Meet Maurice Buchanan

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Maurice Buchanan. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Maurice below.

Maurice, we’re so excited for our community to get to know you and learn from your journey and the wisdom you’ve acquired over time. Let’s kick things off with a discussion on self-confidence and self-esteem. How did you develop yours?

I tried to identify what my strengths were and once I felt confident in putting those strengths into practice from consistently working on them, I would try to utilize them in the best environments and situations available to me. I wasn’t as conscious about it then as I am now, but I knew the things I was able to participate in because of my strengths, made me feel more confident to get stronger and take on newer challenges. I was born with certain attributes that allow me to excel in playing football. The confidence and self esteem I developed from playing football carried over to other areas that I wasn’t as strong in. There were similarities in the things I wasn’t as strong in that required the same development and approach as my strengths. All I needed to do was keep gaining overall confidence in the things I was excelling at to gain more confidence to try at things I wasn’t. Preparation, being disciplined, communicating, paying attention to detail, dealing with failure, and taking risk were all things I had to do in football that helped developed my confidence and self esteem to try in business.

Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?

I co-own and operate Wurk. We are a gym located in Minnetonka Minnesota with an emphasis in boxing, mma, and other fighting disciplines.

What I feel is most special about what we do is creating an environment that populations of people form all different backgrounds and experiences feel comfortable coming in together, wurking side by side for the common goal of self care and improvement. Whether it’s a 25 year old professional fighter training herself for a championship belt or an 75 year old man trying to conquer his push up record, we’re all in the same building wurking and it’s beautiful.

Our brand and mesage to people is the simplicity in taking care of yourself and trying to be the best in the one thing you truly own and are in charge of, your body. Our industry of fitness/health is a global phenomenon participated by millions for every reason you can think of. Health, financial, marketing, mental/emotional health, and countless others. Because so many different genres are involved for business, it can be difficult to understand how you should approach your wellness and who you should listen to. Businesses involved in this industry like any other industry are trying to differentiate themselves from one another for profit. That’s understandable but in that understanding the simplicity of taking care of yourself and bettering your health often gets lost for the focus on trying to be different or “unique” for financial gain. There’s nothing wrong with that depending on who’s executing the mesage and what their message is but we can lose one of the vital purposes of this business and that is to help educate people and instill the confidence in them that they know all they need to know to take care of themselves and if this industry were to fall tomorrow, everyone would be just fine from a knowledge standpoint in how to keep themselves healthy. It’s always been simple. If it wasn’t we would’ve died a long time ago.

We encourage people who want to come to our gym to reach out and have a conversation with us. It’s free to talk to us and ask questions. Anyone’s first session with us is free. We also work with kids who are trying to build confidence through being physically active, learn a new skill, and socialize with other kids.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

Wanting to learn, being excited to hear “no”, confidence to fail.

Learning is free it just takes time and patience. Cost you nothing to seek out advice from people who have done it before either through personal messaging or reading their text. Just do it. You can reach out to CEO’s from widely successful businesses in a matter of seconds and gain a wealth and lifetime of knowledge in just one interaction to get you going.

Be excited to hear “no” because it doesn’t mean never it might mean “not right now.” Which could mean you may need to go back to the drawing board and rethink your idea or approach and that’s very exciting if you have the right mindset because it could make it better and “no” was the reason.

Having the confidence to fail is a true strength. You have to throw your idea out there and see how the world responds and they may not like it first. You may need to grow in areas that you didn’t think you had to. You may need to become a better listener, speaker, or writer and you won’t get to your best unless you put out what you think is a finished product and have it fail miserably but be so excited and passionate to improve it because want an incredible opportunity for your creation to become better.

Alright so to wrap up, who deserves credit for helping you overcome challenges or build some of the essential skills you’ve needed?

The incredible people I’ve had the pleasure of working with for almost 20 years. I have people who have been with me since I started and their patience in allowing me to grow through countless mistakes, errors, and attempts to keep getting better at my profession, is the reason why I’m still in this business today. I can not thank them enough for sticking with me through the tough times of trying to figure it out and giving me the grace and time to fail to become better for them and myself.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://wurkgym.com
• Instagram: @wurkgym
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wurkgym?mibextid=LQQJ4d
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maurice-buchanan-67733461?utm_source=share&utm_campaign=share_via&utm_content=profile&utm_medium=ios_app
• Youtube: @Wurkgym

Image Credits

Matt Brouse