Fitness has been a pillar in Dawn Lee’s career.
Long before she looked into franchising, Lee operated her own yoga and holistic nutrition studio for 12 years and ran a house flipping company with her husband, Michael Lee. Their experiences prepared the couple for a different model of business ownership with Fitness Machine Technicians.
“What we found attractive about Fitness Machine Technicians is that, at the time, it was a younger franchise. … We could see that it had such potential for growth,” Dawn Lee said. “We felt like we were getting in on a foundational level to help and experience that growth, and from the minute we did our discovery call, it felt like we were talking to family.”
Fitness Machine Technicians, with 57 units across the United States and Canada, specializes in fitness equipment repair and preventative maintenance. The brand sits alongside Mosquito Authority and Pest Authority as home service franchises under parent company Main Line Brands.
Lee has operated three territories out of the western Washington market since the couple began franchising in 2019. She later took on full operations when her husband secured a job with Main Line Brands corporate. (Today, Michael Lee works as the company’s national accounts manager.)
Amid local competitors, it was necessary to differentiate the brand across the Pacific Northwest—a process she said came with a learning curve.
Dawn Lee
“Creating that customer experience, at least here in our area, was key,” she said. “We kept that momentum going, making sure our customers had a great experience from start to finish. It’s answering the phone, it’s getting the technician out on time and it’s sending follow-up reports.”
Lee’s three territories are achieving 24 percent year-over-year growth as of late, she said. For her successes, Fitness Machine Technicians named Lee as the company’s franchisee of the year in 2025.
She attributes her success to collaborating and leading without ego.
“I’ve created a safe space that if I make a mistake or a team member makes a mistake, it’s OK,” Lee said. “We have all of this in place to catch it, and all of our jobs overlap each other in a way where we don’t micromanage. It always falls back on how you set up the office, how you have operations and then having those standard practices.”
Lee’s leadership efforts have also served her well as president of the brand’s franchise advisory council. Lee joined the council in 2024 and became its president in 2025, taking on a liaison role between operators and corporate as well as providing advice and tools to strengthen franchisees’ operations.
Albeit no shortage of franchisee communication, Lee said she noticed concerns weren’t being brought to corporate in an organized manner. As president, Lee said communication between operators and the FAC is more frequent compared to the year prior.
“It was really great to be able to get all those collective voices to the brand because that is the only way you can create some forward momentum,” she said. “The FAC is a catalyst for the voices of the franchisees, and some of them are struggling in economic times, so we’ve been able to have these really frank conversations with solution in mind from both sides.”
Entering the new year, Lee said she’s aiming for 15 percent sales growth for her territories in 2026—made possible, she said, by continuing to utilize her strong team.
With wellness making more of an impression in the fitness category, Lee also sees the scope of her operations expanding to more than everyday machines with plans to establish relationships with manufacturers in the wellness industry.
“You’d have to live under a rock if you didn’t know it: strength training and wellness have been such a huge push in our industry,” she said. “More and more of what we’re seeing, at least here in the Pacific Northwest, is that a lot of these wellness aspects are coming to gyms. We want to be that gym’s one stop for their repair service on these proprietary machines.”