We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Zach Jones. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Zach below.

Zach, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?

Before creating Dark Sky CBD, myself and my brother Max built a vapor company (Max & Zach’s Vapor Shops) aimed at helping people quit smoking cigarettes. Currently, this business has 6 locations around the Houston area. Vaping technology gave us the ability to actually help people. With the right training and product knowledge, we found that we could help people switch from smoking cigarettes to vaping, and then if they wanted, could work with them on reducing their nicotine dependence and essentially quit vaping also.

Being able to grow my business and help people at the same time is an incredible feeling. Personally, I can’t imagine going through the stress of growing and operating a business (or multiple now I guess) if it wasn’t something that was creating a positive impact.

After being in the vapor industry for about 8 years, we started to notice all of the positive news and the scientific studies regarding CBD products. After a good chunk of research, a few sample runs of high quality CBD products in our vapor shops and some horror stories from customers who had been scammed or over charged for CBD products else where, we just couldn’t resist the pull to expand our product range and make sure our customers received the best service and education available.

The thing with a new industry like vapor or cannabis is that for every one ‘good actor’ there are at least 10 ‘bad actors’, or simply people who don’t know enough about what they’re doing and decided to jump on the bandwagon and make a bit of money. Unfortunately, when this happens it’s usually the consumer/customer that gets the short end of the stick. Either they were sold the wrong product, paid too much for the product, or simply scammed. We have found the most success in being a trusted company in these new, quickly evolving industries.

After bringing CBD into our stores and helping customers make the right choices about which products to buy to fit their needs, we decided to go a step further and open a CBD only store (Houston CBD Supply). It’s from this base of operations that we decided to build the brand Dark Sky CBD and start manufacturing our own CBD products.

Essentially, we wanted all of our customers to be able to buy the products they needed from a company they can trust. CBD is having such an incredible impact on peoples lives around the world, we are just happy to be part of this incredible movement, and provide top quality products that actually help people.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

My name is Zach Jones and I’m co-owner of Dark Sky CBD. Dark Sky CBD is a Houston based CBD company dedicated to providing high quality, legal cannabis products. From CBD for sleep and anxiety to Delta 8 and THC products for pain relief or simply leisure.

Dark Sky CBD started off as a small batch indoor CBD flower growing operation and has now expanded into providing edible gummy products, both psychoactive and non psychoactive. Our most popular gummy product right now is our ‘Original soft chews’. These gummies are non-intoxicating, contain NO THC, and have had incredible feedback from customers who are using them for sleep, anxiety, pain and general wellbeing.

We absolutely love the power of Cannabis and CBD products. Due to us having multiple brick and mortar locations where we can sell our own products, we get very frequent feedback. There is nothing more motivating than someone telling me face to face that something I have created has made a positive impact on their life.

Can you open up about a time when you had a really close call with the business?

When we first launched Dark Sky CBD, it was only as a small batch, premium CBD growing facility. We were targeting a very niche audience. We weren’t trying to grow enough to sell bulk for other companies to process, we were targeting people who wanted a top quality flower product. Unfortunately, our timing was poor. Soon after we launched, the CBD industry discovered Delta 8 and other legal, CBD derived Cannabinoids. Our already slim audience got even slimmer and there simply wasn’t enough demand for our flower to keep the lights on.

We had some pretty big decisions to make at this point. Should we continue to chip away at the same thing or diversify? Should we close down and try something else wasting our investment? No, we decided to expand what we could offer. This proved to be the right decision. We continue to provide the same high quality CBD flower, but now offer different cannabinoid infused cbd flower. For example, currently we have an amazing strain called Harlequin. Absolutely beautiful. It’s a Sativa dominant hybrid that we have now infused with THCo (Another Cannabinoid similar to Delta 8). So, now we are still able to offer our top quality, small batch CBD flower, but can offer it a little bit differently, opening up a whole new pool of potential customers.

Pivoting in this new direction has allowed us to get more creative with the products we offer, and allowed us to keep just enough cashflow coming in to allow us to continue operating and slowly expanding.

Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?

Managing a team and maintaining morale is the most important part of the business. Without a strong, dedicated team a business is not likely to succeed. As a business owner, it’s very easy to fall into the trap of doing everything yourself. You know you can do a better job than anyone else and most of the time it’s just easier to do it yourself. Unfortunately, this is not a good way to grow your company. If this is how you operate, you need to start trying to let others take on some of your responsibilities. It’s difficult, but it must be done. As you grow, there will simply be too many tasks for you to take care of to the best of your ability, and if you haven’t got people around you trained and ready to take on more responsibility you could quite possibly fail.

Managing a team takes leading by example. You have to be the best at all times. You have to be the most motivated at all times. There’s no way you can expect an employee to be more motivated than the business owner. It’s simply not going to happen. Pass off some big responsibilities to those around you. Allow them to make mistakes, patiently coach them on how to not make the same mistake again. It’s a process, but a process that will pay you back ten fold as you expand.

Specifically for morale, get your team involved and make them feel useful and appreciated. No one wants to go to work and do the same thing every day either. Try your best to change things up. Do some local outreach and get your team involved. Sponsor a local team or event and bring your staff along. Allow them to represent your brand and be proud of what they’re doing. Without them it will be impossible for your business to succeed.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.darkskycbd.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dark_sky_cbd
• Facebook: facebook.com/houstoncbdsupply
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNv0ap1lxZ4
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/houston-cbd-supply-atascocita

Image Credits
Cassandra Jones