February 18, 2025 • 45 mins
Ilan Sobel has been the CEO of BioHarvest Sciences since July 2020. Ilan has brought the company’s first product, VINIA, to North America, building a direct-to-consumer machine that is now generating significant revenues. VINIA’s go-to-market success has established a template for the company’s near-term product pipeline of nutraceutical plant cell banks.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
M and T Bank presents CEOs.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
You should know howar advite iHeart media.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Let's meet Alan Sobel. He is the CEO for bioharves Scientists,
a public biotech company that has developed a patent botanical
synthesis platform technology capable of growing the active and beneficial
compounds and fruits and plants at an industrial scale without
the need to grow the plant itself. Before we talk
more about a lance company, I first asked him to
(00:26):
talk a little bit about himself, where he's from and
his origin story.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
I was born in Johannesburg, South Africa. I lived in
South Africa for the first twelve years of my life
and at the tender age of twelve and a half,
my parents decided to leave South Africa. They didn't agree
with the government at the time, it was an apartheid government.
I had an older brother that had to go into
(00:50):
the army and I didn't want my brother going into
the army and fighting for a cause he didn't believe in.
And my parents were very much part of the anti
apartheid movement and wanted us to grow up in the
right kind of environment. So thirteen twelve and a half
thirteen moved to Sydney, Australia, where I had the more
(01:13):
formative part of my education secondary education. I went to
university and the University of New South Wales. My story
is more of a school of hard knocks in the
sense of how I got to where I got to,
and I'm sure we'll talk a little bit about that.
But I was very fortunate to be part of a
(01:34):
unique program where I was on scholarship between industry and
the university for a group of five of us in
the areas of marketing and commerce as part of a
scholarship program. I did that for three years. I got
a little bit frustrated. I felt like I needed to
leave Australia. You know, it's like this little island at
(01:55):
the end of the world, far far away. And I
was very lucky to be able to receive an opportunity
to do an exchange program with a university in the US,
with a college in the US, and I spent a
year which very much influenced me and I'm very grateful
for this. I spent a semester abroad at Babson College
(02:16):
in Boston. Babson's the number one school in the US
for entrepreneurial studies and that really started to inspire the
entrepreneurial spirit inside me. I was amazing professors and the
way things worked at that time was Australians were allowed
to actually work in the US for as long as
(02:37):
you studied. And after finishing my semester abroad, I didn't
want to go back to Australia. I wanted to work
and I started to apply for internships. But it was
really tough to get an internship when you didn't you know,
you were this little kid from Australia.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
And I was very lucky.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
I interviewed for an internship at Pepsicola in Boston and
I was accepted as an intern and I started my
career at the back of a truck with a two eeler,
literally getting up six o'clock in the morning and being
one of those very challenging job delivering products to South
(03:17):
Boston to Back Bay, up and down the streets of Boston.
And that's really where I started to learn and understand
the importance of how to bring consumer brands to the
marketplace and understanding the power of executing the right way.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
Well, you had an incredible journey, and we're going to
talk a lot about your really wonderful resume because the
one thing that I got from it is there's a
lot of diversity going on between the soda company and
high tech and now what you do for the last
four and a half years the CEO of bioharves Sciences,
which is an incredible company that we're going to find
a lot out about it with the mission and what
(03:53):
you do. But it really is revolutionary when our listeners
and CEOs and future entrepreneurs get to hear what you're
doing right now, because it really truly is extraordinary. I'm
going to have you dumb it down for me because
I'm still learning as I go here, but it's about
fruits and plants and really helping everybody out there when
it comes to that. So, but before we do that,
I want to talk about your journey out of school.
(04:13):
And you know it's not going to surprise you a
lot that you started doing really hard work right out
of the gate and out of school, not exactly what
you want to do, but you work your way up
the ladder. So if you could maybe kind of capitalize
your journey after that, after your interning at PEPSI and
the things that you did, because it really truly is
an incredible resume. So if you could get everybody kind
of the highlights, we'd love to hear that.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
Yeah, sure, I want to go backwards, to go forwards
because I think it's important because my story really is
a story of an immigrant and you know, coming to
and I'm sure many of your listeners have similar backgrounds.
I came to Australia as an immigrant. My parents came
with literally very little money. Anything that I wanted, whether
it was going to the movies or anything that was
considered a luxury, I had to work for. So at
(04:56):
the age of literally fourteen, I was lucky. I was
pretty tall, I looked sixteen. In Australia at the time,
you had to be sixteen to legally work, and off
I went as a fourteen year old and I started
to work. At that time, it was Saturdays and Thursday
nights that you worked like sixteen to twenty hours a week.
And I started in a delicatessen and learning how to
slice meat on a slicer and do window displays, and
(05:19):
that taught me how to do merchandising, and then I
got promoted with a speaker and a headphone to start
to do sales in the shopping center.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
And you know, there I was on a Saturday talking.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
About you know, silver side nine ninety nine ladies and
gentlemen coming to Cup Price Deli. You've got the best
silver side and cheeses and off our wents. And that
taught me, you know, again, how do we engage with
customers all the way through to dish being a dishwasher apprentice, butcher,
and you know at that time you would do anything
in order to get some cash to be able to
(05:50):
enjoy the benefits of what people around you were enjoying,
but you just couldn't afford. So I think that taught
me the value of money. And then I was lucky
to get a scholarship. But the opportunity in the US
started at Pepsi code I spent in Pepsi, I was
able to you know, I had a lot of lucky breaks.
You know works dynamic. I had a boss who basically
(06:12):
quit all of a sudden. What do we do we
need a merchandiser. Take the Australian kid put him in
that job or if I went, I learned how to merchandise.
And there I was CBS, Walgreens, Walmart, Resets and learned
the area of merchandising. And then one of the sales
guys just didn't come to work, and the business development
sales guys. It's a take the Australian guy. And you know, Dennis,
I was very lucky in my career. I had a
(06:32):
lot of breaks. For example, at that time, if you
can remember, there was this great movie that Americans were
infatuated with. There was an Australian movie called Crocodile Dundee
absolutely put your shrimps on your barbie, right, you remember that?
And here I was at that time. I had a
much thicker Australian accent because I wasn't married yet to
my South African wife, who's been my sweetheart from when
(06:55):
I was twelve years old.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
That's another story. We can we can talk about it
other time.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
Way, I do want to tell you that's the first
and the four years I've done this series, a Paul
Hogan reference has been thrown into CEOs. You should know,
so bravo, do you, sir?
Speaker 2 (07:10):
Well, Paul Hogan.
Speaker 3 (07:11):
I owe a lot of my career jumps to Paul
Hogan because there I was, you know, going in and
pitching coke versus Pepsi all these different accounts, and because
I had to stick Australian accent, people remembered me and
it just helped me get those sales over the line
and I was started to win. I started to win
all these accounts in Fennel Hall and all these strategic
(07:33):
places in Boston, and before I knew it, literally I
was running business development in Boston City at my Pepsi
van or If. I went to every single lead and
converted it. And end of the end of my internship
came up and I actually was very fortunate that Pepsi
Cola USA was willing to sponsor me from a visa perspective,
(07:56):
come to the US working operations for two years and
then go to purchase New York.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
So there I was.
Speaker 3 (08:02):
I had to go back to Australia tell my parents
I was going to live after immigrating from South Africa
to Australia.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
I had to tell my Jewish mother that I was
going to be living living in Australia, going to live
in America.
Speaker 3 (08:15):
And I don't know, if you know much about Jewish
mother's guilt, it wears on you. And after having the
discussions with our parents, I said to them. Okay, I've
got three months here in Australia to finish off my
undergraduate degree. Wherever the best job is, I'm going the
best jobs in Singapore, I'm going to Singapore. If the
best job is still with Pepsi USA, I'm going to
(08:36):
the US.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
And I was really lucky.
Speaker 3 (08:38):
At this time, the Coca Cola company was looking to
hire ten middle managers to develop and nurture with intense
training over a one year program in Australia, which is
a very mature market, develop market, and then send those
managers into Asia. This is now we're talking nine to
(09:01):
ninety six. Ninety seven. Asia was pumping. You got the
growth of China, the growth of Indonesia. And I was
very lucky because of my experience at Pepsi. I got
accepted onto that Coke program and that Dennis was the
start of an amazing eighteen year career that I'm so
grateful for where I spent, you know, twelve years in
(09:24):
Asia in multiple different roles running businesses across Asia Pacific,
including in China, where I was headed up all of
marketing and innovation for the China business, where I was
responsible for fighting the code awars which had a very
interesting time in the history of China, built a billion
dollar juice business with the Minimate brand, launching the Minim
(09:46):
brand in China, and was responsible for all the marketing
around the Beijing Olympics.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
And I was able to then follow that up with
going back to South.
Speaker 3 (09:54):
Africa, which is a really interesting opportunity from a leadership perspective,
where in South Africa leading up to the twenty ten
World Cup, I was responsible for the marketing for that
and also leading the organization, the marketing and the commercial
organization at a time where it was critical from a
diversity perspective to change the nature of the organization to
(10:17):
reflect the rainbow nation which South Africa is today is
so well known for.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
And that was an amazing leadership experience. So, you know, basically.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
Twelve years in Asia, three years in Africa, and then
I got sent to the US initially to head up
marketing for the Glasow business unit, which is brands like
Vitamin Water, Smart Water, the Power Aid, Sports drenth Line
and the Energy portfolio. And I was fortunate there to
very quickly be able to take over as general manager
of that business unit that I did for three years
(10:48):
up until twenty fourteen, So that really gave me a
lot of global experience from running businesses. You know, I
started the business for Coca Cola locally in Mongo Yeah,
I'm an honorary Mongolian.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
I'm really happy to say.
Speaker 3 (11:04):
There were like four countries in the world where coke
was not producing locally at the time. It was Iran, Afghanistan,
North Korea, and Mongolia. And the company I found a partner,
and I had the opportunity of really being able to
work with that partner, build a business, build food law
in Mongolia with the local Mongolian authorities, and really upgrade
(11:26):
the whole industry.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
And when I say.
Speaker 3 (11:28):
I'm almost like an honorary Mongolian in the sense of this,
it's just a huge affinity to the people, such wonderful people.
And when you have an ability to come into a
market and obscure people and be able to pay people
more money and help them progress in their lives.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
You know, these are the great, the great.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
Benefits of what companies like Coca Cola do all around
the world, from an economic development and professional development, female leadership, diversity,
really critical human values that are so important today that
I had the benefit of being part for eighteen years.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
I want our listeners to trust me on this one
that we could talk to Alan for a couple hours
about everything he did before Bioharvest because it's such a cool, diverse,
incredible journey. But this is one of my favorite questions
that I get to ask any CEO or founder or
entrepreneur on this series when it comes to the current
place you're at the last four and a half years
(12:24):
as a CEO. And I can certainly see what Bioharved
Sciences was interested in you and the diversity that you
brought and all the change and a risk taking that
you've done. I'm very clear about that. But what did
you see in this company that made you say I
want to join them as CEO?
Speaker 2 (12:43):
Wow, that's a great question, Dennis.
Speaker 3 (12:47):
So it's important to understand my journey because before I
got to BA Harvest, I went from the front of
the airplane to the back of the airplane, and from
the Four Seasons Hotel in Atlanta to the Red Rooftop
Motel in Atlanta.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
And I don't want to disparage the Red Rooftop Motel.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
For great people that run their place, and so I
went into startup world and together with two Israeli partners,
because I moved my family, I wanted to become an entrepreneur.
Hit the age of forty, I kind of had a
I would say, a positive midlife crisis.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
I always had a deep connection to.
Speaker 3 (13:23):
Wanting, as a religious tuition observant Jew, to have my
family live in Israel, and I moved the family in
twenty fourteen, and I also wanted to ignite the entrepreneurial
spirit inside me in a way that you know, it
was outside of the corporate environment. And together with two partners,
we built a big data, IoT and software company in
(13:46):
the beer industry, which we were very fortunate. We had
a lot of luck and we landed up exiting after
four and a half years and as a bush Inmbev,
the largest brewery in the world water our company I worked.
As part of the deal, I had golden handcuffs. I
had to work for them for a year. They were
a great company, great management, amazing people, and I actually
(14:09):
ended up working for them for another year. But I
got to the stage where, you know, it was kind
of ironic. I was the oldest guy in the high
tech company. Right at that time, I was like, you know,
forty five, forty six years old, and I kind of
felt that I, you know again, I was back in
corporate America and I needed to unleash that entrepreneurial spirit
(14:29):
again inside me. And I got introduced to bio Harvest
Sciences through a friend of mine, and Wow, when I
came to this company, what I saw and the best
way to explain it, because I came to the company
initially as an investor, what I saw was an R
and D gold mine, the most amazing technology to unlock
(14:55):
the secrets of plant biology, to be able to be
a bridge between the power of the plant kingdom and
all the phyto medicinal compounds and fighter nutrients that are
contained in plants, and to be able to have a
technology that can democratize all those critical fighto medicinal nutrients
(15:15):
compounds that I found at such small levels, but to
be able to find a way to menu to produce
it at such scale that you can democratize the power
of these molecules and change the world of health and
wellness for hundreds of millions of people, but doing it
in a way which preserve the.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
Planet for generations to come.
Speaker 3 (15:36):
And as a father of three kids who were quickly
growing into their teenage years.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
I felt this.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
Significant compelling desire to want to do something from a
professional perspective, which was much more in the spiritual stage
of my life, where I wanted to leave a legacy,
a lasting legacy that my kids would be super proud
of me. That was a legacy that literally changed the
(16:07):
lives of millions of people.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
From an overall specifically.
Speaker 3 (16:12):
Health and wellness perspective, and when I saw by Harvest,
I saw an R and D company was a gold
mine of R and D. But they didn't like many
R and D companies, they didn't yet have the knowledge
on how to unlock this R and D and commercialize
it and bring it into the global marketplace. I still
(16:35):
landed up investing, even though that was a risk in
my investment.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
I was so blown away.
Speaker 3 (16:40):
With the IP strategy, with the clinical trials that they'd done,
with the regulatory strategy, and the regulatory approvals that already received,
all the way through to the scalability of the technology,
which is so important.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
At the time, I never thought I was going to
be the guy that was going to be, you.
Speaker 3 (16:58):
Know, unlocking and bringing the technology to the global market.
And I invested in the company, and I literally went
away with my family and I got a phone call
from at the time the CEO of the company, who
was the largest investor and an amazing man who's become
a dear friend and a partner for the last four years.
His name is doctor Zaki Rakiv and doctor Zaki he
(17:20):
was the co founder together with doctor Joki Kagai, and
he himself.
Speaker 2 (17:25):
Has a very impressive resume. You should have him on
his show as well.
Speaker 3 (17:29):
He invented voiceover internet, the cable modem, and they had
invested his money. Similarly to my desire to change the world,
wanted to take the money that he had made there
and build a buyer tech company ultimately that was going
to be able to change the world, leveraging the power
of the Planned Kingdom. And doctor Zaki called me up
and he said, listen, he drove me crazy during the
(17:50):
due diligence process, and I really, did you know again,
go back. I don't come from money. Every dollar I've
earned from where I was at a delicate tessant all
the way through to exits. Every dollar is a dollar.
So if I'm investing like one hundred dollars or five
thousand dollars or more. It's the same due diligence, right,
drive some people crazy. But he said to me, listen,
besides driving us crazy with your due diligence, I realized
(18:13):
I need a professional CEO to come in and to
run the company and to be able to really bring
this technology to the world. And at this time my
heart started to beat and it was the kind of
adrenaline rush.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
Well.
Speaker 3 (18:27):
I realized at the time, Wow, this is an opportunity
of a lifetime, and almost denis an opportunity if you
think about it, if you go back to my days
with a two wheeler at the back of a Pepsi
truck and as a merchandiser and as a sales guy
all the way through to all the roles I did
in the Coca Cola company, and then going into high
tech as an entrepreneur and being bootstrapped. I couldn't have asked,
(18:51):
you know, for a better a better training camps, multiple
training camps in order to be able to you know,
take this company at the time had just gone private,
just sorry, I had just gone public. And to be
able to manage this company and scale the technology and
bring the amazing molecules that day had already developed to
(19:14):
the marketplace and impact people's health and wellness. And so
it was a very quick decision for me which I made,
and after unraveling some of my responsibilities with Annals of Bush,
I started as CEO in.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
The company in June of twenty twenty.
Speaker 3 (19:29):
And I will tell you it's been the best four
and a half years of my life from a professional perspective,
and I would probably say from a personal perspective, because
when you're professionally happy, you're personally happy, and it works
the same way, but it's just you have positive energy,
you're energized, and you know, we've now built an amazing
(19:52):
business where where we brought to market our molecule, our
key molecule, which is a red grape cell molecule. And
just to kind of go back, maybe for your listeners
to explain the technology, it might just take like two
minutes to explain the technology or what we do. People
might find it interesting and it may help some of
the future questions that you have. But basically, we've invented
(20:15):
a technology called botanical synthesis. So people have probably heard
of chemical synthesis. Some people have heard of biosynthesis. What
we do is botanical synthesis.
Speaker 2 (20:24):
And what does that mean. That's a big word, but
simply what does it mean.
Speaker 3 (20:29):
We have a technology platform where we can take the
plant once, and as you know, plants have these critical
fighter medicinal compounds that are found in very very small
levels that it's very very difficult to be able to
unlock these molecules in a way that's consistent, in a
(20:50):
way that's economically viable, and in a way that you
can actually build patents because you can't patent nature. And
this is these are the three core reasons why pharmacy
industry they started with the plant and move to chemical synthesis,
because when you chemically synthesize a compound, it's consistent, it's
(21:10):
cheap normally, and you get patterns.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
So what our.
Speaker 3 (21:14):
Technology does is it allows us to take the plant
once we understand exactly where in the plant are the
cells that produce these critical phytomdicinal compounds. We take the cells,
we grow the cells in a petri dish, and we
do literally thousands of experiments where we change the nutrition
we feed the cells, we change other variables like the light,
(21:38):
the temperature, and a whole bunch of other variables that
I'm not allowed to talk about, which are part of
our ip box. And at this stage we get the
cells to do two things. One, we get the cells
to produce the exact same mirror of the phyto medicinal
compounds that the plant produces.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
We call this mirroring. Two, we can.
Speaker 3 (21:58):
Identify a specific phyto aditional compound that we want to
increase by an order of magnitude by changing the variables.
We call this magnification. So in the case of our
red grape cell, we produce a very unique compound called
pissied resveratrol. Pissirisvitral is the old standard of resveratrol because
(22:20):
it has the highest level of solubility. It's twenty five
times more soluble than regular resveratrol, and it's much more bioavailable.
Stays in the body for at least twelve hours, with
two peaks, one after one hour, one after five hours,
so it's like the Rolls Royce of resveratrol versus all
other resveratrol that comes from polygenum.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
It's called transfers vitral.
Speaker 3 (22:39):
It's much less soluble, much less bioavailable, and we're the
only company in the world that can produce pissied resveratrol
together with all the other polyphenales from the red grape,
computing catogen, cosine, anti senis and tannins, because we magnify
the levels one hundred times at least one hundred times
versus what's found in the red grape. And at this point, Dennis,
(23:01):
we lock the cells, we create a cell bank, and
we never have to go back to the plant. And
then what we figured out how to do, and by
the way, all of this is non GMO. We don't
in any way change the molecular structure of the actual
cell itself. And then what we figured out what to
do is how to actually take these cells from a
(23:22):
petri dish and grow them in massive industrial scale bio
reactives thousand leader plus an economic scale. We do this
in eighteen to twenty one day. Is the cells multiply,
they produce the fat and medicinal compounds. We harvest the cells,
we take out the water. Were left with the rich
mud of highly efficacious soluble by available end product that
(23:47):
we dry and today it goes into boetary supplements. We
have as a company where science based everything we do
is back with clinic trials, double blind Placeivero published and
pe reviewed scientific journals, and in the case of our
red grape cell molecule, which we call vinear v NIA,
(24:08):
we've been able to demonstrate the ability to significantly increase
dilation of arteries after taking one capsule every day for
ninety days. And arterial dilation is so important because it
increases blood flow and Denis blood flow is the most
critical part of your body's operating mechanism.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
No blood flow, no quality of life.
Speaker 3 (24:28):
With more blood flow, you've got more oxygen, more nutrients
flowing to the body, tis your cells and organs, which
means you have more physical energy, more blood flow to
the peripheral part of the brain. Our molecule gets below
the blood brain barrier, so we're able to increase blood
flow and critical parts of the brain. Normal brain flow,
more mental alertness, maintains blood pressure within already normal levels.
(24:50):
We're able to help reduce oxidation of LDL cholesterol and
oxidative damage to the cells. So this is the product
that now we've brought to the market place. It's a
subscription subscription based product and it's really validated the power
of our technology platform. We set it as a supplement
in capsules. We've just launched a superfood coffee. We're about
(25:11):
to launch a tea in the marketplace, all direct to consumer.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
We don't go through retailers.
Speaker 3 (25:15):
After spending all my time with retailers, I said, thank
you very much, We're now going to go direct to consumer.
I always want to be directly connected to the consumer.
It's so important not just to have the cash cycle
that you need as an entrepreneur, but also you have
the voice of the consumer directly in your ear all
the time. And today our product we have more than
(25:35):
six thousand verified reviews, four point eight out of five
verified rating, and we change people's lives. And this has
been the validation of the power of the technology platform
that we have. We have an olive cell molecule that
we're going to be bringing to market the end of
next year which has the most potent anti inflammatory called
verbosco side from the olive cell, which is going to
(25:57):
target liver health as well as polesto health and bone
health to bone and joint health.
Speaker 2 (26:03):
And now that we've scaled the.
Speaker 3 (26:05):
Business and we've developed the technology and it's so mature,
we made a conscious decision to open the technology to
other companies, and earlier this year we opened up a CDMO,
which is a contract development and manufacturing organization worth existing contracts.
We have contracts with pharmaceutical companies, with nutrition companies to
develop unique molecules for their businesses, leveraging their muscles so
(26:31):
that we can really democratize these molecules from plants and
impact the lives of hundreds of millions of people. That's
why I think I have the best job in the world.
I'm really the chief plant officer for the world. Ultimately,
we're leveraging our technology to be able to bring the
power of the plant kingdom, and the world is now
realizing that if we don't start to responsibly utilize the
(26:56):
power of what we were given, whether it's from God
on day three of creating the world, or whatever evolution
theory you subscribe to. There are five hundred thousand plants
that contain the secrets and answers to so many of
the challenges that we as human beings are dealing with.
And fortunately, the world is becoming a lot more integrative
(27:17):
and they're thinking as it relates to the whole world
of health and wellness. So the timing for our technology
really is perfect from leading farmer companies starting to go
back to the future because they started there and going
back to the plankingdom for the next generation of therapeutic
solutions to address current indications today where there's no solution
(27:40):
ninety five percent of rare diseases, so there's no solution
out there.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
So I'm having the time of my life. It's brutal hours.
Speaker 3 (27:49):
I have an amazing team, but when you're changing people's
lives every day, and you know, I'm fortunate that I
get forty to fifty reviews because the direct consumer subscription business,
we're getting reviews. I get forty to fifty reviews from
people every day that keep my blood pumping in addition
to me taking two vineary a day, but keep me
(28:10):
going from a spiritual perspective because it's, you know, being
an entrepreneur.
Speaker 2 (28:14):
It's dealing with a company on the public market.
Speaker 3 (28:17):
You're dealing with all these challenges, scaling expectations of investors.
But wow, I mean, it's been an amazing four and
a half year journey. I have an amazing team together
with my partner, doctor Zaki Rakiv. Going back to who
brought me into the company, he's the chairman of the
company and the two of us, they are very very
dedicated management team and nineteen employees.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
You know, we're mission focused to change the world.
Speaker 3 (28:44):
With the north star of developing ten to fifteen molecules
from plants. They've got to change their lives and health
and wellness of hundreds of millions of people by leveraging
the power the planking them in a way that preserves
the planet for generations to come.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
Well, it's pretty extraordinary. Of all the things you talked about,
and admittedly, as a B minus student in both are
sciences and chemistry, I understood most of what you were
talking about. But here's what I would like you to do,
because I know that you're a believer in this and
knowledge is power. And when you talk about what you're
exactly doing with your company, as you work with all
of your clients and heading them down to the consumer,
(29:26):
the consumer wants to know what's going in their foods
and maybe how they're processed or not process and how
they're growing and all that. So your clients and the
consumers want to know about this and need to know
about it. But I'm sure the education process is going
to take some time, and I imagine that as you
work with people, those are conversations that are happening right now.
(29:46):
So as you see the technology continuing to evolve down
the road and you're working with all these clients who
are delivering to the consumer, what's the overall plan of
educating everybody of all the great things that are coming
out of this.
Speaker 3 (30:00):
So look, firstly, the world is changing rapidly and consumers
are understanding the need to move to cellular based technologies,
whether it's you know, meat cells, chicken cells. Our space
that we own and we've been you know, global leaders
of because we've been doing it for seventeen years. The
(30:20):
company was started in two thousand and seven, amazing team
of female leaders from our founder, doctor Jokikha Gai, doctor
Malki Dasai, VP of R and D, probably the best
plant cell biologist in the world, and a number of
other members of the team or PhD plant cell biologists.
(30:41):
My CEO runs manufacturing, doctor Elana Beltze, she's a PhD
plant cell biologist.
Speaker 2 (30:47):
So it's like it's all in the DNA.
Speaker 3 (30:49):
So, you know, the world has started to understand, the
regulatory environment has started to understand, and you know, we
as a company where when it's when it's related to
the consumer. For the brands that we're building in our
direct to consumer business, we invest a lot of resources
(31:11):
educating the consumers, helping the consumers understand the power of
our technology. Because when you understand the power of the technology,
you understand the magnitude of impact of what you're putting
into your body, the cleanliness of it because we grow
all of ourselves in aseptic by reactors, so there's no
funger sides, there's no insecticides, there's no verbicides.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
You're coming to our manufacturing.
Speaker 3 (31:32):
Facility, it's a really it's a it's a sterile facility, right,
You've got to be clothed, I mean literally glay everything,
and it's the biological facility.
Speaker 2 (31:43):
And because at the end of the day, consumers want
to understand more. They're so open to be educated.
Speaker 3 (31:49):
And when you take the time and you obviously you
have to simplify some understand it and you explain to it.
So a lot of TV that we do, we're explaining
to consumers our process and our technology and how the
technology works. And you know, mirror, magnify and multiply. This
is how we do it. Because this is the future.
This is the future of everything from food all the
(32:13):
way to preventative therapeutic solutions. This is the future because
the world cannot continue the way it is operating today.
Look at what we've just experienced from a global warming perspective, right,
you know, look at our friends in Florida, right, and
the southeast of dealing with right.
Speaker 2 (32:33):
You know.
Speaker 3 (32:34):
The magnitude of impact of our actions from an industrial
perspective for the last one hundred and fifty years has
taken its toll on the world. You cannot There are today,
for example, one hundred and forty drugs on the market
that contain critical active pharmaceutical ingredients from plants. If you're
(32:54):
one of those companies, your supply chain is at risk.
Your supply chain is at risk because of global warming.
Your supply chain is at risk because there's no consistency
in your raw materials because you don't know what's going
to happen from let alone, day to day, month to month,
year to year, and you're not able to control the economics,
and you don't have a mote around your technology. So
(33:18):
this is where our technology becomes so critical for everybody,
from players who are in the RX world all the
way through to if you think about cosmetics companies today,
the consumer today, Dennis has voted, they're saying to cosmetic
companies or the top ten, all the way through to
the small guys, don't give me any active molecules that
(33:45):
come from chemicals. I'm not putting chemicals onto my skin
every single day.
Speaker 2 (33:51):
For thirty years, consumers have voted, you.
Speaker 3 (33:55):
Know, a major change right now, and technologies like ours
become really poignant and critical for those industries all the
way through.
Speaker 2 (34:06):
To just the simple nutrition chain.
Speaker 3 (34:08):
Think about what Stevia has done for the overall let's
call it food system, but I would even go broader
to say the healthcare system, because at the end of
the day, you know the perils of sugar when you
don't have an active lifestyle and you have a sentgary lifestyle.
Right this is what you know the American health and
(34:29):
wellness system is dealing with today.
Speaker 2 (34:32):
The unintended consequences of this. Stevia came in.
Speaker 3 (34:37):
It was a decent tasting non nutature sweetener that had
a following.
Speaker 2 (34:44):
But what if we could develop the next.
Speaker 3 (34:46):
Generation, the next generation of non nutative sweetener where there
was no trade off versus sugar, but ultimately you were
bringing a non nutative sweetener into everything that you ate.
It would change the whole healthcare system based on the
perils of the underlying perils of the biggest challenges of
(35:07):
the healthcare system. So this is where our technology really
is anchored in all these different areas and why these
partnership with key companies are so critical. Whilst we execute
our game plan on a director consumer business, launching all
of our own products which just brings us significant scale
(35:28):
and learnings so that we can apply them, or to
our CDMO contract Development manufacturing organization with these key partners.
So the world is changing education. The consumer wants to
be educated. We just have to change the narrative. And
that's what we did. When we brought our resviratrial to
(35:48):
the marketplace. People said to me, Elin, you're crazy. There's
every other resvitral product out there. You go into Amazon,
every other is vitual product out there that use polygonum Japanese,
not weed. How are you you're going to differentiate?
Speaker 2 (36:01):
No chance. That just made me more motivated to try.
Speaker 3 (36:05):
And figure out a way, and I just realized that, look,
you just have to change the narrative to consumers. We
have clinical trials, we have an amazing technology. Let's just
give them the respect and help educate them, spend the
time the investment in the right kind of For example,
we brought the best medical and animator in the world
(36:27):
on board to work with us, and David built three
beautiful videos top videos of medical animation explain to consumers
basically the power of our molecules and how our molecules
work in your body. And that was critical and those
videos have been seen by thousands and thousands of people.
(36:48):
So you have to be willing to invest in education
and the consumers ready for it. They are ready for it,
specifically if it's going to change their life from a
health and wellness perspective and protect the planet. So when
you're hitting on those two areas, you have the ear
of the consumer.
Speaker 2 (37:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:05):
I agree with that, and I'm glad you addressed the
education part because as much as we want and I
think once again, knowledge is power. We need to know
what we wanted, what's good for us. And it sounds
like the future is bright. We are running out of
time a lot, and I do want to do this
and just maybe do a little recap if we could,
and just get some final thoughts from you. It really
is truly amazing and just the four and a half
years as you've been there at CEO at this incredible
(37:26):
company about what has change and what the future looks like.
It's blowing me away. The technology that you guys have
patented and what you're doing as you do direct to consumer.
Let's just get some final thoughts and recap everything. The
floor is your, sir.
Speaker 2 (37:42):
Yes, some final thoughts.
Speaker 3 (37:43):
Look, I would just say to all those CEOs out there,
you know, if you're doing something that you love and
you really feel is making a change the world, you're
aligning your heart with your values. And when your heart
(38:06):
and values are aligned, then no matter how big the
challenge out there is, if you have a great group
of people around you. And I'm so blessed to have
an amazing team, and I've shared a number of the
different people in my team, including our chief medical officer
who's from John Hopkins and has a whole interesting story himself.
(38:29):
Everybody's just you know, got their own unique story, and
everybody is aligned with the strength of a team. And
when there's heart and soul and it's all congruent with
your values, your values as parents in some cases in
my team, your values as grandparents. Because in the world
of biotech, age is everything, right, age is everything that's
(38:50):
the high tech and biotech.
Speaker 2 (38:53):
You're able to climb, you.
Speaker 3 (38:56):
Know, Mount Killerman genre and back ten times over because
you're going to be facing and every few months we
face some really challenging hurdles. But because there's such conviction
and such deep belief in the impact of what we're
doing and our desire to really change the world, that
(39:18):
you're able to actually conquer those hurdles. And so I
just say to people like specifically, like for me, I'm
so blessed that at the age of forty five, I
really found my calling. Honestly, like you, Dennis, I think
I was a nightmare for all my biology teachers, right,
I think I've plunked out every class except one on
(39:40):
biology and I don't want to talk about right, But
I just found that when I came to this company
and spending time with doctor Jokikaga, who's the mother of
the technology and amazing also she has thirty years of
experience in the pharmacide and the biotech side. Together with
off the market I just became like a spongergame because
(40:04):
I realized that they simplified it for me. They helped
me understand what they were doing, and I realized that
if I could tell their story, and if I could
work with them with all my experience in manufacturing and
in high tech to be able to scale the technology,
we as a team to.
Speaker 2 (40:23):
Change the world. Right, And what better way to wake up?
Speaker 3 (40:27):
Like this is why I wake up in the morning
and I'm pumped and I'm happy. Like literally, I always
when I sit down with all my staff members and
I do like a media review or check in, and
I always ask.
Speaker 2 (40:39):
Them, when you wake up in the morning, where are you?
On a scale of one to ten.
Speaker 3 (40:44):
One you don't want to get out of bed, You
can't even open up your eyes. Ten you can't wait
to get out of bed. By the way, there's very
few people in this world that are tens. For last
four and a half years, I've been like a nine
to nine and a half, right, which is amazing, And
that's really driven by the fact that every day I'm
focusing all my energy because there's no politics in our company.
(41:06):
This is either thing all those CEOs out there dealing
with politics, pulling knives out of your back. It sucks
energy when you're mission focused. When everybody comes to work,
from a biologist to manufacturing to literally my team in
manufacturing that I'm working with the bioreactors, everybody understands this
bioreactor is going to produce twelve kilos of our red
(41:29):
grape cell vineo product and it's going to change the
lives of a few thousand people. Everybody's all focused to
energy on the outside. Their hearts and values are aligned.
It's all positive energy, and it just allows for you
to be able to achieve success in a way that
(41:52):
is so satisfying. And that's what I would say to
those CEOs out there. Find the space.
Speaker 2 (41:59):
Where you're art and your values are aligned, where.
Speaker 3 (42:03):
Ultimately you can be in your spiritual phase of your
professional career. By the way, it can happen much earlier
in life. The earlier the better. You can just stay
there for longer, but make sure you don't spend your
time and energy doing something that your heart and values
are not aligned. Get out of it, get out of
it quickly. And I was lucky that all through my
(42:24):
career I was pretty much aligned. But when I got
to the world of biotech, and I saw the impact
of all my energy. Wow right like it really it's
such a virtuous cycle of energy that permeates individually and
from a team perspective. And this way we can really
(42:46):
fulfill our calling of unlocking the secrets of five hundred
thousand plants that are out there that are ready to
be conquered and utilized in a responsible way. Responsible way
leaves the planet in a situation that generations to come
(43:06):
will be able to enjoy and value.
Speaker 1 (43:09):
Well, so, well said man, thank you for that. So
you've got a great website, whoever designed it. It's beautiful,
it's easy to navigate. Let's give the website for everybody
who wants to check it a little bit more about
exactly what you and your team do at BIOHARVESD Sciences.
Speaker 2 (43:21):
What's that?
Speaker 1 (43:21):
What's that? U?
Speaker 3 (43:22):
R L so the webs So the r L is
Bioharvest dot com, b I O H A R V
E s T dot com. And if you want a
little more product Vinya, you can go to Vinia dot com.
Speaker 2 (43:35):
V I n i A dot com.
Speaker 1 (43:36):
All right, and sir, before you go, I'd like to
pay you a compliment I've talked to a lot of
CEOs and entrepreneurs on this series for the last four years.
There is a common theme about getting up every day
and being excited about what they do, having the best
team members on the planet that sometimes are usually more
smarter than them and are very good at what they do.
The communication, having fun, working your tails off, being jacked
(43:59):
up about you know about what we're doing and what
the future is. But also your passion and your enthusiasm
come loud and clear through our conversation. And I will
give you a personal story that I relate to a
lot of the people that listen to the series. In
my industry, what I do, and i'd like to think
over the thirty years of what I do, I do
a pretty good job. But every hiring manager lon that's
ever said, hey, Dennis, do you know why I hired you?
(44:21):
It wasn't for all your gifts and what you brought
to the table, what you're good at. I brought you
because of your passion of the industry. And that comes
loud and clear that you're passionate about what you do,
and I think that's a good lesson for all the
entrepreneurs in future. CEOs that if you're passionate about and
you're willing to take chances like our guest has, you're
probably going to succeed. So I want to pay you
that compliment because that came through loud and clear.
Speaker 2 (44:43):
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (44:44):
I really appreciate it. And you know you've got to
be passionate about what.
Speaker 2 (44:48):
You believe in.
Speaker 1 (44:49):
Yeah, yeah, I agree. That's where Will said, well, listen
and thank you so much for a valuable time, continued success.
It really is extraordinary where you and your team are doing,
and we really appreciate you joining us on Iheart's CEOs.
Speaker 2 (45:00):
Thank you, Thank you very much. Enjoyed the opportunity to
talk with you. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (45:04):
Our community partner, M and T Bank supports CEOs, you
should know, as part of their ongoing commitment to building
strong communities, and that starts by backing the businesses within them.
As a Bank for communities, M and T believes in
dedicating time, talent, and resources to help local businesses thrive
because when businesses succeed, our community succeed
M and T Bank presents CEOs.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
You should know howar advite iHeart media.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Let's meet Alan Sobel. He is the CEO for bioharves Scientists,
a public biotech company that has developed a patent botanical
synthesis platform technology capable of growing the active and beneficial
compounds and fruits and plants at an industrial scale without
the need to grow the plant itself. Before we talk
more about a lance company, I first asked him to
(00:26):
talk a little bit about himself, where he's from and
his origin story.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
I was born in Johannesburg, South Africa. I lived in
South Africa for the first twelve years of my life
and at the tender age of twelve and a half,
my parents decided to leave South Africa. They didn't agree
with the government at the time, it was an apartheid government.
I had an older brother that had to go into
(00:50):
the army and I didn't want my brother going into
the army and fighting for a cause he didn't believe in.
And my parents were very much part of the anti
apartheid movement and wanted us to grow up in the
right kind of environment. So thirteen twelve and a half
thirteen moved to Sydney, Australia, where I had the more
(01:13):
formative part of my education secondary education. I went to
university and the University of New South Wales. My story
is more of a school of hard knocks in the
sense of how I got to where I got to,
and I'm sure we'll talk a little bit about that.
But I was very fortunate to be part of a
(01:34):
unique program where I was on scholarship between industry and
the university for a group of five of us in
the areas of marketing and commerce as part of a
scholarship program. I did that for three years. I got
a little bit frustrated. I felt like I needed to
leave Australia. You know, it's like this little island at
(01:55):
the end of the world, far far away. And I
was very lucky to be able to receive an opportunity
to do an exchange program with a university in the US,
with a college in the US, and I spent a
year which very much influenced me and I'm very grateful
for this. I spent a semester abroad at Babson College
(02:16):
in Boston. Babson's the number one school in the US
for entrepreneurial studies and that really started to inspire the
entrepreneurial spirit inside me. I was amazing professors and the
way things worked at that time was Australians were allowed
to actually work in the US for as long as
(02:37):
you studied. And after finishing my semester abroad, I didn't
want to go back to Australia. I wanted to work
and I started to apply for internships. But it was
really tough to get an internship when you didn't you know,
you were this little kid from Australia.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
And I was very lucky.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
I interviewed for an internship at Pepsicola in Boston and
I was accepted as an intern and I started my
career at the back of a truck with a two eeler,
literally getting up six o'clock in the morning and being
one of those very challenging job delivering products to South
(03:17):
Boston to Back Bay, up and down the streets of Boston.
And that's really where I started to learn and understand
the importance of how to bring consumer brands to the
marketplace and understanding the power of executing the right way.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
Well, you had an incredible journey, and we're going to
talk a lot about your really wonderful resume because the
one thing that I got from it is there's a
lot of diversity going on between the soda company and
high tech and now what you do for the last
four and a half years the CEO of bioharves Sciences,
which is an incredible company that we're going to find
a lot out about it with the mission and what
(03:53):
you do. But it really is revolutionary when our listeners
and CEOs and future entrepreneurs get to hear what you're
doing right now, because it really truly is extraordinary. I'm
going to have you dumb it down for me because
I'm still learning as I go here, but it's about
fruits and plants and really helping everybody out there when
it comes to that. So, but before we do that,
I want to talk about your journey out of school.
(04:13):
And you know it's not going to surprise you a
lot that you started doing really hard work right out
of the gate and out of school, not exactly what
you want to do, but you work your way up
the ladder. So if you could maybe kind of capitalize
your journey after that, after your interning at PEPSI and
the things that you did, because it really truly is
an incredible resume. So if you could get everybody kind
of the highlights, we'd love to hear that.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
Yeah, sure, I want to go backwards, to go forwards
because I think it's important because my story really is
a story of an immigrant and you know, coming to
and I'm sure many of your listeners have similar backgrounds.
I came to Australia as an immigrant. My parents came
with literally very little money. Anything that I wanted, whether
it was going to the movies or anything that was
considered a luxury, I had to work for. So at
(04:56):
the age of literally fourteen, I was lucky. I was
pretty tall, I looked sixteen. In Australia at the time,
you had to be sixteen to legally work, and off
I went as a fourteen year old and I started
to work. At that time, it was Saturdays and Thursday
nights that you worked like sixteen to twenty hours a week.
And I started in a delicatessen and learning how to
slice meat on a slicer and do window displays, and
(05:19):
that taught me how to do merchandising, and then I
got promoted with a speaker and a headphone to start
to do sales in the shopping center.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
And you know, there I was on a Saturday talking.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
About you know, silver side nine ninety nine ladies and
gentlemen coming to Cup Price Deli. You've got the best
silver side and cheeses and off our wents. And that
taught me, you know, again, how do we engage with
customers all the way through to dish being a dishwasher apprentice, butcher,
and you know at that time you would do anything
in order to get some cash to be able to
(05:50):
enjoy the benefits of what people around you were enjoying,
but you just couldn't afford. So I think that taught
me the value of money. And then I was lucky
to get a scholarship. But the opportunity in the US
started at Pepsi code I spent in Pepsi, I was
able to you know, I had a lot of lucky breaks.
You know works dynamic. I had a boss who basically
(06:12):
quit all of a sudden. What do we do we
need a merchandiser. Take the Australian kid put him in
that job or if I went, I learned how to merchandise.
And there I was CBS, Walgreens, Walmart, Resets and learned
the area of merchandising. And then one of the sales
guys just didn't come to work, and the business development
sales guys. It's a take the Australian guy. And you know, Dennis,
I was very lucky in my career. I had a
(06:32):
lot of breaks. For example, at that time, if you
can remember, there was this great movie that Americans were
infatuated with. There was an Australian movie called Crocodile Dundee
absolutely put your shrimps on your barbie, right, you remember that?
And here I was at that time. I had a
much thicker Australian accent because I wasn't married yet to
my South African wife, who's been my sweetheart from when
(06:55):
I was twelve years old.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
That's another story. We can we can talk about it
other time.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
Way, I do want to tell you that's the first
and the four years I've done this series, a Paul
Hogan reference has been thrown into CEOs. You should know,
so bravo, do you, sir?
Speaker 2 (07:10):
Well, Paul Hogan.
Speaker 3 (07:11):
I owe a lot of my career jumps to Paul
Hogan because there I was, you know, going in and
pitching coke versus Pepsi all these different accounts, and because
I had to stick Australian accent, people remembered me and
it just helped me get those sales over the line
and I was started to win. I started to win
all these accounts in Fennel Hall and all these strategic
(07:33):
places in Boston, and before I knew it, literally I
was running business development in Boston City at my Pepsi
van or If. I went to every single lead and
converted it. And end of the end of my internship
came up and I actually was very fortunate that Pepsi
Cola USA was willing to sponsor me from a visa perspective,
(07:56):
come to the US working operations for two years and
then go to purchase New York.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
So there I was.
Speaker 3 (08:02):
I had to go back to Australia tell my parents
I was going to live after immigrating from South Africa
to Australia.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
I had to tell my Jewish mother that I was
going to be living living in Australia, going to live
in America.
Speaker 3 (08:15):
And I don't know, if you know much about Jewish
mother's guilt, it wears on you. And after having the
discussions with our parents, I said to them. Okay, I've
got three months here in Australia to finish off my
undergraduate degree. Wherever the best job is, I'm going the
best jobs in Singapore, I'm going to Singapore. If the
best job is still with Pepsi USA, I'm going to
(08:36):
the US.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
And I was really lucky.
Speaker 3 (08:38):
At this time, the Coca Cola company was looking to
hire ten middle managers to develop and nurture with intense
training over a one year program in Australia, which is
a very mature market, develop market, and then send those
managers into Asia. This is now we're talking nine to
(09:01):
ninety six. Ninety seven. Asia was pumping. You got the
growth of China, the growth of Indonesia. And I was
very lucky because of my experience at Pepsi. I got
accepted onto that Coke program and that Dennis was the
start of an amazing eighteen year career that I'm so
grateful for where I spent, you know, twelve years in
(09:24):
Asia in multiple different roles running businesses across Asia Pacific,
including in China, where I was headed up all of
marketing and innovation for the China business, where I was
responsible for fighting the code awars which had a very
interesting time in the history of China, built a billion
dollar juice business with the Minimate brand, launching the Minim
(09:46):
brand in China, and was responsible for all the marketing
around the Beijing Olympics.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
And I was able to then follow that up with
going back to South.
Speaker 3 (09:54):
Africa, which is a really interesting opportunity from a leadership perspective,
where in South Africa leading up to the twenty ten
World Cup, I was responsible for the marketing for that
and also leading the organization, the marketing and the commercial
organization at a time where it was critical from a
diversity perspective to change the nature of the organization to
(10:17):
reflect the rainbow nation which South Africa is today is
so well known for.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
And that was an amazing leadership experience. So, you know, basically.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
Twelve years in Asia, three years in Africa, and then
I got sent to the US initially to head up
marketing for the Glasow business unit, which is brands like
Vitamin Water, Smart Water, the Power Aid, Sports drenth Line
and the Energy portfolio. And I was fortunate there to
very quickly be able to take over as general manager
of that business unit that I did for three years
(10:48):
up until twenty fourteen, So that really gave me a
lot of global experience from running businesses. You know, I
started the business for Coca Cola locally in Mongo Yeah,
I'm an honorary Mongolian.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
I'm really happy to say.
Speaker 3 (11:04):
There were like four countries in the world where coke
was not producing locally at the time. It was Iran, Afghanistan,
North Korea, and Mongolia. And the company I found a partner,
and I had the opportunity of really being able to
work with that partner, build a business, build food law
in Mongolia with the local Mongolian authorities, and really upgrade
(11:26):
the whole industry.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
And when I say.
Speaker 3 (11:28):
I'm almost like an honorary Mongolian in the sense of this,
it's just a huge affinity to the people, such wonderful people.
And when you have an ability to come into a
market and obscure people and be able to pay people
more money and help them progress in their lives.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
You know, these are the great, the great.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
Benefits of what companies like Coca Cola do all around
the world, from an economic development and professional development, female leadership, diversity,
really critical human values that are so important today that
I had the benefit of being part for eighteen years.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
I want our listeners to trust me on this one
that we could talk to Alan for a couple hours
about everything he did before Bioharvest because it's such a cool, diverse,
incredible journey. But this is one of my favorite questions
that I get to ask any CEO or founder or
entrepreneur on this series when it comes to the current
place you're at the last four and a half years
(12:24):
as a CEO. And I can certainly see what Bioharved
Sciences was interested in you and the diversity that you
brought and all the change and a risk taking that
you've done. I'm very clear about that. But what did
you see in this company that made you say I
want to join them as CEO?
Speaker 2 (12:43):
Wow, that's a great question, Dennis.
Speaker 3 (12:47):
So it's important to understand my journey because before I
got to BA Harvest, I went from the front of
the airplane to the back of the airplane, and from
the Four Seasons Hotel in Atlanta to the Red Rooftop
Motel in Atlanta.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
And I don't want to disparage the Red Rooftop Motel.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
For great people that run their place, and so I
went into startup world and together with two Israeli partners,
because I moved my family, I wanted to become an entrepreneur.
Hit the age of forty, I kind of had a
I would say, a positive midlife crisis.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
I always had a deep connection to.
Speaker 3 (13:23):
Wanting, as a religious tuition observant Jew, to have my
family live in Israel, and I moved the family in
twenty fourteen, and I also wanted to ignite the entrepreneurial
spirit inside me in a way that you know, it
was outside of the corporate environment. And together with two partners,
we built a big data, IoT and software company in
(13:46):
the beer industry, which we were very fortunate. We had
a lot of luck and we landed up exiting after
four and a half years and as a bush Inmbev,
the largest brewery in the world water our company I worked.
As part of the deal, I had golden handcuffs. I
had to work for them for a year. They were
a great company, great management, amazing people, and I actually
(14:09):
ended up working for them for another year. But I
got to the stage where, you know, it was kind
of ironic. I was the oldest guy in the high
tech company. Right at that time, I was like, you know,
forty five, forty six years old, and I kind of
felt that I, you know again, I was back in
corporate America and I needed to unleash that entrepreneurial spirit
(14:29):
again inside me. And I got introduced to bio Harvest
Sciences through a friend of mine, and Wow, when I
came to this company, what I saw and the best
way to explain it, because I came to the company
initially as an investor, what I saw was an R
and D gold mine, the most amazing technology to unlock
(14:55):
the secrets of plant biology, to be able to be
a bridge between the power of the plant kingdom and
all the phyto medicinal compounds and fighter nutrients that are
contained in plants, and to be able to have a
technology that can democratize all those critical fighto medicinal nutrients
(15:15):
compounds that I found at such small levels, but to
be able to find a way to menu to produce
it at such scale that you can democratize the power
of these molecules and change the world of health and
wellness for hundreds of millions of people, but doing it
in a way which preserve the.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
Planet for generations to come.
Speaker 3 (15:36):
And as a father of three kids who were quickly
growing into their teenage years.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
I felt this.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
Significant compelling desire to want to do something from a
professional perspective, which was much more in the spiritual stage
of my life, where I wanted to leave a legacy,
a lasting legacy that my kids would be super proud
of me. That was a legacy that literally changed the
(16:07):
lives of millions of people.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
From an overall specifically.
Speaker 3 (16:12):
Health and wellness perspective, and when I saw by Harvest,
I saw an R and D company was a gold
mine of R and D. But they didn't like many
R and D companies, they didn't yet have the knowledge
on how to unlock this R and D and commercialize
it and bring it into the global marketplace. I still
(16:35):
landed up investing, even though that was a risk in
my investment.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
I was so blown away.
Speaker 3 (16:40):
With the IP strategy, with the clinical trials that they'd done,
with the regulatory strategy, and the regulatory approvals that already received,
all the way through to the scalability of the technology,
which is so important.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
At the time, I never thought I was going to
be the guy that was going to be, you.
Speaker 3 (16:58):
Know, unlocking and bringing the technology to the global market.
And I invested in the company, and I literally went
away with my family and I got a phone call
from at the time the CEO of the company, who
was the largest investor and an amazing man who's become
a dear friend and a partner for the last four years.
His name is doctor Zaki Rakiv and doctor Zaki he
(17:20):
was the co founder together with doctor Joki Kagai, and
he himself.
Speaker 2 (17:25):
Has a very impressive resume. You should have him on
his show as well.
Speaker 3 (17:29):
He invented voiceover internet, the cable modem, and they had
invested his money. Similarly to my desire to change the world,
wanted to take the money that he had made there
and build a buyer tech company ultimately that was going
to be able to change the world, leveraging the power
of the Planned Kingdom. And doctor Zaki called me up
and he said, listen, he drove me crazy during the
(17:50):
due diligence process, and I really, did you know again,
go back. I don't come from money. Every dollar I've
earned from where I was at a delicate tessant all
the way through to exits. Every dollar is a dollar.
So if I'm investing like one hundred dollars or five
thousand dollars or more. It's the same due diligence, right,
drive some people crazy. But he said to me, listen,
besides driving us crazy with your due diligence, I realized
(18:13):
I need a professional CEO to come in and to
run the company and to be able to really bring
this technology to the world. And at this time my
heart started to beat and it was the kind of
adrenaline rush.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
Well.
Speaker 3 (18:27):
I realized at the time, Wow, this is an opportunity
of a lifetime, and almost denis an opportunity if you
think about it, if you go back to my days
with a two wheeler at the back of a Pepsi
truck and as a merchandiser and as a sales guy
all the way through to all the roles I did
in the Coca Cola company, and then going into high
tech as an entrepreneur and being bootstrapped. I couldn't have asked,
(18:51):
you know, for a better a better training camps, multiple
training camps in order to be able to you know,
take this company at the time had just gone private,
just sorry, I had just gone public. And to be
able to manage this company and scale the technology and
bring the amazing molecules that day had already developed to
(19:14):
the marketplace and impact people's health and wellness. And so
it was a very quick decision for me which I made,
and after unraveling some of my responsibilities with Annals of Bush,
I started as CEO in.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
The company in June of twenty twenty.
Speaker 3 (19:29):
And I will tell you it's been the best four
and a half years of my life from a professional perspective,
and I would probably say from a personal perspective, because
when you're professionally happy, you're personally happy, and it works
the same way, but it's just you have positive energy,
you're energized, and you know, we've now built an amazing
(19:52):
business where where we brought to market our molecule, our
key molecule, which is a red grape cell molecule. And
just to kind of go back, maybe for your listeners
to explain the technology, it might just take like two
minutes to explain the technology or what we do. People
might find it interesting and it may help some of
the future questions that you have. But basically, we've invented
(20:15):
a technology called botanical synthesis. So people have probably heard
of chemical synthesis. Some people have heard of biosynthesis. What
we do is botanical synthesis.
Speaker 2 (20:24):
And what does that mean. That's a big word, but
simply what does it mean.
Speaker 3 (20:29):
We have a technology platform where we can take the
plant once, and as you know, plants have these critical
fighter medicinal compounds that are found in very very small
levels that it's very very difficult to be able to
unlock these molecules in a way that's consistent, in a
(20:50):
way that's economically viable, and in a way that you
can actually build patents because you can't patent nature. And
this is these are the three core reasons why pharmacy
industry they started with the plant and move to chemical synthesis,
because when you chemically synthesize a compound, it's consistent, it's
(21:10):
cheap normally, and you get patterns.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
So what our.
Speaker 3 (21:14):
Technology does is it allows us to take the plant
once we understand exactly where in the plant are the
cells that produce these critical phytomdicinal compounds. We take the cells,
we grow the cells in a petri dish, and we
do literally thousands of experiments where we change the nutrition
we feed the cells, we change other variables like the light,
(21:38):
the temperature, and a whole bunch of other variables that
I'm not allowed to talk about, which are part of
our ip box. And at this stage we get the
cells to do two things. One, we get the cells
to produce the exact same mirror of the phyto medicinal
compounds that the plant produces.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
We call this mirroring. Two, we can.
Speaker 3 (21:58):
Identify a specific phyto aditional compound that we want to
increase by an order of magnitude by changing the variables.
We call this magnification. So in the case of our
red grape cell, we produce a very unique compound called
pissied resveratrol. Pissirisvitral is the old standard of resveratrol because
(22:20):
it has the highest level of solubility. It's twenty five
times more soluble than regular resveratrol, and it's much more bioavailable.
Stays in the body for at least twelve hours, with
two peaks, one after one hour, one after five hours,
so it's like the Rolls Royce of resveratrol versus all
other resveratrol that comes from polygenum.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
It's called transfers vitral.
Speaker 3 (22:39):
It's much less soluble, much less bioavailable, and we're the
only company in the world that can produce pissied resveratrol
together with all the other polyphenales from the red grape,
computing catogen, cosine, anti senis and tannins, because we magnify
the levels one hundred times at least one hundred times
versus what's found in the red grape. And at this point, Dennis,
(23:01):
we lock the cells, we create a cell bank, and
we never have to go back to the plant. And
then what we figured out how to do, and by
the way, all of this is non GMO. We don't
in any way change the molecular structure of the actual
cell itself. And then what we figured out what to
do is how to actually take these cells from a
(23:22):
petri dish and grow them in massive industrial scale bio
reactives thousand leader plus an economic scale. We do this
in eighteen to twenty one day. Is the cells multiply,
they produce the fat and medicinal compounds. We harvest the cells,
we take out the water. Were left with the rich
mud of highly efficacious soluble by available end product that
(23:47):
we dry and today it goes into boetary supplements. We
have as a company where science based everything we do
is back with clinic trials, double blind Placeivero published and
pe reviewed scientific journals, and in the case of our
red grape cell molecule, which we call vinear v NIA,
(24:08):
we've been able to demonstrate the ability to significantly increase
dilation of arteries after taking one capsule every day for
ninety days. And arterial dilation is so important because it
increases blood flow and Denis blood flow is the most
critical part of your body's operating mechanism.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
No blood flow, no quality of life.
Speaker 3 (24:28):
With more blood flow, you've got more oxygen, more nutrients
flowing to the body, tis your cells and organs, which
means you have more physical energy, more blood flow to
the peripheral part of the brain. Our molecule gets below
the blood brain barrier, so we're able to increase blood
flow and critical parts of the brain. Normal brain flow,
more mental alertness, maintains blood pressure within already normal levels.
(24:50):
We're able to help reduce oxidation of LDL cholesterol and
oxidative damage to the cells. So this is the product
that now we've brought to the market place. It's a
subscription subscription based product and it's really validated the power
of our technology platform. We set it as a supplement
in capsules. We've just launched a superfood coffee. We're about
(25:11):
to launch a tea in the marketplace, all direct to consumer.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
We don't go through retailers.
Speaker 3 (25:15):
After spending all my time with retailers, I said, thank
you very much, We're now going to go direct to consumer.
I always want to be directly connected to the consumer.
It's so important not just to have the cash cycle
that you need as an entrepreneur, but also you have
the voice of the consumer directly in your ear all
the time. And today our product we have more than
(25:35):
six thousand verified reviews, four point eight out of five
verified rating, and we change people's lives. And this has
been the validation of the power of the technology platform
that we have. We have an olive cell molecule that
we're going to be bringing to market the end of
next year which has the most potent anti inflammatory called
verbosco side from the olive cell, which is going to
(25:57):
target liver health as well as polesto health and bone
health to bone and joint health.
Speaker 2 (26:03):
And now that we've scaled the.
Speaker 3 (26:05):
Business and we've developed the technology and it's so mature,
we made a conscious decision to open the technology to
other companies, and earlier this year we opened up a CDMO,
which is a contract development and manufacturing organization worth existing contracts.
We have contracts with pharmaceutical companies, with nutrition companies to
develop unique molecules for their businesses, leveraging their muscles so
(26:31):
that we can really democratize these molecules from plants and
impact the lives of hundreds of millions of people. That's
why I think I have the best job in the world.
I'm really the chief plant officer for the world. Ultimately,
we're leveraging our technology to be able to bring the
power of the plant kingdom, and the world is now
realizing that if we don't start to responsibly utilize the
(26:56):
power of what we were given, whether it's from God
on day three of creating the world, or whatever evolution
theory you subscribe to. There are five hundred thousand plants
that contain the secrets and answers to so many of
the challenges that we as human beings are dealing with.
And fortunately, the world is becoming a lot more integrative
(27:17):
and they're thinking as it relates to the whole world
of health and wellness. So the timing for our technology
really is perfect from leading farmer companies starting to go
back to the future because they started there and going
back to the plankingdom for the next generation of therapeutic
solutions to address current indications today where there's no solution
(27:40):
ninety five percent of rare diseases, so there's no solution
out there.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
So I'm having the time of my life. It's brutal hours.
Speaker 3 (27:49):
I have an amazing team, but when you're changing people's
lives every day, and you know, I'm fortunate that I
get forty to fifty reviews because the direct consumer subscription business,
we're getting reviews. I get forty to fifty reviews from
people every day that keep my blood pumping in addition
to me taking two vineary a day, but keep me
(28:10):
going from a spiritual perspective because it's, you know, being
an entrepreneur.
Speaker 2 (28:14):
It's dealing with a company on the public market.
Speaker 3 (28:17):
You're dealing with all these challenges, scaling expectations of investors.
But wow, I mean, it's been an amazing four and
a half year journey. I have an amazing team together
with my partner, doctor Zaki Rakiv. Going back to who
brought me into the company, he's the chairman of the
company and the two of us, they are very very
dedicated management team and nineteen employees.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
You know, we're mission focused to change the world.
Speaker 3 (28:44):
With the north star of developing ten to fifteen molecules
from plants. They've got to change their lives and health
and wellness of hundreds of millions of people by leveraging
the power the planking them in a way that preserves
the planet for generations to come.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
Well, it's pretty extraordinary. Of all the things you talked about,
and admittedly, as a B minus student in both are
sciences and chemistry, I understood most of what you were
talking about. But here's what I would like you to do,
because I know that you're a believer in this and
knowledge is power. And when you talk about what you're
exactly doing with your company, as you work with all
of your clients and heading them down to the consumer,
(29:26):
the consumer wants to know what's going in their foods
and maybe how they're processed or not process and how
they're growing and all that. So your clients and the
consumers want to know about this and need to know
about it. But I'm sure the education process is going
to take some time, and I imagine that as you
work with people, those are conversations that are happening right now.
(29:46):
So as you see the technology continuing to evolve down
the road and you're working with all these clients who
are delivering to the consumer, what's the overall plan of
educating everybody of all the great things that are coming
out of this.
Speaker 3 (30:00):
So look, firstly, the world is changing rapidly and consumers
are understanding the need to move to cellular based technologies,
whether it's you know, meat cells, chicken cells. Our space
that we own and we've been you know, global leaders
of because we've been doing it for seventeen years. The
(30:20):
company was started in two thousand and seven, amazing team
of female leaders from our founder, doctor Jokikha Gai, doctor
Malki Dasai, VP of R and D, probably the best
plant cell biologist in the world, and a number of
other members of the team or PhD plant cell biologists.
(30:41):
My CEO runs manufacturing, doctor Elana Beltze, she's a PhD
plant cell biologist.
Speaker 2 (30:47):
So it's like it's all in the DNA.
Speaker 3 (30:49):
So, you know, the world has started to understand, the
regulatory environment has started to understand, and you know, we
as a company where when it's when it's related to
the consumer. For the brands that we're building in our
direct to consumer business, we invest a lot of resources
(31:11):
educating the consumers, helping the consumers understand the power of
our technology. Because when you understand the power of the technology,
you understand the magnitude of impact of what you're putting
into your body, the cleanliness of it because we grow
all of ourselves in aseptic by reactors, so there's no
funger sides, there's no insecticides, there's no verbicides.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
You're coming to our manufacturing.
Speaker 3 (31:32):
Facility, it's a really it's a it's a sterile facility, right,
You've got to be clothed, I mean literally glay everything,
and it's the biological facility.
Speaker 2 (31:43):
And because at the end of the day, consumers want
to understand more. They're so open to be educated.
Speaker 3 (31:49):
And when you take the time and you obviously you
have to simplify some understand it and you explain to it.
So a lot of TV that we do, we're explaining
to consumers our process and our technology and how the
technology works. And you know, mirror, magnify and multiply. This
is how we do it. Because this is the future.
This is the future of everything from food all the
(32:13):
way to preventative therapeutic solutions. This is the future because
the world cannot continue the way it is operating today.
Look at what we've just experienced from a global warming perspective, right,
you know, look at our friends in Florida, right, and
the southeast of dealing with right.
Speaker 2 (32:33):
You know.
Speaker 3 (32:34):
The magnitude of impact of our actions from an industrial
perspective for the last one hundred and fifty years has
taken its toll on the world. You cannot There are today,
for example, one hundred and forty drugs on the market
that contain critical active pharmaceutical ingredients from plants. If you're
(32:54):
one of those companies, your supply chain is at risk.
Your supply chain is at risk because of global warming.
Your supply chain is at risk because there's no consistency
in your raw materials because you don't know what's going
to happen from let alone, day to day, month to month,
year to year, and you're not able to control the economics,
and you don't have a mote around your technology. So
(33:18):
this is where our technology becomes so critical for everybody,
from players who are in the RX world all the
way through to if you think about cosmetics companies today,
the consumer today, Dennis has voted, they're saying to cosmetic
companies or the top ten, all the way through to
the small guys, don't give me any active molecules that
(33:45):
come from chemicals. I'm not putting chemicals onto my skin
every single day.
Speaker 2 (33:51):
For thirty years, consumers have voted, you.
Speaker 3 (33:55):
Know, a major change right now, and technologies like ours
become really poignant and critical for those industries all the
way through.
Speaker 2 (34:06):
To just the simple nutrition chain.
Speaker 3 (34:08):
Think about what Stevia has done for the overall let's
call it food system, but I would even go broader
to say the healthcare system, because at the end of
the day, you know the perils of sugar when you
don't have an active lifestyle and you have a sentgary lifestyle.
Right this is what you know the American health and
(34:29):
wellness system is dealing with today.
Speaker 2 (34:32):
The unintended consequences of this. Stevia came in.
Speaker 3 (34:37):
It was a decent tasting non nutature sweetener that had
a following.
Speaker 2 (34:44):
But what if we could develop the next.
Speaker 3 (34:46):
Generation, the next generation of non nutative sweetener where there
was no trade off versus sugar, but ultimately you were
bringing a non nutative sweetener into everything that you ate.
It would change the whole healthcare system based on the
perils of the underlying perils of the biggest challenges of
(35:07):
the healthcare system. So this is where our technology really
is anchored in all these different areas and why these
partnership with key companies are so critical. Whilst we execute
our game plan on a director consumer business, launching all
of our own products which just brings us significant scale
(35:28):
and learnings so that we can apply them, or to
our CDMO contract Development manufacturing organization with these key partners.
So the world is changing education. The consumer wants to
be educated. We just have to change the narrative. And
that's what we did. When we brought our resviratrial to
(35:48):
the marketplace. People said to me, Elin, you're crazy. There's
every other resvitral product out there. You go into Amazon,
every other is vitual product out there that use polygonum Japanese,
not weed. How are you you're going to differentiate?
Speaker 2 (36:01):
No chance. That just made me more motivated to try.
Speaker 3 (36:05):
And figure out a way, and I just realized that, look,
you just have to change the narrative to consumers. We
have clinical trials, we have an amazing technology. Let's just
give them the respect and help educate them, spend the
time the investment in the right kind of For example,
we brought the best medical and animator in the world
(36:27):
on board to work with us, and David built three
beautiful videos top videos of medical animation explain to consumers
basically the power of our molecules and how our molecules
work in your body. And that was critical and those
videos have been seen by thousands and thousands of people.
(36:48):
So you have to be willing to invest in education
and the consumers ready for it. They are ready for it,
specifically if it's going to change their life from a
health and wellness perspective and protect the planet. So when
you're hitting on those two areas, you have the ear
of the consumer.
Speaker 2 (37:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:05):
I agree with that, and I'm glad you addressed the
education part because as much as we want and I
think once again, knowledge is power. We need to know
what we wanted, what's good for us. And it sounds
like the future is bright. We are running out of
time a lot, and I do want to do this
and just maybe do a little recap if we could,
and just get some final thoughts from you. It really
is truly amazing and just the four and a half
years as you've been there at CEO at this incredible
(37:26):
company about what has change and what the future looks like.
It's blowing me away. The technology that you guys have
patented and what you're doing as you do direct to consumer.
Let's just get some final thoughts and recap everything. The
floor is your, sir.
Speaker 2 (37:42):
Yes, some final thoughts.
Speaker 3 (37:43):
Look, I would just say to all those CEOs out there,
you know, if you're doing something that you love and
you really feel is making a change the world, you're
aligning your heart with your values. And when your heart
(38:06):
and values are aligned, then no matter how big the
challenge out there is, if you have a great group
of people around you. And I'm so blessed to have
an amazing team, and I've shared a number of the
different people in my team, including our chief medical officer
who's from John Hopkins and has a whole interesting story himself.
(38:29):
Everybody's just you know, got their own unique story, and
everybody is aligned with the strength of a team. And
when there's heart and soul and it's all congruent with
your values, your values as parents in some cases in
my team, your values as grandparents. Because in the world
of biotech, age is everything, right, age is everything that's
(38:50):
the high tech and biotech.
Speaker 2 (38:53):
You're able to climb, you.
Speaker 3 (38:56):
Know, Mount Killerman genre and back ten times over because
you're going to be facing and every few months we
face some really challenging hurdles. But because there's such conviction
and such deep belief in the impact of what we're
doing and our desire to really change the world, that
(39:18):
you're able to actually conquer those hurdles. And so I
just say to people like specifically, like for me, I'm
so blessed that at the age of forty five, I
really found my calling. Honestly, like you, Dennis, I think
I was a nightmare for all my biology teachers, right,
I think I've plunked out every class except one on
(39:40):
biology and I don't want to talk about right, But
I just found that when I came to this company
and spending time with doctor Jokikaga, who's the mother of
the technology and amazing also she has thirty years of
experience in the pharmacide and the biotech side. Together with
off the market I just became like a spongergame because
(40:04):
I realized that they simplified it for me. They helped
me understand what they were doing, and I realized that
if I could tell their story, and if I could
work with them with all my experience in manufacturing and
in high tech to be able to scale the technology,
we as a team to.
Speaker 2 (40:23):
Change the world. Right, And what better way to wake up?
Speaker 3 (40:27):
Like this is why I wake up in the morning
and I'm pumped and I'm happy. Like literally, I always
when I sit down with all my staff members and
I do like a media review or check in, and
I always ask.
Speaker 2 (40:39):
Them, when you wake up in the morning, where are you?
On a scale of one to ten.
Speaker 3 (40:44):
One you don't want to get out of bed, You
can't even open up your eyes. Ten you can't wait
to get out of bed. By the way, there's very
few people in this world that are tens. For last
four and a half years, I've been like a nine
to nine and a half, right, which is amazing, And
that's really driven by the fact that every day I'm
focusing all my energy because there's no politics in our company.
(41:06):
This is either thing all those CEOs out there dealing
with politics, pulling knives out of your back. It sucks
energy when you're mission focused. When everybody comes to work,
from a biologist to manufacturing to literally my team in
manufacturing that I'm working with the bioreactors, everybody understands this
bioreactor is going to produce twelve kilos of our red
(41:29):
grape cell vineo product and it's going to change the
lives of a few thousand people. Everybody's all focused to
energy on the outside. Their hearts and values are aligned.
It's all positive energy, and it just allows for you
to be able to achieve success in a way that
(41:52):
is so satisfying. And that's what I would say to
those CEOs out there. Find the space.
Speaker 2 (41:59):
Where you're art and your values are aligned, where.
Speaker 3 (42:03):
Ultimately you can be in your spiritual phase of your
professional career. By the way, it can happen much earlier
in life. The earlier the better. You can just stay
there for longer, but make sure you don't spend your
time and energy doing something that your heart and values
are not aligned. Get out of it, get out of
it quickly. And I was lucky that all through my
(42:24):
career I was pretty much aligned. But when I got
to the world of biotech, and I saw the impact
of all my energy. Wow right like it really it's
such a virtuous cycle of energy that permeates individually and
from a team perspective. And this way we can really
(42:46):
fulfill our calling of unlocking the secrets of five hundred
thousand plants that are out there that are ready to
be conquered and utilized in a responsible way. Responsible way
leaves the planet in a situation that generations to come
(43:06):
will be able to enjoy and value.
Speaker 1 (43:09):
Well, so, well said man, thank you for that. So
you've got a great website, whoever designed it. It's beautiful,
it's easy to navigate. Let's give the website for everybody
who wants to check it a little bit more about
exactly what you and your team do at BIOHARVESD Sciences.
Speaker 2 (43:21):
What's that?
Speaker 1 (43:21):
What's that? U?
Speaker 3 (43:22):
R L so the webs So the r L is
Bioharvest dot com, b I O H A R V
E s T dot com. And if you want a
little more product Vinya, you can go to Vinia dot com.
Speaker 2 (43:35):
V I n i A dot com.
Speaker 1 (43:36):
All right, and sir, before you go, I'd like to
pay you a compliment I've talked to a lot of
CEOs and entrepreneurs on this series for the last four years.
There is a common theme about getting up every day
and being excited about what they do, having the best
team members on the planet that sometimes are usually more
smarter than them and are very good at what they do.
The communication, having fun, working your tails off, being jacked
(43:59):
up about you know about what we're doing and what
the future is. But also your passion and your enthusiasm
come loud and clear through our conversation. And I will
give you a personal story that I relate to a
lot of the people that listen to the series. In
my industry, what I do, and i'd like to think
over the thirty years of what I do, I do
a pretty good job. But every hiring manager lon that's
ever said, hey, Dennis, do you know why I hired you?
(44:21):
It wasn't for all your gifts and what you brought
to the table, what you're good at. I brought you
because of your passion of the industry. And that comes
loud and clear that you're passionate about what you do,
and I think that's a good lesson for all the
entrepreneurs in future. CEOs that if you're passionate about and
you're willing to take chances like our guest has, you're
probably going to succeed. So I want to pay you
that compliment because that came through loud and clear.
Speaker 2 (44:43):
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (44:44):
I really appreciate it. And you know you've got to
be passionate about what.
Speaker 2 (44:48):
You believe in.
Speaker 1 (44:49):
Yeah, yeah, I agree. That's where Will said, well, listen
and thank you so much for a valuable time, continued success.
It really is extraordinary where you and your team are doing,
and we really appreciate you joining us on Iheart's CEOs.
Speaker 2 (45:00):
Thank you, Thank you very much. Enjoyed the opportunity to
talk with you. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (45:04):
Our community partner, M and T Bank supports CEOs, you
should know, as part of their ongoing commitment to building
strong communities, and that starts by backing the businesses within them.
As a Bank for communities, M and T believes in
dedicating time, talent, and resources to help local businesses thrive
because when businesses succeed, our community succeed
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