Kyle is the CEO of Samson Extracts, an Alabama-owned and operated manufacturer of bulk CBD products and one of the largest low-cost hemp processors in the nation. Samson utilizes a GMP-certified, complex industrial extraction system to produce CBD ingredients for a diverse range of products and is a leading wholesale provider for many of the country’s top hemp and cannabis operators.
Kyle has extensive experience in manufacturing, process design and development, organization design and development, business turnarounds, process technology, supply chain, and metric development for businesses. He previously served as the Director of Operations and General Manager for High Life Farms, a privately-held, family-owned cannabis company that includes an impressive portfolio of cultivation, manufacturing, distribution, in-house brands, brand partnerships with Wana Brands and Kiva Confections, white labeling solutions, and ownership stakes in retail dispensaries. Kyle also held previous positions as Sr. Business Consultant at Southwest Airlines, a Sr. Consultant for Oil & Gas and Aviation at PWC, and a Program Founder of the Fraud, Waste, and Abuse Operation at the Deepwater Horizon Economic Class Action Settlement (BP Oil Spill).
Company: Samson Extracts
We are thrilled to have you join us today, welcome to ValiantCEO Magazine’s exclusive interview! Let’s start off with a little introduction. Tell our readers a bit about yourself and your company
Kyle Neathery: Thank you for having me. I originally started my career auditing for the BP oil spill settlement, after which I ventured into oil and gas and aviation consulting and ended up joining the team at Southwest Airlines as Chief of Staff. It wasn’t until I was working out in Michigan in 2019 when a job opportunity opened up in the cannabis industry and I knew I had to take a leap. I took on the role of Director of Operations and General Manager at High Life Farms, a privately-held, family-owned multi-state cannabis company operating 150,000 sq ft that includes a large portfolio of cultivation, manufacturing, distribution, in-house brands, brand partnerships with Wana Brands and Kiva Confections, white labeling solutions, and ownership stakes in retail dispensaries. I helped grow the company significantly, focusing on cultivation, extraction, and manufacturing.
After my experience in Michigan, I was thinking about moving closer to family and a warmer climate and a unique job opportunity opened up in Alabama that aligned with my goals. I joined Samson Extracts as CEO in March 2022 to help optimize operations with a focus on achieving consistency and preparing the existing equipment and biomass for efficient use.
Can you share a time when your business faced a significant challenge? How did you navigate through it?
Kyle Neathery: When I was brought on as CEO of Samson Extracts in March 2022, my job was to optimize our full spectrum CBD distillate extraction operation with a focus on achieving consistency, and preparing the existing equipment and biomass for efficient use. I was tasked with the unique challenge of adapting large-scale equipment from various other industries for hemp and cannabis extraction.
The learning curve was steep, especially when working with machines like the massive dewatering centrifuges used in oil and gas. The facility we’ve built down here in Alabama looks more like a refinery than a typical cannabis extraction setup.
To put it mildly, it was a major challenge to make equipment meant for other purposes work together seamlessly. Success in one area often led to new challenges elsewhere in our operation. We navigated through it with a lot of trial and error to become one of the largest hemp processors in the nation, and the lessons learned along the way have become our blueprint for success today.
How has a failure or apparent failure set you up for later success?
Kyle Neathery: We experienced plenty of failure as we were designing and implementing our systems here to a large-scale operation. Many times in our designs, we thought we had near-perfect concepts and we had planned through every potential pitfall that could occur. We’ve had projects that we absolutely nailed to perfection through our planning – many of them, however, had to be further adjusted. Maybe the piping was too small, the auger was too steep, the equipment wasn’t sized for capacity, or it even performed too quickly – we have been through many of these moments.
Yet, we are grateful for these moments rather than just absolute success. We’re operators, not engineers, so whenever we have these failure moments, it helps us to derive a much deeper and foundational understanding of what our process is doing both chemically and mechanically. We have become much smarter in our failures which actually allows us to expedite our improvements and new projects much more quickly in the future, than if we just had absolute success.
How do you build a resilient team? What qualities do you look for in your team members?
Kyle Neathery: When it comes to building a resilient team, the first and most important thing that you have to do as an executive is display resilience yourself, on a personal and consistent basis. A common mistake I see is folks in positions of leadership not understanding that there will be no automatic buy-in to resilience if your team doesn’t see you actively engaged as well. This may mean doing things you don’t want to — you might have to stay late or work weekends, but if you expect to see the same kind of resilience and buy-in from your team, you have to display it yourself.
With respect to personnel, when building a resilient team I specifically seek out the go-getters who don’t avoid the challenges, who will bravely take on difficult or out of the ordinary tasks with positive engagement and without burning out. You want to embody a culture where your team is prepared to go above and beyond, particularly during the hard times.
How do you maintain your personal resilience during tough times?
Kyle Neathery: In tough times I find that the best thing you can do is to find some time by yourself to start tactically understanding how best to tackle the challenge in front of you. Situational paralysis can easily get in the way of finding the solution, so it’s important not to sit on your heels — the best thing is often to act, but that doesn’t mean you have to make rapid or thoughtless decisions. It does mean you have to at least understand the situation so you can develop what a plan of action might look like and start to gather feedback from others.
Ultimately, your team is looking to you for the answers, even more so during the difficult times. You have to display confidence or some type of direction, even if you don’t necessarily have the final solution.
What strategies do you use to manage stress and maintain focus during a crisis?
Kyle Neathery: The first question I always ask myself is one I learned from David Welker, a chief mentor of mine back when I started my career. At the time I was in my early twenties in a very high-stress job, and I would often get worked up about little things. But the team I was on was staffed with veteran FBI and Navy Seals. Dave, who did over 20 years in the FBI and was the former SAC of the FBI’s New Orleans Division, would pause and ask me, “Is anyone dying?”
It was level setting, and it stuck with me. Now, when I’m trying to assess the criticality or chaos of a situation, this sentiment helps me level with what is truly important. For me, the key is to not sit on your heels or be paralyzed with a tough time. If you really want to manage stress, don’t let it fester. Hang onto that “eat the frog” mentality – do the hard things first.
How do you communicate with your team during a crisis?
Kyle Neathery: When my team is faced with a crisis and there’s a need for resiliency, I find it’s best to clearly communicate that the challenge my team is up against will be difficult – manage their expectations. This communication is so important because it enables a team to power through when things are challenging, and avoid overreacting to small challenges. Helping a team build an understanding of what is considered a “difficult” challenge empowers them to develop that courageous, go-getting attitude.
The second piece is that it’s critical not to bury the crisis on one or two people. You have to delegate different roles to different people; if you burden too few people at a time you’re just passing the buck.
What advice would you give to other CEOs on building resilience in their organizations?
Kyle Neathery: You must be actively engaged to understand the problems you have that require resiliency from your team. Ultimately, as a leader you want to reduce the amount of resiliency that is needed in your operation, but the only way to do that is to have a firm understanding of what is going on within your business, and within the departments within your business. It’s critical that that understanding comes from the top of the organizational chart all the way through to the front line in order to make truly impactful change.
The other advice I would give is similar to what I said before about building a resilient team. Seek out the people who go after a challenge, who are happy to stay late or work an extra weekend to get the project finished. Embody that culture yourself, and your team will be better prepared to go above and beyond.
How do you prepare your business for potential future crises?
Kyle Neathery: You have to have a firm understanding of what areas are creating a potential crisis or have a tendency to create this crisis so that you can build fixes or systems around those areas. It goes back to really being actively engaged in understanding the challenging situations that your business is going to face, whatever your business is.
For us in manufacturing, equipment or parts randomly going down without us knowing can easily lead to a crisis of heavy downtime. With supply chain delays, especially post-COVID, ordering replacement equipment takes much longer than it used to. To prepare for potential future crises, we over-purchase certain inventory as a failsafe. The reason we are able to do that is because we have a firm understanding of the business and which parts go down most frequently versus others.
What’s the most important lesson you’ve learned about leadership in times of crisis?
Kyle Neathery: As a leader, you can’t get too involved in the stress around the crisis. If you are the one in the position who has to make a decision, then everyone is going to be looking to you for guidance and determination. Remember that you are the leader and avoid displays of a lack of confidence.
Second, and this is critical — you must be visual and available. In those times of crisis, you can’t be on vacation, you can’t be working from home. You have to be visual, wherever that crisis is because once again, you are the person who is going to be looked to for the solution. To the best of your ability, you have to show up.
