This Anne Arundel mom can get your kid to ride a bike

Rachel Varn just wanted to teach her daughter to ride a bike. Now the Annapolis-based mother of four has a successful business that’s taught more than 10,000 children in Maryland and Washington how to ride.

Varn, 44, launched PedalPower Kids in April 2018. The company offers year-round instructional programs, summer camps, boot camps, bike clubs and rodeos, in-school physical education sessions and after-school programs in Anne Arundel County, Baltimore and D.C.

The former student-athlete at the Johns Hopkins University studied psychology, brain science and entrepreneurship in college. After graduating, Varn spent some 15 years in franchise development, working with others who wanted to own their own businesses.

Varn was also familiar with bikes. She had been working as a business development manager for velofix, a Vancouver, Canada-based mobile bike repair shop, and her father worked at a bike shop in his younger years.

It was Varn’s boss at velofix who encouraged her to strike out on her own. She eventually quit to start offering bike riding lessons for kids. “It just took off faster than I could have ever imagined,” she said.

“I was consistently hearing from people that they were having trouble getting their kid riding a bike,” Varn said.

Her schedule was fully booked within months. Then came a contract from Anne Arundel County after its bike camp vendor left. Varn stepped in, and “we’ve just been growing ever since,” she said.

PedalPower Kids is hosting 59 camps this summer and has around 44 employees, she said.

“I’ve been doing this long enough that I have employees this summer who were actually campers once themselves,” Varn said. “It’s really cool to see those things come full circle.”

You studied entrepreneurship in college. Have you always wanted to start and own your own business?

I’ve always had a lot of hustle from a really early age, whether it was like lemonade stands or selling Girl Scout cookies. Just finding different ways to monetize things that I was passionate about and interested in.

Being able to be in control of my own destiny is something that I’ve really loved.

There have definitely been growing pains as we’ve scaled up and as I’ve tried to build a team around me, but I really love it. I really love the impact that we’ve been able to have on so many families.

You were also a college athlete. Did that play a role in your decision to make PedalPower Kids?

My first job was actually as a lifeguard and swim instructor. I taught adults how to swim. I’ve always had coaching and instruction jobs. I was a fitness coach in college, and I’ve been a triathlon coach.

What do you wish people knew about the behind-the-scenes work of PedalPower Kids?

There’s so much intention that goes into everything we do, why we do it and how we do it.

From the way we start each session to the way we end each session — every little decision is the result of years and years of iterating, tweaking and trying to make it better.

I think one of the reasons I’ve succeeded in this business is that I have a ton of natural curiosity. I’m genuinely curious about every kid that comes into one of our programs. Trying to figure out what makes them tick, and then, from there, how we can motivate and support them.

We have this method that works, but a big part of that is really individually getting to know every rider who comes to one of our programs and being able to tailor the coaching and support to them.

Learning to ride a bike is usually a one-on-one activity, but PedalPower Kids uses a group environment. How did you come up with that?

I think that, for the model to be able to scale, it was going to need to be primarily group programs. Because, even from the very start, I often had families combine, even though they were private lessons.

I saw that there was a lot of power in having groups of kids working together because there was a lot of positive peer pressure. I realized really early on that was the direction I wanted to go.

What’s your next big ambition?

I have, from the start, looked at building this in a way to be replicated — which I’ve done on a small scale, in terms of moving into different markets. But I think my next step is to continue to expand with different leaders. So not necessarily a franchise model, but I’m exploring a licensing model or joint venture because I think there are others out there, like me, who would be great leaders of this business in their community.

Are you still involved in the coaching and teaching part of the process these days?

Yes, and I think I probably always will be. I love it. I love feeling connected to the kids and their successes. Seeing them do things that they didn’t think they were going to be able to do.

I also really love mentoring and coaching our coaches. Being able to impart all of the tips, strategies and techniques that I’ve learned over the 10,000 or so kids that have been through our programs, camps and so forth.

This interview was edited for length and clarity.