Blending Passions and Purpose: Jake Sitler on Cycling, Entrepreneurship, and Innovating with Endo Tune Up

As someone who has excelled in professional cycling and now in the business world with Endo Tune Up, how do you see the skills and disciplines from your cycling career translating into your role as an entrepreneur and business owner?

Jake: I think elite athletics and business can be very similar in the sense that both carry a whole lot of unknowns. Both require a high level of risk vs. reward and to not overstate the obvious but hard work. Cycling was very survival-based in the sense that each season’s results would determine if you even had a job the following year, and I think in the early phase of growing a company, that can feel very similar at times. Uncertainty, especially in the hemp industry, really takes a special character to truly endure its ebbs and flows while still "loving" the game. As a cyclist, there were days where I dreaded going out to ride 4 hours, but you’d still kit up and get out the door; business is the same. Not every day is perfect but the only time you really lose is when you don’t even try.

What inspired you and Jamie to start Endo Tune Up, and how did your professional cycling background influence the development of your hemp-derived beverage line?

Jake: In 2018 I was home during a break in racing and I was on a normal training route when a driver ran through a red light and burst my L2 vertebrae and herniated a few discs. At the same time, Jamie was working as a teacher for teenagers with autism, and medical cannabis was being rolled out in the state. Both of us during that time in our lives saw the benefits of CBD:THC and made it our mission to try and destigmatize the plant. I didn’t know what I wanted to do next with my career but with the passing of the farm bill I believed there was this whole new market that essentially presented itself overnight. On the flip of that, we have this amazing local community in Lancaster PA that embraces change but it needs to be presented in the right format. I always loved the Amsterdam style café as I raced in Europe a fair amount so we wanted to replicate a similar space but keep it bike-themed. We opened Endo café in downtown Lancaster city, which is actually a double entendre for the bike trick ‘endo’ and the endocannabinoid system. In reality, the tune-up is really just an athletic recovery sparkling water. We’ve worked on some really cool technology the past few years for our hemp-derived beverage line, some ingredients the top-level professional cyclists use for competition as well. Regardless we don’t want us to fully put ourselves in the athletic niche because we feel like our brand can relate to all consumers.

With your educational background in entrepreneurship and management, how has your formal education impacted your approach to business planning, financial analysis, and overall business development for both Endo Tune Up and your other ventures?

Jake: To be honest, I think it’s been a mixture of life experiences mixed with education. My family owned a grocery store from 1931 to 2017. I always worked at the store growing up, and went to university to study entrepreneurship. I stayed a 5th year to receive my MBA, and learned a tremendous amount during my time there. One aspect that has always stuck with me the most from my entrepreneurship professor is making sure you launch your business in a blue ocean. A café would be considered a red ocean (everyone’s doing it), a hemp-derived café that makes its own D9 beverage line? Well, that’s a little more blue. But regardless I think growing up in a grocery store that was a staple in a community has really shaped the way Jamie and I approach business. We are self-funding Endo, probably to the point it's kept our growth solely organic and slower, but we feel like it’s allowed us to stay fully in touch with our community. The most important aspect to us is their feedback, and making products that they like and are good for them. Once we started really exploding within our city we knew we had a product that we felt confident sending out into the world.

Looking ahead, what are your long-term goals for Endo Tune Up, and are there new product innovations or expansions in the pipeline that you’re particularly excited about?

Jake: To be honest, the thing I feel most excited about is the government work and what we believe will come from that. When we launched the Endo tune-up, we saw a huge opportunity with alcohol losing so much market share. I collectively got the support of every single beer wholesaler in the entire state and that’s what’s allowed me to push forward positive movement within PA. I actually went as far as to get district attorney approval to manufacture hemp D9 beverages and then have intimately worked with every regulatory agency for the past 12 months. We don’t need to recreate the wheel. We have regulatory bodies in place so let’s just get appropriate taxations, label guidelines, and 21 plus. If I was to sit and wait, the multi-state cannabis operators would have just swooped in this year and lobbied against hemp because they’re “losing market share”. Fortunately, we are beating them to the punch and they aren’t nearly the powerhouse of alcohol. Also, we are an ag-heavy state and let’s be honest, these big cannabis orgs aren’t helping any small farmers, and frankly, we believe in better access for the general public. At the end of the day, the general public should be able to decide if they want to put this medicine in their bodies and how. This access will only help small business, farmers, the everyday consumer, and cannabis as a category as a whole. As far as product expansion, we are currently distributing through alcohol wholesalers in Massachusetts, New Jersey, and we just picked up 2 more states which should be announced soon. Since we are self-funding we need to be careful with how we expand, but our main plan has been to surround our home state of PA.

Based on your journey, what advice would you give to aspiring entrepreneurs looking to enter the health and wellness industry, particularly those interested in creating innovative products?

Jake: Become an expert and walk the talk. Invest in your industry, and get involved with your community. I really feel like in the health and wellness industry that sometimes people just see a trend and they chase it for the money. I’ve met countless people who ‘used’ to be in the CBD industry but it didn’t become what they expected. Jamie and I have relied on this plant since we opened Endo through highs, lows, trends, and lack of regulatory oversight. Because of that, we mainly just focused on what we can control and that’s our brand and how our customers feel about an Endo product in their hand and the experience they have when they visit our café. Frankly, the Endo tune-up is the first time we’ve distributed a product, but it was also the first product I was willing to expose us on based on the opportunity I saw ahead. It almost felt like our whole past 4 years of work was for that moment. I think with the rise of social media, targeted advertisements, and SEO brands can reach a broad audience quickly but on the flip side of that, consumers are becoming more cognizant of authenticity and story. While this is probably my bias to growing up in a small business, I think it’s important to have a strong community foundation before you scale.

How do you balance the demands of being a professional cyclist with your entrepreneurial endeavors, and what tips do you have for others trying to maintain excellence in both their professional and business lives?

Jake: I know for a fact that I wouldn’t be able to handle the work and stress of our business if it wasn’t for the bike. While at one point in my life it was much more serious, and every minute in the saddle had a purpose. Now it’s just as purposeful but in a different way. It’s a place where I can collect my thoughts, spend time with my 2 boys (they’re usually in the cart, bike seat, or riding along), and I use that time to come up with some of our best ideas. Cycling truly is a huge part of my striving for balance and I make sure I get in at least an hour every day for my mental health. The most important thing to Jamie and I is being a family first and showing our boys how to be confident little dudes. It’s really hard to relate your work adventures to your little kids, but I think when they see mommy and daddy running or biking, they can relate to that movement and it just gives them so much confidence. The best part of my day is watching my little dudes shred on their bikes.

Given the rapidly evolving landscape of the hemp and CBD industry, how do you stay ahead of industry trends and regulatory changes, and how do these factors influence the innovation and development of new products at Endo Tune Up?

Jake: I think this comes back a little bit to what I said earlier about being actively involved in your state and the regulation aspect. I want my café to be able to maintain as is, while also embracing the future of our state with marijuana. We actually have 47 different products we offer, from indoor-grown hemp flower to balms, tincture, soft gels, and gummies. It’s important our consumers can still get access to these products and then if the market fits we can take our brand loyalty and produce for the marijuana space as well. But for that to realistically happen we will be very cautious as it’s our belief over-regulation/taxation has not allowed a ton of true entrepreneurship to survive without large cash influxes.

From an innovation perspective, we really are excited about the tune-up and our water technology. It’s different than anything on the market and from a brand perspective that makes us very unique. A lot of the current brands out there purchase from a beverage ingredient supplier, whereas we are more craft in that we’ve developed our own approach. We do a zero sugar sparkling water with 4 natural flavors, and a nitro cold brew with our direct-sourced beans from our café. Both beverages have zero aftertastes and are extremely health forward.

As far as industry development and saturation, when we originally launched the tune-up, we took a play from OG Dick Yuengling as our slogan is “Pennsylvania’s original 420 beverage.” With the category rapidly expanding, we want to lean into our roots and story while we solidify ourselves as the brand that made Pennsylvania possible for everyone else.

Sustainability and ethical sourcing are becoming increasingly important in the beverage industry. Can you discuss how Endo Tune Up addresses these concerns, particularly in the sourcing of your hemp and the production of your beverage line?

Jake: We have a 2000 sq ft indoor grow about 15 minutes from our café. We formed an amazing partnership with our grow team and together we have been able to sustain the grow until we get regulatory changes. Everything is done indoors with the cleanest techniques possible, and the flower is amazingly medicinal. A lot of medical patients in our city will come to us after visiting the dispensary from our high CBD forward flower and they will cut their marijuana with it for a more enjoyable experience. This has always allowed us to form a relationship with our department of agriculture and show them there are brands doing seed to sale in our commonwealth.

The enjoyable experience users get from our flower is exactly what we wanted to recreate with the tune-up. Each can delivers 4mg of THC and 20mg of CBD. It’s a very pleasant ratio and light effect, as our goal is a product that isn’t making people want to hide in a corner but rather be a functional, mellow, recovery-based, and social experience. Our technology is super unique in that all the ingredients have their own health benefits that we’ve used in one way or another in other use applications.