Tone it Up

Rebuilding Trust in a Digital Product

Tone It Up had built a community of roughly 400,000 people around fitness, positivity, and accountability, but confidence in its existing mobile app had deteriorated. I became a key leader in defining and delivering the product that would replace it, from discovery, research, MVP strategy, staffing, estimates, budgets, and roadmap planning through engineering, QA, launch, and continued product development.

The challenge went deeper than replacing outdated technology. Tone It Up's previous app experience had been poorly executed, and the resulting frustration was working against a brand built around positivity and community. Users had largely stopped relying on the product, and I helped guide the client through the decision to remove the legacy app from the stores rather than allow a compromised experience to continue representing the brand.

That meant the new Tone It Up app had to accomplish more than feature parity. It needed to restore confidence, give an established community a reason to return, and create a product foundation capable of evolving alongside the business.

Leading the Product From Discovery Forward

I was deeply involved across the product lifecycle: discovery, product definition, requirements, research, feature prioritization, MVP definition, estimates, budgets, staffing, schedules, architecture, production planning, release strategy, and the longer-term roadmap. I worked directly with Tone It Up's leadership, meeting with stakeholders in Manhattan Beach on a regular basis and continuing those conversations through video calls between in-person sessions.

Those conversations connected business ambition to delivery reality. We could explore what the product should become, determine what belonged in the initial release, understand the effort behind competing ideas, and build a roadmap that balanced customer value, business priorities, technical dependencies, quality, and time to market.

I helped assemble and lead the multidisciplinary team required to make that happen, working across product, UX, design, market strategy, growth marketing, native mobile development, backend engineering, QA, infrastructure, and specialized vendors. My responsibility crossed the boundaries between those groups because the quality of the product depended on the quality of the entire system, not any single discipline.

Using Research to Define the MVP

We began with the community rather than a predetermined feature list. I managed the resource responsible for conducting interviews with existing Tone It Up members, and the findings were translated into personas that helped us understand behaviors, motivations, expectations, and pain points.

Those personas became a practical decision-making tool. When new ideas or wishlist features competed for space in the MVP, we could return to what we had learned from actual members and ask whether a feature solved an important user problem, reinforced the product strategy, and justified its development cost. Research therefore became part of prioritization rather than a deliverable that disappeared once design began.

Bringing the Community Home

Community was already central to Tone It Up long before the new app. The problem was that much of that interaction had migrated to Facebook groups and other social platforms after members lost confidence in the legacy product. We knew a successful replacement needed to give that community compelling reasons to connect inside Tone It Up's own ecosystem.

That principle became part of the product DNA. The experience was designed around more than watching workout videos. Profiles, conversations, social interaction, search, accountability, support, and opportunities to connect with other members helped turn fitness content into a participatory product. Studio Tone It Up existed within that broader ecosystem as a workout program and experience, rather than defining the app itself.

The objective was to connect what Tone It Up already did exceptionally well as a brand with behavior its community had been forced to take elsewhere. Instead of treating social functionality as an add-on, we approached community as a fundamental part of the experience.

Directing the Technical Product

Everything on the engineering side was developed under my direction, while my role remained leadership and delivery rather than hands-on coding. My technical background allowed me to work deeply with the engineering teams on architecture, backend services, native application development, infrastructure, performance, integrations, and the tradeoffs behind product decisions while still maintaining responsibility for the larger roadmap and stakeholder relationship.

The backend was primarily Python-based and supported the services required by the native applications. Video was fundamental to the experience, so I was directly involved in planning how workout content would be structured, categorized, searched, streamed, scheduled, and surfaced throughout the product. I also worked directly with Vimeo to evaluate and integrate its platform as the VOD foundation for the app.

I participated in infrastructure and operational decisions as well, including helping select DevOps vendors. Subscription plans were defined by the client, while our team translated those business requirements into the product and supporting technical flows. Across each of these areas, my role was to connect product intent with viable implementation and make sure technical decisions supported both the immediate release and future growth.

Launching iOS, Then Expanding to Android

The product launched first on iOS, allowing us to establish the new experience before expanding the platform to Android. I managed the delivery tracks across native development, backend services, design, QA, infrastructure, content, and supporting vendors while maintaining alignment with Tone It Up stakeholders throughout the release process.

My ownership extended through QA, accessibility, device testing, App Store and Google Play requirements, production readiness, release, monitoring, and post-launch support. Given the experience users had with the previous product, stability and quality were not simply technical requirements. They were essential to rebuilding confidence in the Tone It Up digital experience.

Building Beyond the MVP

Launch was a milestone, not the end of the engagement. We continued developing the product through multiple versions, maintaining a backlog of fixes, improvements, and new capabilities. I worked with stakeholders and the delivery teams to determine what moved into upcoming sprints based on business priorities, user feedback, analytics, technical needs, and the evolving product roadmap.

That ongoing ownership allowed the app to mature rather than remain frozen around its original MVP assumptions. Tone It Up publicly described subsequent releases as being shaped by what its members were asking for, with the experience expanding through additional programs, personalization, nutrition, and other capabilities as the platform evolved.

A Product Built to Keep Growing

The product began with an existing community of roughly 400,000 people and went on to become a lasting part of the Tone It Up business. Today, the platform has expanded to more than 1,000 workouts and 30 programs, while the broader Tone It Up community has generated more than 20 million Instagram hashtags. The iOS app has accumulated roughly 14,000 ratings with a 4.8-star score, and Google Play reports more than 100,000 Android downloads.

Those later figures reflect the continued evolution of Tone It Up rather than metrics attributable solely to our original engagement. What they demonstrate is the longevity of the product platform we helped establish. The app moved beyond replacing a failed predecessor and became an extensible home for Tone It Up's workouts, programs, subscriptions, content, and community.

Connecting Product, Client & Technology

Tone It Up is one of the clearest examples of how I lead complex digital products. I could sit with founders and stakeholders to define priorities and roadmap decisions, translate those ambitions into requirements, budgets, staffing, schedules, and sprints, then work directly with designers, engineers, QA teams, infrastructure partners, and vendors to make the product real.

My technical background gave me the depth to challenge assumptions and guide architecture and implementation, but the larger responsibility was connecting every part of the engagement. Product strategy, stakeholder trust, user needs, design, engineering, delivery, quality, and ongoing iteration all had to move together. That ability to operate across those disciplines was essential to turning a difficult product reset into a platform positioned for continued growth.

Available on iOS & Android

• Download for iOS on the App Store
• Download for Android on Google Play