Kyle Harbaugh did not have a linear path to entrepreneurship. He tried all different kinds of jobs that allowed him to network, learn more from mentors, and get a lot of world experience. This is what led him to find the perfect mentor for what he wanted to do in life.
“After highschool, I went straight into the workforce where I worked in all kinds of different industries from building wooden pallets to cutting concrete and renting cars. All the while, I started playing semi-pro football with 5 of my closest friends, this is where I started to understand the power of networking. I got a chance to play with doctors, successful entrepreneurs and all kinds of other interesting people. I played into my late 20’s and eventually made a small professional arena team. After a string of injuries, I stopped playing at 29 and started to focus on my career. I ended up moving to Las Vegas, NV in 2018 and started doing some body guard work for various celebrities, entrepreneurs and met my current mentor Matthew Morgan who was an established cannabis entrepreneur. I worked for Matt a handful of times when he was in Vegas and every time I would take the chance given to me and pick his brain and start to understand as much as I could about the cannabis industry. Eventually, Matt allowed me to come under his wing and continue studying and working towards getting started in the cannabis industry,” Kyle recounts.
Now, Kyle runs an energy drink business known as Xtract Energy. For those who need a boost in the morning, afternoon, evening, or whenever you are feeling low, Kyle Harbaugh has the energy drink for you. He and his team felt there was a factor of nostalgia that drew them to the energy drink business.
“Energy drinks started becoming popular about the time I was graduating high school. Instead of grabbing a coffee every morning, it’s always been let’s grab an energy drink. For me, it’s a way to remember back to 2002-2003 when it was “cool” to go out and grab these new energy drinks and talk about them with all my friends.
Also I think for my partners and I, energy drinks is something we’ve been drinking for 20 years so it’s been fun working on creating a healthier version of a morning staple that has helped us get our day started,” Kyle explains.
Though the company has been able to overcome it, their biggest challenge thus far has been adapting to the world of covid. The pandemic has posed many issues for them, but they have powered through and kept up their resiliency throughout it all.
“Covid has been our biggest challenge! This has been the World’s biggest obstacle and Xtract has been a project my partners and I have been working on for over 2 years now and when we launched this year a few weeks later everything was shut down. As a start-up company that’s something that could’ve been a costly blow. I have to praise our whole Xtract team and my partners for being able to adapt and develop a new plan that has allowed us to continue operations,” Kyle states.
Kyle created an energy drink that is unlike any other energy drink. The ingredients are thought out and made for the best taste all while combining CBD into the drink to give it great flavor and energy for the customer.
“For us at Xtract it’s the ingredients that really separate us from the rest of the competition. We sought out high quality ingredients like monk fruit and stevia to sweeten our drinks and completely cut out the aspartame. We chose to use a CBD isolate knowing a few other cannabinoids are much more associated with sleep and if we were to add those it would’ve been counterproductive as to what we were trying to accomplish,” Kyle says.
To find out more about Kyle, you can follow him on instagram here and check out his website here.
