Actifit Health & Fitness Radio Show - 15 March 2019 with Nathan Mars [Discussing actifit, steem and #seven77]
Hello everybody!
As many of you may know, every Friday evening at 8 PM GTM/UTC, you have the chance to listen Actifit Health & Fitness Radio Show live!
Every week great steemians are the honor guests, @mcfarhat is the host at the ramble discord server, and at the end of the show the participants have the opportunity to earn extra AFIT tokens!
Not to mention the fun at the chat during the radio show
At the last week’s show, Nathan Mars was the guest of honor. Having seen his commitment, his passion about steem and his encouragement for new steemians, I wanted to participate. However, due to unexpected health reasons, I was unable to be online at that time.
Every show is being recorded, and the recording is found usually the next day at the @actifit announcement. This time, apart from only listening to the show, I wished to transcribe it, so that more people would get the chance, not only to listen, but to read about it.
Creating a transcription, especially to a 90-minute video is not easy. It took much more time and I am not sure if I did a descent job.
This is an edited transcription of the Actifit Health & Fitness Show 15th of March 2019. I did some proof reading and editing, some parts are missing because it would be too long as a post. I hope there is no errors, if you find any please let me know
You can find the recording here
Friday Actifit Health & Fitness Radio Show - The Recording!
We've had yesterday our 5th episode of our weekly Actifit Health & Fitness Show. Yes it was a blast !
Our main guest was @nathanmars, who woke up quite early to be with us on the show!
Nathan shared some details about his Steem experience, his amazing commitment to the growth of this blockchain, the support he's giving to the community, and all the cool twitter campaigns across twitter.
We learned more about Nathan's minimalist lifestyle, but also about the secret behind Seven 77. If you missed the show, make sure to watch the rerun below.
Part -1- Welcoming & Short Update about Actifit
Mcfarhat: Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, good night wherever you guys are.
Just so excited tonight for the actifit health & fitness radio show. We are really happy for this evening to have one of the prominent steemians, someone who's dedicated to steem, to promoting steem, to bring it to the masses, to bring the benefit of the steem blockchain to everyone. So at tonight's show we are going to have several stops, the first stop will be introducing actifit. What's actifit it to any listener who's still not aware of actifit what it is. Actifit is a dapp on steem blockchain that aims to incentivize healthy lifestyle by rewarding your everyday activity. It is simply a mobile app, that you can download from the Play Store or App Store. The app will track your activity, whether you are walking or jogging, or mowing your loan or doing your house chores, or walking around the office. All these activities are tracked and you are rewarded both in steem upvotes and AFITS. The purpose of actifit is to push people to get more active, while being rewarded, and to live healthier. That is something that most of us are struggling with, due to our current unfortunate technological lifestyle, sitting behind laptops and phones.
This is what actifit is all about, in a nutshell.
During last week, everybody is probably aware, we have already launched the capability to exchange your AFIT tokens to STEEM upvotes, we actually received a major delegation, we have increased around 90000SP, the actifit account, so we are very close to 400,000 SP and we are able to reward people more, to perform more transactions for exchanging it to steem upvotes.
People are earning more rewards, better upvotes from our account. We are happy to be able to support you more we are able to do more exchanges. We started with 40 exchange transactions, now we are able to process 50 so you are already swapping your AFIT or exchange them for steem upvotes. We have long queues, so the more we are able to exchange I know you guys would be happier. Right now we have daily almost 190 exchanges and those would stand a few days of reward. We are in discussions with exchanges so those would be some of the next big milestones for us. We actually have a meeting with a few investors throughout the week and we have follow-up meetings the coming weeks, so we wish to be able to grow and bring actifit to the masses. The funding will really help us to do that so we are quite interested and in seeing the positive response that we got from the investors. The are happy to hear about the idea, sometimes they struggle to understand it at first but once they do, and they understand the currency and steem and actifit. We have something amazing going on and we hope to be able to bring it to the masses. It is your effort and with our guests effort I think we are getting closer.
That was what we have been up to last week, so now I move on to our main event of the evening.

Someone you probably know either from steem or from twitter, he is everywhere. He is just doing everything for this blockchain, I mean everyone on twitter loves him and without further ado: Nathan Mars, we are so excited, so happy to have you and just for us he woke up quite early in the morning (4 or 5 am). So, thank you so much for joining us Nathan!
Part -2- Welcoming Discussion with Nathan Mars
Nathan: Thanks for having me, it is a pleasure to be here and talk to my fellow steem citizens. Yeah so I'm super happy and to have this conversation with you guys.
Mcfarhat: So let's start with the basics. Who are you and how long have you been on steem blockchain?
Nathan: Yeah I don't know I can't define myself I will always define myself as a global citizen and extreme minimalist. I'm passionate about people and I want to do some good things to make people’s life better. I got into crypto maybe two and a half years ago, full time. When I do anything I’ll go all-in, I don’t go 50/50 or 70/30, if it is 0% / 100% that’s me. So, I went all-in in crypto.
I got into steem almost a year ago as a hobby. Then I had this thought that I could do something better and I didn’t know what to do.
Mcfarhat: So you entered crypto two years ago and then steem about a year ago?
Nathan: I don’t know, I think I found out about it at 2017, but I think I became full time probably this time last year.
Mcfarhat: I always thought you were here on steem before me.
Nathan: Yeah, I joined steem before, I had about 60 different cryptocurrencies in my portfolio and I was learning about this blockchain space. I did not know about the cryptocurrency that suits me, I tried to be an investor but then I realized I am not an investor, at all, so I chose steem because this would bring my entrepreneur skill set to the table. You asked me a question about how long you have been on steem, but I think that it is the wrong question to ask because it is not how long you are into something, it is about how much impact you make. So, if you say about a football game and I can become a substitute in the 88th minute and I score two goals and make the team win, it doesn’t matter how long I play this game. A lot of people got into crypto, but they don’t really go deep into crypto. Even steem. And when you go deeper, then the question, how long and how active you have been
Mcfarhat: Absolutely, there have been accounts for two and a half year who are not active.
[short disconnection]
Mcfarhat: So you were saying…
Nathan: The good question to ask is how active you are on steem blockchain,
rather than how long ago did you sign up. Why did you find out and I started as a hobby, I wanted to learn, I want to support decentralization so here I am.
[…]
Mcfarhat: How did you actually come to learn about steem, how did you find out about steem and what really motivated you to move full-time to it?
Nathan: So as I was into crypto and I had steem in my portfolio I had a steem account and a bear market I was trying to reallocate my portfolio and try to do more research and to reduce the number of crypto, to focus into some crypto and invest for long term. Then, that time I thought I had more time because there’s not much research I could do and then I noticed Jerry Barnfield videos. I am an extreme minimalist and I love to read sometimes, also I thought I could write really well, so I was just reading a couple of articles and dtube at the time and was really excited. I came from Youtube, which really changed my life. I have been on Youtube for almost six year and I learned so many things, it is like a University for me and I saw the potential with DLive
[..]
Mcfarhat We all know what happened with DLive.
Nathan: Yeah, but after one or two months into it, I saw that there are lot of people here in this block chain and there's a lot of projects here and the projects need investment so I want to link people and the project and the investors together to make it grow. Then I started my own project called steem engine list [?] but it kind of failed.
I learned a lot from the experience because I realized there's not many people enough to you know a blockchain to kind of make it happen. Then steem festival happened and my journey evolved.
After DLive I went to DG polling and it introduced me to snap.
[…]
I tried so hard […] and I learned a lot about how to approach things, and to understand what is the motivation behind people to doing certain things. Is this money or is it a passion?
I think that you need to have passion. If we played football, maybe money is important but you need to love football otherwise you can’t be a great football player. If you just play football for money maybe you won't make it. It's not possible if you can't go all the way you know. You have to love whatever you do so I always see people who really love creating video content or really love exercising do things. I did clean planet initiative you know and I was cleaning the planet and I would pick up trash. I see people's video of and I'm like when they pick up the trash I don't see they really want to do it I see versus there is no passion and what you're doing. It's like kicking a ball when you don't really care you play football you don't want to play.
Maybe you sit in a restaurant or bar, you see a boy and a girl talking you see the boy is not really keen on that girl he's looking at something else you know and you can see. I don't want to judge anybody I think what I wanna see is, I want to understand people and I want them to think long term so yeah I learned a lot I'm still learning you know I'm still learning so I like to learn and I like to help
Mcfarhat: I just love those aspects in you. I'm hearing about those Nathan, I mean your perception towards the world and the minimalist approach and all
these things I mean it's not too common to see people who approach the world in
this manner but I mean within that aspect.
Did that affect you focusing so much on steem or why did you focus on steem? Is it the blockchain, is it the cryptocurrency, is is the community?
Nathan: You have to stay here, you have to promote, you have to grow this
thing that's happening. I think I remember when I got into crypto I was
backpacking or traveling Southeast Asia and California and Hawaii surfing so I
was doing research and enjoying my traveling but I was telling people about bit coin and crypto you should get involved as promoting for free you know all the crypto and decentralization. You should just buy Bitcoin, I was teaching them and but there those people don't want to put their money in they're like why do I need to buy Bitcoin, I don't have money but when I say steem and then okay. Maybe I can create the account maybe I can blog, maybe I can earn some steem then and I was trying to promote even in Japan everywhere I tried to tell everyone.
I need to tell them about Bitcoin it just me I always talk about what I do so if the person I need I'm extremely talkative and extremely socialist I'm a social person so I talk to strangersI could have a conversation with anybody. So because I was traveling I was staying in backpackers hostel and going up for the airport then hostel to hostel
and town to town and I was meeting other people along the way. I was telling
everybody about Bitcoin and cryptocurrency but then I understood that most people don't have money to invest.
But if they have the time and they have the passion, they can mine steem. That's what kind of got me. I think steem is kind of everybody's Bitcoin or everybody's crypto. Steem has to bring crypto adoption
Mcfarhat: Being able to earn crypto that's not something you find at different crypto projects I mean it doesn't have that. Steem was quite innovative in that aspect so yeah I understand.
"Everyone has some superpower"
Nathan: It’s not just limited to some. You know if you're a developer you can earn. A fitness person, anybody can earn anybody. Everyone has some superpower and you just need to think. I always tell people before you do your own research about crypto you have to do your own research about yourself you have to discover yourself who you are as a person, what's your passion , what you love to do. Then is easy to connect to the world because you know who you are. Then what you love to do, makes it easy to find anywhere the opportunity. But if you don't know yourself that is hard. You're gonna blame everything, oh that's not good.
[..]
Steem is for everybody
Mcfarhat: Absolutely and I just saw by @blind-spot he's saying see if it is the greener side of the cryptoverse. Nathan you're constantly on travel I mean you did mention lots of places you didn't mention surfing and you got me the jealous. You mentioned you're in Japan I think. How do you keep on traveling?
Nathan: My wife is Japanese and we have three months all Sun and yeah I'm a global citizen. I have British citizenship and my mama is from Sri Lanka and my dad is Daniken. But I'm a global citizen. I've been traveling for last three and a half years maybe after brexit. So I was living in London and that time I was teaching English in London. My students are mostly from France or Spain or Turkey and when the brexit happened there they wanted to go back to their country. Then I realized okay this is probably the best time to me to kind of do something.That time there were some relationship issues as well so then I decided to sell my house in London, I decided to travel the world. So about then I went to Hawaii, I went to Sri Lanka, then I went to Japan then I went to Hawaii again then Southeast Asia. And in different countries, yeah I don't know how I kept traveling and I think I was finding myself.
Mcfarhat: You found your wife.
Nathan: No No we've been together for years now, in London but it's been a roller coaster relationship because of different culture. She really did not understand me well but the more we stay together.. Really we had kind of a bad period, had some difficult, tough times together but we overcame all that. Then we got married but I don't really see this like a marriage. She is like my partner I think in life. In life
everybody needs a partner, so she is like my best friend, she supports what I do.
Mcfarhat: It is the best scenario. I've seen so many couples who are just married because they're married or they just are so alienated that, I mean they're not really a couple. So you're having your wife as your best friend, I mean that's amazing that's the best case scenario probably.
Nathan: Yeah I told that before I proposed her, so you know I'm just proposing because you're like my best friend.
Mcfarhat: That's awesome.
[…]
Be patient and believe in yourself
Nathan: I think the point is that in relationship, in business, the more you are with somebody the more you understand that person. The more you are into crypto the more you understand the potential of it. Everything takes time, [..] My son is three months old and the more he grows up, I learn about parenting.
[…] People break up after six months and say you know […] but they don't really give some time to build a relationship or build a business. They quit immediately and it's failing, it's not working so everything takes time. I want to say to people to be patient and believe in yourself.
Mcfarhat: Yeah awesome. I mean you're doing tons of promotions on Twitter for steem and for actifit. Have you always been active on Twitter or was that yourrecent choice for social media to just attack everyone there and introduce them to steem and recently to actifit?
Nathan: I found out Twitter [..] after brexit. I'm a fan of Jeremy Corbyn UK politician Labour Party leader. At that time I learned how the mainstream media news, you know biggest news in the Fox News, everything is fake. They manipulate. I remember watching in Turkey political things […] and I see two complete different video footage on BBC and [..] live video live broadcasting missed some local people and I'm like..Why is it so different?
People read news, people watch news and they believe this is true and they've been manipulated. I have not become a big fan of Twitter but I've tried […]to step away from the politics because I thought the best way to change politics is to get into bitcoin. Because politics is like never ending here. On crypto I because I do research, I watch youtube videos and read some forums and reddit and I learned that because I don't know who's behind and who's some youtubers, you know, they're not really honest with us. They don't give good analysis so I learned that I need to
follow some good people on Twitter who really know what they're talking about. So I learn some people on Twitter […]
[27:47]
Steem is decentralized and there are not many people clearly promoting steem on Twitter. There are two things that really got me. Do you remember netcoins contest?
You know, about steem listing on net coins? I remember people creating content on Steem and they said okay I signed up, I voted for steem and happened on the steem world. Netcoins announced on Twitter that Steem won the contest and on Twitter the tweet had four likes, some two retweets and one response.
I remember when Oracle-D was upvoting or something and people are commenting and resteeming this and retweeting that content. But when steem was announced nobody would give a shit and then I'm like.. Because, if you are promoting or to trypromoting constantly […] you need to be there all the time.
It happened with bittrex as well, you know somebody wanted to list on bittrex USD steem and they were giving free upvotes for people who comment steem and because then they two days later […] nobody commented about steem. That really got me thinking, what is wrong ? People are just doing it because of the upvote or they really want seem to be listed on bittrex? […]
Mcfarhat: That's the great question
Steem is still a small island and we need to connect to the rest of the world.
Nathan: So I want to change that, I want to change the culture of people thinking short term, and people don't really believe in this. Think long term and I think steem is very under underrated and undervalued. I want to also bring opportunity for projects outside investment and if they're really good enough and the entrepreneur behind there and maybe I can make the connection independent connection, not as a middleman. Investors to look into the steem project maybe you know build a bridge between some angel or venture capitalists to the project or - of steem blockchain maybe possibly look for collaboration so I want to see the world but steem is a small island is still a small island and we need to connect to the rest of the world.
[31:05]
Mcfarhat: I agree, it has huge potential there is still a small community. I mean we have 1.2 million registered accounts probably but the real active ones on a daily basis are maybe maximum 40 to 50 K and among those we have BOTS so yeah
Nathan: Ok but I think people who are active, I think you just need to believe little bit more that's it. You know they need to believe just a little more in our blockchain.
Mcfarhat: Absolutely. So Nathan, do you live personally some sort of a healthy Lifestyle? Do you do sports, are you picky with your choice of food how does that work for you ?
Nathan: Yeah I was 90% vegetarian but after James was born, I kind of eat everything because I don't want to give pressure to my wife. [..]
Japanese meals are healthy, my wife cooks really good Japanese. In terms of exercise I live next to a park I run two to three theaters every day almost every day. Being a minimalist, extremely minimalist, though, I still have my backpack and that's the only thing I own. I don't even use my laptop I only use my mobile 100% mobile.
I do everything from my iphone.
Health is so important for me and having good body and good mind is so important in life and business. We have to appreciate and feel good every day. It's my responsibility to be healthy, nobody else is gonna make me happy though, I have to look after myself.
Mcfarhat: Absolutely, that's the perfect candidate forActifit. And I'm guessing that's somewhat where you saw the connection
[33:34]
Nathan: Yeah I saw huge potential in actifit. Before I got into this seven push-ups for 77 days […] and I was going live on Twitter, Facebook, […] I put a Dtube and cleanplanet more videos and then because Japan is one of the cleanest countries in the world, I couldn't find many trash. I still find cigarettes and I go and pick up the cigarettes but then because my I lost my dad, he had lung cancer. He smoked forty to fifty cigarettes a day and that's why he died so I wanted to pick the cigarette butts and I wanted to collect 1 million cigarette butts.
Mcfarhat : I remember seeing something like that from you if I'm not mistaken yeah 1 million yeah.
Nathan: Basically then I'll start looking the people who actually smoke and I'm asking question maybe I should interview them and ask them why they smoke. Maybe I should tell them not to smoke or something like that then I realized okay maybe they're smoking because they have stress, maybe they have mental, health issues, maybe they don't have such discipline or maybe they don't appreciate their life.
And it's just about education
I don't know maybe they have that habit oh maybe I don't know but then I just even people throw rubbish on the floor you know they go then they'd throw they don't care if it's a street or you know they just throw trash.
And it's just it's about education it's about them having a good outlook on the world and I think then I thought picking up this trash is not going to solve any problem because people want to keep throwing the trash anyway unless I change speed unless I change the people their health and their mind that the world's never gonna change so then I thought okay let me get it get it. So free crypto was doing this 10 push-up challenge then and I started doing Twitter hustles but I didn't have the formula for twitter hustle how to do it I said it's a freestyle you can you can just promote you come on your passion promote your community or project and delegation for you guys but then I made the decision about this 7-push ups challenge.
Some times I make quick decisions and a lot of people complain about people can't keep up with me like I […] but I learned that because some time I figure out something stopped working or maybe I find I find something better then I immediately adapt and change and people can't keep up with me so I find the twitter is helpful for me to keep them updated.
Mcfarhat: Quick changes can make some people dizzy but as long as you're adjusting to something better or more positive I mean that’s great
You have to change and in life and in business even in relationship.
Nathan: I think it's like you know you playing football game and say you have a gamer for higher energy yeah then you had a one player core sent off and your team down to ten men and you have to change you know you have to change and say you have a business and you lost a one client who brings 50 percent of the profit. You have to change and in life and in business even in relationship. You know now we had gems and we have to change our family our relationship style and so 10 tips lure people don't wanna change but this is a good thing but you need to change for the better it can be difficult but I mean if it's for the better then one has to go through it so so yeah how are you perceiving the activity right now on Twitter?
Mcfarhat I cannot keep up with the tweets are you able to do that?
Nathan: Because my minimalism really helped me so I have eleven mobile apps on my phone. I tweet retweet I search team hashtag I searched for #seven77 hashtag and I got my feed and I try to connect with some other steemians. […]The crypto industry is still small and I want to make sure that I connect to many people as possible and see some of the projects that we can build a bridge we can collaborate. I just want to explore more because there's investors with money. [..]
Steem isn't like a social network and so I want to do many things, being active on Twitter. I think the most important thing is that I want to connect to investors. That's my main goal because if we can bring one or two investors to a blockchain second thing is I want to show that steem has the community and we have people here so that makes attention for business project to choose
[40:09]
We have a stable currency, which is a big deal because it's backed by people and backed by community. We have our own economy and we had one of the strongest communities in the world.
We have a stable currency, which is a big deal because it's backed by people and backed by community. We have our own economy and we had one of the strongest communities in the world.
[…]
I wanted to make steem to be $7,77 sent this year
Mcfarhat: Okay so we will bring it back to the all-time high
Nathan: Yes and have stopped creating content on Steem blockchain until that happens
Mcfarhat: I see I see so you have a set target for that.
Personally the reason I came up with actifit, was from need for myself. I'm not moving enough, I'm not active enough and I wanted to come up with something to make me get to activity again because I used to be someone who's quite active and who's just doing lots of sports. So I came with the idea and I thought I want to motivate people to do that and I mean I'm seeing with your with the Twitter activity and everyone who's was following the activity happening on Twitter and I'm just reading right now I mean I see Luke saying ..
“I've never done a push-up in my life until this challenge”
[…] Getting active is really changing our lives I mean, that alone is an accomplishment and I am so excited for this to be happening in front of our eyes. It's an inspiration.
Thank you for all the efforts you're doing on Twitter and I also want
to thank free crypto was all right now he started also a campaign for the ten push-ups and you start the seven push outs for 77 days and those activities are just really amazing so yeah thank you guys for all the work
Nathan: Time to build a virtual fitness center on Twitter maybe something like that [..]
When I lived in London I always had gym membership, but when I go to gym and when I see other people training I'm motivated to train more and I look at other people I want to look like him I want to get a good body. But if I do alone in my house I don't get the motivation. So when you do together is kind of your money play football with your friend you want to enjoy and play and that's kind of something I want to do but I want to use it to really make people stay on Twitter just go they are do the seventh uploaded the video there nominate one person ten couple of minutes a day I want to make a to it as a habit but they some people like rules and condition so they can just go there and upload the video and nominate one person so it just make them check in on Twitter every day.
Mcfarhat: Absolutely and it's the I think the challenge aspect himself is always like challenging to people so there's a challenge you have to do 7 push ups for 77 days and then people just love the idea of that and I think they're interacting and doing that on Twitter so that's another motivation aspect.
Nathan: think you guys I always turn to promote actifit for that and I ask them to post actifit you know attack them active Twitter attacks we crypto for it and he give reward for 1steem for all the participant and I think you guys have brought it back to the tokens or steem upvotes
Mcfarhat: The awards we used to give was 5 AFIT tokens and now we can't even keep up who's doing what. Free Crypto used to give us reports but since we no longer can see who has done what we're not able to give a AFIT tokens anymore.
Nathan I will collect all the people who are doing push ups and complete these 77 days of push ups, it has to be consistent, they can take one or two breaks.
Then I'm gonna reward something for them […]
Mcfarhat: We will back this up also with rewards from actifit. So we'll discuss this with you and we'll definitely reward people with AFIT tokens the ones who complete because really we just can't keep up with all the activity and setting for tokens though so yeah we're definitely gonna make that happen yeah
Do actifit for your benefit
Nathan: At the moment all I want to say is Do actifit for your benefit. Your Fitness is important and if we care about steem and we can do actifit it and participate in seven push for 77 days if you want to promote our blockchain and - if you want to see $7 teams then so do for steem you
Mcfarhat: I see a question from Nick and gives a fit tokens no we can but there's just too many participants now we just can't track them so I guess giving a reward at the end of the competition is I mean that makes more sense so we yeah I think that's a good idea.
Nathan: because I even thought about making a movie something put all the videos together and making a movie I don't know I have something I guess kept coming up but I'm kind of like Super Duty what will bring more impact and more joy you know but people are enjoying I can see people and people are connecting and it just is this fun this is fun and is a creative push up you don't need to do we all push up we can do like a jumper tennis ball and seven times and maybe you can hug somebody for seven
Mcfarhat It's wonderful and I mean for the steam blockchain and for actift itself. All the posts that are being posted there they're automatically being rewarded with our BOT I […]
Today the rewarding circle ran for three hours just rewarding people, we had like over 600 posts rewarded with AFIT tokens so that's an automated approach so anyone who's just doing posts with actifit, you're currently getting rewarded. The interaction with the community on the site itself gives more reward the upvotes
[50:25]
blockchain and with the Twitter activity that's that's of all different rewards
Nathan: I think what I would say is don't focus too much on this and they can do
this as a fun because I know myself because I might changing something for better […]
Mcfarhat we've done this with other competitions. There are several competitions that people started on the steam blockchain relevant to fitness I mean there's the running project they used to do that and we don't interfere we just give reward so you guys find who won and will just reward them and what we do the same with others
Nathan: I understand
something for somebody he doesn't even have a leg and arm and I'm so grateful
59:37
[Music]
Mcfarhat It has been a great show and I really enjoyed listening to Nathan Mars!
Part -3- General Discussion – Prizes
[COMPETITION chat] not included
Comments