The former PepsiCo executive was drawn to Hotworx, a 24/7 fitness studio franchise offering infrared sauna workouts.

As a corporate executive for PepsiCo for 30 years, Gwynda Jones was accustomed to high-intensity work. Then health complications derailed her ambitions. 

“In 2013, I had a heart attack and stroke and was disabled,” Jones says in a new interview with Entrepreneur. “Over the years, I did all the therapy. I was determined to get well.”

Around 2019, Jones was no longer disabled, but she knew she couldn’t go back to that executive job. It had required extensive travel, which she could no longer do. She started thinking about other ways to exercise her business acumen while still preserving her health. Her answer was franchising, and her focus was on something simple. 

Her research eventually brought her to Hotworx, a 24/7 fitness studio franchise offering infrared sauna workouts. Members choose a 30- or 15-minute workout conducted in infrared sauna rooms. 

“I started looking into it,” Jones says. “I didn’t know much about it except that it’s a franchise, you’ll need a staff of four or five, you don’t have to hire instructors because it’s all virtually instructed. Hey, I think I can do that, right?”

Right when she was about to start her business, the Covid-19 pandemic hit. Jones put her franchise plans on pause. 

Shortly after came an earth-shattering diagnosis: She had a rare, aggressive form of cancer with no cure. Doctors gave her six months to live and said they were going to give her six treatments of chemotherapy to extend her life long enough to get her affairs in order for her daughter, Monica Nia, who was in college at the time.

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