Why she’s interesting: Hartnett spun up Cleveland’s spinning craze. The founder of Harness Cycle opened her first location in Ohio City in 2013 and her second location downtown in 2017. She also founded GroundSwell Collective. This pop-up event company focuses on activities that can’t be done in a studio and collaborates with other businesses on activities ranging from overseas retreats to rooftop and paddleboard yoga.
Code Academy: Hartnett was a software engineer for Hyland Software before she became a cycling queen. Her job took her throughout the country, where she fell in love with cycling studios. “I knew I wanted to bring indoor cycling back to Cleveland.”
Name Game: Hartnett’s original techy-cool business plan was to harness electricity from a flywheel, but the bikes never ended up getting manufactured. She kept the product name for her studio, deciding the term still applied because riders harness their own positive energy. “That would be still cool to use the flywheel at some point in the future.”
Memory Lanes: Bikes have been part of Hartnett’s life since she was 5. When her dad was sick at the Cleveland Clinic on Easter, he asked the nurses to hide a Pretty in Pink bike in the hospital room’s bathroom to surprise her. “The bike has always been a part of me. My husband and I rode a tandem bike on our wedding day.”
Reality Star: Hartnett appeared on the LeBron James-produced CNBC show Cleveland Hustles to promote her passion project, GroundSwell. “I was super-hesitant to be on television. But knowing how much it aligned with my own values — I care so much about neighborhood development in Cleveland — I was like, ‘I have to do this.’ ”
Creative Births: Hartnett births babies and businesses at the same time. She started Harness Cycle while on maternity leave for her first son, Grady, then GroundSwell while pregnant with her second son, Jack, and Harness Downtown just after the birth of her third son, Bobby. Any more on the horizon? “Oh man, no! I would definitely be labeled the official crazy lady.”
Interesting Fact: Hartnett still remembers all the steps from the Irish dancing lessons she took when she was a child.
