Katie Addison: Product Leader

Passionate about products in the health, fitness and sports, childcare and parenting, coaching and education technology, community building and productivity spaces.

I am a Product Leader with 7+ years of experience collaborating with cross-functional teams to deliver winning products in the health and fitness technology field.

My specialty is leading teams to correctly identify, prioritize, and solve the most impactful customer problems in order to deliver business impact.

I do my best work when I am building products and features that enable end users to live healthier, happier, more engaged lives.

Product Philosophy

Know Thy Customer

Be obsessed with your customers - yes, know their demogragraphic information, but also know their goals, dreams, challenges, frustrations and fears. Communicate with them often and observe how they use your product(s). You are building for them!

Prioritization is Key

There are an endless number user stories and items in the backlog. Selecting which items to prioritize is both an art and a science. I tend to use the Impact - Confidence - Effort (ICE) Framework when doing prioritization and seek to implement experiences that will solve real customer pain points and have profound business impact.

Always Have a Feedback Loop

Get feedback from internal and external stakeholders early and often when building features and products. You aren’t done after a release! Was what you implemented successful? How do you know? What is your plan for improvement?

Set SMART Goals

Goals give us something to shoot for, and if they are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-Bound, they have the potential to motivate us to do our best work.

Be a Good Host

There should be a level of craft when designing product flows. Being a good host means putting clean towels on the bed so guests know the towels are for them. In other words, save users steps, make instructions succinct, don’t make users think, create an overall delightful experience.

Work from the Top Down

Start from the company mission and work down: Mission —> Vision —> Strategy —> Goals —> Roadmap —> Task. This will ensure you are focused on building things that enable you to achieve what you have set out to do. There are many tools, templates, principles and examples from other companies that exist to provide guidance during each step of the process.

Prioritize Small and Big Bets

Have a combination of small (low-risk) and and big (high-risk) projects when you identify strategic bets that your company / team plan to focus on for the next term. I generally follow the 80/20 rule with 80% of resources going to incremental low-risk projects and 20% going to longer-term higher-risk bets, but in some cases the 80/20 rule goes out the window.

Be Agile

Be willing to adapt quickly to new information. Agile methodology focuses on delivering features that have the greatest business value first. This process is at it’s best with constant, real-time customer feedback.

Build Empathy and Improve Creativity

To build empathy, observe people interacting with products and deconstruct everyday products. To improve creativity, learn from great product thinkers and be curious about changes in technology and your field.

Work Experience

Product Team - Rock My World, Inc.

2017 - Present (7 years)
  • Rock My World specializes in the creation and delivery of DJ mixes for exercise activities. The company has multiple music products for consumers and businesses (see 'Products Launched' section below), and the music is proven to improve exercise performance and motivation by up to 35%.

  • Gym partners: Orangetheory Fitness, Nike Training/Running Studios, TITLE Boxing and Fitness, Mayweather Boxing and Fitness, 30 Minute HIT, RockBox Fitness

    • Positions held:

      • Chief Product Officer (2020-Current)

      • Senior Product Manager (2018-2020)

      • Product Manager (2017-2018)

D1 Varsity Soccer Coach - University of California, Davis

2014 - 2017 (3 years)

  • Coached with Twila Kilgore, the current Interim Head Coach for the US Women’s National Team

Regional Coordinator - Small Goal Soccer

2013 - 2014 (1 year)

  • Organized Small Goal Soccer (SGS) leagues and tournaments in major cities in the Western Region, and helped grow the SGS leagues from ~1,000 to ~5,000 participants.

Graduate Student Researcher - Arizona State University

2012 - 2013 (1.5 years)

  • Notable projects:

    • Jawbone UP Study - Partnered with the company Jawbone to test the reliability of the Jawbone UP 1st generation band to measure step count, distance moved and calorie burn

    • Just in Time Adaptive Interventions - Researched how new mHealth technologies might give individuals the “right” feedback at the “right” time and in the “right” context in order to promote behavior change

Couples Therapy Researcher - Stanford University

2009 - 2011 (1.5 years)

  • Conducted psychology research aimed at building a Blueprint for relationships that Barbara White, Ph.D uses in her university lectures, private practice and web-based educational program for couples seeking therapy or tools that will enable them to take care of their relationships and improve their emotional and social skills.

Experience building AI products before it was cool (2017-2019).

  • Jolt.AI - An accountability partner chatbot designed to help individuals reach their activity goals.

  • Sync Your Health Data.

  • Earn Rewards for Working Out.

  • Get Credit for Your Activity.

  • Receive Daily Progress Updates.

  • Compete with Others who Have Similar Goals.

Products Launched

RockMyRun - Music App for Runners

A music and activity tracking app designed specifically for runners.

Key Metrics:

  • Over 2.4M registered users

  • Average customer listens to ~1,000 minutes of music per month

  • 70% user retention at 6 months

Notable features:

  • 1,000s of running-specific workout mixes

  • Advanced music discovery

  • Sync the tempo of the music to your heart rate or steps

  • Manual tempo adjustment

  • Apple Watch Music Control

  • Music suggestions based on preferences and listening history

Development Strategy:

  • Utilizes React Native so most code for the iOS and Android apps can be updated in one place

Rock My Fitness Class - Music App for Coaches

A music app designed from the ground up to support the fitness class experience.

Key Metrics:

  • Over 2,000 gym customers

  • Average customer listens to ~10,000 minutes of music per month

  • 90% customer retention at 6 months

Notable Features:

  • 1,000s of gym-specific workout mixes

  • Advanced music discovery

  • Manual tempo adjustment

  • 1 tap from the Now Playing screen to:

    • Increase the tempo and volume of the music to motivate members during high intensity intervals

    • Significantly raise and lower the music volume for transitions

    • Go into Cool Down mode

  • Interval timer

  • Advanced sorting and filtering for Favorited mixes

Development Strategy:

  • Utilizes React Native so most code for the iOS and Android apps can be updated in one place

  • Utilizes a monorepo so studio-branded versions of the app can easily be created from the classic app with custom logos and colors and custom music libraries / features

Rock My Gym - Background Music Scheduler for Gyms

The ultimate background music scheduler created exclusively for gyms and fitness studios.

Key Metrics:

  • Product launched October 2023

Notable Features:

  • Music channels covering all the popular genres for gyms

  • Schedule music programming and audio ads in advance (Set it and Forget it!)

Development Strategy:

  • Utilizes React / Next.js so most code for Mac and PCs and their respective browser types can be updated in one place

  • Utilizes a monorepo so gym-branded versions of the web product can easily be created from the classic web product with custom logos and colors and custom music libraries / features

Experience creating backend tools that enable non-engineers to quickly perform actions that are integral to their roles.

  • Create users. Assign them to business products. Manage their profile information, subscription status and feature flags.

  • Enable the Content Team to customize the music experience by managing music libraries across products and clients.

  • Make client and music reporting easy by allowing non-engineers to filter, sort and export song play logs.

Education

  • B.A. in Psychology, Stanford University

    Varsity Soccer Team, 3 Final Fours

  • M.S. in Sport and Exercise Psychology, Florida State University

    Varsity Soccer Team, 1 Final Four

  • Executive M.B.A., Quantic School of Business and Technology

    Graduated with Honors

Core Competencies

Product Management

  • Ability to craft product vision, strategy and roadmap that align with company objectives

  • Integration of usability studies, research insights and market analyses into product prioritization and product requirements

  • Experience gathering requirements across diverse areas and users and converting them into product solutions that delight users and grow the business

  • Collaboration with Design, Engineering and others on product discovery and product delivery

  • Experience with a wide range of product discovery techniques

  • Managing software development team’s backlog

  • Performing product briefings, walkthroughs, demos for internal and external stakeholders

  • Execution of initiatives on-time, on-budget and with high quality

Data and Decisions

  • Exceptional standards for making data-informed decisions

  • Skilled at generating hypothesis, running experiments and analyzing results

  • Experience with monetization strategies (e.g., subscriptions, in-app purchases) for digital consumer and business products

  • Ability to define measurable objectives and key results for product teams that align with the product vision and strategy

  • Backlog prioritization decisions based on scoring frameworks that align with company goals

  • Data and analysis to uncover new problems and identify opportunities to improve existing products

  • Technical experience with analytical tools, methodologies and design

Background in Coaching and Psychology

  • Acting as a leader within the company

  • Excellent written and verbal communication

  • Excellent teamwork skills

  • Proven ability to influence cross-functional teams without formal authority

  • Ability to oversee and mentor a small team of Product Managers

  • Ability to empathize with users and business partners

  • Proactive engagement with internal and external stakeholders throughout the product development lifecycle

  • Constantly improving and open to feedback through collaboration

  • Growth mindset with an enthusiastic and resilient approach to a constantly evolving environment

Self Rating on Most Essential PM Skills

Full graph viewable web only. On mobile you can tap the bars to see the skills and ratings.

Tools in the toolkit.

Tools in the toolkit.

Data Analytics

  • Amplitude / Looker / mySQL / Firebase

  • Keap / Active Campaign / MixPanel

  • App Store Connect / Google Play Console

  • Google Analytics / Google Adwords / Google Search Console

Product Management

  • Jira / Confluence / Linear / Aha!

  • Slack / Google Drive / Dropbox

  • Sketch / InVision / Miro / Canva

  • GitHub / XCode

Things I love

My Family

Running / Hiking

Homemade Pizza

Coaching

Snowboarding

RV Camping