Winning Together: Michael Lee of Main Line Brands On How Strategic Partnerships Can Unlock New…
  • Chad Silverstein
  • July 29, 2025
  • 1:27 pm
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Winning Together: Michael Lee of Main Line Brands On How Strategic Partnerships Can Unlock New Sales Opportunities

An Interview With Chad Silverstein

Engage with companies in your vertical, market or industry that cater to your specific partnership needs. This engagement can take place through trade show attendance, cold emails, soft introductions, finding organizational contacts, connecting with potential customers and more. Interaction is key to understanding your targeted partner, their core competencies and how they relate to your organization.

Strategic partnerships have the potential to unlock growth and create new opportunities in ways that businesses can’t achieve alone. To explore this important topic, we had the pleasure of interviewing Michael Lee, National Accounts Manager at Main Line Brands and Co-owner of Fitness Machine Technicians Pacific Northwest.

Michael Lee serves as the National Accounts Manager at Main Line Brands, where he is responsible for developing and maintaining relationships with key national accounts for both the Fitness Machine Technicians and Pest Authority brands.

With more than 10 years of experience in aerospace engineering and experience in business development for major materials production companies, Michael’s skillset has provided him with the tools needed to increase sales for both technical and executive customers. Prior to joining the Main Line Brands corporate team in 2022, Michael began his own entrepreneurial journey opening a Fitness Machine Technicians franchise in the Pacific Northwest in 2019. As an active franchisee, he simultaneously provides repair and preventive maintenance services for local businesses’ fitness equipment while playing an integral role in increasing sales and profitability for Main Line Brands and its portfolio brands.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series. Before we dive into our discussion, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you share with us the backstory about what brought you to your specific career path?

I’ve always had an engineering and problem-solving mindset. As a former aerospace engineer and someone who has worked in sales in some capacity for my entire career — from representative roles to entrepreneurial and technical positions — I’ve developed a strong foundation in both problem-solving and business development. I came to Fitness Machine Technicians as a franchise owner despite having no background in fitness equipment maintenance or repair. However, as a former Ironman competitor, I had a passion for exercise and understood the value of a healthy lifestyle. When my wife and I were looking for an entrepreneurial opportunity through franchise ownership, Fitness Machine Technicians’ model and offerings aligned perfectly and we opened our franchise in 2019.

After three years as a co-owner, a corporate national accounts position opened with Main Line Brands, the parent company of Fitness Machine Technicians. I saw an opportunity to leverage my years of sales experience, passion for healthy living and the practical knowledge I gained as a franchisee, leading me to transition into my current role as director of national accounts. While my wife now leads our business, I focus on building and maintaining strategic partnerships and developing the Fitness Machine Technicians brand through national and regional sales and relationship management. In my corporate role, I’ve found that the people I work with appreciate that I have firsthand experience working on fitness equipment and understand how faulty or broken equipment can impact club and gym owners.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began working with partnerships or collaborations?

One story that comes to mind is when I was negotiating with a major fitness equipment brand and boutique gym to establish a partnership. During the process, I learned that the brand had reached out to the manufacturers of its gym equipment for recommendations on a repair and maintenance service provider. It turned out that that one of those manufacturers was a company we had worked with many times, and they recommended us at Fitness Machine Technicians. Working with equipment manufacturers is a key part of our job, but we take those relationships seriously and treat them with the same level of commitment as we do our national account partners. When evaluating ideal partner brands, firms or other organizations, it’s important to remember the relationships you build today can have a major impact on future collaborations.

You are a successful leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?

Listening — While this may seem like a no-brainer, it is not only a valuable leadership quality, but also a crucial skill for salespeople. When it comes to partnerships, if you don’t listen closely to a potential partner’s needs and goals, you might miss out on opportunities to help them or ways your brand can maximize its impact.

Understanding — Understanding what a customer, team member or potential partner is going through is essential. It’s not just about understanding their position but also understanding how your brand or organization’s relationship affects or impacts them differently. When I form a new partnership with a company, there’s always some benefit for our franchisees, so I make sure to think about the collaboration from their perspective. I ask questions like, ‘Where could I use this partnership in my business?’, ‘What do I need to do to engage with this partner?’ and ‘When will I see the value in utilizing this partner versus outsourcing?’. Understanding is crucial for both parties, and when you’re responsible for the results of a partnership, you must also know how to communicate it to everyone in your organization — in my case, the franchisees — to ensure a smooth transition and ramp-up.

Communication — Communication remains at the core of success as a leader and in strategic partnerships. When you’re responsible for building partnerships and managing relationships, clear communication with all parties is essential to maintaining synergy throughout the collaboration. One of my mottos is to over communicate and continue to over communicate with both teams involved throughout the process. This approach fosters transparency and builds trust within partnerships and with everyone impacted by them.

Let’s now jump to the focus of our interview. What does a “strategic partnership” mean to you, and why do you think it’s such an essential part of sales growth today?

To me, a strategic partnership is a mutually beneficial relationship that supports both parties involved. Partnerships are an essential part of sales success, and it’s important to recognize that partnerships that benefit your company won’t always look the same. There can still be value in working with smaller partner brands or groups, and you can tailor your partnership to specific regions or markets to best meet your current needs.

There are two key criteria for evaluating potential partners to ensure a mutually beneficial relationship: trust and growth mindset. Building a strong foundation for a partnership starts with trust, which must be maintained in all stages — even stretching beyond the formal end of the partnership. When done correctly, collaboration positively impacts both parties. To successfully evaluate a potential partner, you must ensure that working together makes you stronger together than working individually and that there is room for growth and strengthening your partnership over time. If a partner lacks a growth mentality and isn’t forward-thinking, then they may not fully recognize the potential for both parties to succeed beyond the initial bounds of the partnership, which could limit the value you receive in return.

With Fitness Machine Technicians, if we work with an apartment complex manager on one property and they recognize the quality of service we provide — along with our certification level to work on fitness equipment — they are more likely to trust us for multiple locations rather than working with multiple brands for the same service. This strengthens partnership and enhances the long-term value and growth potential for both teams.

How do you go about identifying potential partners that align with your business goals? Are there specific qualities or traits you look for in a partnership?

Research is the most important step to understanding who a potential partner could be and how a future partnership with them could impact your brand. Research can be daunting, especially if an ideal partner seems unattainable or unapproachable, but don’t limit your efforts. Instead identify their strengths and areas of opportunity, and determine how your brand can provide value, whether now or in the future. Researching your ideal partner and identifying where your brand or organization meets their needs will help you enter collaboration conversations with more confidence and insight.

Beyond research, the qualities and traits to look depend on the purpose for the partnership — whether it’s core competency, future growth, operational efficiency or brand reputation building. If you’re seeking a partner to help elevate and improve the standards your company upholds or aims to achieve, there are many ways to engage with partners who will hold you accountable to those values. When identifying partners with this goal in mind, they must meet optimal performance expectations to ensure that your brand not only reaches their level but exceeds it.

What steps do you take to build trust and ensure that a partnership will be mutually beneficial for both sides?

There are three main steps to encourage trust-building and align goals that result in a mutually beneficial partnership.

  1. Establish clear expectations from beginning — Expectations are best met when both teams understand them from the beginning and have a strategy to support them. Challenges arise when one party does not fully grasp the other’s expectations, even if they are clearly laid out.
  2. Ensure your partnership agreement aligns with your expectations — It can be easy to spend weeks or even months in discussions and negotiations, feeling confident that you’ve covered all the right details and are ready to move forward. However, beyond clarifying expectations and goals, it’s essential that the partnership agreement itself reflects those details and remains accessible to everyone involved. This includes basic yet crucial elements such as contact information for the main point of contact, a checklist of required documents to be signed and submitted before the partnership begins and clear outline of the desired outcomes.
  3. Keep the first few interactions and activations “handheld” — You can demonstrate your value and commitment as a partner early on by maintaining close communication and consistent follow-ups when kickstarting your partnership. If you’re leading a team that will be directly impacted by the partnership, ensure they are prepared for a smooth collaboration. This may include setting up a process for internal and external communications, facilitating virtual introductions, creating a dedicated web landing page for partnership details and maintaining an open line of communication as team members submit paperwork and refine standard procedures.

Keeping an eye on the partnership and the individuals involved helps ensure a strong foundation for its long-term success. There may be instances where follow-ups are necessary to reengage collaborators if communication has stalled. Maintaining traceable lines of communication allows for easy tracking of interactions, ensuring a clear record of the partnership’s progress and activation.

Can you share a specific example of a strategic partnership you were involved in? How did it come about, and what impact did it have on your business?

A few examples come to mind, as one of my goals has been to establish diverse partnerships that benefit multiple areas of our business and our franchisees’ businesses. Recently, we worked with a major fitness equipment manufacturer brand that had previously been out of reach. By maintaining close communication and clearly demonstrating how we could provide mutual benefits, the impact of this partnership continues to be felt today. On our end, we significantly improved the manufacturer’s ability to serve customers and make service recommendations that extend the lifespan of their equipment. In return, working with this brand made it clear that Fitness Machine Technicians truly can support all types of manufacturers.

Another target for partnerships that I have been closely involved in is property management companies. One recent example is with Morgan Properties, a nationwide apartment complex management firm. Servicing these companies can be challenging because managers often do not prioritize the complex’s equipment or see regular maintenance as a necessary expense. However, through our ongoing partnership, the property managers have realized the value in using a single service brand for all properties rather than working with different providers for each. Partnering with a franchise like Fitness Machine Technicians has created a cost-effective solution that benefits all their properties by providing consistent, reliable service nationwide. In turn, we’ve benefitted by generating job opportunities for multiple franchisees in our system.

Additionally, I’ve been involved in working with college and university partners, some of whom have been partners of the brand for more than 10 years. This partnership includes assisting them with purchasing new equipment, understanding their equipment needs to recommend the best suppliers and ensuring our technicians can continue servicing their machines while keeping costs reasonable and technology up to date. As equipment evolves, a big part of our role is consulting. Now that we work with multiple universities, we’ve found college recreation departments frequently communicate with one another and compare service experiences, which works in our favor as a service provider. Since we regularly talk with manufacturers, we can provide these teams with the most value, the latest recommendations and consistent service — critical factors given that equipment for college and university recreation centers represents a major investment.

These are some of the main partnerships that I help manage for franchisees and the corporate brand, and we’re continuing to look for new national brands to partner with. We’ve recently established a new partnership with another major boutique gym brand, which is opening new doors for our team, offering a broad range of opportunities and long-term value potential for our brand.

What role does communication play in maintaining a strong, long-lasting partnership? Are there particular practices or tools you use to keep everyone aligned and engaged?

As mentioned in a previous response, communication is essential in every partnership and team to encourage a smooth workflow, build strong relationships and maintain expectations. You might find a partner with excellent standard operating procedures, but if their procedures differ from your team’s, communication becomes essential to keep everyone on track. You can keep everyone aligned by evaluating software systems needed for the partnership, keeping a clear and traceable paper and email trail, and reviewing information relating to partnership activities to make sure it’s clear and digestible from the start.

Let’s now focus on actionable strategies. Based on your experience, can you share “5 Steps to Create Strategic Partnerships That Drive Sales Growth”? If you can, please share examples or stories for each.

1. Engage with companies in your vertical, market or industry that cater to your specific partnership needs. This engagement can take place through trade show attendance, cold emails, soft introductions, finding organizational contacts, connecting with potential customers and more. Interaction is key to understanding your targeted partner, their core competencies and how they relate to your organization.

2. Research ideal partners thoroughly, even pulling in resources to gather customer viewpoints of the potential partner to confirm that they’re the right fit. After taking the initial engagement, you will have more information to assess who will align best with your goals. In some cases, you may be looking for one partner, while in others, you may need two or three partners to work across different markets. Thorough research will help identify the closest alignment for your team.

3. Make a final decision by expressing interest and clarifying to the prospective collaborator that you’d like to set terms for a partnership and gauge their interest. At this stage, it’s helpful to clearly outline areas where your brand or organization can benefit the other party and where they can help strengthen your brand in return.

4. Create limits and expectations for the partnership through a detailed partnership agreement. It’s important to discuss these expectations throughout the negotiation process, once both parties agree to partner, they should be clearly outlined in the agreement to ensure a tangible, mutual understanding.

5. Follow through with promises and goals set at the beginning of the partnership. This is achieved by implementing organizational processes and strategies, establishing communication formats, initiating communication with both teams and staying actively engaged throughout the relationship.

Overall, it’s important to understand that this process is not always linear and can progress quickly or slowly, depending on the partners. Negotiations, legal processes and setting systems to track the partnership’s success can take time, and no two partner timelines will be exactly the same.

What advice would you give to smaller companies or startups that may not have the resources or networks of larger businesses but want to start building strategic partnerships?

Building successful, strategic partnerships doesn’t have anything to do with the size of your business. Partnerships don’t need to be complicated — they just need to have clearly defined mutual benefits for both parties and a foundation built on trust, growth and support. Every business or organization has its pain points, and as a small company or startup, it’s important to outline the needs your potential partner has that your business can solve and how you’d fit in as a partner. Additionally, investing in trade conventions and shows associated with ideal partners helps level the playing field for starting conversations and establishing your brand’s niche.

How do you handle challenges or conflicts that may arise in a partnership to ensure that the relationship stays strong and productive?

The best partnerships with the longest-lasting results often have come from conflicts and challenges. As mentioned throughout this series, communication must be at the core of every new collaboration. As a result, the most common challenges often stem from communications issues or a lack of production due to infrequent communication. In these scenarios, what makes a difference in resolving them is how you handle them — how you communicate, how you listen and how you relate to the other partner. You must listen, understand and communicate to build a strong relationship. If these elements aren’t established early on or if you slack on maintaining those standards, trust in the partnership can be easily lost when issues arise.

When you establish a new collaborative relationship and take the time to nurture it, you have less to worry about when issues arise, knowing that trust and mutual respect have already been built. Working through conflict is an opportunity to truly get to know someone. It’s best to address conflict and work together on a solution, with constant communication at the core to resolve the issue.

Can you share a surprising or unexpected lesson you learned from a past partnership?

We had a partner of many years who worked with several of our locations across the country. When a new manager took over, they discovered that Fitness Machine Technicians hadn’t been set up correctly in their system. As a result, our franchisees were not being regularly selected for jobs, and we found that payments for the handful of services completed were only going to one location, not each individual franchisee that provided the service. This was obviously unexpected and shocking, but when the new manager brought it to our attention and fixed the issue, the number of jobs coming in greatly increased. Franchisee payments were dispersed correctly and both parties — and the partnership itself — became stronger as a result.

What trends or changes are you seeing in how businesses approach strategic partnerships, and how do you think this will evolve in the coming years?

Strategic partnerships are becoming more common and will continue to evolve in the coming years. Businesses should approach strategic partnerships by evaluating how they can best provide and maintain value and a competitive advantage while serving as a partner. Partnerships are also becoming less costly, with more emphasis on support and how partners benefit each other. If that support is lost, it creates an opportunity for new partners to jump in and prove their value.

In your opinion, how do strategic partnerships impact not just sales, but a company’s reputation, relationships, and long-term growth?

The way that you establish, grow and maintain partner relationships will directly impact how your brand is perceived. When looking to expand in your respective industry, your connection to your partner can make or break your potential for future partnerships. When evaluating partnerships with mutually beneficial expectations in mind, and when done correctly, a strategic partnership will outlast initial sales goals, bringing future opportunities for new revenue, additional partnerships, higher service standards and boosted brand credibility.

You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would inspire more companies to embrace collaboration and partnerships, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.

If I could start a movement that could inspire other brands to embrace collaboration, I’d ask organizations to look outside of their core business, evaluate their brand values and seek partnerships beyond their industry and corporate boundaries. Whether it’s through social and cultural development, youth development, nonprofit engagement or other community involvement, I believe there is so much opportunity for franchisors and large brands to look outside of traditional business partnerships and find value in unconventional avenues. For example, as a fitness-related concept, many of our franchisees look to their communities for ways to promote a healthy lifestyle, which aligns with the passion that drives many of our franchise owners to invest in a Fitness Machine Technicians franchise.

How can our readers further follow you online?

This was great. Thank you so much for the time you spent sharing with us.

About the Interviewer: Chad Silverstein is a seasoned entrepreneur and Thought Leader with over 25 years of business experience. He has founded, operated, and exited multiple companies and now builds into a handful of high impact CEOs. Chad has launched multiple online communities, including a recent leadership development platform, and also serves as a strategic advisor for Authority Magazine’s thought-leader incubator program. To learn more and connect with Chad visit: chadsilverstein.io

Winning Together: Michael Lee of Main Line Brands On How Strategic Partnerships Can Unlock New… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.