We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Colleen Flaherty a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Colleen, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?
I came up with the idea for MotherRuckersNC while listening to Andy Frisella’s The Real AF podcast (the founder of 1st Phorm and 75 Hard) featuring the founder of GORUCK, Jason McCarthy. GORUCK is an America-first company as Jason was in the military and built ruck packs to withstand the rigorous trainings of Green Berets. He started hosting group rucks back in 2010 and has since then held 1000’s of events through regional clubs and formal GORUCK events. Rucking is a military activity, to carry your gear in a back pack. It’s now translated into civilian life, walking or working out, by loading up a pack with various weight; weight plates, sand, dumb bells, bags of sugar, ice packs, bricks….whatever you have laying around!!
A little back story – I’ve been a professional strength coach for 11 years, involved in the fitness industry since I was 14. I love all things body and movement related, I just want to be outside as much as possible. In summer 2023, I had just started formulating ideas on how I wanted to support women getting back into nature, more often, purposefully moving their bodies. And that’s when I heard the podcast! Light bulb moment. Carrying weight on your back is SO SIMPLE. And how many people walk their dog? Walk while their kids ride bikes? Walk around while they’re at the playground? Or walk around to do yard work/garden? All these times could BE A WORKOUT! One thing you have to know about me, I love efficiency, and if we can kill 2 birds with one stone, I’m all about it…metaphorically speaking.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I’ve never been a ‘traditional’ strength coach. I think it’s because I get bored easily of doing the same thing over and over again. It’s never why I could train serious athletes. Their training is repetitive for a reason, they HAVE to plan for and see very specific progression. Not my thing! My training style brings together the best and most interesting from a variety of modalities like ‘functional fitness’, animal flow, crossfit, yoga, and gym class. Yup, gym class! We do things like play catch, balance on a bar, throw bean bags, hop through hoops in addition to throwing around kettlebells, sandbags, kegs, and our ruck bags!
Why? Because adults lose their coordination and balance as soon as they stop playing sports or playing with their kids. Seriously, when’s the last time you regularly threw a ball around, played hop scotch, balanced on the curb, or climbed the monkey bars? Those things are VITAL to aging healthfully….yet regular gym routines don’t include these types of variety! Mine does.
Our other western problem is being inside for too long. We are not meant to live inside the cage of our houses. Our bodies, and our pets body’s for that matter, thrive in direct sunlight, fresh air, bird song, dirt and tree exposure. We see so much sickness, anxiety, depression, allergy, hyperactivity, etc. because we are inside too long. Living a life of outside takes planning, but it’s 100% doable to get outside more than we are in, and move more than we sit!
Along those lines of sitting….you probably know what I’m going to say, “sitting too much is bad.” Your body was designed to move, and move pretty darn well! We’ve been evolving for millions of years to move about in nature to live and survive. The new lifestyle of sitting….indoors….is a leading cause of our body ailments, headaches, injuries, anxiety, depression, hopelessness, and weight gain. Just 30 minutes of walking outside per day significantly reduces everything I just listed!! Amazing!
Getting outside the gym 4 walls was very important to me and rare for group fitness classes, but I knew I was onto something when 400 local women joined my private Facebook group in 2 months! More women want to be outside, they don’t want to go to a gym, and they want to be fitness-ing differently! I love strength and conditioning because it is brilliantly adaptable to every body, every goal, and every environment. Some classes we may only use our ruck bag, others we may use a variety of tools, and the next might just be a 3 mile walk! No matter the session, it’s the consistency in ACTION that allows my clients to reach their goals of weight loss, muscle building, better cardio, and an overall sense of calm, joy, and confidence! If you are reading this and want to participate in a group fitness activity that’s like no other, sign up for a class and join us! We always have fun while working hard!
Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?
As I mentioned in the beginning, I listened to Andy’s “Real AF” podcast and I will say that it’s been the one business podcast I binge because just like the name….he is real AF in everything he speaks about. He’s built multiple, multi-million dollar companies while being humble and just doing the work. I recommend every business owner, especially those thinking about entrepreneurship and new to the game to listen. He doesn’t sugar coat anything and at the end of the day, owning a business is the hardest thing you can do because the suck never stops. There’s always hurdles, there’s always doubts, there’s always something to take action on. It’s not for the weak or the faint of heart. Mindset is the one thing I’ve learned from him this year, that the hard makes us tough and more resilient to being our best selves day in and day out. Being a business owner is going to make or break you, and if you have the mentality of winning to serve the greater good, reaching your goals is 100% possible with hard work and commitment. Everyone needs someone like Andy in our corner giving us the “real talk”, go take a listen!
We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?
Business culture is very masculine, work your hands to the bone for what you want, and as a woman in business, the ‘hustle’ and ‘grind’ culture doesn’t always work that way. I’ve had to unlearn ‘early bird gets the worm’ and ‘logically figure it out’ because sometimes, especially for women, our intuition can get us further than working for work’s sake. Sometimes space is required to really know which direction or next step to take. But listening to our intuition isn’t something that’s normally talked about when we learn about “running a business”. I will say now, more than 4 years ago, women business owners are speaking more to the ‘flow’ of being guided by our hearts and our guts versus always choosing with our heads. Again, that intuition is a feeling and trust thing, it’s not a logical thing. The practice of trusting hard work will pay off, trusting outcomes will be delivered, and envisioning/speaking into existence what I want, has taken a lot of practice….and I’m in no way perfect!! I want to make it all happen by my own hands….but, as I’ve seen glimpses of, that’s not the way this all works! The saying should be, “work hard, wait hard”!!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.motherruckersnc.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/motherruckersnc
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/motherruckersnc