10 milligrams of CBD or THC or whatever 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 a defense mechanism. So in case you eat a poisonous plant, you survive and it does a really good job. It destroys 96% of the cannabinoids on the way down. So when you ingest 10 milligrams, you really only get about half a milligram.

Speaker 2: 9:40

What my technology does is we take a helix structure, polysaccharide so imagine, like a slinky. We unravel it in the lab, we coerce the CBD and THC, CBN, whatever you want inside of this. Then we close it back up. Now what happens when you ingest it? Your body doesn't see a toxic chemical it's see, or what it perceives as toxic chemical. It sees fruits, vegetables and different things it's used to and it treats it as such and it lets it go all the way down into your lower gut where you want it to land, and then amylase, a natural enzyme that you have down there, works like a lock and key with this thing, breaks it open and out like a Trojan horse, come the cannabinoids and you 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 medicinal or is it recreational?

Speaker 2: 10:30

as well. Yeah, we do it for whoever wants it. We basically provide a service to 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 your morning coffee, for example, or if maybe not in the morning, if it's recreational. But yeah, exactly. And do you have a scientific degree or qualification?

Speaker 2: 10:56

My, psychology, psychology. But the thing is I'm really inquisitive and really where this all came to me was when I started the Medical Cannabis Society and was the first guy on the podium talking about this stuff. You start to pull out of the audience the people that are very interested. And when I'm speaking to doctors and researchers and getting paid to speak at the spectroscopy convention or the Pennsylvania banking conference, because I was the first guy, I start to hear all the problems from those industry leaders and because I was that almost API in the cannabis, I was able to start to pull together teams. I mean I was even working with Johns Hopkins on software. You know it was amazing what I was able to gain access to because I was at that, that higher point when it came to my state and prepared. But yeah, psychology, a lot of people asked me from a doctor. I said no, they say you're a scientist. I said no, I got a psych degree. I know how to go, how those guys think and talk, so I could regurgitate it.

Speaker 1: 11:52

well, Okay, amazing. Well, it's obviously done very well for you. Thank you To get here and how long 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 tough three years for hemp and cannabis. It's starting to level out, but those, those industries have been hurt.

Speaker 1: 12:19

Yeah, I'm sure. And how have you adapted? For instance, how did you adapt to the pandemic in terms of business operations?

Speaker 2: 12:29

I mean we had. We started building our facility in the middle of the pandemic. The pandemic hit. The state governor said nobody's allowed to work unless you're a life sustaining business. So we had a fight to gain life sustaining business certification, while we also went and found a new location and moved our whole entire operation to something somewhere that was already up and ready to go, as opposed to something we had to build. So we had to do a lot of bobbing and weaving and then people were at home. So we had to change to a retail model and so we started creating and formulating products as opposed to just focusing on ingredients, because the big players, the big food manufacturers Nestle's, conag or Foods they decided they weren't going to make a move on this until it's federally legal.

Speaker 2: 13:16

So we're in a really crappy spot for three years and now, at the end of it, the people that all jumped into this growing industry, that diluted it, are now 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 you've ever seen the movie when he buys the shrimping boat and he goes out he's not catching any shrimp because there's tons of the shrimpers, and then the hurricane comes and wipes him out. Well, I've been talking about this hurricane coming, because we knew it was only a matter of time. Well, it came this year, so 2024 is going to be really good for him.

Speaker 1: 13:51

Also for AI? Okay, amazing. Yeah, I was about to ask you if you if you're making use of these, how much you're making use of AI, because I see you did on sin that, yeah, I mean, I'll tell you, I'll give you a really cool story, okay, and it plays within what I had been talking about how I kind of see these things.

Speaker 2: 14:10

So here I cracked social media, I started to realize what my industry wanted to see and started getting 30,000 views on posts, and what happened was I started to get too many inbound requests for information to me, leads, requests for meetings, whatever. So I went to Carnegie Mellon and I grabbed two developers and I said listen, I think today I can do this. I wanted to be able to communicate as me on LinkedIn after I make a post and 60 inbound requests come in. I want it to do all the micro communications weed out the people that are trying to sell me something. I don't want make a meeting with the real me for the people I do want I get on the meeting. Every one of my meetings ends with I got to give you samples of my technology. So at the end of the meeting, I want AI to understand the order where the samples are going and send it to the lab and Then send it to something. It's gonna measure it and then print out a shipping label so that my lab just puts it on a thing and it's done, shipped out and in three weeks we build it and it changed my life.

Speaker 2: 15:09

I realized 70% more of my day and that's where I started to focus on problems from my friends. And now we've built Different things that can do things that you would never imagine that a human or a computer I'm sorry that a computer could do, and the humans that now own these bots are trying to figure out what to do with their time. It's a weird place to be. It's hard to even explain and I you look at the AI market Supposed to be about two trillion, depending on what you're looking at. Two trillion by 2030. That's a lot of money. That's that's like Apple's market cap. So that means that all your friends they're gonna be spending on AI what they do on Apple products.

Speaker 2: 15:49

That's why knowing that, ask them where they're spending their AI money. Now they don't know. So you know you have an opportunity there if you have the right team and right product and you know what you're doing To grab that, that market share now and it's, it's here. I mean, I use it for everything in my life, right, and it's it's. I've learned to talk to it to the point that my psych degree plays really well as a command prompt 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 that commercially 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 an electrician. He he said he doesn't want to do his social posts anymore, which is a lot like these small business owners under and little small business. They have to do all these things accounting, bookie, book. I said what do you want it to do? Rich? He said I just wanted to do my posts. I Said alright and I took it a step further.

Speaker 2: 16:46

I know he gets a Vowpack lead from some magazine that he has to use, so once that Vowpack lead comes from that person's email it, the bot now reaches out to him and says rich, I got it. I now know what the offer is for the week. Let me give you here's the seven posts I want to make, based on the parameters that Russ and the team taught me. Do you like it or not? He just comes back, responds yes or no. Usually yes. It goes in and it just starts posting his stuff on a schedule After his approval on all his social networks. From that's how he doesn't even do anything. He's answers. He just says yes. Now it saves him two hours a day.

Speaker 1: 17:25

And how accurate is it in communicating like the person that's meant to be communicating like?

Speaker 2: 17:32

it's better than him. It's better than him, and the reason is is because a he's slow. All right, people are having the same conversation with him over and over again. For instance, there he's an electrician, they're calling about an electric while it's gone bad, that he's just gonna troubleshoot and not make any money off. Well, now we can integrate not only a chatbot through text that'll do that, but we can integrate a AI robot voice that's trained to do it off the same brain. So now he doesn't have to worry about the answer in the phone anymore. That can schedule meeting so much, like the one I built for my company that will filter. This would filter the people that need troubleshooting. Take the people that need escalated and then people that need to schedule. So they'd go into three buckets and now again, his time and his wife's time now are cut down immensely, because something that's better than them on time every time and just trained to what it's supposed to do Never calls off work.

Speaker 1: 18:28

That's. That's not. How much does it cost to get set 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 that are willing to work. But I mean, if you look at what the market rate is right now and this is across the board from Germany, because I've called them all and shop them all To get something done that you want done, you would you would say this is a to be and they're gonna go in and Tell you what needs to happen and say, here you go, and you're gonna come 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 like a few thousand dollars. Now if you say you want to build a rocket ship for you, that's obviously gonna be more. You wanted to start doing your social media and you know little things that you do every day and the way I start the meetings with people's, what are you sick of doing over and over again every day that you you don't want to do? And you'll see, because people are like, oh, my god, I can't stand doing this and I can't stand doing this, and that's where you say, okay, if we can get rid of that, that's one thing. You want it to do. You know what else like this. And then what I realize a lot of people don't believe that it can do it until they see it Do it. And then they're like then it's skies the limit. Like I want to do.

Speaker 2: 19:38

I'll give you an example my mother. I said, mom, if you could have a, I do anything for you. What would you ever do? She said you know the family DVDs that I'd converted from eight millimeter to VHS to now DVD. I can't find a company online it does it that converts them to itunes.

Speaker 2: 19:53

I brought into my car and get Carnegie Mellon kids, handed him a DVD drive which was new to them, handed the DVDs and 12 minutes later he had written this, the script and the software that now all you have to do is pop the DVD in and push the up button. It does it all tags, it puts it on the, the media. We need it to be on. And Now I have a service to sell to all the DVD companies that took eight track and VHS, the DVD, and they don't have another option to take it to the next level. So, or a tedious option, I should say so it's neat, it's wild, to see what, what can be built once this stuff's going because there's a human. Now you have more time to think further 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 at lean discovery group. We automate manual workflows that people don't like doing. Yeah, and it's. It's super interesting to see and people are shocked. They're just, they don't understand what's possible, and pretty much anything's possible, which is it's a wild place to be it's neat, right, because, as a site guy is, you're talking about these new things like cannabis, right?

Speaker 2: 21:10

Like I'm used to talking about things, psychedelics. Well, ai is one of those things that they don't you see what's happening as you like a rats in a skinner box. I'm watching them as I'm talking to them and I know that they're not really grasping everything, and one of the things I say that's why I use my mom as an example. Mom, anything, forget, like what the computer can do, forget what a video game, because I know that's where your head's at when I phone could do what do you want done? That's not getting done. She's like, oh, you know, let me think outside the box. And that was something.

Speaker 2: 21:39

No, granted, it's something we would think. Obviously I can do, but she couldn't find anybody to do that in the work. There's two letters seem to be enough to her ever think out of the box. But who would have thought that I could just be on a meeting and just say what I want and then just hang up the phone and AI text me and says hey, let's make sure this order is right. That you said on the phone and I'm gonna go ahead and do all the work. It's an awesome time To be a human, yeah that's.

Speaker 1: 22:04

It's amazing. I'm so excited to see what what we 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 think it's the guys that had the marketing background that could use the word presses of the world Right right now. They're gonna be the ones that get to jump in on the agency model, because it's a little too hard for your typical you know even jack of all trades business owner 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, but I've really enjoyed chatting to you. I want to ask you before we go if we met again in, let's say, two years time and everything's gone right in both of your businesses? What do those businesses look like?

Speaker 2: 22:59

Sold to somebody else, and I'm in Costa Rica on a psychedelic retreat that I've built 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 what I'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 in the face and it's not gonna be the initial plan that you went out with. Most of the time, get up and keep going, because you're gonna learn from that. You're gonna get knocked off your horse again. You're gonna learn from that. You're gonna have all these scars but at the end of the day, as long as you persevere, you're gonna get further than most people can get. And it's because of those ups and downs and those scars and falling down that not everyone's an entrepreneur. But you gotta have the mental wherewithal to know to get through that.

Speaker 2: 24:01

And as a guy that's done this now a lot, you know, as I'm bringing these Carnegie Mellon kids in and teaching them the ways of business, going into it, saying, guys, this isn't gonna be our model in six months. It's just not. So don't get too set on it, it will change. I'm not that naive that I think that I'm right the first time out of the gate anymore, because I'm not. We're gonna learn so much more and it's wild to see these things evolve in weeks and months and that happens. And just know that you're gonna get knocked down. Things are gonna change. Just keep going and you'll end up 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 people to 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 check everything.

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.