For Laura Green, a Northeastern graduate, running has been a big part of life since childhood.

Green, 37, grew up in a running family in upstate New York. She ran track in high school and was part of the cross-country and track teams at Northeastern until her graduation in 2010. 

She made friends around the country through running while being a traveling physical therapist and met her future husband through a fitness movement, “November Project,” that originated in Boston.

Running has also been Green’s “me time” since she became a mother of two and the time to see her girlfriends and to socialize in the wee hours of the morning. It also gave her an unexpected creative outlet and a new occupation.

About a year ago, Green, encouraged by a friend, tried creating funny skits about running for social media.

“I made a couple [videos], and they did pretty well. I realized that this is something that is not fully capitalized in the running space,” she says. “I think most people take themselves really seriously and most ads in running are very serious. So I kept going.” 

Green quickly found her audience, started partnering with running gear brands and was able to quit her physical therapy job at a hospital. 

On her Instagram, TikTok and YouTube accounts, Green jokes about anything and everything running, from the sport’s lingo to sports commentators, brands, types of runners, road versus trail running, snacks and runners’ obsession with Strava, a physical activity tracking application. In a little over a year she amassed more than 153,000 followers, who readily engage with her content, calling it “brilliant,” “too real” and “PURE GOLD.”

Among her latest achievements is a partnership with Asics that took her to the 2023 World Athletics Championships in Budapest, Hungary, in September where she conducted interviews with athletes, showed her followers the facilities and “built hype around track,” as she said.

Northeastern Global News caught up with Green to ask her about her life as a social media influencer and get some tips on how to get into running.

How did attending Northeastern and Bouvé College of Health Sciences prepare you for a career in physical therapy?

It’s one of the best physical therapy schools in the country.

When I was younger, I thought that I wanted to work with athletes because I was one. I was supposed to be on the sidelines of the NFL training those athletes. 

Then, because of the co-op program, I got to work in these different settings that I probably wouldn’t have chosen. I went to San Diego and worked at Scripps Memorial Hospital La Jolla and then I went to Hawaii. I really loved the inpatient setting. I loved working with the geriatric population, and so I kind of shifted gears. I was like, “Oh, I really like cardiothoracic. I really like neuro.” The athletic portion and outpatient orthopedic I thought was painful and boring.

When I graduated, a fellow friend and Northeastern graduate and I became traveling physical therapists. We really wanted to travel. I think co-ops and clinical [practice] just really prepped us for traveling physical therapy. They really just throw you into the fire, there’s very little orientation, and you need to kind of be prepared for anything.

How often do you run?

Most days. When I’m training for something, there’s usually a plan in place (I did two marathons last year — in New York and then in Paris). For the most part, I am lifting and going to the gym. But I run to the gym and home, at the very minimum. On my days off from lifting, I run farther. 

How do you describe yourself when people ask what you do?

I call myself a comedic content creator and I say that I’m in the running world. Sometimes, there’s a little parenting side note or more about lifting or biking, but for the most part, it’s running.

Have you always been a jokester?

My friends are not surprised by this. But I will say that I am not the funniest of my friends. The Northeastern track team, I can’t even tell you how many of them should be stand-up comedians. They were all so funny.

How do you come up with ideas for your content?

It’s mostly just lived experience that I’m either exaggerating or making fun of. I mean, all my videos are making fun of myself, that’s the goal. 

I do have friends I bounce ideas off of, and friends come to me out of the blue or will just message me, “Have you thought about doing this?”

Do you have to post a lot?

I try to put up two [posts] a week. My posts are most of the time scripted. There’s storyboarding, there’s outfit change. So they take a little bit longer to make. I don’t ever want to feel so stressed out, like, ‘I got to post more.’ So I try to do two a week. If it doesn’t happen, that’s all good. 

I never really post on the weekend. It’s family time. I do post stories most days.

I do my best to only be on social media during work hours. I go pick my kids up at 4:30 p.m., and I do my best to just turn it off as if it’s my work email because if not, it could be on all day, all night, and it consumes your life.

My husband occasionally makes me put my phone into a box, and I’m not allowed to touch it. That actually is very effective.

Does your husband help you create content?

I showed him maybe the third video I made. I edited it, and then I showed it to him. And he didn’t laugh hard enough for me. So I said, “No, never showing you one again.” 

How comfortable are you with putting yourself out there in front of thousands of viewers?

It takes a certain comfortability in who you are, and at this stage in my life, I’m there. I’m much more concerned with the jokes being funny and accurate than how I look on camera. 

I definitely wouldn’t have been there a decade ago. So, I’m definitely much more comfortable. I don’t watch anything back and think, “Oh, I look terrible.”

Can you tell us more about monetizing your content?

I have been surrounded by very knowledgeable people from the start and that has helped me so much. At the beginning, of course, I didn’t know what to charge. It also is kind of the Wild West out there, where creators are kind of making up their own price.

I mean, you’re basing it on what you feel your worth is based on — your followers but also your engagement, and your viewers, and your views. There’s no set calculator and that is the problem. Then, content creators will do work for much less money, and we’re like, “No, ask for more.” You’re essentially writing, storyboarding and filming commercials, you need to be paid for that. 

I would say, I’ve made twice as much this year [in seven months] as I would as a physical therapist. It’s incredibly lucrative, if you know what to ask for, and you also know how to sell it. 

What about physical therapy, do you see yourself going back to it?

I’m sure I’ll go back. I’ve taken breaks before to travel and have kids. 

I view this new career as very temporary. I’m very realistic about it and how it can change overnight, and the pressure to remain relevant. I don’t care that much. So if I become irrelevant tomorrow, it’s OK. I can go back to working as a PT. We’ll see, we’ll just ride it out for as long as we can.

What would be your advice for someone who is hesitant to get into running?

Honestly, starting with running a block. It doesn’t have to be how far you run. For me, it’s about just being outside, and it’s also a great way to meet people or connect with people who already run that you’re friends with. 

Go to a specialty store, have someone who knows what they’re doing take a look at your foot and really put you in a great pair of shoes. You always want to start with walk-running. You don’t want to just go out for a run. You need to build up slowly, or else you’ll get injured. So these walk-runs, like walk a block, run a block, walk a block, run a block, those are a great way to enter the space. 

Alëna Kuzub is a Northeastern Global News reporter. Email her at a.kuzub@northeastern.edu. Follow her on X/Twitter @AlenaKuzub.