Another Entrepreneurial Journey: Meet Scott & Julie Jenney

With the assistance of Mark Cory, Market President and Franchise Consultant for FranNet of Michigan, Scott and Julie Jenney made their entrepreneurial dream come true—a business operation of their own. The husband-wife co-owners are ready to share their franchise ownership journey as the owners of Fitness Machine Technicians of Detroit. Below, in his own words, Scott Jenney shares the tale of their journey with FranNet…

Background

“I graduated with a degree in business and communications and followed it up with a master’s degree from Wayne State University. I entered the world of corporate sales and worked in several different industry channels including finance, banking, and pharmaceuticals. My wife Julie is a graduate of Michigan State, and she plays an integral part of our new franchise, thanks to her exceptional organizational skills.”

On Becoming an Entrepreneur

“Was I always a bit entrepreneurial? Sure, I guess—I mean I had a pretty robust lawn cutting service that I ran in high school and a few other ventures through my sales experience, as well as working with my family business, a car dealership. We’d considered owning a business of our own for the past five years or so. We both agreed that it would be much better to be in charge of our own destiny for a change. Julie and I had become ‘Empty Nesters’ and I think we were both approaching a point in which we were tired of having our lives dictated by Corporate America. Personally, I have always enjoyed being in control of my own financial destiny.”

Why Franchising?

“Franchising seemed like the best fit for us because we were looking for a business opportunity that had a defined structure with longevity factored in. We did check out a couple of existing businesses for sale, but the Fitness Machine Technicians concept was just a really good fit for us. The brand is a new—an emerging franchise concept if you will—and the validation we heard from other owners became a very convincing point. It’s a Monday-Friday operation with regular business hours and the Fitness Machine Technicians executives had very similar mindsets. After doing a bit of research, we determined that there weren’t many big market players in the industry, and it was exciting to be part of a ground floor opportunity.“

How FranNet Helped

“Mark Cory was instrumental in helping us navigate the investigative process. He just has such a good business sense and perspective. He was a true advisor and we never felt pressured to go a certain way or make a decision we were uncomfortable with. There was nothing pushy about the process at all. FranNet has such a great system. They really help eliminate a lot of the clutter that’s out there. Mark even ended up being one of our first customers, as he had a treadmill that needed fixing! He still stays in regular contact with us to this day.”

Where Do You Stand?

“We officially opened for business in August of 2018, so we’ve been at this awhile now. Under the guidelines of our pro-forma, we ended up outpacing our benchmarks right off the bat. My previous sales experience has been beneficial, and I think we were just six months in when we needed to hire our second technician. When Covid hit, it threw us a bit of a curveball, but a lot of slack was picked up on the residential side of the business. People that could no longer go to the gym suddenly needed to get their home equipment in good working order. We love being Fitness Machine Technicians owners and look forward to what the future holds. No matter what—it belongs to us.”

For more information, please visit Scott & Julie Jenney’s Fitness Machine Technicians of Detroit page on the internet.