​Guess what? The business has been approved to conduct business in the state of Arkansas as a foreign business. However, I still have to wait till early to middle of next week to conduct consulting sessions online. Why? I have to create a DBA, aka Doing Business As for the business. Why do you ask? Part of this new journey is being completely open with some things I had to navigate early in my life or career that ultimately helped shape me. I mainly learned by a sink or swim principle, and this story almost sank the business just as it was getting its foot in the door. Let me take you back to very late 2019 when the business was called Puzzle Piece Fitness LLC, which was created in June 2018 in preparation for the studio after being a DBA for me as Puzzle Piece Fitness. If you don't remember the business got a whole lot of buzz in the media that even went internationally that year. This was beyond amazing for the business in terms of brand awareness. However, due to being a small company just starting off, I dismissed creating a trademark for the business. Thinking my business was unique enough and was created early enough that I would be fine without one for the time being. Boy, was I wrong. One random day, I got a random Instagram message asking me if I knew of this trainer across the country. I'm leaving their name and business out to leave it to speculation. I knew of them and their business. Even though their business name sparked a similarity close to mine, I believed their purpose, along with my earlier usage, would ensure my safety. Nope. I received a cease-and-desist letter shortly after this message stating to change the name of my business. This put me in a tailspin. I was furious beyond reason. I spent a lot of money on this brand that just got international attention, just for someone to undercut a person apart of a population that they were supposedly helping. I got my lawyer involved and was then referred to a trademark specialist lawyer. When I discussed the situation with that lawyer, I was told that battling this in court, even with previous usage on my side, could cost over 100k dollars. I was just breaking even with the business and could not afford that kind of payment just to keep a brand. I was also told that I could just create a DBA and not create an entirely new business as the IRS did not care; the trademark is just for public use. Thankfully, around this time, the autism community was going away from Puzzle Piece, so I decided that it was time to evolve the brand entirely and focus on helping more than the autism community. Thankfully if I try hard enough, I can be creative at times. Numerous searches, both at the state level and the trademark office, to come up with a new brand name that fit the direction of the business. Then I had to create the logo. Again, I am not artistically gifted, but I could not afford to hire anyone for a second time to create one for me. So, I sketched one out, and my artistic sister (who is an amazing architect) put it together to get the logo that Equally Fit has today. I made sure I got it trademarked this time, and my lawyer had it framed for me. That brand, I think, helped me survive the pandemic and ultimately get more recognition down the line as I was able to pull in clients with other disabilities into the gym to work with.
This is one of the situations I endured that led me to want to start business consulting. If you have a business and want to become better than ever, I can help you with that as someone who has endured all the lessons the hard way and succeeded, so you do not have to. Email me to schedule a free 15-minute talk to discuss your needs and find out how I may be able to help you.

​Well, sort of, still working to move the business, but the excitement overcame me, and I could not hold it in anymore. It is not that we left; I just took a little time off to discover the new direction.
You- “What does that mean, Dr. Mark?”
It means there are some changes around here. First off, to help more people, I am going mainly virtual for now. Obviously, I do not have the studio, and I am now in Arkansas, so the commute would be brutal to see previous/returning clients. I have accepted a contract to work in a gym here and will use it as a home base gym. That will be disclosed a little bit later though. So, after you read this, go look at all that I have to offer. A brief outline is below.

• Fitness and Health Consulting
• Business Consulting
• Fitness Coaching and sessions
• Autism Lifestyle and Fitness Influencer (Through These Autistic Eyes is back!)
• Public Speaking

You may be asking yourself why all the sudden change, don't autistic people love consistency? First off, we all crave consistency as it's hardwired into our brains to stay at homeostasis. Secondly, I was in a bad car accident in June of 2023 that left me with chronic neck pain that eventually required surgery. During this time, when I could not do much physically, I was really able to contemplate where things were headed and where I was in this grand scheme of life. I determined that I was extremely burnt out from trying to catch up to keep a business afloat after opening it up the year before the world stopped, and I felt like something drastic needed to change as I was close to becoming a doctor (Ph.D.). Thankfully the wreck was not my fault and provided me with the opportunity to leave everything behind for a little while to discover parts of me that needed healing while I finished my dissertation. This time away from everything I loved led to me discovering my passion again for who I was helping and figuring out how to make it work with the style that worked best for me, as the last few years were me just guessing what I should do instead of what worked best for me. I hope you enjoy the changes I am making to this company and will continue following this crazy journey that I am on. The first change you will notice is that after all my failed attempts to make Equally Fit its own brand, it is now My Brand. No more separating us because people saw me as Equally Fit and I as Equally Fit. While in business, it's proper to have the business be separate, and for all accounts it is, but juggling the different social media accounts and everything was too much, so I will be switching everything over to my personal accounts. You can click the links below to follow my personal accounts.

https://www.facebook.com/dr.markf31
https://www.instagram.com/official_drmark/
https://www.threads.net/@official_drmark
https://www.tiktok.com/@official_drmark

Catch y’all later!
-Dr. Mark