Ep 39: From Concept To Market. An interview w/ Russ Cersosimo, Founder and Managing Partner at Hemp Synergistics

I’m sure you can agree that this interview with Russ was really awesome, scientific and energetic. We got some amazing information about isolation and extraction and really the science behind created CBD additives and more... We also talked about Russ’ book Molecular Influence.

Who is Russ Cersosimo? He is the go to person for launching a business - from concept to market!   In fact, Russ plays a key role in helping businesses get off the ground, brand, grow, improve processes and increase revenue.  Russ is the managing partner at Hemp Synergistics .

Hemp Synergistics is a biotech company specializing in intelligent hemp ingredients and consumer products. Hemp Synergistics partners with brands and healthcare professionals to incorporate THC-free, CBD containing products into their product offering.

Connect w/ Russ:
https://hempsynergistics.com
https://www.instagram.com/hempsynergistics/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/hemp-synergistics

Check Russ' Book: Molecular Influence

Transcript

Ronjini Joshua: 0:11

I'm sure you can agree that this interview with Russ Cersosimo from hemp synergistics was really awesome.

Sheldon: 0:17

Oh, it was the bomb and we're definitely going to Pittsburgh.

Ronjini Joshua: 0:21

Yes, it was scientific energetic. And of course Pittsburgh is where their HQ is. So that's why Sheldon is taking a solo trip there,

Sheldon: 0:31

I'm gonna go into the lab.

Ronjini Joshua: 0:32

And we got some amazing information about isolation and extraction and the science behind creating CBD additives and more stuff. I mean, like, he just kind of goes and breaks it down at every level and the way he explains it. It's just really simple to understand. Yeah, yeah. Now let's get back into the interview with Russ Cersosimo from hemp synergistics Hi, everybody, we are back. And today in the greenroom, we have Russ Cersosimo. He's a serial entrepreneur, founder and CMO of hemp synergistics. It's a biotechnology company that provides the highest quality, THC free, hemp based ingredients for consumer products. So, Russ, thank you for joining us today. Good to be here. Yeah. So I have a lot of questions for you. But we always start this off by getting into the background of like, what people were doing before they're doing what they're doing now. So kind of the journey of how you got to where you are, and then we'll we'll go into some other details of what you did today.

Russ Cersosimo: 1:38

Yeah, so Oh, what I was doing before actually leads into what I'm doing now. So I started a tech company in around 2008 2009 in California. And I was at a school playground, you know, they kids playing on playground, basically. And I saw a woman that had a stroller with her child in it, and she lit up a joint and the other side of the playground was a police officer and nobody cared. And coming from the east coast and being an on the west coast, it was kind of like, wait, what you can even say marijuana in Pennsylvania, right? without fear of being searched, right? So I just remember that hit me pretty hard, right? So I went, I brought the company back to East Coast. And there was a group of moms that were starting to push legislators, you know, they all had children with severe epilepsy and seizure syndromes. And I we kind of reached out to me my business partner and say, Look, we'd love to help you guys. Like we saw what this was doing. We saw in California, it's not demonized my background psychology. So I think I can help influence. And other moms were kind of like, I don't know, I mean, you don't have like, why are you really in this, you know, because a sauce is the business guys getting into it. And what happened was I went to a fundraiser at one of the highest profile patients house. And she had a grand mal seizure right in the middle of the party. I mean, it was the first time that these eyes got to see what happens to these children. And I mean, I've close to like so she just had the seizure went down, hit her head on the concrete and the sound was crazy disgusting. And I just remember it hit me it really hit me. As I left half the party left scared to death as the ambulance came. I was one of those. The other half was like Hey, where's the wine at? Or did you try the chicken in the buffet? They were real desensitized. And coming from a site guy. I noted that right? So I went back to my life. And about two weeks later, I got a call from my business partner. He said, hey, look, they just sent Hannah that was her name home from the hospital. She was 11. She was out about 10,000 seizures a year. They sent her home, our organs are now shutting down. They don't know what's wrong with her. They've suggested we start hospice. You gotta find her this oil. And it was about four hours of dialing all over the United States. And eventually I got in touch with a woman that was funding research at a major university. She called the researcher and said, Look, I'm pulling your research money if you don't get this to this kid, you only have so many days left. They compound it, got it to us and she was on her side in a bed for days wasn't able to get up or walk out a feeding tube in and they gave her one grain of rice size drop on her tongue basically inside her lip. within seven minutes, she was pulling away at the feeding tube and within half an hour she's she was up and running around and then put a helmet on her. That was in August of 2014 What was it that they gave her? It was a THC, high THC I think it was actually 16 to one okay. And at the time you know, the guy said he said look, I mean if this stuff is strong, but that's what she needs because our organs need to rest right and that that this is what she needs. So it was real high THC, I think was 16 to one CBD THC. And she went from having 10,000 a year to about I think it's like, you know, four episodes a month or something like four major episodes. But that was about I think, about seven years ago and she's living she's, you know, quality life she didn't have before. Her mother has has, you know, a better quality of life as well now that they're giving it to her. It was just when I saw that I never looked back. I mean I was in data at that technology at the time with a company I brought back from California and I said to my brother, how's that To you, I'm jumping into marijuana I want to go save people and that's kind of how it started we went and started the Pennsylvania medical cannabis society as a nonprofit to go out and educate them because it was pre legalization and we were involved in about 50 events across three different states. And you know, we went out and just kind of really took the torch as far as education goes, but that's how I got into it. And then how I evolved into the biotech side is is I ended up winning dispensaries in Pennsylvania and a full vertical in West Virginia so I'm one of the guys that go after these licenses. But I in all my talking out there in front of doctors, researchers, scientists, parents, caretakers, you name it you know you heard what they were looking for in products you know, delivery forms different different you know, they were worried about bioavailability they're worried about heavy metals so I started kind of taking this all into account and eventually it was let's let's refine this stuff and let's put it into forms that these people are used to working are forms that industries outside of the hemp industry can use like nutraceutical and food and beverage so that's kind of the evolution that's how I got into it and you know once once I saw what it did and I never looked back

Ronjini Joshua: 6:06

What about you like did you ever have like you know childhood experiences with we like what was your introduction to just like weed in general like,

Russ Cersosimo: 6:17

yeah, so my dad was so anti weed. He would literally make me smell breathe on him when I came home. I was kind of I was kind of the guy that was anti right now. I took what my dad said and regurgitated it right I remember the first time I had it I was on a golf course in action I take that back as a Dave Matthews concert.

Ronjini Joshua: 6:41

That makes sense. Yeah, so that was

Russ Cersosimo: 6:43

the first time I ever did and then second time I really did I was on a golf course and I got paranoid and that's when I kind of backed off of it again. So really I started a tech company and hot why I got into it is first of all the doctors were prescribing me 30 focalin which is Ritalin a day okay which is insane Oh wow. They were using me as a guinea pig and you know i One could say I had ADHD but I also changed my diet and fixed a lot of things once I got on plant wisdom in general but what I noticed is I had the Add issue and then I had a major head injury to my frontal lobe back in 2012 about and I started realizing that it was marijuana that would help me concentrate help get rid of the concussion symptoms when I really didn't even know I had a problem I just know that if I smoked it things got better and that's when once I you know at that point then I never looked back on on ingested it myself in different ways. And now looking at different cannabinoids and really refining and seeing what CBG and CBN and I'll tweak in my daily schedule right so I've annoyed as opposed to just you know, it's the diva versus Indigo

Ronjini Joshua: 7:46

right? Right interesting. Okay, so now you've gotten into this you starting this technology company which is really interesting that you're positioning it that way and I'd like to hear a little bit more about that but yeah, what is what is the next thing you start this company and what is where was where did you go from there?

Russ Cersosimo: 8:04

Yeah, so that's a kind of that's a good story too. So we raised the money on the basis that we were going to be one of the very few that could remove THC down to the parts per billion because we know that's coming. We also have management that comes from highly regulated industries has worked under DEA guidelines and things like that. So when we read the Farm Bill, it was really we started raising the money in the Farm Bill hit and now there was clear roles right? So we read through those and we said look we know that scaling what's called reverse flash chromatography which is the the main technology that can take that THC molecule out right and leave the rest of them in there. We knew that scaling that was going to be tough. So the Coca Cola is of the world and when they want to get into it their big thing is they need access to supply and it's got to be there all the time and it's got to be standardized. That's what we shot for a while. I don't know if you know this but everyone in the industry is operating in a major gray area they're all shipping THC laden products they're figuring Hey, if you water it down at the point of retail product creation you're gonna be okay and everyone's kind of happy in this say like I'm ignorant stage right they're not cracking down so when they weren't cracking down we realized that we can't we were in now price battle with all these guys that were just out there squeezing hemp into a jar for through an apex machine right not worrying about the THC remove on the part that's expensive, and it takes a high level of science and knowledge. So very quick, man, it didn't take us more than really I'll bet you a week after we opened and I said look, let's focus on solving major problems instead of I should say the whole team collectively. So that's called major problems because they came from nutraceutical food and beverage the supplement industry as well as lawn not I won't say law enforcement but testing and that testing the stuff through the state crime lab system. So we were looking at things from a different angle. And if you look at the let's look at just three major problems that we're gonna have to solve in food and beverage and I was listening to one of your episodes earlier today and you were talking with the gentleman two days ago on your, I think the 20th episode and you were mentioned I cook within you It was tough for you and you know yes, there's a lot of steps that like if you just want to integrate marijuana cannabis or hemp, whatever it is, you know there's all these extra steps you have to do this you have to we said look, let's take, we got to take that molecule put it in a form that these food manufacturers are used to working with and they're used to powders and they're used to just throw it in flour, right? evenly homogenized, it's dosed perfectly but that's they don't have it they haven't a nano but nano most people don't realize is eight to one chemicals it's it's it's for every one molecule of CBD there's eight other molecules of titanium dioxide there's there's pickling agents there's there's just

Ronjini Joshua: 10:39

like preservatives for like that like a preservative Okay,

Russ Cersosimo: 10:42

exactly they don't have to be on the label because there's such small form gotcha and there's also other major problems with the and I mean people are testing nano drinks and they're finding no CBD and it's because the CBD is under 50 nanometers nano it seeping into the plastic so we said what the taste problem because you know it's gonna taste like marijuana when you put the stuff in. It smells off pudding, it's bitter when you do bite into it and you know it's not something that the general public would be interested in buying a second one of if there wasn't some major effects and they can be okay getting through that taste and that smell was like Oreo cookies not going to come integrate something into their you know, age old recipe and have it tastes like some it's not supposed to. They want Oreos with CBD, you know, just have a taste the way Well, so what we did is we took the CBD molecule and all the good things that come along with it. And we took a helix structure polysaccharide kind of like DNA, and we opened it up and we stuck it inside, closed it back up. What that did is that took away the smell and the taste. It's completely vegan and organic, it has no chemicals in it. And 100% natural. And what it also did is solve the first pass metabolism problem, right? So if we take any supplement including CBD, THC, whatever, our stomach acid between our mouth in our lower GI tract destroy about 90% of the active ingredients got to get up and left for bioavailability then they go up in the system, because we encapsulated in something that's completely impervious to stomach acids. It's getting all the way through. And conveniently there's enzymes in your lower intestine that unlock that polysaccharide so

Ronjini Joshua: 12:12

I was gonna say how do you unlock it if it's an impervious? Yeah,

Russ Cersosimo: 12:16

so so that opens it up and now like I'll give you an idea I could have a 25 milligram CBD pill from any other manufacturer and I don't even know I don't know if anything's happening, right. There's no there's nothing so when we found out that we put this stuff in a brownie that has fats in it, if I eat a CBD brownie with 25 milligrams, I am literally asleep in an hour sleep best night asleep in my life and it's wild because it's preparing well and it's getting all the way down into that lower GI tract. So I'm getting hit with 25 milligrams all at one time as opposed to like 2.5 so that food and beverage industry that's that's where we went with that. nutraceutical manufacturers, they can't use anything about powders on their machines like they don't even clean the machines with water. So when you walk through these facilities is nothing but 200,000 square feet of boxed powder stacked on top These are three stories I sure when you look at the rooms that they're doing the caption, you know, they're making the calves there's you know, flyaways what they call it there's dust everywhere, so that the better you can pelletize that when it goes in the better it is the less runoff there is. So we focused on making another variation that would work well for capsule manufacturers. Because ours is two and a half times stronger than nano then nano, we can use way less of the capsule which gives these other nutraceutical manufacturers the ability to compound other things.

Ronjini Joshua: 13:32

We'll go back real quick. So you say because your product is nano you can make better use of the capsule does that mean that it's not going to go through anything is that what you're asking

Russ Cersosimo: 13:42

us it's two different technologies you have nano and their technology is that to literally beat the crap out of the molecule with a sonicator it's this it's this titanium rod that basically put stuff up in a bowl and this rod will vaporize ice in seconds I mean it's it gets really hot which also isn't good for the molecules it converts some of the precursor molecules into other things that are toxic you know during that process a lot again, all things we don't really know about yet they're still coming out. So nano then their goal is to get it to you know between 150 and 150 nanometers wide. That's really tiny. Ours is about 300 so ours isn't getting into little crevices in the notch Okay, that and also it's we're not having some of these issues that nano causes with the blood brain barrier and bringing in Titanic like these titanium fragments and stuff from the process. So I think we're gonna find out a lot more about nano moving forward but nano, because it's that eight to one molecule you're having one molecule CBD to eight other things. It's lost my train of thought for a second Oh, it takes up all that pill. Sorry, yeah, takes up all that pill and now you can add other things. So we solve two problems their bioavailability and you know, we brought that down to just a fraction, maybe 20% of a big capsule and now they cut out other things. Things like enzyme blockers that will further help it get into your system. Like I said, melatonin now you can claim it's for sleep because there's research tied to millstone so things like that. The other big major problem that we focused on because we have people coming from the lab testing in law enforcement side of things was we know now that now that hemp is federally legal, you have people driving around with hemp in their car, or in their tractor trailer, like you know, pounds and kilos, and you know, a lot of it and these guys are pulling them over and they're seeing marijuana, right? Doesn't matter that it looked at if you say attempt, it doesn't matter, you have lab tests, it looks like it smells like it tastes like it's got to be it and that's what they have to do right plus they're taught that you're lying anyways for the most part. Now they got it, they got to put it in queue at the state crime lab system takes about eight months on average, depending on what state you're in, oh geez $800 to test it, just to find out that it was hemp and no one's in trouble here right? So $800.08 months later, you got someone that's got this on the record, what we did is we invented something that for around the cost of $15 on the hood of a car, a police officer can take hemp or cannabis whatever it is grind it up, shake it up, put a couple chemicals in it, and within 90 seconds tell you exactly how much THC is in there not just pass fail, we haven't seen a 3% 1% more than 3% and so on and so forth. So we actually quantify the results. What this does is it takes major load off the state crime labs within each state and it's gonna help a lot of people go free for something that now we're seeing its prevalence all over the place. That's amazing. We patented that with Purdue University Northwest nirbhaya forensics department and we just testified to the State Senate of Indiana the state because they want to write this into legislation if someone gets pulled over with a substance that looks like this make sure it goes through this process first before we put all this weight on the state crime lab system so state crime labs aren't happy about it because taking away their business but so those are the may have

Ronjini Joshua: 16:59

other they have other crime says oh that's okay right.

Russ Cersosimo: 17:02

That's right. Right let us go Yeah.

Ronjini Joshua: 17:07

Because go ahead sorry.

Russ Cersosimo: 17:09

No, so that's what we're talking about kind of the problems are what we're doing now Yeah, that's that's kind of the evolution is we're looking at what things that we solve for these bigger you know, in the food and beverage industry is the biggest thing in the world nutraceuticals it's up there internationally I mean, the 6 trillion I think nutraceuticals you know that 72 billion or a trillion for the food and beverage so those guys are starting to get into it we're working with tier one manufacturers that know that this is on the horizon to be legalized and food not federally and they're all starting to get ready and we have I'll bet you we have probably 20 different large scale manufacturers that have this in r&d or are already implementing it into their products and I'm talking to tier one guys we work with restaurants and all kinds of little guys but you know we're going after the big scale guys because ultimately once they jump in it's it's gonna be pretty wild time so

Ronjini Joshua: 18:00

so so from your site I saw that it was a THC free so you're working with hemp and CBD? Is that correct? Are you going to be doing all of it once it's all available?

Russ Cersosimo: 18:09

Well, yeah, so we're creating the IP around doing things with the molecules Yeah, so right now in Pittsburgh, we have our 53,000 square foot facility we do nothing but isolate hemp molecules are separate and reformulate hemp molecules because we didn't have to go get a license to do it with marijuana. The marijuana industry is actually very behind the times on that and the reason is is because they haven't had to push science any further right right. Growth the genetically they're they're doing things because they want to squeeze more THC or different you know, miners out of it. But then it's just going through an apex machine getting squeezed into a jar, it costs $20,000 to put money down again, Apex machine 200 grand total, anyone can get it, anyone can operate it, it's as easy to use as a commercial washing machine. They haven't had to go in and fish out that single THC molecule to remain legal, like the CBD industry has, right so our science has kind of evolved the separation of cannabinoids where, you know, cannabis industry squeezing in a jar, a lot of people in the hemp industry are squeezing the jar both add like a little bit of carrier oil, whatever we're going in and literally fishing out the molecules separating them go into these manufacturers and what do you want, you want to sleep formula? Okay, we're going to do this much CBD, we'll throw a little CBN in there. And we're going to go ahead and put these other you know, enzyme blockers that are going ahead

Ronjini Joshua: 19:33

and how are you figuring out like, and obviously this is super like scientific and technical, but how are you figuring out what is the process of figuring out like, okay, let's, let's say, hey, yes, I'm having trouble sleeping, or we want to create a product to support sleep or support joint health or whatever. What is the process for you guys to come up with a formula for them?

Russ Cersosimo: 19:55

Yeah, it's actually pretty cool to have a biotech facility you would not believe I would the first day I went in with a new molecule new molecule molecule I've been looking at for a long time dimethyl dimethylsulfoxide I walked in I said to my head science and said look I think we can create like and I had a couple different things one was a mouth gargle one was a topical he said we'll go into the other scientists and tell her exactly what you want they went and looked at the molecules right there to make sure everything would bond they did a test and then boom about 15 minutes later I had what could have been put on the shelves as a product and we all were testing it so you know people rubbing it on we're checking for irritation I drank a bunch of it. I ended up on the toilet for two days

Ronjini Joshua: 20:37

I hear you you're your guinea pig in yourself

Russ Cersosimo: 20:40

somebody's got to do it right founder thing on my title I mean, me if no one else wants to do it right right I'll give an example this is pretty cool this is this gives you a look into how close we are to this stuff so I drank it and what happened was the dimethylsulfoxide carries it through skin and through any kind of membrane it loops it and kind of lattices your skin and pushes through it does the same thing with your you know anything, anything it touches. It's actually kind of dangerous if you're not paying attention but it's it's non toxic, unhealthy. So what happened was I drank it. I spent two days in the bathroom. I called my my scientists and I said, this is like literally making me I feel like everything blasting out of my body like and it's I think it's detoxing me. Because I've done I was going all the other plants where I know exactly what's happening. And it's this rush of toxins to your to your insides, and then you have to flush it out. I said I think that's what's happening. He says you poisoned yourself, dude, you're crazy. Let's try and I stay I stayed strong. Yeah, right. Not many people have done I was good. They know like, hey, that's the same feeling right? That's exactly what's doing in here. Two weeks later, another CBD company put out a there was an article in one of the magazines they had just patented a an intravenous shot of CBD for rapid detox. So the key was I was getting soup. I mean, not super dose I probably had, I think was like 1000 milligrams of CBD in one dose. And it was rapidly going into my system. But you know, we noticed right away that at least I noticed that it was it was detoxing, and you know, someone else had patented like two weeks later. So yeah, that's the kind of work we're that close to things and we're trying different things. And that's how it all starts. Then what you do is you bring in other people so like we're working on a sleeping pill. What we did is I you know, I my first question when people come in the office, because anyone that walks through that door is a potential subject.

Ronjini Joshua: 22:30

We're not going I'm not going to your office, I'm not.

Russ Cersosimo: 22:34

You have a lot of NFL players, surprisingly, that come through and, you know, their big thing is pain. We're working on a topical patch that does it superpowered, right, so we had one of the guys from the steel curtain back in the 70s of the Steelers Come come in and he had any problems we put it on him. But 10 minutes later, we always ask Hey, how's it What's going on? And he goes, I can't feel the whole left side of my body. Ready to turn it back. You know, another one's a sleeping pill. I had one of the we have a guy we just Charlie bats. He's He's an NFL quarterback for the Steelers, he he just signed on with us. He's now going to be part of our team. And why he was sold was he told me and sleeping problems. And I said this first day he came the office I said take this pill tonight. Call me the next day he sent me a screenshot. He said this is my sleep app that monitors everything every night, look five hours, five hours, five hours, nine and a half hours. So that that one milligram of CBN paired it encapsulated in our thing that literally gets all of it through so it'd be the equivalent of having about 10 milligrams. Oh, I

Ronjini Joshua: 23:36

see. I see.

Russ Cersosimo: 23:37

I mean, so now I mean that's just boom puts them out and you get the best sleep. So that's how it all starts right? I mean there's there's there's all kinds of research that you can pay for after the fact. But right now, I mean, in the nutraceutical industry, we don't really have to do that it has to work and people have to rebuy it right. So that's kind of without that now if I want to go out and have this tested by hospital we are we have things set up with various researchers and doctors, but they're slow universities are a pain in the ass to deal with, you know, they're they're just slow and COVID didn't help. We had a lot of stuff set up that because COVID kids weren't coming into school, they weren't able to do a lot of this stuff. So anyways, but yeah, that's how you get it started you. you ingest it. Okay,

Sheldon: 24:16

I have a quick question this write it down, writing it down was important. This keeps coming up in interviews that we have, that you know, indika and sativa. That's not the main thing you should be going for when you're trying to understand the effects and people are saying more and more the terpenes are what you should be looking at to understand the effects of, you know, the the end effect, I guess. So what role from your perspective and your knowledge to terpenes play in the effect of cannabis consumption?

Russ Cersosimo: 24:48

So that's a good question. And here's a good you know, analogy or metaphor, whatever you call it. I've heard people say that the cannabinoids are like the gas. If you Driving a car, right? And then that terps kind of steer it. I've noticed personally, that certain terpenes knock me out. So if those are removed, I don't have the same problem without you know, a higher refined distillate. So I think they absolutely have effect. I mean, they've been in our diet for a long time. I think now because it's cannabis, everyone's super interested in them, but they definitely can steer the car. There's no doubt about it. Cool. Yeah. So

Ronjini Joshua: 25:27

how do you guys? So do I mean, I guess Do you use that to create the profiles of the things that you have? So like, like you said,

Russ Cersosimo: 25:35

Now we're not worried about that. We

Ronjini Joshua: 25:37

got good. No, I was gonna. I was gonna say, well, then how do you? How do you identify what parts of the cannabis plant or this like this compound that you guys are? You're basically manipulating How do you know which parts of those are an obvious you guys are looking at under a microscope, but are going to apply to joint pain or sleep or anti anxiety or you know, the the host of things that we talk about when when we talk about cannabis? Right? So

Russ Cersosimo: 26:10

yeah, so like, there's I mean, there's a couple ways to do it. So we have a scientific advisory board. In fact, Dr. burbach bond is on it. He's the guy that is pioneering CBD research related to COVID. He's all over the world health organization website. What happens is researchers like this are finding this stuff in little studies, some with with mice, and rats, you know, some with you know, little groups of humans utilizing the data, it's tough to do the research because everyone's handcuffed. You know, I almost had a thing going with Johns Hopkins because I was able to create software that allowed them to talk to the patient and monitor what those cannabinoids were, because there was then I jumped into biotech and forgot about it. But yeah, you got to be dynamic in this industry right now. But no one wants to buy the data yet. So let's move to something else, right. But basically, these guys are determining what to start looking at. And then we have the ability to just separate it and try it and find out for ourselves. Like I said, we don't have to do any major research. Because we're in the nutraceutical side of the industry, we just can't make any claims. What you can do is compound with other things that have been proven in research that you can make claims, and tie that to your product. But really, you know, from our side, we really do this for the large scale people, I want to make ingredients to sell to the Nestle's in the conagra is and the Coca Cola is of the world, we do make retail products that so that people can try them. But at the end of the day, our main thing is if someone comes to me and says, I know that this works for this, this and this, I need you to come up with a formulation, tweak it do the r&d, test it on some people make sure it works and I'd be willing to buy, you know, 20 kilos a month of that powderized product from you, the integrated whatever

Ronjini Joshua: 27:48

when it comes to consumer rising consumer rising this and and you working with extractions and like powders the way you guys are? What do you think the role of you know, being organic? And like, is it chemically? Are you guys creating it as a chemical? I guess, are you creating it separately as like a chemical copy? Or is it actually coming from the plant?

Russ Cersosimo: 28:13

Yeah, so there's, yes. first answer is we are making everything 100% from the plant, okay, we'll take it from the plant, we're refining it, we're then maybe reformulating it, but it's all stuff that came from the plant. We're certified organic, we bring in organic stuff, by the time it leaves our facility, it's still organic. Okay. Now, you're hearing a lot about Delta eight, right? And everyone's the new face. Well, we clearly looked at, we looked at the things and we clearly saw the DA was going to be illegal eventually. Right? And the main reason is not necessarily that it's intoxicating, is that the way that people were getting da was taking a different cannabinoid and taking it through a process that will convert it right so you look at those molecules, you know, let's just say this is you know, let's say delta A, delta nine, okay, take the Delta nine out, they break that thing off through some sort of process like catalytic conversion or, or a different chemical process. And now all of a sudden, you have D eight, and it has different things in it. That's now a synthetic cannabinoid. Now that falls in like a to, you know, you spice you hear about that kind of stuff that's now schedule one, because it's synthetic cannabinoid, right. But governments, you have now local governments that are stepping in like, I want to say I know Texas. And I think it was Colorado, I can't recall there's another state that just just laid out the laws and said any form of delta is out delta A delta nine, and they went through Delta because

Ronjini Joshua: 29:40

because it's chemic. It's it's synthetic.

Russ Cersosimo: 29:44

Well, and because it's causing other highs that they'd rather just shut the whole door on it, I suppose. Have these ones go but the government's gonna end up coming down because they're synthetic.

Sheldon: 29:56

Okay. And that's a tricky one, because if you open up that floodgate, then you can say Oh, well everybody can create whatever they want to. By the way, kudos on the hem shape and benzene structure.

Russ Cersosimo: 30:09

hexagon

Sheldon: 30:10

Yeah.

Ronjini Joshua: 30:11

Oh, that's a hexagon make it a molecule you. So yeah, I mean, that part is interesting to me. And also the part of like extracting THC and what, like a lot of people claim that like, Okay, once you extract, you know, the CBD from the THC like, is it effective? Is it is it? You know, what is the science behind that? I mean, you seem to have like a pretty good science background. So I think I'd love to hear more about like, what is the real science behind the facts on the potency of CBD with or without THC? Like, what, what really is the controversy? Yeah, yeah. So

Russ Cersosimo: 30:53

the truth is this, that plant grows the THC naturally, at about point 3%. If you keep it at that, you're gonna get all the benefits of the entourage effect. Yeah, and they all help each other in some little way, like to dumb it down seventh grade level. So if you start removing those things, you're taking little pieces out of the out of the whole recipe, right? That all go to benefit. You know, the word isolate, we hear isolate a lot. They've isolated CBD yet has a lot of benefits, but also has a lot of side effects. And it doesn't do all the things that a full spectrum product would do.

Ronjini Joshua: 31:24

Does it have side effects? Because it's extracted?

Russ Cersosimo: 31:29

It's not mean because it's isolated, isolated? I'm

Ronjini Joshua: 31:32

sorry, yes. Yeah. I

Russ Cersosimo: 31:33

mean, well enough. We're looking at GW Pharmaceuticals thing I were in pharma. And I don't know exactly what else they're putting in might be causing side effects. But I mean, lactate is anytime you manipulate Mother Nature, yeah. Right. And if you make it easier to manipulate Mother Nature, you're like, causing cancer, things are bad, whatever. So I mean, at the end of the day, I blame pharma for a lot of this, just generally, but I think, I mean, you you need that whole plant to get all those effects, not like I said, you're gonna get some of them. But I'm the, like, CBN worse for sleep. But we put 22 milligrams of CBD in with it with that one milligram of CBN. Right, right. Yeah, I mean, we don't know what would happen, you might fall asleep for two days, it might not work the way it's supposed to. And these are all things that that even science and research haven't figured out yet.

Ronjini Joshua: 32:18

Right? So you guys have to find the like, like the formula to kind of put things together. So they work in a way that hopefully you expect it to work, you're gonna crack the code, which is why you ate or drank your own formula does.

Russ Cersosimo: 32:37

r&d baby,

Ronjini Joshua: 32:38

yeah. Well, I think it's really, I mean, I don't know like, what what are this? What are some of the products that you guys have kind of gotten into so far? What who's adopting this? You mentioned food and beverage Is this the kind of science that's going into these like new CBD beverages, some of them I've had are pretty bad. By the way,

Russ Cersosimo: 32:56

they're bad, right? And the reason they're bad is because you're drinking nano, right. And then as the only water soluble form until we invented our stuff, we're calling him drink mix. But, you know, because it has all those masking agents, and agents and all that, that's what you're tasting. And they have to put in a lot more sugar. Yeah, to get rid of that. So that's why the most of the drinks are off putting. And if they try to sell something Low, low sugar, or whatever, it's now you creep up on the nasty, bitter taste. We manufacture something that doesn't taste like anything, and you just put it in your drink, and you're good. So the food manufactures products. And so one of the things that we did on the product side is we took our stuff that easily mixes in with food, and we put it in a little like a sugar packet. I must be calm sachets around the office. Little sachet. Now you could go home, you could have a dinner party, and you could go buy off the shelf. Any brownies, or cake or gravy are Marin, it doesn't matter what you want to make. You make your recipe and the last thing you add is this mix, put it in you can cook it after you can put it out you can cook it before you can cook it after it doesn't matter. You do it when it makes sense in the recipe. Tastes free odor free, and now all of a sudden you have 25 milligrams per whatever you're doing for the brownies. And there's 12 of them. If there's 12 donuts, whatever it is a loaf of bread per slice, everything equally. You know, it doses out the way it should. That's hot right now, because there's nothing else on the market. I mean, like I said, you had mentioned cooking with it. It's difficult to taste weird. It's not something you're proud to put out now. I've gone to dinner parties where I brought this stuff in, right because I'll send it to the people for dinner parties. They throw this in the desert, and people were blown away that face that the fact that they're tasting the pumpkin pie that they ate, there's nothing else they had a couple glasses of wine and now they're just chill the whole entire night. We can do that in THC as well. I know we kind of touched on this or I was going yeah, we just need to work with a manufacturer within that state. You know, for instance, you had I forget the guy's name on your two episodes ago, he was making extracts and put them into food. Oh, simply Hi. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I could go to go to him and Listen, let me license my process to you, you're gonna have to add these little bits of equipment, you have to do it this way. But now you can take any cannabis oil, turn into a powder. And now it's available for any food and beverage manufacturer in the state in a better form. And that's, that's where we're headed with it. We have a lot of work to do here just in the hemp industry as as it is. But eventually we'll end up getting the cannabis industry, doing it with THC as we refine everything. And I

Sheldon: 35:24

just say I'm honored that you watch our podcast.

Ronjini Joshua: 35:29

Great, thank you. Well, so then you mentioned powder. You mentioned powders. So would this work in a different form? Like, and maybe it turns into something else? If you make an A water soluble product or an oil or like a, I don't know, what is the difference between having a powder, an oil, a liquid, you know, like, what is the best opportunity?

Russ Cersosimo: 35:56

Like I'll give you an example. I talk to people that are in the marijuana industry. Like, we have, like, you know, that last little bit of oil that's in your vape pen, right? Okay. Yes, yes, guess Okay, that's that's what like when people order a whole kilo of distillate they're getting that you literally can take the top off that jar, you cannot pour this loud, it doesn't move. It's not free flowing, got it almost crystallized, you're going to talk about oh, what's the CBD present? 93%? Well, that means it's pretty much like a hard object, right? Like it's a solid object at that point. Well, the stuff that you're seeing that you get a vape pen, the easy stuff, well, that has propylene glycol and other things added to it so that it's less viscous. You can put that stuff from food starts to change the recipe and show us what is possible to mix. So turning into powder changes that whole entire thing, but it's mainly because it's sticky, you truly can't work. It's like It's like getting you know, glue on your finger like supervillain you can't get off. Yeah, you need to use a solvent. And now you're adding the solvent. Now you got all these other things that you're adding, it's like, Look, let's just get it down to a natural, vegan, organic, pourings free flowing substance that looks and works like flour. And it won't change the recipe now that no one has to think anymore. You don't have to mess with something they've never brought in. They don't have to clean machinery with special chemicals to get this viscous stuff off of it. So it's actually a game changer for the food and beverage industry.

Sheldon: 37:15

Well,

Ronjini Joshua: 37:15

so as far as the technology and the development of this technology, I mean, you guys, yes, you're creating formulations, but really your, your, your specialty, is the actual technology behind it correct or

Russ Cersosimo: 37:27

Yep, so everything's patented. We, I mean, that's, that's the main thing is, look, let's solve this major problem. Let's get there first, let's also lock it down, right and continue to be able to do biotech stuff, which is r&d. A lot of you know, biotech, if you get into that, as you see a lot of it is really, for years working to figure stuff out in in, lock that IP down, and then you have a big sale. Yeah, or someone comes in and buys you that needs to utilize that and doesn't want anyone else to have that technology. And that's kind of where we're at. But everything's locked down IP. And, you know, it's, it's ours, which is cool.

Ronjini Joshua: 38:03

Yeah, it's cool that you're doing this in the cannabis hemp space, but it can pretty much apply to any space. Right? I mean, you could do it with other other products.

Russ Cersosimo: 38:13

100% Yeah.

Ronjini Joshua: 38:14

Is it plant? Like, is it plant focused? Like, would you would it be like other herbal like, plants flowers, or does it really apply to anything?

Russ Cersosimo: 38:24

You Well, you mean? encapsulating? Yeah. The what? what you

Ronjini Joshua: 38:27

guys are doing specifically in like creating the powder and encapsulating Yeah,

Russ Cersosimo: 38:31

yeah, actually, that's a good question. I don't know. That would be higher level science than I am. Oh, I can tell you tomorrow I walk in the lab and ask my science. Yeah, no, no. Okay. I think it's possible. I think a molecule is a molecule. Yeah. No, it's a matter of how much can you loosen up that that that helix structure? Gotcha. And there's other you know, there's other structures that we could use to sit to your point, we could probably pack a lot of stuff into it. Yeah, but I do not know the answer off the top of my head. Well,

Ronjini Joshua: 38:57

okay. You also wrote a book. So I want to hear a little bit more about what you what you wrote in your book, your molecular influenza, he's ready. Yes. What is it? What is it about? What can we learn from it?

Russ Cersosimo: 39:12

So little backstory, my grandpa was a magician, I was the oldest grandson. Okay, so as the oldest grandson, I was taught the tricks because they had to use someone as a prop. So that I'm told by my grandfather, hey, listen, you're gonna get cut in half, but you're not really gonna get cut in half. If you do X, X and X the crowds we think you have cut in half. And then, you know, we laugh our whole way back into the other room knowing that you didn't you know, right, that's a trick. So like five, six years old, I was exposed to that. So I guess,

Ronjini Joshua: 39:42

before we move forward, you you've got to tell me the secret to that trick. Like how do people get cut? I don't I don't know. I don't know additions

Russ Cersosimo: 39:50

can't tell their tricks. I'll tell you I'll tell you off.

Ronjini Joshua: 39:54

I think we all wonder about the cutting in half track okay. So

Russ Cersosimo: 39:58

basically What happens I learned just to set up a room where, you know, if people see certain things, they're gonna think certain things, right? And if you keep certain things away, you're gonna keep them from thinking a different way. Right, right from

Ronjini Joshua: 40:12

my power of influence. Exactly. So

Russ Cersosimo: 40:15

my dad was a, it was an entrepreneur around here and he built the world's or the country's largest privately held home security system security company and I got to watch him systematically approach customers. Well here at seven years old and really for two years before that, two or three years before that I worked at the Pittsburgh Home and Garden Show with him when they would have the annual show and you'd have a security booth. And across the aisle from us every year was another guy from meat mckees rocks, Pennsylvania, and that's Billy Mays, the oxiclean guy. Okay, yeah. Right. So Billy was doing his thing and this is way before he was famous. He was young I was probably you know shit back then. He was probably 2930 years old. And I just watched him everything he did was just so lucky he had a system to everything. Well here I could wonder why everyone bought two mops he was every year he was selling a why some wash ematic salsa Matic veggie mash right it's something a little bit more automatic than you're used to like mobberley just squeezed itself in like maybe at a pump or something right? But what happened I saw everyone walk away with two of them everyone that he presented he would have his his thing where he was a little 12 inch stage yeah microphone Yeah, everyone come around whoever's close to me do this. It's a 510 minute thing and everyone bought too and as a kid watching across the aisle I'm wondering How's he doing it what's what's he doing? You know, how's it going? We're here a couple walks past me and each one of them had to over their shoulder and the husband the wife looked at the husband and said, You know, it really stinks. You can only buy two of these you can only buy two and I'm like, man that's it. Like Pappy would does my grandpa yeah like he would get them to pick the right card the card he wanted Billy was maneuvering the words in his pitch and all that so that they would say I want to have these things right up to him I said Mr. Mays, because in my mind my dad knew each other they were great we grew up on the cross the street and each other. I said I want to learn to do what you do better because I was like this cocky little shit kid. Yeah. And he said alright kid, I want you to come stand next to me when I do my next pitch and you're going to watch one by one I'm going to pick off the women that I'm going to pick off the men I'm gonna pick off the kids and they're all gonna buy to when I hit him with an offer they can't refuse now we know later that ended up evolving into but wait there's more that was his tagline started calling people up on stage he said Ross get up here I sat next to the world's greatest pitch man of all time quite arguably. And I got to see him do exactly what he told me he was going to do so much of a card trick or if you don't that's exactly what he did every time and he got the same result every single time well hear that that you know that I started thinking a whole different way then after that so I went into sales I went to psychology school I worked with rats in a Skinner box and you start to see that animals are all the same and how they come up with something in their head is it's like the factory and theorem if you if you know what a is, and they know a Yeah, you'd be their brains gonna automatically do see but you need to know what information to put in front of them. So that that so that that happens, right? That heuristic or that eureka moment, which is where heuristics is derived from. And basically then, you know, I'll fast forward it's it's kind of cool. 20 years later, Billy Mays, I was put on the phone with him. I was like in the weirdest situation. I was at a restaurant someone said, Hey, you said you know Billy Mays, look who's calling. I said get out here. So if that would have been Spider Man or Michael Jackson, I would have been just excited. Right? Right. Hey, they put them on the phone. I said, Billy, get out of his roster sauce bases Get out of here. I said, No, no, not my dad. We get the same name. He says Now I know. He said the seven year old kid that freaked me out. When he said I want to learn to do what you do better. I mean, he remembered so I started tearing up. I was like, my heroes, my hero. He's remembers me. And he said, he said, Listen, I'm filming this TV show down in Miami called pitch option Tampa Bay called pitchmen. It's on Discovery channels where people come pitch their products. I want you to come beyond the final episode. So hear me his son, his dad were on this final episode, I got to work with him. It was a coolest thing. And here he died the week before it was before it was released and Mamet of Poland just doing a tribute episode. I was still on it. But Gosh, that's kind of and so the book is about is, you know, I went to psych school and I got to learn from a research side and from academia. Exactly what the street guys in my dad, Billy Mays and my grandpa were doing. And I got to see exactly what that's called, what the research says how they got to that point. And when you know that stuff, now you really could build a system. So I build a framework that if you want to influence somebody, aka into the marijuana industry, you want to influence legislators, you want to interest a partner, you wanna raise money, whatever it is, know your goal, know how to dress to impress them, right? Like because they're going to judge you the second second, they look at you because that's how we're built. And then from there, what do you do to elicit emotion from them, then surround them with indisputable logic, so their brain starts thinking, you know what, I do want to do business with that guy, and then probably time when you have the ask, but if you follow that structure,

Ronjini Joshua: 44:57

just slow down so I can write this down on my I'm like, wait a minute, where's my notebook? Yeah,

Russ Cersosimo: 45:02

share your book. I mean, it's easy and it's when people follow this, they're amazed that when the time for the Ask comes, people are just, they go along with it. It's because you've created a homeostatic homeostasis in their brain right? Where they're making a decision, you know, based on you

Ronjini Joshua: 45:18

you've actually you've actually bought them into the story as you're doing the different steps

Russ Cersosimo: 45:23

Yeah, I mean, like you said it you say hey, look, you know a lot about science. I don't know much about science, I regurgitate really well, right? And I'm receptive to what these guys are talking about and I i understand what so I then can explain it to people but that puts a white coat on me right? This is the right word. And what happens is once I'm perceived as an authority now all of a sudden you're buying into a little bit more what I'm saying and I don't mean in a manipulative way No, no to prove it right away so that all those questions that might have been there that that keep that brain from being in a homeostatic environment you've checked that box so if you can check all these boxes then when you go in and have the ask you don't know how much to worry about.

Ronjini Joshua: 46:01

So the idea is that you're like knocking down the questions like I'm not questioning your your authority or your ability to know this information and that's when people will make don't make decisions is when they're still questioning the options right?

Russ Cersosimo: 46:15

Like I mean just an example if I prove them on authority, I mentioned something that gives me social proof like your friends are buying it or here's a testimonial right? I show that there's scarcity like I could somehow like incite a little bit of FOMO you start doing that you start mentioning to you starts going towards you right like what you want like it's no longer what they want they start to fear missing out right and right, this person is the authority like now all of a sudden I'm salivating like a Pavlovian dog I'm paying attention to five minutes ago and you know, it all comes down to you need to hook them at first and hook them with your emotion right so if you can somehow get them through common enemy common goal curiosity need they want you to one of those things it's real systematic to the approach and then boom once you get it going, you're good to go and you know, because I was in marijuana I really was able to refine it because I was hit with radical opposition Oh yeah, yeah, anytime I spoke there was there was people in the audience that could not wait to get up and tell me what they knew and why I was wrong and I turn that around pretty quick. But then then you win them over and you see you know, it is just a system I get hit in the face with this radical opposition it's the same thing every single time if I just unfold the peel back that onion in this in this way that person is going to want to hug me at the end of this and they're gonna be an advocate and right well you can see it clearly especially because it was marijuana. It was easy to write the book because it was just you know, pulling things together and having that sight back on so it was it's cool it's an exciting it's good to read and you'll learn a lot from it. I'll send you

Ronjini Joshua: 47:45

one Okay, please do

Sheldon: 47:47

too. But I love books like this because one for a person trying to become more influential it's very helpful but also for someone being influenced it gives insight into your own mind so when you're receiving information you get to make a choice and not just be led so this exactly right yeah

Russ Cersosimo: 48:07

it's it's a good it's a it's a defensive strategy book as well.

Ronjini Joshua: 48:12

Okay, well, we're running out of time but I would love to talk to you more but before we run out of time time I want to make sure that we you know if there's anything that you guys are doing specifically in the industry that you think is worth talking about and just you know having a short conversation around Is there anything that we missed that you guys are working on

Russ Cersosimo: 48:32

no I think we've covered it I'm I'm pretty good at rattle that off whenever you get me started wind me up

Ronjini Joshua: 48:38

we were gonna have to do like half the normal Part Two we're gonna have to do like a half slow mo version because there's a lot of juicy information you you dropped it was just really fast we just Yeah, yes.

Russ Cersosimo: 48:53

Well I mean honestly, I think that the food mix is the big thing because that's that's who's sitting on the sidelines right now saying I'm gonna jump in Yeah, and I don't know how where, who to talk to what to put in and they got to start from scratch. You know, now we have something you could pour in just throw it right into your ingredients like you always did. So that I mean that's what I'm most excited about. But yeah, I would say for listeners that's that's the one they could kind of dig their teeth into.

Ronjini Joshua: 49:18

Do you think do you think most I mean, right now we're looking at brands that are creating new brands for the cannabis CBD hemp industries. Do you think that the food the adoption with food is really going to happen more at that like larger CPG side or is it new brands too, that are going to create new opportunities,

Russ Cersosimo: 49:40

you're going to have new brands at first, like I'll give you an idea we started a brand called the hemp bakers because we teamed with a company that has five generations of family bakers and their last name is Baker so perfect. We started putting the CBD and we're selling those out to gas stations, health food food stores, we've got them in a large Scale grocers here. But we're a small company doing it. Yeah, what's going to happen is there's going to be another company that sees it and either buys that company or says I want to integrate my own things, but it's going to be the smaller company, things that have no problem kind of navigating the weird laws and regulations right now. Pennsylvania, I'm sorry, New York, West Virginia, Colorado, a lot of the states have legalized CBD and food. So you have the large scale groups, they're like, at, like, my distribution is all over the country of the world. I don't want to worry about onesies. twosies For now, in the States, like Colorado got a hold of our brownies. We have a 50 chain gas station gas station. It says look, we want them in our places. So I know that they're not making good CBD food out there because they're they're buying our stuff from out in Pennsylvania. But it is the little answer your question. It's the little guys that are starting first. And then we'll start to see these big brands who are looking into it Oreo, Anheuser Busch morson, you know, Cola, Molson Coors. They're all in r&d right now.

Ronjini Joshua: 50:55

Oreo cookie, CBD cookie.

Sheldon: 50:58

I already feel extreme relaxation when I eat Oreos. This would just be right yeah,

Ronjini Joshua: 51:03

we already low Yeah, you already use it as a as a like euphoric experience. And it can't get any better or can it

Russ Cersosimo: 51:13

that's it. That's the tagline I like that Yeah.

Ronjini Joshua: 51:16

Well, thank you Russ so much for spending your time with us this Saturday and there's going to be an awesome episode so we will put all the links for the book and ham synergistics in the show notes. So guys, check them out there and Russ will talk to you next time.

Russ Cersosimo: 51:32

Thank you guys was awesome being on.

Ronjini Joshua: 51:36

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