That is the takeaway from our Member of the Month, Mark Fujiwara, a 56 year-old father of three, private wealth advisor, and founder of Legacy 88 Partners, a comprehensive family office advisory firm.
By most external measures, Mark was already performing before he came to Coya. He’d qualified for and run the Boston Marathon. He’d been doing cold plunges, saunas, and following Dave Asprey’s protocols for years. He had an Oura ring and every intention of using it. What he didn’t have was the context to make any of it actually work — or the support to make the right changes stick.
Pre-Coya Reality
Mark described looking at it every morning and feeling a kind of resigned repetition: it tells me I’m stressed, it tells me I need to rest, and then I start the whole cycle over again. He knew the dashboard. He didn’t know what to do with it – and sometimes that left him feeling worse, rather than better.
Sleep was the central failure. Every night, he’d put his six-year-old daughter Stella to bed at 7:30, then disappear into Netflix, a full basketball game, or late-night work — telling himself the yoga and cold plunge might happen later (they never did). He was consistently in bed at 10:30 or 11 PM, wanting to be up at 4 AM, and subsequently running on the kind of sleep debt that slowly narrows everything. His HRV. His patience. His confidence. His bandwidth.
The Experience
From his first session, Mark decided to fully commit to the process and hold nothing back – his mental health history, the stress keeping him up at night, all the ways his energy was quietly failing him.
Mark’s coach didn’t start with a supplement stack or an exercise protocol. He asked a question: What happens after you close your daughter’s door at night?
Mark walked him through the whole routine. Netflix. Work. The healthy intentions that never quite materialized. And then Kyle asked: Would you want to be in bed by eight?
Mark said he’d love it — he wanted to be up at 4 AM. He was just going to sleep six hours too late to get there.
The prescription was simple: be in bed by 8 PM and asleep by 8:30, for five nights. “The third night I succumbed and watched the Warriors game,” Mark admitted, “and I paid for it the next morning.” But by day five, the data was moving. HRV rising. And his wife Amy said something he hadn’t expected: You’re a lot calmer. You’re a lot more present with Stella.
The fitness piece followed the same logic. Strip out the complexity functioning as an excuse — forget SoulCycle, forget driving to the perfect trail — and just run 30 minutes a day. Three miles, conversational pace. Mark started taking his team Zoom calls while running, having previously assumed his teams would object. As it turns out, they didn’t even need him looking at a screen. “Three miles in the morning,” he said. “Sometimes three more in the afternoon. Before Coya, I hadn’t realized the barriers I was putting in front of myself.”
The Moment That Mattered Most
About a month into his time with Coya, a very close family member called. This person had a history of suicidal ideation and addiction, and he was spiraling. Mark was the one he trusted. The entire extended family looked to Mark to handle it.
Mark stayed with him. He stayed present, measured, and available — through every conversation, through every overnight vigil — without burning out, without panicking, without running dry.
“I will say this,” Mark told us. “If it had happened two months before I started with Coya, I’m not sure he would be here right now. That’s how much I had to be dialed in.”
His cup was full enough to pour, at a time when it mattered most.
His Results
- +45.89% HRV increase
- -10.71% RHR decrease
- +15.79% restorative sleep
- Leadership clarity: Moved from scarcity-driven leadership in his consulting to a clear, abundance-first vision
- Mindset performance: Meditation quality measurably improved, with breakthrough problem-solving clarity emerging from sessions that previously felt blocked
- The ripple effect: His wife, Amy, began adopting his sleep habits and his daughter Izzy (22) started implementing his routines as she prepares for CPA exams
- Fitness gains: With the help of his daily runs, his endurance, fitness levels, and cardiovascular markers all improved
Post-Cohort Takeaway
Mark’s story is a reminder that the gap between who we think we are and who we’re capable of being is often not a motivation problem — it’s an information and support problem. He had the awareness, and all the right intentions. He had the wearable. He had the discipline. What he was missing was someone who could look at the data with him, ask the right questions, and give him permission to prioritize his health with a few simple, but ultimately life-changing habits.
The people we love are watching. Our teams are watching. And occasionally, someone’s life depends on how full our cup is.
“Before this, I was playing NCAA basketball,” Mark said. “I was good enough. But now I’m in the championship. Now I am the go-to guy. Game seven. That’s how I equate it.”
