At 64 years old, Rayburn admits he smokes marijuana. Like many in his generation, he smoked for the first time in high school. Today, Rayburn considers himself an occasional user, although for very different reasons — he has glaucoma, and his medical marijuana card provides him relief when the condition flares up from time to time.

“You can feel that coming,” he says. “It’s not a regular thing, but it’s nice to have [marijuana]. It has no side effects.”

Rayburn’s personal impetus for diving into the cannabis business came in 2015, when a friend he’d known for decades was sent to hospice care near the end of a 12-year fight with multiple myeloma.

The cancer, which damages the bones, immune system, kidneys and red blood cells, had been extremely difficult. But soon after going into hospice, he called Rayburn to tell him he smoked marijuana for the first time.

For the first time in two years, Rayburn’s friend didn’t feel miserable. He had slept through the night and eaten real food when he woke up.

Tears welled in Rayburn’s eyes. He wiped them away as his friend asked, “What do you think about all that?”

Rayburn’s answer: “I think you should smoke some more marijuana.”

The pair had grown up together on the East Side of Cleveland and watched their fathers play golf together. They had also worked together, played a lot of golf themselves and often argued about who was the better golfer.

“He was one of those tough Irish guys that played football, basketball and baseball,” Rayburn says. “That’s why he was able to fight cancer so long, in my opinion.”

His friend’s experience made the idea of starting a medical marijuana company a personal passion for Rayburn. In 2016, he started attending national conferences to learn what he could, and he and his business partner Scott Halloran visited production facilities, mainly in Colorado and California.

Research had shown medical marijuana could relieve pain and anxiety, and be used to treat depression and Crohn’s disease. Today, Ohio allows medical marijuana use for 21 qualifying conditions, including PTSD, traumatic brain injury, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, HIV, AIDS and epilepsy.

The more Rayburn learned, the more he believed. And while he admits there is a profit margin to any business, a driving force was to do something that would benefit people like his friend.

“One of the biggest rewards is having people tell me their stories, whether it’s their direct story, or about their father or friend,” he says. “And it doesn’t get old. It never does.”

Stories have even come directly from Buckeye Relief employees. As the company’s cultivation technology director, Jeremy Shechter ensures the right amount of water, fertilizer, carbon dioxide and light is delivered to each plant using a central automated environmental control system. He also has his own card to relieve chronic back pain.

“I developed a love for working with the plants and developing the systems that keep them alive,” he says. “It’s probably one of the most challenging plants of our time, due to the lack of research around the plant and understanding of it, because it’s been illegal for so long.”

Rayburn doesn’t wait in his office to greet visitors. Instead, he walks out to the entrance to shake hands and introduce himself.

The Grateful Dead devotee and former minor league baseball team owner doesn’t look like your typical high-level executive. His untucked, pale green shirt with brown pants and canvas shoes suggest a more easygoing approach to doing business.

“It’s sure fun to learn,” he says. “We’re proud of this facility and it speaks a lot about the way we do business.”

With a career that’s spanned many different industries and taken a few unusual paths, Rayburn has always been successful, gaining knowledge and insight along the way.

He spent a few years working in sales for a wine company while living in a $400-a-month apartment in Sausalito, California. But he returned to Cleveland in 1979 and took over Flexalloy, an industrial distribution business that sold parts for heavy trucks such as Freightliner Trucks, in 1981. Over 18 years he helped it grow from one office and 20 employees to locations in 13 cities, including ones in Canada and Mexico, with 385 employees.

Rayburn had gone into debt to secure the company though, and when the opportunity to sell and erase that debt came along, he took it. On April 10, 1999, Rayburn sold Flexalloy, setting him up for life.

“I celebrate that day every year,” he says.

In 2000, he founded Big Game Capital, a private equity investment firm that dipped a toe in the water of medical marijuana by investing in cannabis companies and ancillary businesses that provided insurance and financial support. He also bought a minor league baseball team and became a minority owner of the Cavs.

The baseball venture started in 2000 when he purchased the Daytona Cubs, a High Class A minor league team in Florida now called the Tortugas.

“It was for sale and it was about a minute from the beach,” says Rayburn.

During his introductory press conference, a fan Rayburn dubbed “Front Row Joe” because he attended more than 1,000 consecutive games, asked what the new owner knew about running a team.

“I said, ‘I don’t know anything about running a baseball team, but I know a lot about being a baseball fan,’ ” says Rayburn.

That kind of honest, can-do attitude has helped Rayburn take risks, attract investors and garner loyalty from his employees.

It shines through at Buckeye Relief when he gives tours of the facility, where the hallways are polished clean and Grateful Dead posters and photos of Cleveland taken by his wife Heather hang on the walls.

He dons scrubs and fist-bumps

employees while advising visitors not to touch the plants.

“We want to educate people as to the controls, the precision, the cleanliness and the sterility of our operation,” says Rayburn. “It is all done to promote high quality and prevent contamination.”