The Business of Being Yourself: Content Creation, Cycling, and Showing Up

I went into this episode expecting to talk a lot about content creation strategy, and we did. But what surprised me most was how much of Rebe Dunn's story is really a story about community. The content, the cycling, the business she's building, it all comes back to people.

Rebe is a Fort Collins-based content creator with a growing following on Instagram, @rebeexplores, a part-time role with a local mountain biking nonprofit, and a new venture launching soon that I genuinely wish existed in Truckee. We covered a lot of ground.

Starting With a Business Mindset

Rebe didn't stumble into content creation, she decided to go into it. Coming off of running a food business where she was working 80-hour weeks, she had the rare chance to slow down and think about what she wanted to build next. She invested in a course, studied engagement rates, and leaned on a creator community to learn what brands were actually paying.

That foundation mattered. Early on, a friend drilled something into her that stuck: if you take free product and call it payment, you're hurting the entire industry. "Women have been working for free and undervalued forever," Rebe told me. She's carried that with her since, and recently hired a manager to handle pitching and negotiating, which has changed the dynamic with brands significantly.

The Outdoors Didn't Find Her Until Later

Rebe grew up in Dallas. A wilderness program in her teens planted a seed, years on the Central Coast of California helped it grow, and four seasons in Vail did the rest. By the time she landed in Fort Collins, the outdoors was already part of her identity.

Cycling came later. Her husband got injured training for a race, picked up a bike, and because they did many outdoorsy things together, she did too. She'd never done endurance sports before, and with him being a foot taller and a former competitive runner, the speed gap was real from the start. Around 2022, she also had a serious health scare, a ruptured appendix that landed her in the hospital for about two weeks, and spent that summer e-biking around town and along the river. When she eventually got a gravel bike, she found the Queer Plus Bikes rides specifically because they had more reasonably paced options, and from there, Fort Follies and the wider women's cycling community in Fort Collins.

The Hook Was the Community

I asked her what made her go deeper into cycling, and her answer was immediate: the people. The group rides, the coffee before, the encouragement mid-climb when your legs just will not cooperate. She also made a point I think about a lot, showing up in person at races has been some of the best networking she's done as a creator. Meeting brand reps face to face, seeing the same people every season, letting them watch you actually do the thing you talk about online. It builds trust that a cold pitch never could.

Joyride Is What Cycling Needs More Of

The thing I was most excited to hear about was Joyride — the women and queer-owned cycling repair shop, retail space, and cafe that Rebe is co-founding in Fort Collins with Bea and Lauren of Queer Plus Bikes.

It's going to be a repair shop (not a bike shop — they're not selling bikes), a curated retail space, and a cafe with real, thoughtful food. There will be a community room for pop-ups and mechanic workshops they plan to put on YouTube. The whole vision is bright, welcoming, and built for people who haven't always felt like cycling was for them.

"We don't care what kind of bike you ride. We don't care what speed you go. We don't care what you look like. We just want community"

I told her this has been floating around in my head for years — a similar space here in Truckee — and hearing her talk about it reminded me that these places can exist when someone decides to build them. That's really what this whole conversation came back to. Rebe is someone who saw what was missing and decided to do something about it.

Links & Love

Follow Rebe: ⁠@rebeexplores⁠
Follow Joyride: ⁠@joyridefoco⁠
⁠https://www.joyridefoco.com/

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