Rabbit and Halo on Missing the Middle of the Pack and What Real Event Activation Looks Like

Monica Devreese is the CEO and co-founder of Rabbit, a running apparel brand celebrating its tenth year in business. Hilary Fenet is the founder of Halo, a platform built to solve the logistics and community gap that exists when runners travel to races. They're sitting at a partnership between their two businesses and a shared belief that the most important runner in the sport is the one nobody is talking to — the middle of the pack. This conversation covers brand building, experiential marketing, the noise problem at race activations, bootstrapping versus outside capital, and why real community only happens in person. Quick note before we get into it. This conversation with Monica Devreese of Rabbit and Hilary Fenet of Halo was recorded a few weeks before there was any business between us. Since then Hilary and the team at Halo have come on as a partner of the show — and that happened because of conversations exactly like this one, not the other way around. You'll hear a proper word from Halo beginning next week. For today, this conversation stands on its own. Topics covered: - How Monica built Rabbit without taking on significant outside capital for ten years - Why the product is the means and the community is the point - How Hilary had her aha moment over Christmas with a piece of yellow construction paper - Why nobody had solved the race travel and community problem before Halo - What a Rabbit clubhouse actually looks like and why it works - The middle of the pack runner — why brands keep missing them and why they're the whole business - ACG's Broken Arrow activation and what nearly a million dollars in brand spend buys you - Whether big brand investment in trail is a rising tide or a dependency risk - How to think about bootstrapping versus angel versus VC capital - Tiny grains of sand — the fundraising advice that changed how Hilary thinks about building - What experiential marketing actually creates versus what a shakeout run creates - The UTMB clubhouse, croissant making classes in Chamonix, and why brands need to show up as your friend **Stay connected:** Hilary on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hilary-fenet-b2b2358/ Halo Website: https://www.poweredbyhalo.com Monica on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/monid/ Rabbit Website: https://www.runinrabbit.com **This episode is supported by:** The Huddle: If you're at the point where going at it alone isn't working or you're ready to level things up in your business, go to https://findmyhuddle.com/ and fill out the application Popfly: If you're a brand trying to reach outdoor, travel, and adventure audiences, Popfly is where to do it. It connects you with the largest communities of adventure creators and handles the entire process from start to finish. Creators click here: https://popf.ly/longrunlabscreators. Brands click here: https://popf.ly/longrunlabsbrands