We crossed paths with today’s guest at Outdoor Retailer, and we’re excited to have Lizzie Shilko from Revi on the podcast. There are so many incredible founder stories out there, and the lessons that she’s learned along the way are great additions to the “playbook” for starting and growing a company in the outdoor industry, including some of the unconventional (but incredibly effective) things you can do to open up new opportunities along the way.

Listen To Second Nature

She Wore the Same Broken Helmet for 10 Years, Then Built Her Own

Lizzie Shilko wore the same busted ski helmet for more than 10 years, the foam coming loose from its shell, and every year she looked for a replacement worth buying and found nothing she liked. So she wrote a business plan in her notes app and built the helmet herself.

Now just over a year into Revi, she joins Second Nature to trace the path from that note to product on retail shelves: why putting a helmet on someone’s head sells it better than any website copy, the customers who walked into ski shops and pitched Revi to buyers unprompted, and how sharing her story on TikTok, shot on her phone, put her in front of two major retailers who reached out by DM. Lizzie also shares what she’s learned about showing your work as a founder, why she’s choosing slower, more deliberate retail growth over launching more products, how Backcountry Garage fits in, and what she took away from a week at her manufacturer overseeing safety testing.

Episode 179

We Want To Join The Fun

If you’ve been listening to the podcast for a while, you’ve heard us talk about Halo, the platform that helps brands create hotel-based experiences around events, and helps athletes find awesome places to stay during races.

But the thing that we think makes it special is how it helps brands break out of their typical activations and create memorable, elevated experiences for their community.

Aaron loves this idea so much that he wants to jump in on the next round of brainstorming calls with Halo. If you’re a brand and you reach out to Hilary at Halo to learn more about the platform, please tell her you heard about it on Second Nature. If you do that, she’ll add him to join the brainstorming session and we can come up with some really fun concepts together.

If you’re not already familiar with this platform, click here:

Check out Halo

Job Of The Week

🙌 Mons Royale (just on the podcast a few weeks ago!) are looking for a Global Director of DTC, based in Wanaka, NZ.

👟 Veloci is hiring a Social Media Content Lead in Austin, TX.

🇨🇦 LowerLeft Designs is looking for a Director of Operations (based in Squamish, BC).

Article Of The Week

Jonathan Levitt

Brands Don’t Own Their Trust Anymore

Popfly sponsors Long Run Labs and Second Nature, and I pitched them on that partnership this past winter. I’d already been using the platform and wanted every brand I work with on it. So when Taylor and I sat down, I wanted to skip the founding story (Aaron already covered it on Second Nature) and ask him why running, why now, and where creator commerce goes from here…

Read more

3 days ago · Jonathan Levitt

Show Notes

• Lizzie Shilko

• Revi Helmets

• KORE Podcast with Lizzie

• Backcountry Garage

• Revi on TikTok

• Revi on Instagram

Here To Help

The most common refrain we hear from friends working at brands is “we need to find content creators, but we are strapped on time”. This is the exact problem that Popfly has solved. If you’re working at a brand that needs this kind of help, you need to check this out (and tell them we sent you), it’ll be worth it. And…if you’re an athlete or creator, you should definitely get on this platform - there are brands, ready to support you and looking for your talent. We’re using it outside of the podcast and having a lot of success with it - and this is exactly why we wanted to partner with Popfly in the first place. Highly recommended!

Popfly for Athletes/Creators

Popfly for Brands

BPC - Brand, Product, Content

BPC is our closing segment where we share Brands we’ve discovered, Products we’re using and Content that we love.

👉 Gear Envie: This brand was the buzz of Outdoor Retailer, tons of people were walking around the show with these leggings. Have a look!
🍫 Built Puff Bars: Lizzie recommended these bars during our conversation about exploring protein options (and we can now confirm that they are delicious).
🥛 David Milkshakes: David bars have been a mainstay in Aaron’s travel kit, but these new milkshakes are out of control. The vanilla flavor is top tier. If you’re looking for an insane amount of protein and want to try something new, check these out.

Thank You

Next week is episode 180, which feels crazy! We’re bringing it back to our origins with a BroPod. Dylan is back from a wild season of travel, and we finally get a chance to reflect on the year to date. Stay tuned!

Sometimes we talk to people who are specifically creating businesses and brands in the outdoor space, but today we go a layer beyond that to talk about a category being created that will have a huge impact on running, riding, and everything in between. This conversation was fascinating, and toward the end of the episode, we got to dig into the one thing that all of our smart friends are talking about (and doing) in their spare time.

Listen To Second Nature

The Most Overlooked Health Category Nobody Built - Until Now.

Allie Melnick, co-founder of Climatic, joins Second Nature to talk about building an entirely new health category: proactive lung health. A ten-year veteran of Harry's (now Mammoth Brands), Melnick explains why breathing, not legs, not sleep, not gut health, might be the next frontier in everyday performance, and what it actually takes to convince people a problem exists before you can sell them the solution.

She and Aaron dig into Climatic's L-MAX inhaler, the sheep-lung testing and Mount Sinai clinical research behind it, and the surprising communities who found the product before the company expected them to. The conversation also covers the discipline it took to stay patient through a sold-out, scarcity-driven launch, and closes with an unplanned detour into the hidden world of startup advising: how operators with full-time jobs can build equity and expertise on the side, and why a sharp, one-sentence pitch beats being a Swiss Army knife.

Episode 178

Here To Help

The most common refrain we hear from friends working at brands is “we need to find content creators, but we are strapped on time”. This is the exact problem that Popfly has solved. If you’re working at a brand that needs this kind of help, you need to check this out (and tell them we sent you), it’ll be worth it. And…if you’re an athlete or creator, you should definitely get on this platform - there are brands, ready to support you and looking for your talent. We’re using it outside of the podcast and having a lot of success with it - and this is exactly why we wanted to partner with Popfly in the first place. Highly recommended!

Popfly for Athletes/Creators

Popfly for Brands

Job Of The Week

Lots of cool stuff opening up this week! Here are the highlights:

🏔️ Arc’teryx is hiring a Senior Manager, Global Sports &Partnerships Marketing.

🦙 Cotopaxi looking for a Social Media Manager.

🎿 Palisades Tahoe has an open role for Content and Social Media Manager.

⛰️ Big Sky is hiring a Social Media Manager.

🐊 Crocs has an open role for Director, Sports Partnerships.

Article Of The Week

There’s been a lot of discussion online recently about authenticity, meaning, community, content. We recorded a podcast recently where the guest talked about “primitives”, which are the core truths that drive everything. Jeff Pelletier’s latest article is a great reminder of the who, what, and why behind it all:

This article is a year old, but still rings true. Worth a re-read:

Derek Thompson

Everything Is Television

A spooky convergence is happening in media. Everything that is not already television is turning into television. Three examples…

Read more

a year ago · 2789 likes · 36 comments · Derek Thompson

Second Nature Is Supported By Halo

Halo is a hospitality platform built by trail runners specifically for sports and event travel. They work with brands, event organizers and professional leagues to simplify one of the most operationally painful parts of any event: lodging. If you’re a brand thinking about experiential marketing, managing travel for your team or professional athletes, or a league handling lodging for your athletes and fans, Halo’s platform gives your brand a custom hotel booking platform and locks in better rates so you’re not managing hotel logistics from scratch. They’re already working with names like Western States, Aravaipa, Rabbit and New Balance.

And if you’re just heading to a race or event yourself this year, it’s worth checking out, too. Same platform with great rates, community, perks from band partners and less hassle. If any of this sounds like you, reach out to their team and tell them you heard about Halo on Second Nature.

Check out Halo

Show Notes

• Allie Melnick

• Climatic

• Harry's

• Seed

• Mount Sinai Study

• Performance Advisory Board

• Mentorpass

BPC - Brand, Product, Content

BPC is our closing segment where we share Brands we’ve discovered, Products we’re using and Content that we love.

💧 Loonen Water: Allie shared her favorite water, this stuff goes through some serious processing to make it special. Check it out!
🧼 Defense Soap: If you’re outdoors, working hard, and sweating, sometimes normal soap doesn’t cut it after the adventure. After spending an entire summer testing and trying new soaps, Aaron found Defense and absolutely swears by it now.

Thank You

This week’s podcast was about creating a new category in an area that has been entirely overlooked. Next week’s pod is with a founder who is putting a new focus on an existing, but forgotten, category - and it’s fascinating. Stay tuned!

This week’s podcast is with another “BPC Alumni” and someone we discovered through Outdoor Retailer. Dry Brew ended up in our traveling kit instantly, but what fascinated us with John and his team was how they’ve managed to scale the business, and the signals that they’ve followed to get there.

Listen To Second Nature

The team at Dry Brew has arranged for a 20% discount for the Second Nature community. If you want to try it out, hit this link and it’ll automatically apply your discount (or use code SecondNature20 at checkout).

Dry Brew x Second Nature

Building A New Category: The Signal Was The Strategy

John Schade first discovered Dry Brew: a patented, waterless, ready-to-eat cup of coffee, while searching for something better than a mediocre coffee gummy he'd seen on Shark Tank. He reached out to the original founders immediately. It took over five years, and a random cold email in 2024, before he finally got the chance to help build it.

In this conversation, recorded after meeting at Outdoor Retailer through Popfly's Wild Reach program, John walks through Dry Brew's go-to-market journey, starting in aviation with pilots who instantly understood the product, then following that same signal into trade shows, outdoor specialty retail, and eventually Target. He also gets into the patent that protects the entire category, why packaging has to do all the talking on a retail shelf, and the wild, unexpected use cases customers keep finding - including a police officer who uses it for 2am hostage negotiation call-outs.

Episode 177

Here To Help

Popfly actually arranged the introduction to John and his team at Dry Brew as part of their Outdoor Retailer Wild Reach program, and this is another example of how they connect brands and creators in the right place and at the right time. The needs of a brand and the availability of athletes and creators aren’t always lined up perfectly, and what sets Popfly apart is that they make it easy to connect the dots at the perfect time. While this connection happened at a trade show, we’ve personally experienced this same type of connection with multiple brands on their platform - and thanks to their approach, you can dive directly into the work with a brand, instead of all the back and forth that typically takes place.

If you still haven’t had a chance to get a demo from Popfly on their platform, take this as a sign to make it happen. Use the link below to get a custom demo - and if you’re a creator who hasn’t made their profile yet, we highly recommend getting yourself set up on there.

Popfly for Athletes/Creators

Popfly for Brands

Job Of The Week

✅ REI is hiring a Communications Manager, Brand and Product.

👟 Superfeet is looking for a Product Designer.

🤘 People for Bikes has multiple roles open: Executive Assistant, Fleet Forward Program Manager and State Policy Manager.

🚨 Lawyers! Whoop is hiring Assistant General Counsel, Litigation and Goodr is looking for a Director of Legal.

👉 Avelo Running (previously featured on the podcast, pre-launch!) has an open role for a Principal Firmware Engineer.

Article Of The Week

Our friend Kate Courtney made a massive career pivot this season, and it’s been fun to watch her navigate her new world in road racing. This is what she wrote after World Championships this year, and even if you don’t ride bikes, there’s some solid wisdom in here.

The Monday Mantra

Surf the wave.

Mantra: Surf the wave…

Read more

a month ago · 83 likes · 16 comments · Kate Courtney

Also, our friend (and PNW Components Founder) Aaron Kerson wrote this incredible breakdown for calculating your margins. His Substack is filled with plenty more where this came from, have a look!

Second Nature Is Supported By Halo

Halo is a hospitality platform built by trail runners specifically for sports and event travel. They work with brands, event organizers and professional leagues to simplify one of the most operationally painful parts of any event: lodging. If you’re a brand thinking about experiential marketing, managing travel for your team or professional athletes, or a league handling lodging for your athletes and fans, Halo’s platform gives your brand a custom hotel booking platform and locks in better rates so you’re not managing hotel logistics from scratch. They’re already working with names like Western States, Aravaipa, Rabbit and New Balance.

And if you’re just heading to a race or event yourself this year, it’s worth checking out, too. Same platform with great rates, community, perks from band partners and less hassle. If any of this sounds like you, reach out to their team and tell them you heard about Halo on Second Nature.

Check out Halo

Show Notes

• Dry Brew

• John Schade

• Dry Brew on Instagram

• Dry Brew on TikTok

• Final Boss Sour

• Neurogum

• Nathan's Gum

BPC - Brand, Product, Content

BPC is our closing segment where we share Brands we’ve discovered, Products we’re using and Content that we love.

🏃‍♂️ Veloci: These shoes are John’s go-to for running. Fun fact, John’s original photo that he sent over for the episode was in the finish corral of an Ironman. Although this episode was not entirely about trail running or anything specifically outdoor, he’s the real deal!
🙌 Bookshop.org (Second Nature Book List!): Here’s our list of the books that have been recommended on the podcast so far, and in a way that supports local bookstores instead of Amazon. A big thank you to Ming for building this list (since the beginning of the pod!) - have a browse through it, there are some great recommendations in here.

Thank You

Stay tuned for next week, we’re talking about something that everyone needs, no one focuses on, and why it’s a huge opportunity to do the meaningful work of category creation.

Today’s podcast conversation is the perfect encapsulation of bringing an idea to life: it all started as an e-mail titled “Anatomy Of An Idea” and now it’s a global brand about to hit the 20-year mark in business. During this conversation, we were able to get the first few chapters of the Mons Royale story, but hopefully we can get another round with Hamish and Hannah in the future to hear about the rest of their journey.

Listen To Second Nature

How A Brand From The Bottom Of The World Went Global

Hamish and Hannah Acland, co-founders of Mons Royale, join Second Nature to tell the story of building a global merino wool brand from Wanaka, New Zealand. The brand started with an email titled "Anatomy of an Idea" that brought the two of them together. They talk through the founding insight that base layers were the one piece of ski gear nobody had bothered to make exciting, and how they set out to build a global brand from day one rather than a New Zealand one, despite a disastrous first trade show and years of razor-thin margins as distributors took their cut.

Hamish and Hannah are candid about the harder second chapter of the business: losing their creative conviction under pressure from wholesalers, the challenge of scaling a founder-led vision into a real team, and the ongoing tension between growth and funding.

They also get into how "action sports can better people and planet" became the brand's operating mission over the language of sustainability, why Mons Royale built an athlete program when visibility wasn't even possible for a base-layer brand, and what it's taught them about resilience, team-building, and staying global-minded from a town of a few thousand people at the bottom of the world.

Episode 176

Making It Happen

The most common refrain we hear from friends working at brands is “we need to find content creators, but we are strapped on time”. This is the exact problem that Popfly has solved. If you’re working at a brand that needs this kind of help, you need to check this out (and tell them we sent you), it’ll be worth it. And…if you’re an athlete or creator, you should definitely get on this platform - there are brands, ready to support you and looking for your talent. We’re using it outside of the podcast and having a lot of success with it - and this is exactly why we wanted to partner with Popfly in the first place. Highly recommended!

Popfly for Athletes/Creators

Popfly for Brands

Job Of The Week

🏃🏻‍♀️ Hettas, a female-specific running shoe company, is hiring reps in Ontario and British Columbia.

🤘 VF (Vans, The North Face, etc) is hiring a Principal Apparel Prototype Concept Designer.

👉 Brandwave Marketing is looking for a new PR Account Manager, based in the UK.

Article Of The Week

Matt Trappe’s latest article feels like a deep breath - a chance to pause and reflect on where we’re at, and some perspective on where we could go (not just for the outdoor industry, I think this applies well beyond that).

A Matter of Brand

Culture and Running are Changing. Reading the Tea Leaves. No Confetti!

We’re back from summer and coming in hot with new brand storytelling prompts. If you’re a creative person then you’re always paying attention, remembering and filtering back information. This article hits on something my intuitive antennae have been buzzing about for a while now. This one looks at the larger cultural climate we’re entering and how that …

Read more

22 days ago · 11 likes · Matt Trappe

Second Nature Is Supported By Halo

Halo is a hospitality platform built by trail runners specifically for sports and event travel. They work with brands, event organizers and professional leagues to simplify one of the most operationally painful parts of any event: lodging. If you’re a brand thinking about experiential marketing, managing travel for your team or professional athletes, or a league handling lodging for your athletes and fans, Halo’s platform gives your brand a custom hotel booking platform and locks in better rates so you’re not managing hotel logistics from scratch. They’re already working with names like Western States, Aravaipa, Rabbit and New Balance.

And if you’re just heading to a race or event yourself this year, it’s worth checking out, too. Same platform with great rates, community, perks from band partners and less hassle. If any of this sounds like you, reach out to their team and tell them you heard about Halo on Second Nature.

Check out Halo

Show Notes

• Mons Royale

• Hamish Acland

• Hannah Acland

• ISPO

• Mattie Sims on Second Nature

• Robin Goomes

• Future Ground Event

BPC - Brand, Product, Content

BPC is our closing segment where we share Brands we’ve discovered, Products we’re using and Content that we love.

👟 Keen Shoes: Portland based! The Mons Royale team has been rocking Keen shoes lately, and are big fans of the brand.
📕 Belonging (Book): The full title of this book is “Belonging: The Ancient Code Of Togetherness” and it’s written by one of the most sought-after performance coaches in the world.
🎥 Insta360 X6: Aaron’s camera of choice for all things mountain biking. Capture your ride from every angle, no need to worry about missing the shot…ever.

Thank You

Thanks for joining us this week, and stay tuned for next week where we get to talk to a BPC alumni, someone we discovered at Outdoor Retailer and were immediately fascinated to talk to. It’s a story of discovery, scale, and growth, all with the help of a little caffeine!

We’ve talked about partnerships on the podcast in the past, but one topic we really haven’t dug into is affiliate marketing. While we were at Outdoor Retailer, we had the opportunity to talk to one of the best in the business when it comes to understanding the opportunity and requirements to create a successful affiliate business - and we’re excited to share this conversation. This episode is a literal playbook for both brands and athletes to better understand what it takes to succeed in this space.

Listen To Second Nature

Wisdom From A Decade Of Affiliate Marketing

Angie Burnett has spent over a decade in affiliate marketing — starting with coupon sites at 1-800 Contacts, moving through fashion e-commerce, and now leading influencer and affiliate partnerships at Backcountry, a 30-year-old brand she's helped modernize for the creator economy. Recorded live at Outdoor Retailer, this conversation goes deep on what most people get wrong about affiliate marketing and what the best creators and brands are doing differently right now.

Angie breaks down why owning your audience matters more than ever, how she evaluates creators beyond follower counts (including a surprising use of Reddit and Meta's Creator tools), and her own experience growing a Facebook following from 900 to 88,000 in under a year. She also walks through what it actually takes to build an affiliate program from scratch, why newsletters are a much harder affiliate channel than people assume, and how YouTube's new shopping integration is changing the game for creators.

Episode 175

Partnership In Action

Today’s episode is a concrete example of exactly how partnerships come together on Popfly. We wanted to work with Backcountry for a long time, but never knew how to reach the right person at the right time, with the right pitch. When we got onto the Popfly platform, Backcountry was there waiting, and we made a connection that started with one project and quickly expanded to a longer-term partnership. Popfly is an incredible place for brands to connect with athletes and creators - so if you’re working at a brand, use this link to get a personalized demo. If you’re an athlete or creator, use the link to get set up on the platform.

Popfly for Athletes/Creators

Popfly for Brands

Show Notes

• Angie Burnett

• Backcountry

• Popfly

• Wasatch Adventure Dress

• Avantlink

• Impact

• Clique Agency

• MarTec Record (Slack)

Second Nature Is Supported By Halo

Halo is a hospitality platform built by trail runners specifically for sports and event travel. They work with brands, event organizers and professional leagues to simplify one of the most operationally painful parts of any event: lodging. If you’re a brand thinking about experiential marketing, managing travel for your team or professional athletes, or a league handling lodging for your athletes and fans, Halo’s platform gives your brand a custom hotel booking platform and locks in better rates so you’re not managing hotel logistics from scratch. They’re already working with names like Western States, Aravaipa, Rabbit and New Balance.

And if you’re just heading to a race or event yourself this year, it’s worth checking out, too. Same platform with great rates, community, perks from band partners and less hassle. If any of this sounds like you, reach out to their team and tell them you heard about Halo on Second Nature.

Check out Halo

BPC - Brand, Product, Content

BPC is our closing segment where we share Brands we’ve discovered, Products we’re using and Content that we love.

🧼 Koala Eco Veggie Wash: This wash removes residual pesticides, oils, waxes and agricultural chemicals from fruit and vegetables, incredible stuff!
☕️ DryBrew: This might be the final piece of the puzzle to our travel kit. Edible coffee! It’s tasty (comes in three flavors - coffee, caramel, and espresso) and has the same amount of caffiene as a cup of coffee. Perfect for hitting the ground running on a big trip (or any other time you don’t have a proper coffee within arms reach). This has already saved the day more than once!

Thank You

Next week our friends from New Zealand are joining us on the podcast to talk about how they created a company together - and how being so far away from the rest of the world was actually a huge advantage for the brand. Stay tuned!

We’ve talked to more than a few founders on the podcast, but it’s rare to catch someone pre-launch, while they’re sweating the details and doing the heavy lifting to get their idea off the ground. Today’s conversation is exactly that - YJ Tung is creating Foresthill Basecamp (and making solid progress!) and we wanted to check in to see how it’s going - and what we can learn from his experience, while he’s in the thick of it.

Listen To Second Nature

Building in Public: A Basecamp From the Ground Up

YJ Tung is building Foresthill Basecamp — a performance lodge with ten modular cabins at mile 62 of the Western States Trail, featuring saunas, cold plunges, and everything an endurance athlete could want after a long day on the trail. The idea started after a three-hour delirious drive home from his first ultra, and it's now becoming real through a combination of validation, relationship-building, and no small amount of serendipity.

In this conversation, YJ walks through how he and his business partner validated the concept with just $15-20 a day in Meta ads before building anything, how a chance connection in the Second Nature Slack turned into real partnership support, and what it's been like to work his first-ever trade show booth at TrailCon. He also gets candid about losing his father, managing the imposter syndrome that comes with pursuing something this ambitious, and why he's convinced he's exactly the right person to bring this particular idea to life.

Episode 174

Second Nature Is Supported By Halo

Halo is a hospitality platform built by trail runners specifically for sports and event travel. They work with brands, event organizers and professional leagues to simplify one of the most operationally painful parts of any event: lodging. If you’re a brand thinking about experiential marketing, managing travel for your team or professional athletes, or a league handling lodging for your athletes and fans, Halo’s platform gives your brand a custom hotel booking platform and locks in better rates so you’re not managing hotel logistics from scratch. They’re already working with names like Western States, Aravaipa, Rabbit and New Balance.

And if you’re just heading to a race or event yourself this year, it’s worth checking out, too. Same platform with great rates, community, perks from band partners and less hassle. If any of this sounds like you, reach out to their team and tell them you heard about Halo on Second Nature.

Check out Halo

Show Notes

• YJ Tung

• Miwok 100k

• Isaac French

• Unreasonable Hospitality (Book)

• Sally McRae - Western States Film

• East Peak

• SF Run Co

• TrailCon

• Foresthill Basecamp on IndieGogo

• Hitchhiker’s Guide To the Galaxy

• Second Nature Slack

• Autocamp

• Ramble episode on Second Nature

• Snowpeak

• mammoth trailfest.

Here To Help

The most common refrain we hear from friends working at brands is “we need to find content creators, but we are strapped on time”. This is the exact problem that Popfly has solved. If you’re working at a brand that needs this kind of help, you need to check this out (and tell them we sent you), it’ll be worth it. And…if you’re an athlete or creator, you should definitely get on this platform - there are brands, ready to support you and looking for your talent. We’re using it outside of the podcast and having a lot of success with it - and this is exactly why we wanted to partner with Popfly in the first place. Highly recommended!

Popfly for Athletes/Creators

Popfly for Brands

BPC - Brand, Product, Content

BPC is our closing segment where we share Brands we’ve discovered, Products we’re using and Content that we love.

🪏 Trail Work (Book): This book is one of the best resources for trail building currently out there - and the author is one of the people currently helping create the trail system at Foresthill Basecamp.
🤘Without A Doubt - Braydon Bringhurst: Braydon Bringhurst is your favorite mountain biker’s favorite mountain biker. Style, flow, and especially in this video - tenacity. This is Braydon’s first official film with Patagonia, and it’s not what you would typically expect, which makes it even better.

Thank You

Thanks for joining us this week and supporting the podcast - stay tuned for next week’s episode where we dig into the playbook for Affiliate Marketing with someone who has been working in the space for a decade. We recorded it at Outdoor Retailer, and we’re extra excited to share this one, because we haven’t covered affiliate marketing in the past - and this conversation is loaded with insights. Stay tuned!

There’s been a lot of talk in the past few weeks about what brands are doing at events to create experiences, build community, and so on. The majority of those discussions center around how most of these things are starting to look and feel interchangeable to the people experiencing them - and how the value is slipping away. That’s exactly why we wanted to talk to Hilary Fenet about Halo, because she’s creating opportunities for brands to get creative again - and to create meaningful experiences for everyone coming to big races and events.

Listen To Second Nature

The Business Behind the Best Activation at UTMB (And Beyond)

Hilary Fenet just pulled off one of the most talked-about brand activations at UTMB — a full hotel takeover in Chamonix for Rabbit, complete with a clubhouse for the week, community breakfasts, and an espresso cart in the parking lot. But the company behind it, Halo, started with a much smaller and much less glamorous moment: Hilary booking a hotel on the wrong side of a mountain before a race in the Italian Dolomites.

In this conversation, Hilary walks through how a bad hotel booking turned into a genuine business insight — brands were building incredible experiences for their sponsored athletes, but ignoring the people actually buying their gear. She breaks down how Halo builds these activations from the ground up, the data that makes the case for in-person experience over pure digital marketing, and what it actually takes to scale something this bespoke to multiple events happening around the world at once.

Episode 173

It’s Easier Than You Think

We know that working at a brand can feel like a never-ending game of whack-a-mole — plenty of opportunities, never enough bandwidth to get them done. Finding top-tier athletes and creators to develop content for your campaigns is a huge one, and Popfly solves exactly that. You can write a brief for exactly what you need and get it done without a ton of extra effort. If you haven’t already looked into Popfly, it’s worth a closer look - click the link below to get a custom demo.

Popfly for Athletes/Creators

Popfly for Brands

Job Of The Week

🏆 SRAM is hiring in Europe! They just opened up a Marketing Manager role for the region.

⛰️ HOKA has a Product Director role open for their Performance Apparel.

🤘 Chris King Components is looking for a Sales and Marketing Manager in Portland, Oregon. Join this legendary brand (and hang with us in PDX)!

Article Of The Week

This week, it’s not a single article - but an entire library of articles worth digging in to. If you’re not familiar with Dan Coe and The Brand Report, you should be. And in either case, stay tuned, because he’s going to be on the podcast very soon - and we are excited to sit down with him!

Read The Brand Report

Show Notes

• Halo

• Hilary Fenet

• Rabbit

• Monica DeVreese

• Dolomite Skyrace

• Aravaipa

• Citadel Investment Group

• What is a SAFE Note?

• Athletic Brewing on Second Nature

Second Nature Is Supported By Halo

Halo is a hospitality platform built by trail runners specifically for sports and event travel. They work with brands, event organizers and professional leagues to simplify one of the most operationally painful parts of any event: lodging. If you’re a brand thinking about experiential marketing, managing travel for your team or professional athletes, or a league handling lodging for your athletes and fans, Halo’s platform gives your brand a custom hotel booking platform and locks in better rates so you’re not managing hotel logistics from scratch. They’re already working with names like Western States, Aravaipa, Rabbit and New Balance.

And if you’re just heading to a race or event yourself this year, it’s worth checking out, too. Same platform with great rates, community, perks from band partners and less hassle. If any of this sounds like you, reach out to their team and tell them you heard about Halo on Second Nature.

Check out Halo

BPC - Brand, Product, Content

BPC is our closing segment where we share Brands we’ve discovered, Products we’re using and Content that we love.

🏃‍♂️ Rabbit: We are all big fans Rabbit, and the latest activation at UTMB was another incredible entry in their playbook.
📔 Theo of Golden (Book): We hadn’t heard of this book prior to Hilary’s mention of it, but since then, it started showing up everywhere!
💨 Climatic: This product helps clear out your lungs, which has been extremely useful lately with all the forest fires in the Northwest.
📘 War of Art (Book): This book gets read by Aaron on a yearly basis (sometimes more) as a swift kick of motivation. Highly recommended!
📕 Shoe Dog (Book): Hilary highlighted this book as a favorite - and this has been a popular mention by many other guests who are trying to build something meaningful.

Thank You

A big thank you to Hilary and Halo for supporting Second Nature - and to everyone who has been listening to the podcast and joining us in the Slack channel the past few years! Stay tuned for next week’s episode, we’re talking to a founder who is still in the process of creating and launching their vision - a much different inflection point than most episodes of the podcast, but we can’t wait to share it with you. Stay tuned!

This week we had a bonus episode - a crossover with our good friend (and absolute legend!) Rebecca Rusch. The episode was featured on her podcast, What’s The Rusch, but it was such a great conversation, we shared it to the Second Nature channel, too.

Today’s episode was one that we’ve been looking forward to for a long time, we finally had a chance to sit down with Taylor Hoekstra from Popfly. The entire crew at Popfly has been incredible to work with, and they were the first brand to jump in and officially support Second Nature. We recorded this one in person at Outdoor Retailer, with support from the Wild Reach program, which led to a bunch more episodes…stay tuned!

Listen To Second Nature

What Farmers Taught Him About Building A Company

Taylor Hoekstra spent years selling products through an unlikely channel — farmer YouTubers — years before anyone called it the "creator economy." That experience taught him something most people in the outdoor industry hadn't figured out yet, and it planted the seed for Popfly.

Before writing a line of code, Taylor spent two years and roughly 500 conversations validating the idea, testing a simple question: would people actually pay for this? In this conversation, recorded live at Outdoor Retailer, Taylor walks through the classic cold-start problem every founder building a two-sided marketplace has to solve — get supply first, use supply to pull in demand, then reinvest in supply relentlessly. He also gets honest about the early years trying to convince outdoor brands that working with creators was worth their marketing budget, long before it was an easy sell.

Episode 172

Second Nature Is Supported By Halo

Halo is a hospitality platform built by trail runners specifically for sports and event travel. They work with brands, event organizers and professional leagues to simplify one of the most operationally painful parts of any event: lodging. If you’re a brand thinking about experiential marketing, managing travel for your team or professional athletes, or a league handling lodging for your athletes and fans, Halo’s platform gives your brand a custom hotel booking platform and locks in better rates so you’re not managing hotel logistics from scratch. They’re already working with names like Western States, Aravaipa, Rabbit and New Balance.

And if you’re just heading to a race or event yourself this year, it’s worth checking out, too. Same platform with great rates, community, perks from band partners and less hassle. If any of this sounds like you, reach out to their team and tell them you heard about Halo on Second Nature.

Check out Halo

Job Of The Week

👉 Vibram is hiring for two jobs: Product Developer (Footwear) and West Coast Sales Manager, both based in Portland, Oregon.

Show Notes

• Taylor Hoekstra

• Popfly

• Wild Reach Program

• Camp Chef

• Cold Start Problem

Here To Help

This week’s episode was a deep dive into the backstory of Popfly, the first brand to officially support Second Nature. While you might have learned the founding story and gotten some insight into the business, we know that every brand and business has its own specific needs. Use the link below to get a customized demo, and the crew at Popfly will get you all dialed in.

Popfly for Athletes/Creators

Popfly for Brands

BPC - Brand, Product, Content

BPC is our closing segment where we share Brands we’ve discovered, Products we’re using and Content that we love.

🙌 Outdoor Retailer: This year’s event in Minneapolis was all about discovery. We met so many new brands and saw the energy of the region come to life in a major way.
⌚️ Amazfit T-Rex 3 Pro: Taylor’s new watch - and first wearable!
⚓️ Shackelton's Voyage: One of the most incredible (and true) stories - Endurance is the story of a mission to the South Pole where everything goes wrong, and everyone survives.
✈️ 57 Hours: Aaron’s newest find at Outdoor Retailer, this travel company works with guides all around the world to unlock unique outdoor experiences. Sign us up!

Thank You

Stay tuned for next week’s episode, we’re checking in with someone who had a breakout business experience in Chamonix.

Thank you to everyone who completed our listener survey, too - your feedback was incredibly helpful!

Thank you to everyone who has contributed to our listener survey so far - we’re just about to close it up, so if you haven’t already shared your input (it takes about 90 seconds) with us, now is definitely the time. We have learned a lot from the feedback so far, and we’d love to hear from you if you haven’t already contributed to this form. Help us make Second Nature even better by sharing your thoughts here:

Take Our Listener Survey

How To Build a Business, Not Just a Following

Alyssa Olenick, known online as Doc Lyss, has spent the last eight years building a seven-figure fitness and training business while simultaneously earning a PhD in exercise physiology. She started with $35-a-month one-on-one coaching over Google Sheets and a MacBook that literally overheated. Today she runs a training app, a coaching team, and a quarter-million-follower community built on a simple philosophy: talk to your customers, act fast, and never stop iterating.

In this conversation, Alyssa breaks down what it actually took to build a business that didn't feel real until nearly a decade in, why she turned down far more brand deals than she accepted, and what "world-building" really means in modern marketing: the idea that people buy into an identity, not just a product. She also gets candid about the hardest season of her business, the difference between growing a business and running a company, and why she deliberately paused an entire second brand for years because she knew she couldn't do both well at once.

Episode 171

Here To Help

The most common refrain we hear from friends working at brands is “we need to find content creators, but we are strapped on time”. This is the exact problem that Popfly has solved. If you’re working at a brand that needs this kind of help, you need to check this out (and tell them we sent you), it’ll be worth it. And…if you’re an athlete or creator, you should definitely get on this platform - there are brands, ready to support you and looking for your talent. We’re using it outside of the podcast and having a lot of success with it - and this is exactly why we wanted to partner with Popfly in the first place. Highly recommended!

Popfly for Athletes/Creators

Popfly for Brands

Job Of The Week

👉 Wahoo is hiring a Director of Marketing & Customer Growth. Check out the other roles listed on this link, too - there’s some interesting stuff, like a Running Product Manager and Retail Specialist for KICKR Run.

😳 If you listened to last week’s episode with the Bentonville crew and thought “that’d be fun to work with them”, here’s your chance!

Article Of The Week

UTMB is everywhere this week, so here’s something completely different: a story about the MADE Show, where beautiful custom bikes and brands come to shine.

n-1

2026 MADE Show tech gallery, part 1

Read more

2 months ago · 41 likes · 13 comments · James Huang

Show Notes

• Alyssa Olenick

• DocLyssFitness

• The Lyss Method

• DocLyss Newsletter

• DocLyss YouTube Channel

• Alex Hormozi

• Shelby Sapp

• Codie Sanchez

• Yeti

• ShopMy - Alyssa's Storefront

• NoBull

• Ozlo Sleepbuds

Second Nature Is Supported By Halo

Halo is a hospitality platform built by trail runners specifically for sports and event travel. They work with brands, event organizers and professional leagues to simplify one of the most operationally painful parts of any event: lodging. If you’re a brand thinking about experiential marketing, managing travel for your team or professional athletes, or a league handling lodging for your athletes and fans, Halo’s platform gives your brand a custom hotel booking platform and locks in better rates so you’re not managing hotel logistics from scratch. They’re already working with names like Western States, Aravaipa, Rabbit and New Balance.

And if you’re just heading to a race or event yourself this year, it’s worth checking out, too. Same platform with great rates, community, perks from band partners and less hassle. If any of this sounds like you, reach out to their team and tell them you heard about Halo on Second Nature.

Check out Halo

BPC - Brand, Product, Content

BPC is our closing segment where we share Brands we’ve discovered, Products we’re using and Content that we love. Alyssa went for the trifecta: usually our guests just drop a Brand, Product, or a piece of Content, but she brought all three!

⛰️ SENIQ: Alyssa’s go-to for stylish AND functional hiking gear. If you missed it, we just had the founders of SENIQ on the podcast a few weeks back. Check it out here!
⛷️ Halfdays: Another outdoor gear brand that has caught Alyssa’s attention - bringing both style and functionality to the world of outdoor.
⌚️ Suunto Race 2: Alyssa’s go-to watch for training and running at the moment.
🏆 Courtney - Post Hardrock Interview: Courtney’s champions interview post-Hardrock win, full of energy after a mega effort to smash the course record.
🎥 HoverAir X1 ProMax: Aaron’s latest camera test - this drone follows you (up to 37 mph) and films in 4K.

Thank You

We just got home from Outdoor Retailer, where we were able to capture a bunch of interviews for the podcast. Stay tuned, next week’s pod is a fascinating insight into a platform that we’ve come to know and love.

This week, we’re launching a listener survey. It’s a quick one, but it’ll help us keep delivering great episodes for you. It takes about 90 seconds to get through, and there are a few areas to add even more information if you want to share. We truly want to hear from you! Please click this link and let us know how we can continue to make this podcast better and better:

Take The Listener Survey

The Bentonville Blueprint

Gary Vernon, Scott King, and Aimee Ross have spent a combined half-century building what is now one of the most significant mountain bike destinations in the world. What started in 2006 as a five-mile trail system in Bentonville, Arkansas has grown into 600 miles of trail across the region, 1,200 miles statewide, and most recently, a lift-access bike park with its own chairlift, restaurant, and membership model.

In this conversation, the three founders walk through the design principles that made it work: building for beginners first, focusing on progression, and the decision to build within city limits rather than isolating trails on private land. They also break down the economics of trail building compared to traditional recreational infrastructure, what it actually took to build a 38-trail bike park in under two years, and the advice they give every community that calls asking "how do we become the next Bentonville".

Episode 170

Second Nature Is Supported By Halo

Halo is a hospitality platform built by trail runners specifically for sports and event travel. They work with brands, event organizers and professional leagues to simplify one of the most operationally painful parts of any event: lodging. If you’re a brand thinking about experiential marketing, managing travel for your team or professional athletes, or a league handling lodging for your athletes and fans, Halo’s platform gives your brand a custom hotel booking platform and locks in better rates so you’re not managing hotel logistics from scratch. They’re already working with names like Western States, Aravaipa, Rabbit and New Balance.

And if you’re just heading to a race or event yourself this year, it’s worth checking out, too. Same platform with great rates, community, perks from band partners and less hassle. If any of this sounds like you, reach out to their team and tell them you heard about Halo on Second Nature.

Check out Halo

Job + Article Of The Week

We’re combining the article and job of the week section this week to share the lastest listings from WIRE. 90+ open roles! (Some of these are also listed in our Jobs channel in the Second Nature Slack Channel, often by the hiring manager. Join us there if you haven’t already!)

WIRE: The Work in Running Email™

90+ Open Roles: Brooks, Mizuno, Girls on the Run, PUMA, Raide, Nike, and More

Note: This newsletter is long and could get cut off by some email services. Click the headline (90+ Open Roles) to view it online…

Read more

2 months ago · 6 likes · 1 comment · Mike Hahn

Show Notes

• Scott King

• Aimee Ross

• Gary Vernon

• Tom Walton

• OZ Bike Park

• OZ Trails

• Discovery Loop

• IMBA

• Transform Your Community (Gary's TED Talk)

• IMBA Trail Labs

• Gravity Logic

Here To Help

The most common refrain we hear from friends working at brands is “we need to find content creators, but we are strapped on time”. This is the exact problem that Popfly has solved. If you’re working at a brand that needs this kind of help, you need to check this out (and tell them we sent you), it’ll be worth it. And…if you’re an athlete or creator, you should definitely get on this platform - there are brands, ready to support you and looking for your talent. We’re using it outside of the podcast and having a lot of success with it - and this is exactly why we wanted to partner with Popfly in the first place. Highly recommended!

Popfly for Athletes/Creators

Popfly for Brands

BPC - Brand, Product, Content

BPC is our closing segment where we share Brands we’ve discovered, Products we’re using and Content that we love.

🤘 Cone valve suspension: We had to google this one - it’s a really cool style of suspension for moto (and will probably show up on MTB at some point).
🍺 Sierra Nevada NA: Aimee shared this NA beer with us - which may end up in our rotation this summer. It’s awesome that there are more and more NA options popping up, we’re here for it.
🏍️ Triumph Daytona: Two moto references in one podcast! This looks fast…
📕 The Design Way (Book): The rest of the book title goes like this: “Intentional Change In An Unpredictable World”. Enough said - this one is going on the list!
⚡️ Marin Alpine Trail EXR (Aaron's Bike): This is one hundred percent fun on two wheels - Aaron’s latest e-bike, just ready to rip right out of the box. The “XR” stands for Extra Rad, which means the parts on this bike are as good as you can get. E-Bikes continue to get more and more fun, and this one is no exception!

Thank You

Stay tuned, next week’s podcast is with someone we met at TrailCon. As soon as she started sharing her insights at our event, we knew we needed to get her on the podcast. Next week’s episode is about building an empire from scratch!

This week’s conversation with Annijke Wade was a fascinating insight into an athlete who is opening doors for other athletes and helping events develop an entirely new category of competitor. We love having conversations on the podcast about how athletes work with brands, but it’s not too often you hear about athletes working with the events themselves to open the doors for even more people to participate. We hope you enjoy this conversation as much as we did!

Listen To Second Nature

The Athlete Who Thinks Like a Founder

Annijke Wade became an adaptive mountain biker in 2021 after a downhill accident left her with a spinal cord injury. Four years later, she's racing at events like SBT Gravel and Sea Otter Classic, running a nonprofit called Dirt Bound that develops para athletes, building a content strategy sophisticated enough to land her in a Meta Creator program, and already planning for goals she can't quite reveal yet for 2027 and 2028.

In this conversation, Annijke and Aaron dig into what's changed in adaptive mountain biking over the last five years, how she thinks about building a career that doesn't depend on race results or viral moments, and what it actually takes to convince race organizers to include para athletes. They also get into her content strategy — from 822 followers to 10,000, the loop format, and working with Meta on creator growth — and what brands should look for when building long-term athlete partnerships.

Episode 169

Here To Help

The most common refrain we hear from friends working at brands is “we need to find content creators, but we are strapped on time”. This is the exact problem that Popfly has solved. If you’re working at a brand that needs this kind of help, you need to check this out (and tell them we sent you), it’ll be worth it. And…if you’re an athlete or creator, you should definitely get on this platform - there are brands, ready to support you and looking for your talent. We’re using it outside of the podcast and having a lot of success with it - and this is exactly why we wanted to partner with Popfly in the first place. Highly recommended!

Popfly for Athletes/Creators

Popfly for Brands

Job Of The Week

There are a mountain of new roles this week - most of them originally appeared in our Slack channel. If you’re not already there, here’s the link to join us!

🐐 Our friends at Backcountry have two roles open: Senior Director, Performance Marketing and Vice President, Performance Marketing.

🙌 Join the team at Skratch! They also have two openings: Director of Commercial Sales and Fractional Growth Marketing Leader.

👟 Avelo, the smart footwear brand we interviewed before their launch, is looking for a Head of Marketing.

👉 Keen has a Senior US Community & Partnerships Manager, Running role open - based in their Portland office.

⛰️ Raide has four new jobs open in their Boulder office: Design Director (Equipment & Apparel), Head of Sales, Product Development & Production Manager, Customer Support Agent.

🚴 Apidura has three roles in their Camden, UK location: Sports Marketing & Community Manager, Technical Repair Specialist, Product Developer.

🎥 Fiska Media has three openings at their agency: Email Marketing Specialist, Graphic Designer, Senior Account Manager.

There’s a lot more besides open roles in our Slack channel. If you haven’t joined us yet, now would be a great time to hop in!

Join Second Nature Slack

Article Of The Week

The data always tells the real story - here’s a breakdown of the shoe selection at Western States, and what that might mean for the brands represented (or not represented, in some cases).

Trail Waves

Buy, Sell, or Hold: The Shoes of the 2026 Western States 100

Going viral is a strange experience. It’s not clear to me why so many people and brands optimize for it. Seems like you’d always be chasing the next big moment or clever post. And, naturally, I predict that would lead creators toward making content for…

Read more

2 months ago · 6 likes · 1 comment · Seth LaReau

Show Notes

• Annijke Wade

• Bowhead Bikes

• Martyn Ashton

• Rideable Now

• Rebecca's Private Idaho

• Annijke's Shreddit Film

• Dirt Bound

• Dialed Creator Program

  ---

  Second Nature Is Supported By Halo

  Halo is a hospitality platform built by trail runners specifically for sports and event travel. They work with brands, event organizers and professional leagues to simplify one of the most operationally painful parts of any event: lodging. If you’re a brand thinking about experiential marketing, managing travel for your team or professional athletes, or a league handling lodging for your athletes and fans, Halo’s platform gives your brand a custom hotel booking platform and locks in better rates so you’re not managing hotel logistics from scratch. They’re already working with names like Western States, Aravaipa, Rabbit and New Balance.

  And if you’re just heading to a race or event yourself this year, it’s worth checking out, too. Same platform with great rates, community, perks from band partners and less hassle. If any of this sounds like you, reach out to their team and tell them you heard about Halo on Second Nature.
  

  Check out Halo

BPC - Brand, Product, Content

BPC is our closing segment where we share Brands we’ve discovered, Products we’re using and Content that we love.

🏆 Lael Wilcox: Arguably one of the greatest endurance athletes of all time? She’s on a mission to break the world record for circumnavigating her bike around the globe!
🦷 Matador - refillable toothpaste: Annijke brought another new discovery to our ongoing travel kit. Add this one to the list!
😴 Ozlo Sleepbuds: Get REM sleep on an airplane? Aaron swears by these sleepbuds (which just released a 2.0 version recently) for all his traveling and sleeping needs. Highly recommended.
✈️ TRTL Travel Pillow: Another standby in our travel kit - this neck wrap looks a little funny, but works like a charm.
🎥 Any One Of Us (Film): Designed to be the “field guide for spinal cord injury”, this film was created to help people going through life-changing injury (and those supporting them) have a clearer picture of what to expect.

Thank You

Stay tuned for next week, we’ve got the mastermind(s) behind the city - and trails - of Bentonville joining us on the podcast. We went deep with them about what they did; but more importantly, the elements that ANY city or region could do to create a community (and the opportunities that follow).

Imagine if your parent company had all of the industry data for nearly all the retail shops in your country. How might you, as a brand, use that information to make decisions about your brand, business and products? That’s exactly the information that today’s guest, Jill Nazeer, has access to - and it’s led to some incredible innovation in the industry.

Beyond the data, Jill has some incredible experience working with not only brands and products, but athletes, too. This conversation was a really fun deep dive into all the stuff we love the most - we hope you enjoy it as much as we did!

Listen To Second Nature

How One Brand Can Predict the Industry's Next Move

Jill Nazeer is the brand marketing manager at Salsa Cycles and one of the most experienced athlete and content marketers in the bike industry. Before Salsa, she was at Diamondback during one of the most interesting periods in mountain bike content history: when Seth from Berm Peak was just a guy with a cool YouTube channel, and Eric Porter was figuring out what adventure content could look like. She helped build what became one of the most effective creator rosters in the industry, almost by accident.

In this conversation, Jill walks through what she learned about athlete marketing at Diamondback, how Salsa's relationship with parent company QBP gives them an unusual data advantage in the industry, and why she spent two years making penny farthing jokes before becoming a true believer in 32-inch wheels. She also gets into what brands get wrong about the DTC vs. bike shop debate, why the bike shop still matters more than most people think, and the Columbia Expedition Impossible campaign — which might be the most creative brand marketing move of the year.

Episode 168

It Could Be Easier..

As you listen to today’s episode, you’ll hear everything that someone in Jill’s role at a brand has to handle to keep things moving forward. Trying to add “build a creator program from scratch” on top of all that is daunting! This is the exact problem that Popfly has solved. If you’re working at a brand that needs this kind of help, you need to check this out (and tell them we sent you), it’ll be worth it. And…if you’re an athlete or creator, you should definitely get on this platform - there are brands, ready to support you and looking for your talent. We’re using it outside of the podcast and having a lot of success with it - and this is exactly why we wanted to partner with Popfly in the first place. Highly recommended!

Popfly for Athletes/Creators

Popfly for Brands

Show Notes

• Jill Nazeer

• Salsa Cycles

• Eric Porter

• Berm Peak

• Mike Hopkins - Dream Ride

• Micayla Gatto

• QBP

• Surly

• Salsa Fargo 32

• Unbound Gravel

• Wanderosa

• SENIQ on Second Nature

Job Of The Week

🚀 Our friends at Skratch are looking for a Director of Commerical Sales.

👉 Field Mag is hiring a new associate editor role - here’s everything you need to know.

🏆 BibRave has an opening for a Business Development Lead.

Article Of The Week

Tour de France Femmes is in full swing - and while we (hopefully) all recognize how powerful and valuable it is, here’s the data to back it up!

Built on Bikes

The Tour de France Femmes Is the Most Important Race in Cycling. Here Is Why.

Hot off the heels of the Tour de France, the Tour de France Femmes Avec Zwift kicks off in less than 24 hours. The race packs all the excitement of the men’s event into nine stages and features just as many star athletes across sprint, mountain, and breakaway stages. Despite receiving less overall airtime than the men’s race, a str…

Read more

3 months ago · 5 likes · 5 comments · Kyle Dawes

Second Nature Is Supported By Halo

Halo is a hospitality platform built by trail runners specifically for sports and event travel. They work with brands, event organizers and professional leagues to simplify one of the most operationally painful parts of any event: lodging. If you’re a brand thinking about experiential marketing, managing travel for your team or professional athletes, or a league handling lodging for your athletes and fans, Halo’s platform gives your brand a custom hotel booking platform and locks in better rates so you’re not managing hotel logistics from scratch. They’re already working with names like Western States, Aravaipa, Rabbit and New Balance.

And if you’re just heading to a race or event yourself this year, it’s worth checking out, too. Same platform with great rates, community, perks from band partners and less hassle. If any of this sounds like you, reach out to their team and tell them you heard about Halo on Second Nature.

Check out Halo

BPC - Brand, Product, Content

BPC is our closing segment where we share Brands we’ve discovered, Products we’re using and Content that we love.

🌎 Columbia Expedition Impossible: Jill highlighted this campaign from Columbia, effectively challenging the flat earthers to find the edge of the Earth, using their gear. It’s a clever approach that ties in the brand and product to the challenge (and the prize is pretty spectacular, too - I bet their legal team had fun with that one).
🔥 Backcountry Slickrock Kit: Aaron has been switching it up this year and ditching all his black riding gear in favor of bright, colorful kits. Backcountry supports Super Rider, and their Slickrock kits have been the perfect fit for riding this season.
🙌 Wild Rye: Cassie Abel - founder of Wild Rye - was featured on the podcast about a year ago. We’re big fans of Wild Rye, and now that we think of it, we should probably have her back on the podcast for an update!
🤘 Shredly: This was the first mention of Shredly on the podcast, but after recording, we dove into the brand to check it out. Give Shredly a look if you haven’t already!

Thank You

Next week’s episode is titled “The Athlete Who Thinks Like A Founder” and we can’t wait for you to hear it! Thanks so much for joining us this week, and if you’re not already with our community in the Second Nature Slack channel, here’s a link to make it happen:

Join Second Nature Slack

There’s something to be said for the BPC-to-Podcast Guest pipeline that seems to be forming. Some of our favorite episodes have come from Brand recommendations in previous episodes, and this conversation with SENIQ is exactly that. Mattie Sims recommended SENIQ, and we knew we had to invite them on the podcast. Co-founders Tina and Madi both joined the podcast for an unfiltered discussion about building the brand from scratch - and how they went from filling in a business plan template to filling orders for REI.

Listen To Second Nature

What Victoria's Secret Taught Two Founders About the Outdoor Industry

Tina and Madison started SENIQ after nearly a decade building careers at Victoria's Secret and Backcountry — and it turns out the most important lessons they carried into their brand came from a lingerie company, not an outdoor retailer. Growing up in a world where women sat on every leadership team and product innovation was the quarterback of the business shaped how they think about building SENIQ from the ground up.

In this conversation, the co-founders of SENIQ walk through the full story — writing their business plan on a template they found online, moving into their parents' basements in Columbus, Ohio to launch, and trusting their gut to launch a ski collection six months in, despite every mentor telling them not to. They also get into how low-res iPhone content consistently outperformed expensive campaign shoots, why co-founders who disagree on everything make better brands, and how to figure out which voices to ignore when you're building something nobody has built before.

Episode 167

A Word About Our New Partner: Halo

Halo is a hospitality platform built by trail runners specifically for sports and event travel. They work with brands, event organizers and professional leagues to simplify one of the most operationally painful parts of any event: lodging. If you’re a brand thinking about experiential marketing, managing travel for your team or professional athletes, or a league handling lodging for your athletes and fans, Halo’s platform gives your brand a custom hotel booking platform and locks in better rates so you’re not managing hotel logistics from scratch. They’re already working with names like Western States, Aravaipa, Rabbit and New Balance.

And if you’re just heading to a race or event yourself this year, it’s worth checking out, too. Same platform with great rates, community, perks from band partners and less hassle. If any of this sounds like you, reach out to their team and tell them you heard about Halo on Second Nature.

Check Out Halo

Job Of The Week

🚀 Red Bull is looking for a Director of Sports Marketing in the Southeast Region, based in Miami.

⛰️ REI is hiring a remote-eligible position for Marketing Program Manager - Impact.

☀️ Arizona Sports Enterprises has a Sports Partnerships job open.

Article Of The Week

Co-founder of SENIQ (and featured on the podcast this week), Valentina Thompson, has her own newsletter where she shares her experience as a founder.

Detours with Valentina

The Founder's Guide to Preparing for Your First Asia Factory Trip

It’s taken weeks to digest the trip that defined my year, opened my eyes, and completely changed my brain chemistry as both a founder and a human…

Read more

4 months ago · 2 likes · Detours with Valentina

Show Notes

• Tina Thompson

• Madison Hilson

• SENIQ

• Backcountry

• Business Plan Template

• SENIQ Instagram

• Mattie Sims on Second Nature

Here To Help

The most common refrain we hear from friends working at brands is “we need to find content creators, but we are strapped on time”. This is the exact problem that Popfly has solved. If you’re working at a brand that needs this kind of help, you need to check this out (and tell them we sent you), it’ll be worth it. And…if you’re an athlete or creator, you should definitely get on this platform - there are brands, ready to support you and looking for your talent. We’re using it outside of the podcast and having a lot of success with it - and this is exactly why we wanted to partner with Popfly in the first place. Highly recommended!

Popfly for Athletes/Creators

Popfly for Brands

BPC - Brand, Product, Content

BPC is our closing segment where we share Brands we’ve discovered, Products we’re using and Content that we love.

🙌 Primally Pure Deodorant: Madi shared this all-natural deodorant brand - and recommended the Vanilla + Citrus option.
🏔️ GorpGirls x Oboz: The GorpGirls hiking collective collaborated with Oboz, and if you look closely at some of the images on the page, you can also see them proudly rocking SENIQ gear.
🥳 Never Slept, Always Dreamed - Nike Knicks Ad: Nike celebrated the Knicks win with this ad.
🏆 Dream Crazier - Nike Ad: A great example of an “anthem” style ad that Nike put together. This is one of their best!
⌚️ Garmin 970: Aaron’s new GPS watch - finally upgraded after too many seasons relying on an Apple watch - picked up from Tina and Madi’s previous employer, Backcountry.
🗺️ Detours With Valentina: If you want to follow along with the SENIQ journey, Tina has a Substack where she shares the behind-the-scenes details of the founders journey. We linked it in our “article of the week” today, too - check it out!

Thank You

What a week! We are grateful to have the support of this community, as well as our partners Halo and Popfly. Next week, we welcome a friend onto the podcast who shares her experience working with creators, launching new categories, and the data that drives all those decisions. Stay tuned!

We started this conversation on stage at TrailCon, but when the panel was over, we realized we had so much more to dig into. The original panel was “Athletes As Creators”, so we picked it up from there and kept it going. Tommie shared his approach to brand partnerships, content creation, and his approach to growth. This is Tommie’s first appearance on the podcast, but certainly not the last.

Listen To Second Nature

He Never Wanted to Go Viral. That's Why Brands Trust Him.

Tommie Runz started running in 2018, a year after choosing sobriety, and began documenting the journey simply because it felt good to share progress and get encouragement. Seven years later, he's built an audience of over 30,000 through nothing but consistency and honesty — no viral moments, no big follower jumps, just a steady climb built entirely on trust.

In this conversation, Tommie and Aaron pick up where they left off after a live panel at TrailCon, digging into what it actually looks like to build a career as an athlete-creator without compromising who you are. Tommie breaks down why he's turned down "ambassador" deals that undervalue creators, how relationships with brands often take years rather than emails to develop, and the moment he realized his content needed to sound exactly like him or it wasn't worth doing at all.

Episode 166

You Can Do It

If you’re an aspiring creator, looking to walk the path that Tommie talked about in today’s episode, Popfly is the best way to make that happen. On the Popfly platform, there are brands, ready to support you and looking for your talent. We’re using it outside of the podcast and having a lot of success with it - and this is exactly why we wanted to partner with Popfly in the first place. Highly recommended!

Popfly for Athletes/Creators

Popfly for Brands

Job Of The Week

If you’re on the hunt for a job in the industry, this newsletter has all the goods!

WIRE: The Work in Running Email

100+ New Roles: Strava, HOKA, Smith Optics, norda, Nike, and More. FT/PT/Remote

Note: This newsletter is long and could get cut off by some email services. Click the headline (100+ Roles) to view it online…

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3 months ago · 3 likes · 1 comment · Mike Hahn

Show Notes

• Tommie Runz

• Tommie on Instagram

• Tommie on YouTube

• PR Project (Podcast)

• Asics

• Mack Baker (Asics)

• Cosign Creative

• The Tommie Runz Show (Podcast)

• Broken Arrow

• Tommie on Freetrail

• TrailCon

BPC - Brand, Product, Content

BPC is our closing segment where we share Brands we’ve discovered, Products we’re using and Content that we love.

🎽 Currently: Tommie came through with Brand, Product AND Content this week on the podcast. If you haven’t had a look at Currently yet, take this as a sign - they just released eyewear, too!

🎙️ Best Running Podcasts: After our podcast with Centium, Hans Kristian Smedsrød took inspiration from the lessons in the episode and created the highest ranked website for best running podcasts! And yes, Tommie’s podcast, PR Project is on there!

👉 Precision Hydration: Precision has been supporting Tommie at his big races this season - including Western States, which he just completed.

🏔️ Aaronnomics: Tommie shared another outdoor creator that he’s discovered, check him out!

Thank You

Stay tuned for next week, we’ve got an outdoor clothing brand that took inspiration from a very different place than most brands. They were previously mentioned in a BPC segment, and we know you’re going to love next week’s podcast as much as we did.

Steve Holmberg and Matt Trappe return! We got to spend a lot of time together recently during the week of TrailCon, and wanted to share out the emerging trends in trail running (and beyond) and the discussions that we had a chance to participate in. Trappe also built out an incredible house with amazing people, soul-nourishing food and deep conversations - so we dug into the behind-the-scenes story of how it all came together (and what’s next).

Listen To Second Nature

State of the Industry: Trail Running at TrailCon

Steve Holmberg and Matt Trappe are back for a debrief on one of the biggest weeks in trail running — Broken Arrow, Western States, and everything in between at TrailCon. Steve breaks down his state-of-the-industry analysis: why trail running's rebrand from "ultra running" unlocked massive new participation, why the sport is about to fragment the way mountain biking did decades ago, and why brands chasing "max" specs are about to pivot to "right" specs built specifically for trail.

Then Matt takes listeners inside a project few people got to experience firsthand — a house in Tahoe built with Skratch and other partners, designed to bring brand leaders, athletes, and creators together without competitive walls. He explains the intention behind it, what happened when 37 of 40 people in the room spoke up during an unscripted conversation, and why some of the best moments of the week happened specifically because they weren't being recorded.

Episode 165

We Saw It Happen

We had the Popfly crew rolling with us at TrailCon, and it was so fun to introduce them to our friends who work in the industry, because it felt like everyone had been looking for a solution to the problem that Popfly solves. They connect athletes and creators with brands and businesses in the outdoor, travel and adventure space. At this point, you’ve likely heard about Popfly, but I would seriously encourage you to look into this platform if you haven’t already. There’s something special going on here, and seeing brands discover this in real time at TrailCon only solidified that for me.

Popfly for Athletes/Creators

Popfly for Brands

Article Of The Week

Perfectly timed with our state of the trail running industry episode, Seth LaReau’s shoe sponsorship power rankings for Q2 just dropped. Read on!

Trail Waves

The Trail Running Shoe Sponsorship Power Rankings (Q2 2026)

It’s been a whirlwind of a summer. I spent the last week of June at TrailCon and Western States, my next door neighbors’ house burned down on the Fourth of July, and I’m now on an annual family camping trip in the Santa Cruz mountains. The internet here is spotty, I’ve been trying to unplug as much as possibl…

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3 months ago · 1 like · Seth LaReau

Show Notes

• Steve Holmberg

• Matt Trappe

• Insight Accelerator

• Matter of Brand

• TrailCon

• Tommie Runz

• Salomon TV - Trail Dogs

• Salomon TV - Bill Dooper

• WSJ on Trail Running

• Broken Arrow

• ACG

• Freetrail

• Tantrums

• Amazfit

• Skratch

• SF Run Co

BPC - Brand, Product, Content

BPC is our closing segment where we share Brands we’ve discovered, Products we’re using and Content that we love.

🎥 "Raise The Bar" Film: This film by Hilary Yang and Carrie Highman follows the journey of the women at Western States: Heather Jackson, Cindy Shepard, Fuzhao Xiang and Eszter Csillag.
⚡️ Marin Rift Zone EL XR: Steve got his first taste of eMTB this past week on Aaron’s bike, and after seeing the look on his face, we doubt it will be his last e-bike ride. The EL version of this bike is a “light” e-bike, meaning it has a smaller/lighter battery, making the bike handle like a normal mountain bike. Just enough assist to keep things fun!
🎯 Golden Hour Racing Shirt: Aaron swooped Matt Trappe’s latest Auteur Sportif shirt at TrailCon, the “Golden Hour Racing” shirt. There is a full capsule on the Auteur Sportif site if you want to check it out!

Thank You

A big thank you to everyone who joined us at TrailCon for the panels, meetups, and conversations. It was great to meet so many of you in person at the event, and we’re already excited for next year.

We’ve been recording a ton of podcasts lately, and there are some incredible conversations coming your way. Stay tuned!

Ramble was a BPC entry from Mel Strong a few months back, and if you know anything about this podcast, you know that we are her biggest fans and will follow any and all of her recommendations. So it was only a matter of time before we got the founder of Ramble, Matt Oesterle, on the podcast with us to learn more about his business. And not only how it’s going today - but how he got here, from choosing the idea and his thoughtful approach to the experience.

Listen To Second Nature

The Last Time Someone Reinvented Camping Was 1962

Matt Oesterle built his first company, Callisto Media, from zero to $85 million in revenue by using data to disrupt the book publishing industry. Then he sold it to Penguin Random House and asked himself: what's the next industry that hasn't been forced to evolve? The answer was camping — an industry whose biggest brands were founded in the 1960s and haven't changed much since.

In this conversation, Matt walks through the framework he uses to pick businesses, how he designed the Ramble campground experience from scratch, and what it takes to build a hospitality brand that maintains a 4.98-star review score while scaling to 100+ locations. He also gets into the role of data versus instinct in entrepreneurship, why type two fun is a hiring requirement for his team, and why you don't have to be a sociopath to build something great.

If you've ever looked at an industry and thought "someone should fix this" — this is the episode for you.

Episode 164

Here To Help

The most common refrain we hear from friends working at brands is “we need to find content creators, but we are strapped on time”. This is the exact problem that Popfly has solved. If you’re working at a brand that needs this kind of help, you need to check this out (and tell them we sent you), it’ll be worth it. And…if you’re an athlete or creator, you should definitely get on this platform - there are brands, ready to support you and looking for your talent. We’re using it outside of the podcast and having a lot of success with it - and this is exactly why we wanted to partner with Popfly in the first place. Highly recommended!

Popfly for Athletes/Creators

Popfly for Brands

Article Of The Week

Jonathan Levitt worked with Michael Rueckert from Centium AI (check out Michael’s episode on Second Nature here) put together this giant study about running brands and AI. How are people finding the best running shoes, the best races, and everything else? That’s exactly what this study is all about. They went deep, have a look!

Jonathan Levitt

How AI Recommends Running Brands in 2026: The Largest Study Yet.

A growing share of runners have stopped Googling “best trail shoe” and started asking ChatGPT, Gemini, or Claude. Whatever the model says back is the new top of the funnel. I wrote about that shift a while ago in The New Top of Funnel Is a Chat Reply…

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3 months ago · 3 likes · 4 comments · Jonathan Levitt

Show Notes

• Matt Oesterle

• Ramble Campgrounds

• Next Ventures

• Mel Strong on Second Nature

• Callisto Media

• HipCamp

• Net Promoter Score (Term)

• Solo Stove

• Zendesk

• The Everything Store (Book)

BPC - Brand, Product, Content

BPC is our closing segment where we share Brands we’ve discovered, Products we’re using and Content that we love.

🏔️ RAB: This mountaineering gear looks legit! Matt Oesterle shared this as his brand, one that he relies on for all of his adventures in the mountains.
📈 The Algorithm (Book): The ex-President of Tesla Motors shares the framework(s) that Elon Musk instilled in him as they ran and developed the company.
🚀 MFM Pod - The Algorithm Author: If you don’t want to read an entire book, but you still want access to the frameworks and ideas, this episode of MFM covers pretty much everything (also, MFM is one of our favorite podcasts).
🤖 New Yorker Profile - Sam Altman: “Can He Be Trusted” is the byline of this article. AI has made a dramatic impact on our world already, and this guy has a lot to do with that (for better or worse).

Thank You

A big thank you to Mel Strong for making the introduction to Matt and the team at Ramble. Stay tuned for next week, Steve Holmberg and Matt Trappe return to the podcast to talk about emerging trends in the outdoor industry.

There’s a short list of “dream guests” for our podcast, and Martyn Ashton has been on this list since we started. The list of reasons why we admire him is a mile long, but his latest effort - launching Rideable Now - is what we want to share with everyone. Adaptive mountain biking is going through an incredible phase of innovation at the moment, and Martyn’s efforts are making those bikes more attainable and visible.

Listen To Second Nature

If this episode resonates with you and you’d like to support Rideable Now, here’s the link to do so. Join Aaron (and many others) in supporting the cause with a £5 monthly contribution.

Support Rideable Now

Martyn Ashton on Rideable Now and the Future of Adaptive MTB

Martyn Ashton spent two decades as one of the most influential trials riders in the world — making the smallest, most niche discipline of mountain biking accessible and exciting for a global audience through videos, shows, and a personality that made everyone feel like they could try it. In 2013, a crash during a stunt show left him paralyzed. Now he's doing the exact same thing all over again — this time for adaptive mountain biking.

In this conversation, Martyn walks through the founding of Rideable Now, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to helping people with disabilities and life-changing injuries access adaptive mountain bikes. He explains why modern adaptive bikes aren't a watered-down version of mountain biking — they're genuinely terrifying, capable machines that unlock every trail in the world for people who never thought they'd ride again. He also gets into the economics of £25,000 bikes, why the e-bike power race could go too far, and the moment he gave away Rideable Now's first complete bike to a father of three who had no idea it was coming.

Episode 163

We Keep Hearing This

We just got back from TrailCon, and the conversations we had with brands there all pointed to the same struggle. They know they need to be working with creators, but most of them are too busy to find the right ones and get it off the ground. This is the exact problem that Popfly has solved. If you’re working at a brand that needs this kind of help, you need to check this out (and tell them we sent you), it’ll be worth it. And…if you’re an athlete or creator, you should definitely get on this platform - there are brands, ready to support you and looking for your talent. We’re using it outside of the podcast and having a lot of success with it - and this is exactly why we wanted to partner with Popfly in the first place. Highly recommended!

Popfly for Athletes/Creators

Popfly for Brands

Article Of The Week

A big congratulations to Seth LaReau for one year of Trail Waves. Amazing how much can change in a year!

Trail Waves

A Year Ago, This Newsletter Didn't Exist. Last Weekend, It Brought Me to Western States.

[Note: this post contains a lot of pictures and videos and may be truncated in some email clients. I suggest clicking through to read the full post on Substack…

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4 months ago · 22 likes · 18 comments · Seth LaReau

Matt Trappe created an incredible space in Tahoe last week - where we were invited to host a night for an offline Second Nature conversation. This is a mega update from Matt, including some TrailCon/WSER stuff, and then some. We’re going to have him on the pod to dive even deeper into this, but this is a solid preview!

A Matter of Brand

From the Front Row at TrailCon and Western States

A lot to unpack here. I was busy. Hang on, this one’s a banger…

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4 months ago · 12 likes · 8 comments · Matt Trappe

Job Of The Week

💧 HydraPak is hiring a Content & Social Media Strategist.

🟧 ACG has a role open in Shanghai, China leading Sport and Marketplace Integration.

🚀 Our friends at Popfly are hiring a Client Success & Partnerships Manager.

🏃‍♂️ Tailwind Nutrition is looking for an Associate Creative Director.

Show Notes

• Martyn Ashton

• Rideable Now

• Bowhead Bikes

• Cole Bernier

• Annijke Wade

• Random Tandem

• Dirty Tricks and Cunning Stunts

• GMBN

• Rideable Now Membership

• Disabled Dad Of Three

• High Fives Foundation

BPC - Brand, Product, Content

BPC is our closing segment where we share Brands we’ve discovered, Products we’re using and Content that we love.

💨 Topeak Electric Tire Pump: Tire pumps have come a long way in the past few years - no more manually pumping your tires on the side of the trail (or anywhere else). As an added bonus, all these electronic pumps typically have a digital tire pressure gauge included. Too easy!
🤯 Stashed Spacerail (10% discount link): Martyn and Aaron both swear by this bike storage setup, and if you haven’t seen it yet - now’s the time. Getting bikes up off the floor makes a HUGE impact on your space (and organization), and the way Stashed puts it all together makes it super easy to install and use. Game changer!

Thank You

Thanks for listening to this week’s episode - this one meant a lot to us. Next week’s episode is with a founder who was previously mentioned on BPC by one of our favorite recurring guests. Stay tuned!

To be honest, we thought this episode was going to be a straightforward discussion about heat training and the tools to get the job done. What we didn’t expect was a deep conversation about completely changing directions with your career, and the intention and framework to think about that decision. This episode has two chapters, really, and they’re both fascinating.

Listen To Second Nature

You’ve Heard Of Heat Training. Here’s How It Actually Works.

Ross McGraw has had one of the more interesting career arcs in the outdoor industry — from Nike's NYC Run program to Vice Media and Viacom, to helping build Hammerhead through its acquisition by SRAM, and now leading commercial efforts at CORE, the company changing how elite athletes think about heat.

In this conversation, Ross breaks down the science of heat training in plain language — why 80% of the energy athletes generate is thermal, how heat zones work, and why the world's best cyclists and runners are training in heat suits before major races. He also gets into what it felt like to go from being a cog in a media machine to betting on himself in sports tech, why triathlon taught him more about business than any corporate job, and how to know when you're doing the "social run" version of your career.

Episode 162

Here To Help

The most common refrain we hear from friends working at brands is “we need to find content creators, but we are strapped on time”. This is the exact problem that Popfly has solved. If you’re working at a brand that needs this kind of help, you need to check this out (and tell them we sent you), it’ll be worth it. And…if you’re an athlete or creator, you should definitely get on this platform - there are brands, ready to support you and looking for your talent. We’re using it outside of the podcast and having a lot of success with it - and this is exactly why we wanted to partner with Popfly in the first place. Highly recommended!

Popfly for Athletes/Creators

Popfly for Brands

Job Of The Week

💪 Exos is looking for a Director of Sports Media, PR & Social.

Article Of The Week

This week at TrailCon, we got to spend a lot of time with incredible people. Dan Coe is one of those people, and his work with The Brand Report is worth checking out (and bookmarking) if you haven’t already. Super thoughtful, well-researched articles that will be a great resource for anyone in the outdoor industry (and beyond).

Read: The Brand Report

Show Notes

• Ross McGraw

• CORE

• CORE Heat Suit

• CORE Heat Zones

• Hammerhead

• Zwift Bike

• Wahoo Firmware Update

BPC - Brand, Product, Content

BPC is our closing segment, where we share Brands we’ve discovered, Products we’re using and Content that we love.

⚽️ World Cup - Adidas ad: This ad resonated with so many people, and has now made a few appearances in BPC. If you haven’t already watched this whole video start to finish, take this as a sign.
💨 Breathe (Book): We sometimes take the act of breathing for granted, but this book gives new shape to it. Aaron read this a while ago and the lessons are still sticking with him (see the next line, too).
🤐 Respire Mouth Tape: Aaron’s been on a quest to find the best mouth tape, especially since Amazon has some weird rules around it. This one has been the best (so far), if you’re looking to tape your mouth shut when you sleep, too. 😆

Thank You

To everyone who came up to see us at TrailCon to say hi and talk about the podcast: thank you so much. We put a ton of effort into making this podcast happen, and it means the world to hear from you. Thank you for supporting Second Nature!

Next week’s podcast is an extra-special one, with an incredibly inspiring figure in the world of adaptive sports (and one of Aaron’s personal heroes). Stay tuned!

Mattie Sims, the co-founder of Courier and Mate the Agency, joins the podcast this week. Originally we thought we’d have a great check-in about Courier, since it’s been about a year and a half since we’ve checked in on the pod. But Mattie had so much more to share; this conversation is loaded with some incredible insights for entrepreneurship, brand building and beyond. We hope you enjoy this conversation as much as we did!

Listen To Second Nature

Courier x Second Nature

To celebrate this episode and the Second Nature community (not to mention the second appearance of a Courier co-founder on the podcast), Courier is giving a 15% discount to Second Nature listeners. Use code SECONDNATURE15 at checkout!

Courier Socks

The One Question Every Brand Needs To Answer

Mattie Sims has built brands at Lululemon, Electronic Arts, Reef, and Rally Pickleball — and along the way developed a framework for brand building that most founders skip entirely. Now she's applying everything she's learned to two ventures at once: Courier, a performance sock brand built around the idea of the "Renaissance athlete," and Mate the Agency, a brand strategy firm working with founders across industries.

In this conversation, Mattie walks through the muse framework she learned at Lululemon and has refined across every role since — why the most important question isn't "who buys this product" but "what is this person worried about when their head hits the pillow at night." She also gets into why looking branded is not the same as having a brand, what happened when Rally discovered their customers weren't there for pickleball, and why having her son was the thing that finally convinced her she could be an entrepreneur.

Episode 161

Here To Help

The most common refrain we hear from friends working at brands is “we need to find content creators, but we are strapped on time”. This is the exact problem that Popfly has solved. If you’re working at a brand that needs this kind of help, you need to check this out (and tell them we sent you), it’ll be worth it. And…if you’re an athlete or creator, you should definitely get on this platform - there are brands, ready to support you and looking for your talent. We’re using it outside of the podcast and having a lot of success with it - and this is exactly why we wanted to partner with Popfly in the first place. Highly recommended!

Popfly for Athletes/Creators

Popfly for Brands

Job Of The Week

🚀 The Athletic is looking for a Head of Social and Off-Platform Growth.

📲 Aravaipa is hiring a Social Media Manager.

🏔️ This Area Community Director (USA) role at Arc’teryx is still open. Check it out!

Article Of The Week

Every article that Seth LaReau drops is an instant read - we’re forward to seeing him at TrailCon and having these kind of in-depth conversations in real life!

Trail Waves

Who's Actually Betting on Trail Running?

Nike put ACG on Olympic athletes, decked out the Western States champion in a prototype cooling kit, and spent $225,000 to sponsor major prize purses for Broken Arrow and Gorge Waterfalls. Yet the company discloses $0 in trail or outdoor revenue and barely mentions ACG on its earnings calls…

Read more

5 months ago · 19 likes · 9 comments · Seth LaReau

Show Notes

• Mattie Sims

• Courier Socks

• Mate The Agency

• Rally Pickleball

• Mate IG Carousel Link

• Carrie Rheaume (Mate agency co-founder)

• Matt Sims

• Gartner Hype Cycle

• Morgan Tuohy

• Dera

• Ryan Thrower

BPC - Brand, Product, Content

BPC is our closing segment where we share Brands we’ve discovered, Products we’re using and Content we love.

🎯 Seniq: Mattie shared this clothing brand that is absolutely nailing it with their muse, which was perfectly in line with our discussion about brands on the podcast. Stay tuned, the co-founders of Seniq will be on the podcast soon!
😎 Summer Edition - Red Bull: There’s a wild story behind the original Summer Edition (different flavor than this year), if you haven’t listened to the podcast episode yet, it’s worth sticking around to hear this story.
🤯 Billy Oppenheimer’s newsletter: One of Aaron’s favorite weekly reads - the latest issue had a story about “treating everything as extraordinary”, which is a great reminder for all of us.

See You At TrailCon!

Only a few more days until we head to Tahoe for TrailCon, please come up and say hello if you’re there - and join us Wednesday morning at 9am for the Second Nature Social in the Alpenglow room. See you soon!

We met Tom Austen at Sea Otter earlier this year, and after a few minutes chatting with him, we knew there needed to be a dedicated episode with his story. We’ve been using Pelotan for a while (Jeremy Dunn brought it as a BPC for the famous “you can just do things” episode), and now we have the full story.

👉 There is a reference in this podcast to the Gartner Hype Cycle, definitely have a look at this, because it’s appeared in multiple conversations since then. This feels like the perfect visual representation of what many of us have gone (or will go) through.

Listen To Second Nature

The Sunscreen Brand That's Rewriting Performance Science

Tom Austen is the founder of Pelotan, the world's first sun performance brand, and co-founder of Chance Running, a trail running apparel brand he's building with pro athlete and serial entrepreneur Christian Meier. Both brands are based in Girona, Spain — a two-square-kilometer pocket of world-class endurance athletes, cafes, and startups that's become the Boulder of Europe.

In this conversation, Tom walks through how Pelotan went from a sunburn problem on training rides to winning two Tour de Frances with Team Sky in its first year, and how the brand is now pioneering something entirely new: treating the sun as a performance variable rather than just a health risk. He also gets into the Chance origin story, why cross-pollination across categories is the key to building something original, and what it's like to run two high-growth startups at the same time from a city of 100,000 people.

Episode 160

Here To Help

The most common refrain we hear from friends working at brands is “we need to find content creators, but we are strapped on time”. This is the exact problem that Popfly has solved. If you’re working at a brand that needs this kind of help, you need to check this out (and tell them we sent you), it’ll be worth it. And…if you’re an athlete or creator, you should definitely get on this platform - there are brands, ready to support you and looking for your talent. We’re using it outside of the podcast and having a lot of success with it - and this is exactly why we wanted to partner with Popfly in the first place. Highly recommended!

Popfly For Creators

Popfly For Brands

Job Of The Week

👉 Arc’teryx is hiring an Area Community Director for the USA. Check out this job description…this looks really interesting.

Article Of The Week

Congrats to our friend Jonathan Levitt for making the leap one full year ago! Interesting to read his experience over the past year, it’s been fun to watch this unfold (and we’re extremely grateful for his support via the Long Run Labs Network).

Jonathan Levitt

One Year of Betting on Myself

A year ago I left a job I’d held for over a decade…

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5 months ago · 20 likes · 21 comments · Jonathan Levitt

Show Notes

• Tom Austen

• Pelotan

• Chance Running

• Second Nature - Sea Otter Episode

• Christian Meier

• The Gartner Hype Cycle

• Pelotan Apres Aftersun

• Pelotan App for Second Nature listeners

• Broken Arrow Skyrace

• Lael Wilcox

BPC - Brand, Product, Content

BPC is our closing segment where we share Brands we’ve discovered, Products we’re using and Content we love.

🥦 Nomio: How far would you go for a performance boost? How about drinking broccoli juice? This was the first we’d heard of this magical elixir, but Tom says it’s legit!
🏆 Adidas World Cup ad: This reference is going to appear in upcoming episodes, and it’s clear after watching this why it made such an impression on so many of our guests.
⚽️ Nike - Airport soccer: Another legendary World Cup ad from many years ago, we had to dig deep on YouTube to find this one!
🎥 Insta360 GO Ultra: Aaron’s go-to lightweight 4K camera, the size of a GoPro battery! This thing has some serious power, and you won’t even notice it’s there.

Thank You

Next week we’re bringing on an incredibly talented guest who has co-founded both a brand as well as a brand agency. She shares some incredible frameworks that anyone can apply and follow - and gave us so much insight into her approach to entrepreneurship. We can’t wait to share this one with you!