Behind the Scenes: The Trials and Triumphs of Creating Fitness Apps

Introduction

It was August 2013 — and I remember like it was yesterday. I was sitting in the living room late one evening brainstorming ideas with two of my close college friends, Mike Xhaxho and Jonathan Ratcliff, and we landed on a problem we wanted to solve.

‍

For a long time, we’d been trying to figure out a quicker, easier way to find new workout plans on the Internet. Once we finally found something we were interested in, then we still had to write down the exercise, reps, sets, time durations, search for a video on how to do the exercise, etc. — and then repeat for day’s routine. The process was time consuming and frustrating.

‍

At the time, the influencers of fitness media and social networking media were both rapidly increasing, so we thought: Why not combine the two together? We then set out to create an app where users could easily find different types of training plans from many of the world’s top trainers all conveniently located in one place — on our Flexter app. Our business model was simple — trainers would be able to host their workout plans on the app and then receive a percentage of the proceeds if and/or when they were purchased. The idea consumed us. With no experience in app development and nothing but sheer determination to make it work, we decided to take the leap.

‍

We scraped together some money and hired an iOS designer from London on Upwork named Daniel. He worked with us late into the night — after he came home from his day job and spent time with his 8-month pregnant wife. The initial design for v1 was scheduled to take two weeks. After numerous late night Skype chats, countless revisions, and a newborn baby, all screens were painfully completed two months later. Ouch!

‍

The first developer we hired was from China. His name was Jinbu and we also found him on Upwork. Only two weeks into the project, Jinbu expressed he “needed” more money than the price we had agreed upon and that the project would proceed no further until he had it. We immediately knew this relationship was doomed and went into arbitration, and the idea of potentially losing a large portion of the little remaining money we had was awful. However, it worked out okay; after a week of deliberation, it was determined that Jinbu refund 90% of our money to our account.

‍

So we found another developer from China, named Jiang, and learning from our experience we adjusted the contract so that Jiang would only receive payment when certain milestones were met. Four months and two additional part-time developers later we had a decently working prototype.

‍

Flexter — Find Free Workouts, Fast

‍

‍

We knew we couldn’t continue operating like this much longer and needed to find a local developer in Austin to join the team because we were out of money. We found a developer that wanted to join the project, Anurag. After reviewing the code we had spent so much time and money on, he told us that on a scale from 0–10 our code quality was about a 2. I remember this news coming on a stormy Monday morning — the irony. It was agreed we had to re-start the entire project from scratch.

‍

The app had evolved into a library of free one day workouts. Due to time constraints, we decided we would have to add purchasable programs in a later version. Finally, Flexter went live on the App Store! It was such an awesome feeling of accomplishment. We even had a SXSW Launch Party at Rio.

‍

‍

Our marketing strategy was to have the trainers post about their Flexter workout on their own social media channels and drive their users to download the app. The combined social reach of all 50+ trainers we sourced totaled over 10M followers. We calculated that even if we could only capture a small percentage of them each round of posts it would be enough to get the ball rolling.

‍

‍

The first round of posts was successful, but we quickly saw that the trainers were not incentivized enough to continue to post on their pages about Flexter without any immediate monetary benefit. So we came up with the idea of using our original model to make a separate app solely for one person. I mean, what’s cooler to say, “Check me out on this app with a bunch of other people?” or “Check me out on my own app?” This is when I found Natalie Jill.

Toned — Home Workouts by Natalie Jill

Natalie specializes in home bodyweight workouts that require zero gym equipment and are targeted at women aged 30 and above. She was listed as Forbes #9 most influential fitness influencer, as well as being feature on ABC, CBC, NBC, and more.

‍

After about one month of discussions, both parties agreed to a software license agreement. Natalie would own all the content and be responsible for marketing, while Flexter Inc. would own the source code and be responsible for design, app development, customer support, etc. I took several free learning courses over Sketch on Udemy and designed an app specifically for Natalie. We would give users a select amount of free workout content, but to access all her premium content, users would have to purchase a $4.99/month or $39.99/year subscription.

‍

We launched Toned late March 2015. Natalie started heavily promoting the app across her social media channels and at one point Toned reached the #14th highest grossing fitness app in the U.S.

‍

‍

We were now generating enough monthly revenue to bootstrap the company and pay ourselves, and that summer we were selected into Capital Factory’s Accelerator Program for pre-seed stage startups. At Capital Factory, we were exposed to potential angel investors and venture capitalists, shared office hours with some of Austin’s most successful entrepreneurs, were invited to attend weekly learning classes, and much more. It was the most stimulating environment I’ve ever been exposed to.

‍

Mike had left Flexter Inc. to pursue other opportunities before we were selected into Capital Factory, and Anurag left shortly after. By this time, Jon and I had learned everything from A-Z on app development and could now knowledgeably source great remote developers at an affordable price. Since we had some extra money in the bank, we decided to bring on another trainer to make an app for. Natalie’s manager introduced us to Koya Webb.

‍

Get Loved Up — 28 Day Holistic Health Challenge by Koya Webb

Koya is an internationally recognized yoga teacher, personal trainer, holistic health and wellness coach, author, motivational speaker, and professional fitness model revolutionizing the holistic living landscape. She is known as a “transformational specialist” when it comes to helping people reach their goals — by encouraging sustainable positive lifestyle changes that maximize their ability to cultivate self-love, lose weight, increase energy, reverse life-threatening conditions and experience optimal health. She has made appearances on NBC, CBS, and the Steve Harvey Show to name a few.

‍

She is known for her quick and delicious Vegan recipes. We decided to make a 28 Day Holistic Health Challenge app with breakfast, lunch, snack, and dinner recipes called, Get Loved Up. The app also included weekly shopping lists.

‍

Conclusion

In 2019, Jon and I decided to close the business to pursue other endeavors. It was an incredible experience to start my own company. Our app portfolio generated over 300k+ downloads and $300k+ in sales. I learned more in those few years than I could have possibly fathomed. The idea of trying something completely new or crawling the web in search of answers to problems no longer scares me. Persistence is key.