Fitness has been part of the relationship my husband David and I have had since we met playing in a volleyball league. For much of our relationship, we talked about owning and building our own business. These two interests came together about a year ago when we became CycleBar franchisees, purchasing the CycleBar Uptown Dallas studio.
We were drawn to the inclusivity that CycleBar stands for, which was important to us as a gay, mixed-race couple. Having started at CycleBar as an instructor, I had a chance to see how much CycleBar cares about the LGBTQ+ community and promotes inclusivity and acceptance. I know several CycleBar instructors who are part of the LGBT community, and the studio has always felt like a safe space. The culture is rooted on inclusivity. In the cycle theater, you can be next to someone who has a different background from you, but in that room you can forget differences and celebrate that you are there to feel good.
More broadly, you can be someone completely new to cycling or someone with years of cycling experience and you can both have an amazing workout at CycleBar.
Having been part of the fitness community in Dallas for seven years as an instructor (two of those at CycleBar), I’ve learned Dallas has some of the best riders in the nation. People love indoor cycling here, David and I included.
From our research, we felt that the CycleBar business model offered enough support and brand recognition to help us newbie entrepreneurs who had backgrounds in marketing and corporate training.
David and I have leaned on each other throughout our relationship, and this is no different. We are building our business for us and for our amazing three-year-old daughter, who we worked hard to adopt, and who we want to show how much our family can achieve with hard work and dedication.
As part of the LGBTQ+ community, we try to promote inclusiveness because of the lack of representation for families like us—parents and business owners who are mixed race and gay. We want to give visibility to families like us and help others see that at the end of the day, we’re a hard-working family. It is so much fun when the three of us are in the studio and our daughter greets or says goodbye to our riders, who love seeing her there.
We know there is still a lot of work for us ahead to show what CycleBar Uptown Dallas can do for the LGBTQ+ community. We’ve started by joining the North Texas LGBT chamber of commerce, which held a ribbon-cutting ceremony when we purchased the studio. Last year for PRIDE, we had a month-long celebration of inclusive rides with some of our instructors who are part of the LGBTQ+ community, and we had our team take over our social media channels to share what PRIDE means to them. It was heartwarming to see that for many people the studio is a place where they feel like they belong. We try to promote inclusiveness at our studio year-round, but we definitely had fun with some PRIDE theme rides, and we can’t wait to plan more of this in 2023.
BIO
Jorge Avalos is a marketer turned business entrepreneur. He worked for 16 years for Fortune 500 companies in marketing, strategy and innovation. Now he is a full-time business entrepreneur, building his business at CycleBar Uptown Dallas along with his husband, David Hrncirik, who has a training and development background with nearly 20 years of experience building and leading training teams for mortgage companies. Their most prized achievement is their now toddler daughter who they adopted in 2019.