Don Keely didn’t set out to build a business. He retired early from a Fortune 500 vice president role, got restless, and started paying attention to a problem he’d spent years watching companies struggle with: nobody could find reliable people to service their fitness equipment.
So he built a company that does exactly that.
Today, Fitness Machine Technicians covers many territories across the United States servicing treadmills, ellipticals, and weight systems for places such as: schools, hotels, fire stations, apartment complexes, and commercial gyms. The business is currently growing at a rate of 20–30% year over year. Although growth is positive, this growth comes with a cost. For Don, that cost was showing up in his calendar.
“It’s Not a Good Thing to Be Spending My Time on Admin” – Don Keely
Don launched his franchise in early 2020, weeks before COVID shut everything down. Growth was slow at first, until it wasn’t. As his service volume climbed, his technician roster expanded which resulted in piled up back off. The scheduling requests piled up with quotes sitting in the queues and customer emails went unanswered much longer than they should have. Even with an office manager in place, the team couldn’t keep pace with the volume of daily coordination that a multi-technician field service business demands.
Don immediately understood what was happening because he’d seen it before in his corporate career. He already knew what it costs when an owner gets buried in the operational details instead of being focused on driving growth. “It’s not a good thing to be spending my time with administrative work when we’re trying to grow,” he said. Don needed help, but the question was, what kind?
Why He Chose MyOutDesk
Don looked at several outsourcing options but what distinguished MyOutDesk wasn’t the pitch, it was the process. “It looked like your business was a little bit more selective in terms of the folks you had available,” he said. “A little more checking and verifying and credentialing.” MyOutDesk also had an existing relationship at the Fitness Machine Technicians franchise level, which gave Don additional confidence. He moved forward with the process, and was matched with a virtual assistant named Aon.
Meet Aon: The VA Who Took Ownership
From the very first day, Don was clear about what he didn’t want. “I didn’t really want someone just pushing work around,” he said. “I wanted someone who could help to start it and finish it as much as possible.”
That’s exactly what he got. Aon now owns a wide range of daily operations from: scheduling service calls, routing incoming calls, managing service requests from email, web forms, texts, building quotes, researching repair parts across manufacturer sites, and sending completed part repair estimates to customers. These are the multiple admin tasks that were eating up Don’s time and stacking up his back office.
The onboarding process wasn’t without some complexity. Don was simultaneously transitioning the business from one operating system to another, which meant both he and Aon were learning workflows together in real time. Don laughs about this process now. “He was finding that he was training me sometimes,” he said. Within a few weeks, Aon was operating independently and the team built a daily rhythm around Slack huddles and structured check-ins, and results showed up fast.
The Number That Says Everything
Before Aon joined the team, gaps in the technician schedule would surface the morning of with no explanation, no warning, and no easy fix. If technicians were idle that meant lost revenue. In a field service business, utilization isn’t just an operations metric, it’s the business model. That problem no longer exists. “We’re pretty much scheduled out almost two weeks now,” Don said. “Before, it was the next day and I’d be like, ‘Why do we have a hole in the schedule?’ I’m not seeing that anymore.”
A solid two weeks of forward visibility, built on daily coordination that Don no longer has to run himself? That’s the operational shift that compounds.
Getting Back to the Work That Actually Grows the Business
As Aon took over daily coordination, Don did what every founder hopes to do: he stepped back from the details and refocused on growth. “The biggest thing is for me to be focusing on new business,” he said.
In the beginning, he was still in the daily huddles dealing with day to day busy tasks and now he’s not. Now, his office manager and Aon run the schedule. The requests come in and get handled and Don hears about problems when there are problems which is now very rare. “I am noticing that some of that stuff I’ve been trying to push off is starting to feel like it’s actually being pushed off,” he said. “And I’m not having to be concerned about it.”
What He Didn’t Expect
Don came to MyOutDesk with outsourcing experience from his years working in corporate. What surprised him wasn’t the capability, it was the processes and working relationship.
“I just find that the personality and people are just nicer, and a more easy going,” he said of working with talent from the Philippines. “Which in a way helps us work together a little better.” That intangible, a team member who’s easy to communicate with, adaptable, and genuinely invested in the work turned out to matter as much as any specific skill.
The Commitment That Says It All
Don originally signed a six-month agreement with MyOutDesk. This past week, he extended the agreement to twelve months. “Just to say that my level of satisfaction, the fact that I see it’s working well made me make a longer commitment.” He’s also already referred MyOutDesk to another business owner in the fitness equipment industry.
For a franchise owner growing at 30% a year, thinking about adding technicians, and eyeing the next phase of expansion, having the right back-office foundation isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s what makes the next stage of growth possible. Don Keely built his business by spotting a problem other people kept walking past. He’s scaling it the same way: by solving the operational problems before they become the ceiling. Ready to fix your operational problems like Don? Let’s have a conversation.
