Building a Culture of Movement | Kwame Terra

Kwame Terra is on a mission to make movement a cultural norm and health an accessible part of everyday life. Through his community-based bEHR Health platform, the New Orleans athlete is reimagining wellness through walking, technology, and social connection. 

His mission: to make healthy choices desirable, accessible, and part of daily life, particularly within Black communities that have long faced systemic health gaps.

Terra promotes walking as a low-cost, high-impact path to improved longevity and reduced health disparities. He’s developed tools such as personal health scores and participation challenges that turn physical activity into an engaging, collective experience. 

Earlier this year, he walked more than two million steps in 30 days - a record-breaking endurance feat that underscored his message that modest, consistent movement can transform health outcomes. Now, with the launch of the bEHR Health app, he aims to deliver real-time health feedback and community-driven challenges directly to users’ hands - turning wellness into a shared, sustainable habit.

In this conversation with Peter Bowes, Terra discusses the role of culture, environment, and feedback in shaping lasting habits - and why small steps, taken together, can help close health gaps and extend healthspan.

Related:  Check out our 20-part series, Move for Life

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Chapters

• 16:13 [Ad] Fit, Healthy & Happy Podcast
• 17:02 (Cont.) Building a Culture of Movement | Kwame Terra

Transcript

Kwame Terra: 0:27

Several people would walk up to me when I was walking throughout the street and, you know, they had seen me on social media and they recognized me and said, hey, aren't you the walking guy? And it's hilarious. I, you know, I set out to start a company and build this entire platform for our community, and all I managed to do so far is become known as the Walking Guy.

Peter Bowes: 0:55

We recently covered on this podcast new research that suggests 7000 steps may be a better, more realistic number to aim for than 10,000 to get about the same health benefits. Now, some of us are overachievers and can't resist doing a few more, but why would anyone want to do 66,000? Today we're going to meet the amazing Kwame Terra, who did just that every day for a month. Hello again. Welcome to the Live Long podcast, I'm Peter Bowes. This is where we explore the science and stories behind human longevity. Kwame, it's good to talk to you.

Kwame Terra: 1:34

Peter. Happy to be here.

Peter Bowes: 1:36

We'll get into why you did it in a second. I just want to ask you right at the top, how did you feel at the end of a month? Doing what, 66, more than 66,000 steps every day?

Kwame Terra: 1:47

Yeah, at the end of the month, I felt surprisingly okay. I think in the beginning of the month, the first five days, it was honestly, I'd never been as tight in my life than those first five days. You know, I'm an endurance athlete running cross country and track and field, and I never experienced that level of tightness that I did in the first five days of, of the challenge. But the last few days, I actually I was ahead of pace for the world record, and I just kind of coasted into the into the finish line. I think the last couple of days I was maybe about 60% of my daily average for the month.

Peter Bowes: 2:26

And you did break a record.

Kwame Terra: 2:27

I did, yeah. International Book of Records for the most steps in 30 days. Previously it was 1.9 million and I did 2,007,178.

Peter Bowes: 2:36

That's why you set out to do this? Because you wanted to break the record.

Kwame Terra: 2:39

That's right. Yeah. You know, a month or last year, several of the users on our platform completed 1 million steps in 30 days. So May of 2024. Doctor Eric Griggs did 1 million steps in 30 days. That's about 15 miles of walking per day. About 33,000 steps per day. He ended up losing 20 pounds and got taken off his blood pressure medication. And it became this big story here in the city of New Orleans. And, you know, people kind of followed suit. People in our community followed suit. And so one other user did it in July. He lost 28 pounds in 30 days. Two users did it in August. They each lost 20 plus pounds. And it just we all got to talking about the world record. Like, what do we think the world record is, and do we think any of us can go after it? And so we're doing research and, you know, came upon this record and in April of this year, I decided to go after it.

Peter Bowes: 3:31

So let's backtrack a little bit. You mentioned your platform. You're the founder of Bear Health. Can you tell me what that is and give me a bigger picture as to what your goals are that led to you doing this extraordinary feat?

Kwame Terra: 3:44

Sure. Yeah. So bEHR Health. The genesis of bEHR Health was during the Covid 19 pandemic where just like everybody else, you know, I was devastated by the effect that the virus was having on our community. And I just wanted to do something so that next pandemic or next challenge that we face, we're in better health to have better outcome. And my my first thought was that we don't know how bad we're doing. I know, we know we're not doing our best. We know we should be eating better. We know we should be exercising more, but most of us aren't aware of the short and long term implications of our current health status, and not drawing a really strong connection between our lifestyle habits and our health risks. We don't completely understand that if you don't exercise, you might have a heart attack at 45. If you're in your early 30s right now and you continue to eat the same diet that you've been eating, and these are the things that we see in the hospitals here in New Orleans. And I just wanted to make that clear for people. First and foremost, to raise that awareness and then ultimately connect them to solutions, primarily communities that, sort of live that lifestyle to where they can just naturally live into health as opposed to health being this extra thing that people do. And so you've seen kind of the the evolution and growth of run clubs and just different types of wellness communities that are emerging. And and that's essentially what our solution is becoming now. We help people understand their health status, and then we encourage them to find their community within our offerings, whether that's a run club or a meditation club or a yoga club or a HIT workout club, whatever makes sense for you. Um, we just want to help seamlessly integrate health into our culture so that again, it's not this extra thing that people have to do, it's just something that people can live into in a natural way.

Peter Bowes: 5:27

Now you're focused on your community. Black community in New Orleans. But many of the issues, probably all of the issues that you raise, can be applied to everyone.

Kwame Terra: 5:37

Yep

Peter Bowes: 5:37

Just look at the country as a whole. The ignorance or the lack of understanding, let's put it that way, the lack of understanding about where we are in terms of daily habits, exercise, walking, diet, really, there's a huge amount of misunderstanding, let's put it that way, in terms of people's daily lives and habits and and routines as to what we should be doing to optimize our health and well-being.

Kwame Terra: 6:04

Yeah, absolutely. This isn't unique to the black community. It's a bit more pronounced in the black community. It's part of why we focus on that problem. However, anyone can download our app, anyone can use our app and enjoy our offerings and be a part of our community. But the the reason that we focus primarily on the black community is because there's a six year life expectancy gap between black people in the US and the rest of the population. And when you extrapolate that across the entire black population, that comes out to about 268 million years of lost time. And that is really important that we recapture. So, again, ultimately, my vision is to help each individual reach and achieve their full potential as a human being, whatever, whatever that looks like in the end. Because that's what I think that we're all in some sense morally obligated to. Because if you aren't all that you can be, you suffer more than you have to, and so are the people around you. And, I don't think we really have much, much better to do. But I do want to create the environment and help, you know, make it a bit easier for people to achieve that. And right now, our environments and our cultures in some sense are set up to create the opposite, create disease.

Peter Bowes: 7:15

Just tell me a little bit about your background. You say you're an athlete, but what brought you to this place that you're in now and this drive to try to do something and to make change. Where have you come from?

Kwame Terra: 7:28

Yeah. So, like I said, I was born here in New Orleans. I grew up in Houston, Texas, grew up in a family of runners for I have six siblings, three of which, including myself, were collegiate athletes and in cross country, cross country and track and field. So my older brother ran at Wisconsin. My sister and I ran here at Xavier. My younger brother, he could have gone to college to run, but he decided not to go to college. And so early on, you know, a sense of like health and wellness was instilled into me primarily through by my father, who just made sure that we ate food that was optimal for performance and didn't really allow us to consume things that weren't good for us, especially things like Cokes. Early on, I don't. I haven't drank Cokes really, since maybe I was in eighth or ninth grade. And so, you know, that was etched into me pretty early on. And then I ended up going to Xavier University of Louisiana to study pre-med. So my original career goal was to become a physician. And but early on in my academic career, I was introduced to research which, ultimately, like, drew a strong connection for me between the root cause of issues and solving problems from that perspective, as opposed to solving problems, you know, once the problem already exists, right? Like managing the symptoms or doing damage control. I just, I just found that to be really inefficient. And that ultimately is the model for the system here, at least in the US. And, you know, my goal started to shift from being a practitioner as a physician to being a practitioner to have more scaled impact and see if we can reduce the burden of disease that exists in the country. So right now we spend about 90% of our healthcare dollars on treating preventable conditions like hypertension, type two diabetes, many cancers. And, you know, maybe I'm the only one seeing it this way, but if we're doing our job as public health professionals, we should be trying to get that number as close to zero as possible, right? We should be spending the majority of our money treating conditions that we don't completely understand, and that we can't prevent, that we can't predict. And and we should be preventing the rest of the conditions that that are currently plaguing the community. So that's kind of like my public health mission is to get that number as close to zero as possible.

Peter Bowes: 9:49

And I guess one of the questions that especially when you formed your organization, one of the key initial questions must have been where do we start? This is such a huge problem, really, uh, in your community, across this country, across the world, in terms of bad habits, bad diets, bad lifestyles. Yes, there's a discrepancy in opportunity as well in terms of access to good healthcare. It's a a vast problem. And I'm just curious where you started in trying to address the problem so that you could see meaningful results.

Kwame Terra: 10:24

Sure. Yeah. It's a really good question. And in a sense, we're always finding that starting point because a lot of people are different. Different communities are different. And in a sense we are trying to create a universal tailored system. Right. Which which is obviously an oxymoron. And it started off with awareness though. So 60% of people in, in, 60% of black people in the US are have low health literacy. Most of us don't know current health status, aren't aware of, again, the connection between our lifestyle and our health outcomes. So that's a big problem, right? And it's difficult to get people to change or make change when they aren't even aware that there's a significant problem. And I personally regard the health problem in the US as a crisis, as an emergency. It's not a matter of this is something nice to do that we should do and be good for us. But as an emergency. And so I talk about it in that way. That was the first step, is awareness. And we needed a unique way to engage folks that maybe a little less pressure than going to a clinic or going to a clinic. You now you're with the doctor, you're going to get your blood pressure taken. You're, you know, maybe you don't have to take some blood. Like, that's a lot for most people, right? To engage with the healthcare system in that way. Again, I highly recommend that everybody do that. That is something that's absolutely required to understand your health. But I wanted to design something that would allow people to engage, at least in a less invasive way with their current health status. And that's where we came up with the idea of the health score. So again, the health score is a number between 0 and 1000 that represents your overall health. The higher your score, the slower your aging, or the healthier you are and the lower risk you have for a significant health event on any given day. And then the lower your score, the faster your aging, or the more risk you have on a given day. And the cool thing about the score is that it's not a static score. So you don't just come on the app, answer some questions, and then that's your health score. The score changes as you change. So if you go on a run one day, your score goes up a few points. If you are inactive for a week, your score is going to go down and reflective of that. It'll show trending down or trending up. And again, this is really about helping people draw that connection between their daily habits and their health risks. And so that's the first concept that we that we put out. And we we've been able to engage over 4000 people around that over the past year and a half. And, you know, you have an idea and you put it out there and that's you don't really know what what it's gonna do until you actually do put it out there. `And so it's been pretty encouraging to see people engage with it once and then consistently engage with it and participate in all of the challenges and stuff that we have on the platform. But ever since then, it's just been a learning experience. We've tried a variety of ways to to engage folks primarily through steps, challenges. So when we first launched last year, we did the Mardi Gras Steps challenge, where whoever took the most steps on our app during the Mardi Gras period, about five day period, won $5,000. And people were walking their lives away. You know, it was such an incredible thing to witness. But the coolest part about it was that the the demographic breakdown of the top ten was so diverse, right? Half the top ten men, half the top ten women, a variety of backgrounds, a variety of races, so on and so forth. And that was really encouraging to see. And that's really what got my attention as it relates to walking, because it's super accessible. Because again, that that, that spread indicated that. And then that's how walking kind of became a part of the culture. And then we just leaned into it. Right. This is a moving target. This the problem that we're trying to solve? It's a moving target. And we're gonna follow day to day, week to week, month to month. What people seem to be wanting to engage with that makes sense for them and their journeys.

Peter Bowes: 14:14

And I guess that sort of instant feedback aspect of your app. So you say if you go for a walk, go for a long walk, you'll see your health score increase if you change your diet, if you have a day when you don't drink Coke or eat burgers, and you have a healthier diet, that that will fairly quickly influence your health score on the app. And I guess that's important because we do, for better or worse, live in this kind of society where instant gratification is becoming the norm, especially the way that we use technology, and that it could resonate with with more people, that as opposed to, as you talked about going to your doctor, getting your regular checks, there isn't much instant gratification there. There isn't. There aren't instant results. But I think something that people can see that, oh yes, I'm doing something beneficial here. Let's do it again tomorrow. Could be useful.

Kwame Terra: 15:07

Absolutely. And you know, I agree with you not only to, I guess, accommodate for the current, you know, perspective mentality of, of the, the population. But also health is a bit hard to measure day to day, week to week. And we we as humans need some indication that we're making progress toward our goals when we're working on our goals. And the thing about health is you can be working out for a month, or you can be working out for a few months and not really see any progress. And so then that that reduces motivation for people. And so sure, you know, on one day or two days you don't see any weight loss, but you see 22. increase in your score. That little nudge, that little feedback I think is valuable for just a general human being, whether whether they're in this current, uh, societal landscape or. You know, or not. I think that's a really good point that you make, and certainly a value proposition for an individual to, to engage with us because, again, they get that feedback. They know that what they just did is improving their overall health.

Peter Bowes: 16:51

And of course, there are many factors that go into good health. And I talk a lot on this podcast about walking, about taking steps. It's one of my daily passions. It's one of my daily routines. Every morning, go for about a three and a half mile hike with the dogs. And it's my view. And I'm not a scientist, I'm not a physician. But I'm becoming of the view that it's probably the best thing that I can do every day. And that is simply take a long walk. And the beauty of that is, and I'm just curious to know what you think. The beauty of that, of course, is that it's free, and as long as you can make the time, it's relatively easy.

Kwame Terra: 17:25

Yeah, 100%. I mean, that's a big part of what we try to incorporate into our solutions is how do we incorporate Systems and strategies and suggestions that are low to no cost and that are accessible to the majority of people. I want to break down accessibility a bit, because sometimes people conflate certain ideas or leave out certain ideas that are important. So there's three components to accessibility. There's availability. So is it is healthcare or healthcare services available in your neighborhood? Are healthy grocery stores available in your neighborhood? Okay. That's one component of accessibility. Is it affordable? Right. Can you afford the medical services? Can you afford the healthy food in your neighborhood? On the whole, that is the case for the most part across, at least here in the US. Healthy food. Health care. Affordable and available. The primary challenge is the third component that that I like to harp on a bit more, which is really where our I guess you could say ingenuity lies is in desirability. These things are there, but most people are just walking past the healthy food and going to the, to the to the highly processed foods that have been, you know, designed to make us addicted to them. And, and that's and that's that. And so how do we get them to choose what is available and affordable that is better for them than over the products that aren't? And that's the real challenge. And that's a cultural thing. Again, in this country. That is a is a price thing because price comparisons. Right. Because it's not that the healthy foods are more expensive. It's just relatively to the to the unhealthy foods.

Peter Bowes: 19:20

It's interesting to hear you phrase it like that, because I often hear you could say it's an excuse that affordable, healthy food isn't available. And that's what forces people into to fast food, because they can get a burger for a few dollars, as opposed to maybe getting a selection of healthy vegetables and protein another way. But the argument I repeatedly hear is that in certain and maybe it's true for certain places, that that healthy food isn't affordable. But I think en masse it's not the case, and that if you are dedicated to it and if you're committed to the the idea of healthy food, it doesn't have to cost the earth.

Kwame Terra: 20:00

Right. And again, that that dedication is related to that desirability. Is it a core value for you? And if not, why is it an environmental factor? Is it a personal thing? And let's explore that. Because it should be because every every aspect of your life is dependent on your health.

Peter Bowes: 20:16

What about media messages advertising that we see for foods? The billboards, the commercials? We are we live in an age and it hasn't really changed, to be honest, for decades that we are bombarded with ads that are usually for foods that are not particularly good for us.

Kwame Terra: 20:35

Yeah, those are absolutely shaping our desires. I mean, they shape our desires for every aspect of of our, you know, consumerism or whether it's clothing, whether it's political, you know, vote. What media is shaping, shaping what we do and what we want. And it does the same thing for food. And so that's my point. Right. And and I'm not saying again, it's just on an individual level. We need to restructure not only the, the individual's mind and elevate the individual's mind as it relates to health awareness, but we need to reshape the environment as well. Because if you only if you only make someone health aware on an individual level. But if you don't change their environment, the environmental pressures are just going to recreate the old mind, after a while. And if you only elevate the mind but you don't. I mean, if you only elevate the environment but don't elevate the mind at the same time, the mind is going to recreate the old environment. It's going to bring into that new, healthier environment the old habits and break down. So they both have to happen at the same time. And that's part of what makes our solution unique here at bEHR Health is we provide real time health education for individuals through the health score and the coaching in the app. But all of our user data goes into what we call the health score report, which is a real time database of all of our user health insights that we use to inform and drive community health interventions, evaluate the impact of policies, so on and so forth. So we can see the average health score in New Orleans compared to the average health score in New York. And eventually, you know, different parts of the world. And they'll say, okay, this this community in New York is doing much better than this community in New Orleans. Let's go see what's going on in New York, see what environmental factors are different, see what kind of accessibility they have to walking, for example. And let's go see if we can apply those those practices, those strategies, those policies to the New Orleans area and elevate to health. And we get to evaluate that and see the impact in real time as opposed to waiting, you know, three, four years down the line after a needs assessment on a community. And the community has changed ten times over over that time before they deploy the the solution. And, it's that's really what I'm most excited about with what we have is, is that health score report and the ability to, to influence communities.

Peter Bowes: 22:49

So let's talk a little bit more about your challenge, which you did to raise the profile of walking and highlight the benefits. What did you learn during that process? Every single day, 66,000 plus steps that might encourage other people to make? Obviously not at that extreme, but to make daily walking not only a routine, but a habit, something they do pretty much without thinking. What did you learn during your experience that you could perhaps share with people and perhaps make them think, well, yeah, I could do something like that again, not to that extreme, but maybe just 7 to 10,000 steps a day.

Kwame Terra: 23:26

I think it's it's important to try something one time. When I started the challenge, I didn't know if I could complete 66,000 steps a day for 30 days. I had never done it before. No one had actually ever done it before. And so, you know. But I just went for it. And I think sometimes we get caught up in the final outcome of things. We don't want to start unless we know we're going to complete the whole thing. And that's a bit unimportant to me. giving your best effort, making any progress toward your goal is your job because you aren't really in control of the outcome. You have influence, certainly, but there are things outside of your control that influence the outcome. So to take the pressure off, I took the pressure off of myself, like my job is to give myself the best chance. And so I need to make sure that I'm sleeping. I need to make sure that I'm eating right. I need to make sure that I'm stretching every day, and I need to make sure I'm giving it my all each day. Whatever happened from that, I would be able to sleep at night. I'd be happy. And I know I have made progress toward improving my health and improving my mentality, so on and so forth. That's that's the, the outcome that you're, you're aiming for.Not necessarily the, the final mark, again, because that is there are parts of that that's outside of your control. So that's the first thing I'll say. Just try it one time, one day. There's a I don't actually remember where I heard this from. It might have even been a movie, but a guy said that his, he would ask his dad if he was going to be sober for the rest of his life. His dad is like a recovering alcoholic. And he said, I don't know, son. but I'm gonna be sober for one more day, and, like, your job is today, because, you know, ultimately, we all know it could be our last. But your job is to live this day, fully representing who you would want to represent yourself as to the world every day. And so you can't accomplish the world in a day, but you can accomplish your best in each day. And that's your job. And so go walk 7000 steps today because you know it's good for you, not because a month from now or a year from now or so on and so forth. you're going to achieve some particular outcome that will probably happen if you stay on it for sure and that was the case here, but I was focused on the day. That's the first thing I would say.

Peter Bowes: 25:51

How long did it take you? Every day. And what did you think about as you were pacing the streets?

Kwame Terra: 25:57

Yeah. The first day took me a lot longer than I anticipated. So I had done the math, and I was thinking, like ten hours of walking per day, which, again, that's not the whole day. So I was like, I could manage that. And I ended up walking probably like 15 hours. The first day I was walking entirely too slow. It started at 5 a.m.. I walked for maybe about two hours. Then I had to drive to the track to, coach some of my athletes. And I'm literally just walking around the track as they're doing their workout, and I'm, like, yelling from different parts of the track, when it's time for them to take a rest. And then I and I drove to the school where my office is, and then I walk around the fitness center. I mean, I was only really able to be seated for about three hours a day when it was all said and done. And so on, my feet typically about 15 15 hours. My longest day, I think I was on my feet for about 19 hours, which is just unreasonable. But yeah, what I was thinking about, I was working for the most part. So I was still running my company and I was just working from my phone the majority of the time, that got to a point where it was just too much and all I could really do was walk. Especially as I had to speed up my pace. I would say the first 15 to 20 days. I was I was working primarily on my phone, and then after that I was just walking, trying to get it done.

Peter Bowes: 27:23

And what reaction have you had? Did you get the response that you you'd hoped for in terms of inspiration?

Kwame Terra: 27:30

Yeah. You know, and it's funny that you say inspiration because that's not what I was anticipating. Right. Which again, it sounds obvious, like obviously this is going to inspire people. But that's not what I was thinking about. I was thinking again that it would raise some awareness and get people excited. People would think it's cool, you know, and interesting, and maybe I'll follow this guy's journey because he said he just did this. Incredible. He made this incredible feat. But several people would walk up to me when I was walking throughout the street and, you know, they had seen me on social media and they recognized me and said, hey, aren't you the the walking guy? And it's hilarious. I, you know, I set out to start a company and build this entire platform for our community, and all I managed to do so far is become known as the walking guy. And that's fine for now.

Peter Bowes: 28:18

Well, maybe that's not such a bad thing though.

Kwame Terra: 28:20

Right? but but what stood out to me about those comments was, they would say like, you are me and my friends inspiration. And again, that's not something I was anticipating. Although again, I understand that it makes sense. And inspiration is a really important word because when I think about what I'm actually trying to do, although this wasn't obvious to me when I first started, is I want to give people more reason to live. And that's what inspiration is, right? People see something that you're doing for yourself or you're doing for the community, and they are then moved to do that themselves. They feel like their life is a bit more worth living or their their ambitions are a bit more worth pursuing. And I have actually a slightly different definition of public health. And so if you aren't aware, the definition of public health is the art and science of prolonging life. And to me, it's a bit incomplete because we can prolong life for a very long time now and keep people alive. Essentially keeps people alive for a long time. However, at the root of longevity is the desire to live again, getting back to that desire piece. And so inspiration seeds the desire to live seeds and to live a long time, because you want to be here to carry out everything that you envision for yourself. and that you maybe envision for your community. And so I've shifted the definition, at least for myself, to prolonging the desire to live again, because it is the root of longevity. We can leverage that to carry out, all practices and education and things like that. And so I think that was what stood out to me the most was that it inspired people. And I hope to continue to to live my life in a way that that does just that, because that is my ultimate objective.

Peter Bowes: 30:14

And you're making the distinction really between lifespan and healthspan there. As you say, science suggests that we can live for a very long time these days. But what quality of life do we have necessarily at a very old age if we have chronic diseases? So I talk a lot about healthspan, which is living as long as we can without those chronic diseases. And that really encapsulates what you're saying, that it's what we all want, but it's it's what not a lot of us actually think about in any sort of detail. It's just living as long as possible and enjoying life and being purposeful. I think not just being alive, but actually contributing and having a purpose to continue living.

Kwame Terra: 30:55

Absolutely. And I love that it works that way. When someone just essentially leads by example, showcases that in their own life that the the byproduct is that other people feel inspired to do the same. That's such a I guess when I think about systems, that's a really good system, a model that doesn't require a bunch of moving parts. It just requires each individual pursuing their full potential, and then it just naturally influences the rest.

Peter Bowes: 31:26

Do you have another challenge in mind for the future?

Kwame Terra: 31:28

I do. So the last day of the challenge, several people were congratulating me and everything. And one question that kept coming up was what's next? And I actually thought that was a crazy question, because I had just done 2 million steps in 30 days, and I wasn't thinking about what's next at all. I was thinking about, like, laying down for a week or two.

Peter Bowes: 31:49

Thinking about a hot bath or something like that.

Kwame Terra: 31:52

Yeah. Not not what's next. But but I got that question a lot. And so then I just got to thinking, and in keeping with the world record theme, because folks seem to really, really get behind that, uh, we're going to go after the world record for the most people participating in a virtual run walk event across multiple venues. the current world record is 773,000 people, which is a lot. It's that's incredible that they got that many people around the world to walk together for one cause. And so that's what we're going to attempt to do for the official launch of our app. So from October 6th to April, sometime in April, we're going to kind of wait until until, next year, we're going to try to rally enough people on our platform, or at least to register for this event, to to break that world record. That's the ultimate that's the first objective of this annual event that we're going to have called the bEHRATHON, where again, it's a virtual run slash walk event across multiple venues, and you just have to log or run or walk on our app to, to be to, to participate. and so yeah, that's our goal. The theme of this year is barrel to the moon since it's our launch, and if we aren't able to achieve the one or the yeah, the 1 million people participating, we want to at least cover enough distance as a community to reach the moon. in keeping with that theme. So it's 239,000 miles. So if we get 100,000 people on the platform over the course of the next eight months, then everybody only has to do a couple of miles and we'll achieve our goal. But if not, then we're going to have to walk.

Peter Bowes: 33:30

Well, you can you can count me in on that. I'll certainly join you on that. And what what is the for people maybe now thinking about this. That's something I'd like to do. What is the ask of people? In other words, are you asking a certain distance or a certain time? How would it actually work in practice?

Kwame Terra: 33:46

Yeah. So it will depend on how many people we get to register for the for the world record attempt. Everyone just needs to do a mile. So if we get if we get 700,000 people on, you see the log a run or a walk. And we define the distance as a minimum of a mile you can do more than that, but it's up to you a minimum of a mile. However, with the bEHRATHON bEHR Health to the moon reaching 239,000 miles, that'll just depend on how many people we have on the platform on that day in April. So again, if we have, you know, 20,000, then everybody needs to do about ten miles on that day, which is doable, and 20,000 is a bit more realistic. Over the next eight months than 200,000. And so that may be the reality for us.

Peter Bowes: 34:33

Keep me in touch. I'll look out for that campaign because I think it's a great goal to look forward to. I just want to ask you, finally, you're doing great work. Clearly. What sort of support do you have? We live in a a political world where to make big changes. We need big organizations behind us. You do. What sort of support outside of your organization are you getting to try to fulfill your goals?

Kwame Terra: 34:59

Yeah, that's a really good question. So when I graduated from my master's program in 2022, I started applying to what are called startup accelerator and incubator programs. These are basically boot camps for startups that help you get from wherever you currently are to wherever you're trying to go a bit quicker, with a few more resources and a few few, less road bumps along the way. Because this is this is not something that I've done before. Build a startup company that you aim to to achieve, you know, status of $100 million in value, let's say. And there are folks who have already done this type of work. And so that's where a lot of our resources and support come from. I've done about 12 accelerator and incubator programs over the past two years. We brought in about $250,000 in funds through that, through those programs. And then we also have a technology partner in Dacadoo that has invested almost $250,000 as well worth of technology into their health, enabling us to get to the point that we are now where we have a fully functioning app with 2500 plus users on the platform and 900 people engaging with it daily. And, you know, obviously the vision is driving the ship, but it really comes down to me being able to communicate clearly to the people who are in the position to, make this possible for us to make it possible. So if you're an entrepreneur that's looking to build anything or anyone that's going to build anything, you know, obviously do do what you can within your own means as much as you possibly can, because then you get to remain in control and continue to shape the vision the way that you want it to go, without the pressures of external investors and things like that. Most of our money has been grant funds, and so we don't have any expectations of return or things like that. But at the same time, the scale to truly get to where this is something that's not just a cool app that people use because they are favorite influencers, but it becomes endemic. we're going to need significant capital. and the relationships that we've built so far are the ones I'm going to go to when we need. We need that level of capital.

Peter Bowes: 37:14

As I say, I think you're doing great work. I wish you continued success. Certainly something I want to continue to follow. Kwame Terra, thank you very much indeed.

Kwame Terra: 37:22

Yeah, Peter, thanks for having me again. Talk soon.

Peter Bowes: 37:25

The life long podcast is a healthspan media production. I'm Peter Bowes. You can contact me through our website, livelong Podcast.com, where you'll also find show notes for this episode.

DISCLAIMER: 37:36

This podcast is for informational, educational and entertainment purposes only. We do not offer medical advice. If you have health concerns of any kind or you are considering adopting a new diet or exercise regime, you should first consult your doctor.