Cannabis COO | Large-Scale Operator | Industry Pioneer | OG
The Hotbox with Dustin Hoxworth isn’t your polished PR interview. It’s me getting stoned and asking people the questions they probably aren’t ready for. These aren’t cold reads or copy-paste Q&As; I sit with my guests, usually multiple times, and I’ve likely met them in person, which gives me a window to learn who they really are before I ever send the questions. By the time the words hit the page, it’s smoke-thick honesty, not surface-level bullshit. These are cannabis conversations that showcase the voices, stories, and truths that won’t show up in the boardroom.
The Hotbox with Byron Staton
This week in The Hotbox, we sit down with my friend Byron Staton, a man who has turned failing cannabis companies into cash-flow machines and helped design some of the biggest grow and manufacturing facilities in the country. With decades of experience in both automotive and cannabis production, Byron has been at the helm of operations across Massachusetts, Washington, Maine, Oregon, Missouri, Pennsylvania, and Ohio.
From partnering with national brands like Cookies, Wiz Khalifa, Jim Belushi, CANN, and Old Pal, to building out 40,000-square-foot facilities and rewriting SOPs that drive efficiency, Byron is one of the industry’s unspoken engineers of scale. He’s a data-driven operator who believes culture and process can transform even the bleakest bottom line.
But behind the spreadsheets and systems, Byron has strong views about what’s happening to cannabis politically, economically, and culturally. And he’s not shy about saying where it’s going wrong, and how it could be set right.
The Hotbox Q&A: 5 Questions with Byron Staton
You’ve built and commissioned facilities over 40,000 square feet, worked across multiple states, and helped national brands find their footing. At the same time, cannabis still struggles to reconcile corporate expansion with the plant’s legacy roots. How do you square being an “OG” with building for massive scale; does one compromise the other, or can they coexist?
Great question. That has not been an easy one!
Coming from the corporate car world in my first profession prepared me to deal with board structure and accountability, which I think is important in any company that is successful.
I did make a promise to myself, friends, and family to not lose my own way of thinking along the way. In the car world I was the guy in between corporate and real blue-collar workers to make both sides understand the opposite side’s struggles to help the company be successful in a constructive way.
Coming from the West Coast black market, I was a traitor in the beginning, then the smart guy, but I am just a real person who leads real people.
Just do the right thing, and it will work out. Don’t be afraid of losing a job, keep focused, and understand that corporate and small operators need each other. Goodbye ego!
You’ve worked with major names like Cookies and Old Pal, but you’ve also turned around failing operators. When you look at the industry right now with high taxes, oversupply, layoffs, lawsuits—what’s the real state of cannabis behind the press releases, and what’s broken at its core?
That is a very loaded question.
All those hurdles exist in the black market also. I have been on both sides. Not taxes, but legal issues are classified the same to me. Going to jail, no friends, and not having credit. Is that different than now, yes or no? Just different issues, same problem. Whomever they are, they don’t want us to succeed. It was set up to fail, and we are the fools who dumped millions into the economics of cannabis in this country and abroad, thinking they want us to succeed. LOL
Politics continues to strangle the industry. Banking reform is stalled, federal rescheduling is a mess (it should be de-scheduled), and local regulations are often contradictory. From your decades of experience, what political change would actually move the needle for operators, and what do you think keeps it from happening?
Well, this is a two-part question.
Let’s tackle the rescheduling, banking, and regulatory first. It really gets down to the fact that the feds do not want to start a new company! The US government is a company, just a large one, and I wouldn’t want to deal with it either. If you look at the business model now, they get tax money, and they don’t need to hire a whole new branch to regulate the country. That is called ROI!
Second part: Open banking would change the whole game. Access to money for operators that know how to operate at low cost but cannot access funds would fix a ton. It would push my family in the game.
Interest rates now for cannabis capital, high taxes, and difficult regulations keep a ton of really great farmers I know out-of-the-game and corporate players with a lack of decades of experience, but capital keeps them in the game. Let’s see how it washes out.
You came from automotive manufacturing before cannabis, which is an industry obsessed with efficiency, scale, and margins. Looking ahead 5–10 years, do you see cannabis evolving into something that looks like automotive, or is there another model you think fits the future better?
I think drinks are going in that direction now. Carts will move in those directions soon. You will need to produce large outdoor biomass for these products to be manufactured.
I think the future model is large-scale outdoor for MIP (gummies, drinks, carts, dabs) because the chance of lab failure is gone with those products, and flower is very hard to pass time and time again, so that model is harder to predict for a company to be successful.
Flower I think, will become a small-scale product to make the ROI work for a successful company, or the quality will suffer.
You’ve said culture is one of the key drivers of ROI. In an industry that often prioritizes quick exits and short-term profits, how can cannabis companies build an authentic culture that uplifts teams, sustains communities, and still hits the numbers investors may demand?
Culture drives cannabis! Without the people, it would be a soda company. We all know that, having been around regulated cannabis the last decade and a half, the circle is small. Same people over all the US, and it’s not the alcohol industry. Very small numbers of consumers compared to other consumables in economics.
Quick exits and short-term profits are almost over. Some will happen with new markets coming online now, but they will be few and far between.
Teams are built from leadership, and cannabis workers want to work for cannabis people. Corporate cannabis will have workers, but they are only workers. They don’t understand the amount of production they get from a person is different than the production I get from my leadership. Corporate cannabis thinks the number they hit will be the same per hour or minute, and it is not the same. That is where real cost happens! Labor is expensive.
I have seen companies that are 40k square feet with 100 people vs. my 21 people–way different ROI.
Byron Staton isn’t the face on a billboard or the voice behind a flashy brand campaign. He’s the operator, the one who takes the chaos of cannabis and builds systems that work. Whether it’s automotive precision applied to living plants or culture applied to bottom lines, his perspective cuts through the noise. In a time when the cannabis industry is questioning its soul, Byron Staton is asking the hard questions about what we’re really building, and who it’s for.
