Max Mayes built a construction company to $1.6 million a month in under six months then walked away from it. He has raised over $30 million across venture, real estate and alternative investments and figured out early that once money stopped being hard to get the relationship with it changed completely. He hit $50,000 a month take home and realized it did not feel the way he thought it would.

Today Max is the founder of GrowthGod, where he works with founders and investors on contrarian marketing, capital strategy and the systems that actually turn a good offer into an enterprise. His model is find the growth constraints, build the marketing team inside the business and only focus on what actually moves the needle.

In this episode Max and Sean get into what most business owners get completely wrong about marketing, why your offer economics have to work before any marketing will and what it actually means to hire unmanageable people and make them your greatest asset. They also get real about what happens when financial success arrives before emotional maturity and why chasing more money after a certain point is just filling a hole that money was never going to fill.

If you are a founder, entrepreneur or investor trying to scale faster and smarter this episode is exactly what you need to hear.

This Episode Explores:

✅ Building a construction company to $1.6 million a month in under six months and exiting

✅ Raising over $30 million across venture real estate and alternative investments

✅ Hitting $50,000 a month take home and realizing it still did not feel like enough

✅ Why offer economics have to work before any marketing strategy will save you

✅ The presupposition problem that kills most marketing campaigns before they start

✅ Why broadening your market filter can dramatically increase your conversion rates

✅ How to hire unmanageable lone wolf marketers and actually make them team players

✅ The difference between a marketing agency model and what GrowthGod actually does

✅ Why fulfillment is rarely the problem and acquisition is almost always where businesses are stuck

✅ What chasing money costs you in relationships and what to do once you finally realize it

🔗 Connect with Max Mayes

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/maxmayes/

Follow REAL Mentors Podcast

Instagram: https://instagram.com/realmentorspodcast

Host Sean Martin: https://instagram.com/theseanmartin

Kelly Siegel already wrote the book on grinding through pain. Harder Than Life was the story of weaponizing poverty, abuse and addiction to build a successful company. Then he got to the top of that mountain, made the money and realized he still was not fulfilled. That is when the real work began.

In this episode Kelly comes back to the REAL Mentors Podcast for a second time and goes deeper than he has ever gone publicly. He talks about the three beliefs that ran on repeat in his head for most of his life — unworthiness, unlovable and death — and what it actually took to rewire them. He gets into doing mirror work alone during the pandemic, couples therapy with his wife and finally learning how to listen instead of just solve. He talks about the difference between acts of service that come from love and acts of service that come from fear of not being safe if everyone is not happy.

This is not a conversation about grinding harder. This is a conversation about what comes after the grind and why getting to the second mountain is the hardest climb of all.

This Episode Explores:

✅ Why scaling your business starts with your willingness to heal yourself first

✅ The three beliefs that ran on repeat: unworthiness, unlovable and death

✅ Five minutes of mirror work every day during the pandemic and what it actually did for him

✅ The difference between Harder Than Life and his new book Happier Than Life and why they are polar opposites

✅ Why people stay in comfortable misery instead of facing the unknown to live their dreams

✅ What wiring for chaos looks like in business and in relationships and how to recognize it in yourself

✅ Going to couples therapy as a fully healed version of himself and finally hearing what the therapist was saying

✅ Why showing up and providing is not the same thing as making someone feel seen and heard

✅ The second mountain is getting to the top financially and realizing success still does not taste the way you thought it would

✅ Why manifestation without action is just a dream and presence without doing is not the answer either

🔗 Connect with Kelly Siegel

Instagram: @kelly.siegel.71

YouTube: youtube.com/@harderthanlife

Website: harderthanlife.com

Books: Harder Than Life and Happier Than Life

Follow REAL Mentors Podcast

Instagram: https://instagram.com/realmentorspodcast

Host Sean Martin: https://instagram.com/theseanmartin

Madeline Martinez was a teenage mother living in the New York City shelter system before she was old enough to graduate high school. She got her GED the same year she would have walked across that stage, enrolled in college and kept moving. Then life pulled her back under.

What followed was fourteen years of addiction, an $800 a day habit, sex work, evictions, shelter system violations and a morning she woke up at 108 pounds with no shoes, people crossing the street to avoid her, and two kids she had somehow never lost custody of. That last part is what saved her.

She joined the Army to escape the cycle, built a life in Arizona, watched it fall apart again and finally hit a bottom so complete there was nowhere left to go but up. She came out the other side with one mission, to make sure nobody else goes through it alone.

Today Madeline is the founder of Boots Underground, an organization born from her own hunger and heartbreak, dedicated to serving veterans, single mothers and people fighting their way out of systems that were never designed to help them win.

This Episode Explores:

✅ Growing up in the Bronx and entering the shelter system as a single teenage mother

✅ Getting her GED the year she would have graduated and starting college at LaGuardia

✅ Joining the New York Army to escape a cycle she did not know how to break any other way

✅ Leaving her baby behind to go into service and what that cost her

✅ An $800 a day addiction and what it took to feed it

✅ Hitting rock bottom at 108 pounds with no shoes and people crossing the street to avoid her

✅ Never losing custody of her kids throughout fourteen years of active addiction

✅ Why she refuses to judge anyone because you never know what road they walked

✅ What finally made her stop and how she rebuilt from absolute zero

✅ Founding Boots Underground and turning her pain into a platform that serves others

🔗 Connect with Madeline Martinez

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alwysmaddi3/

Boots Underground: https://www.instagram.com/bootsonground_nyc/

Follow REAL Mentors Podcast

Instagram: https://instagram.com/realmentorspodcast

Host Sean Martin: https://instagram.com/theseanmartin