Mike Rabil and his little brother have been hard to separate for as long as they can remember.

Rabil, the “tall, big-boned” older brother of lacrosse superstar Paul Rabil and their sister Rebecca, played a handful of sports as a child. Paul watched, eagerly awaiting a time when he could play with his big brother. Mike was a strong swimmer in all strokes, as was Paul, who specialized in the breaststroke. Mike played the role of center in basketball, while Paul was a quick and agile guard. They played soccer, too, but lacrosse was where the brothers bonded.

“They played every day in the backyard with the neighbors — outdoors was their other competitive landscape,” said their father, Allan Rabil. 

The Rabil brothers picked up the sport when a neighbor gave them their first sticks as gifts — the start of a lifelong venture. Since then, they’ve taken different career paths, but Mike has maintained a passion for the game throughout.

While his brother became the face of lacrosse, Mike Rabil found his calling in entrepreneurship, from owning Snap Fitness gyms across Maryland to building Endurance Companies — an investment holding company in San Francisco. He continues to channel that spirit in his newest endeavor, working with his little brother to launch the Premier Lacrosse League, where he serves as the CEO. He’s as excited about working with his brother as he has been for any of his previous stops.

“We wanted to help the game and help these players who have invested so much time and sweat equity into the pro game,” Mike Rabil said. “If we can do that, then all of a sudden we give all these people that have come before us and paid homage to the Native American community who brought us this game, all the legends of the game, an opportunity to grow it. ... That’s personally where I get a lot of energy. I think about the community and how passionate people are about this. It gives me a lot of energy and makes me want to jump out of bed fast.”

In fact, lacrosse has always been in the older Rabil’s life, starting from the time that he played the role of backyard defenseman against his brother. His large frame made it an easy decision to place him on defense. 

That towering presence certainly had its benefits, Allen Rabil said. Mike was the protector of the family.  

“One late Saturday evening, a stranger rang our doorbell,” Allan Rabil said. “I answered because I thought I knew the person, but then he started begging for money. At first, he would not go away, and then suddenly, he ran away to his truck. I thought I had done a good job, until I turned around and saw Michael had snuck up behind me with a baseball bat. He was only in eighth grade.”

Mike Rabil played lacrosse at Watkins Mill (Md.), but bloomed late in his career. By that point, the 280-pound defensive tackle had committed to play football at Dartmouth.

Between high school seasons, Rabil dropped to as few as 230 pounds to adapt to the speed of lacrosse in the spring. He entertained playing both sports at Dartmouth, but the workload and fitness demands for each sport made it too difficult a task to undertake. He left lacrosse for the time being, while his brother began building a name for himself at DeMatha (Md.).

“I had always missed playing lacrosse,” Mike Rabil said. “There’s this beauty to the game that when you’re in it, it doesn’t feel like anything else. … It’s not as much militaristic as football. Football did a lot of things for my life. In football, it’s like, ‘Do your job. Take care of your guy, and the rest will take care of it itself.’ In lacrosse, it’s like, you have to do your job, but also help and do a lot of other jobs as well.”

Rabil knew he had the traits to be a successful entrepreneur. His father was a paper salesman for more than 30 years. Many members of his extended family were small business owners. He ran lemonade stands and worked at a local ice cream shop as a child. He worked construction during high school while interning on Capitol Hill. But Dartmouth helped him find the tools to succeed in the world of entrepreneurship.

Rabil opened his first business in 2009, a gym in Joppa, Md. where he and Paul did everything from opening the store, cleaning the floors, to selling gym memberships. He looked not only for profitable business ventures, but also those that served a purpose to its community. 

“We were selling gym memberships for less than $30 with no contracts,” Mike Rabil said. “People would come in crying, losing a bunch of weight. That was really meaningful to me.”

Meanwhile, Rabil worked full-time in consulting at Jones Lang LaSalle. Eventually, he expanded the gym business and created Endurance Fitness 247, a company he helped run for seven years. He also co-founded Endurance Companies, an investment holding company based in San Francisco while building Turnstyle Cycle, Boston’s largest indoor cycling company.

His knack for building companies brought him to Silicon Valley, where he and his fitness partners built Endurance Lending Network and was acquired by Funding Circle Ltd. in October 2013.

Despite his steady ascent as a serial entrepreneur, Rabil never stopped assisting his brother as his lacrosse journey blossomed. He served as Paul’s agent shortly after Paul graduated from Johns Hopkins — a job he’d hold until “he wisely chose to go somewhere else.”

Rabil also joined on as a co-founder of Rabil Ventures, a company that oversaw the Rabil Live Tour and many other lacrosse camps and clinics. His passion for the game never faded.

Mike and Paul Rabil frequently had conversations about improving professional lacrosse. They intially met with Major League Lacrosse to figure out a way to bolster the existing product, but could not come to a consensus. Rabil knew that if he worked with his brother — Paul was a rising star in the New York City business sphere whose digital media empire had expanded well beyond the lacrosse niche — they could change the game together.

“The decision tree was, ‘How do we figure out the outdoor lacrosse game?’” Mike Rabil said, carefully avoiding confusion with the National Lacrosse League, an indoor league. “Do we want to spend a meaningful amount of time, if not a large chunk of our career, making this a commercially viable opportunity for the entire lacrosse ecosystem?”

Now, weeks after the announcement of the Premier Lacrosse League, Mike Rabil is relishing the opportunity to work with his brother .

“He’s invested in every deal I’ve done and every company I’ve started. I’ve advised him on all the businesses he’s started,” Mike Rabil said. “We’ve always been backboards for each other, and either closely related partners on something or tangentially related.”

The secret to Mike’s success? Working with those who were far more talented than him, he said. The PLL has secured investors like the Raine Group, Chernin Group, CAA, Blum Capital and Fortress Investment Group.

“The only skill I have is convincing somebody to come work with us,” he said.