"Most importantly, executives learned that what you don't know is coming is more important than what you do know is going to happen"
Michael Sassano Tweet
Michael Sassano is the CEO and Chairman of the Board for Somai Pharmaceuticals LTD, a European pharmaceutical and biotech company centered on manufacturing in Lisbon, Portugal, and distribution of EU GMP-certified cannabinoid-containing pharmaceuticals throughout the European Union and globally.
Somai emphasizes scientific pharmacology applications with EU-GMP standards to deliver treatments to the endocannabinoid system, effectively and with consistency across all markets.
Taking with him the product development knowledge honed in the competitive American market, Somai is the largest and most advanced cannabinoid manufacturing facility across legal European markets producing medicines products and registered API’s.
Michael has brought together an all-star team of scientists and KOL’s from around the world with various clinical experiences to guide Somai’s product development and acceptance globally.
He stresses education and continual R&D, which started from the USA as transformative developments, to help EU doctors and patients properly diagnose and treat the individual indications by providing variable dosage choices.
Michaels’ primary goal for Somai is producing the most advanced products with the most innovative delivery methods to create maximum bioavailability and healing for patients. Somai is fast becoming one of the most recognized and well-developed pharmaceutical brands in the EU.
As a global biotech player concentrating on cannabinoids, Somai has a unique pipeline of current and future products that will be on the market starting in late 2022. They already boast one of the largest IP (Intellectual Property) vaults of APIs that weren’t accessible to Europe until recently.
Somai’s near term products conform to the highest standards of herbal medicine (ACM) and specialized cannabinoid API’s for R&D, but also keeps a steady eye on the horizon of future clinical trials for their proprietary pipeline, setting it up to be well positioned for the next decade.
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Table of Contents
Quiet quitting, The Great Resignation, are an ongoing trend causing many businesses to struggle keeping talent engaged and motivated. Most are leaving because of their boss or their company culture. 82% of people feel unheard, undervalued and misunderstood in the workplace. In your experience, what keeps employees happy? And how are adapting to the current shift we see?
Michael Sassano: Finding, training and maintaining good moral and good employees has always been an issue and even more so today. In countries like USA there are more job openings than applicants.
For the pharmaceutical industry in Europe, there is less turnover than US markets but still designing a good work environment that values the employees is important. Little things like a good break area with free coffee and drinks makes a home environment. Somai even has daily fruits delivered from local growers as healthy snacks for employees and is also free.
Clean surroundings and respect for the pharmaceutical industry standards is guaranteed but creates a sense of dignity. Collaborative working environments that encourage people to use meeting rooms and learn together shows that we care about individuals.
Maintaining a competitive wage and free time to decompress acknowledges peoples efforts and needs for privacy. All are important factors, as well as keeping a humor amongst top management even during the most stressful of time.
Online business keeps on surging higher than ever, B2B, B2C, online shopping, virtual meetings, remote work, Zoom medical consultations, what are your expectations for the year to come and how are you capitalizing on the tidal wave?
Michael Sassano: The world has been forever changed and people want home shopping, meetings, medical visits and commercial at home opportunities. The pharmaceutical industry is adopting to this shift with tele-medicine and home drug delivery.
Somai needs to recognize these new avenues of distribution and be prepared to service the many new outlets of sales. Reaching tele-medicine groups has become a must going forward in the post-covid age.
There is also a worry to be prepared for a similar event again. Even business meetings today can be partially in-house with people joining in by zoom. Flexibility is needed but also companies need to run with people and cannot be skeleton ships powered by zoom.
Christopher Hitchens, an American journalist, is quoted as saying that “everyone has a book in them” Have you written a book? If so, please share with us details about it. If you haven’t, what book would you like to write and how would you like it to benefit the readers?
Michael Sassano: I am a prolific writer and have been writing a series for 2 years with the 18th installment just submitted. I try and explain to people what is going on and teach them how to be successful in the cannabis pharmaceutical businesses as well as analyzing current trends. I find it much easier to send to the world then repeat the same ideas over and over.
Could this all turn into a book? I was always hoping that the series on GMP would be a base for a how to guide that would be easy to understand the intricacies of running building and operating a GMP pharmaceutical manufacturing facility. Time will tell.
2020, 2021, 2022 threw a lot of curve balls into businesses on a global scale. Based on the experience gleaned in the past years, how can businesses thrive in 2023? What lessons have you learned and what advice would you share?
Michael Sassano: The last 3 years have been extremely mountainous terrain for all business models and really helped people to reach deeper to make stronger businesses. Some broke but many just got stronger from the experience.
Most importantly, executives learned that what you don’t know is coming is more important than what you do know is going to happen. Predicting the future and unknowns is art but also can be scientifically explained by chaos theory.
I think everyone going forward has to understand that there will be random events that can derail you and as long as you adjust your perception and expectations to account for unknown variables, that you will ride these movements out and emerge stronger.
On a lighter note, if you had the ability to pick any business superpower, what would it be and how would you put it into practice?
Michael Sassano: I want the business superpower of future prediction perfection. If you can predict the future, you will survive anything.
Jerome Knyszewski, VIP Contributor to ValiantCEO and the host of this interview would like to thank Michael Sassano for taking the time to do this interview and share his knowledge and experience with our readers.
If you would like to get in touch with Michael Sassano or his company, you can do it through his – Linkedin Page
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