REAL = Real Examples Altering Lives Mentors ⭐️ We shed light on mentors and leaders who are impacting lives and creating success stories for everyone, most especially the youth.
125 Pounds Lost and a Wellness Empire Built | Anthony & Tereza Lolli on REAL Mentors Podcast Ep 106
Anthony Lolli was driving a Rolls Royce and living in a mini mansion in Brooklyn when he was slowly eating himself to death. He knew it. His wife Tereza knew it. His kids knew it. Nobody could make him stop until the right combination of accountability, ego and a two and a half year old daughter who did not know the word fat but found one that hurt just as much finally cracked him open.
What followed was a 125 pound transformation documented on a cell phone that became a global phenomenon on Amazon Prime Video and Apple TV. Then came skin removal surgery, competing in six back to back bodybuilding competitions together in five months with no cheat meals and the realization that if they could do that together they could build anything together.
Today Anthony and Tereza are the co-founders of Biohack Yourself Media, one of the fastest growing independent health platforms in the world. They produce documentaries, run a national magazine in 5200 retail locations, launched Health News Network as a Netflix for health and built Zanzi.ai (http://Zanzi.ai) as a guided intelligence system for biohacking and longevity. They also produced the MAHA Ball for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. This is what happens when a personal health crisis becomes a mission.
In this episode Anthony, Tereza and Sean get into obesity as addiction, what functional medicine revealed about their son after seven misdiagnoses, why the current medical system is 50 years behind the science and what it actually takes to build a wellness empire with your spouse without killing each other.
If you care about your health your longevity or what is actually possible for your body this episode will change how you think about all of it.
This Episode Explores:
✅ Why Anthony calls obesity suicide by food in slow motion and what finally made him take it seriously
✅ Documenting a 125 pound weight loss on a cell phone that became a documentary on Amazon Prime and Apple TV
✅ Tereza’s journey from putting herself completely on the back burner to becoming a two time bikini world champion
✅ Six back to back bodybuilding competitions together in five months with zero cheat meals
✅ Their son being misdiagnosed seven times and how Tereza spent two years and $250,000 becoming a health detective to find the real answer
✅ How functional medicine revealed mold infection being confused for autism and what that taught them about the broken medical system
✅ Why the current medical industry is practicing medicine based on science that is 50 to 60 years old
✅ Building Biohack Yourself Media into a national magazine streaming platform documentary studio and health news network
✅ Producing the MAHA Ball for Robert F. Kennedy Jr and what the Make America Healthy Again executive order actually means
✅ Why they call themselves delusional optimists and why that is the only way to build something nobody has built before
🔗 Connect with Anthony and Tereza Lolli
Instagram:
Anthony https://www.instagram.com/anthonylolli/ (https://www.instagram.com/anthonylolli/)
TereZa https://www.instagram.com/terezalolli/ (https://www.instagram.com/terezalolli/)
Biohack Yourself Media: www.biohackyourself.com (http://biohackyourself.com/)
Follow REAL Mentors Podcast
Instagram: https://instagram.com/realmentorspodcast (https://instagram.com/realmentorspodcast)
Host Sean Martin: https://instagram.com/theseanmartin (https://instagram.com/theseanmartin)
13 Oct 2026
He Quit at 40 to Chase Art and Almost Lost Everything | Don Donneruno on REAL Mentors Podcast Ep 105
Don Donneruno grew up in New York City during the graffiti movement of the early 80s. Every year in school when they asked what he wanted to be he wrote artist. Every adult around him told him that was not a real career. So he spent decades doing everything but that until his early 40s when a friend called and asked him to help make a King Kong cake.
He had never made a cake in his life. Ninety seconds after posting it online someone wrote forget the Cake Boss you are the Cake Tuck. By the end of that first day strangers were messaging him for orders. What followed was a spot on season four of Buddy Velasco on TLC, his own bakery, 18 months of being his only employee, missed mortgage payments, panic attacks, depression and suicidal thoughts all while chasing the only thing he ever actually wanted to be.
Today Don has made custom cakes for Cardinal Dolan, Elon Musk and some of the most recognizable names in the world. He got there by putting the trauma in a backpack, freeing up his hands and never stopping.
In this episode Don and Sean get into absent fathers, the internal work it takes to stop being driven by a ghost, what a four day guided medicine experience in New Mexico did to his ego and why authenticity is the only competitive advantage that nobody can take from you.
If you are a creative entrepreneur, a career changer or anyone who has ever been told their dream is not realistic this episode is exactly what you need to hear.
This Episode Explores:
✅ Growing up in the New York City graffiti movement and spending decades burying his identity as an artist
✅ Quitting his career in his early 40s to chase art and what that decision actually cost him
✅ Making his first cake and getting flooded with orders within 24 hours of posting it online
✅ Landing on season four of Buddy Velasco on TLC and what happened when the cameras stopped rolling
✅ 18 months as his only employee missing mortgage payments while battling panic attacks and depression
✅ His father leaving at five years old and never coming back and why he now speaks of him only with gratitude
✅ The backpack metaphor that changed how he carries trauma and freed his hands to create
✅ A four day guided medicine experience in New Mexico that dissolved his ego and changed everything
✅ Making cakes for Cardinal Dolan Elon Musk and some of the biggest names in the world
✅ Why comparison is the thief of joy and why none of his competitors can ever replicate being him
🔗 Connect with Don Donneruno
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the_cake_don/ (https://www.instagram.com/the_cake_don/)
Website: www.thecakedoncreations.com (http://www.thecakedoncreations.com/)
Follow REAL Mentors Podcast
Instagram: https://instagram.com/realmentorspodcast (https://instagram.com/realmentorspodcast)
Host Sean Martin: https://instagram.com/theseanmartin (https://instagram.com/theseanmartin)
6 Oct 2026
Over $1 Billion to the Businesses Banks Won't Touch | Steven Edisis on REAL Mentors Podcast Ep 104
Steven Edisis grew up in Edison New Jersey watching his family scrape by through the entire decade of the 1970s. By college he was throwing black paint parties on tennis courts for five dollars a head, promoting nightclubs in Miami and eventually moving into a house the Real World cast just vacated and charging a hundred dollars a head at the door. He figured out how to monetize fun before he ever figured out how to build a business.
What followed was three decades of massive wins, massive failures and the kind of hard lessons that only come from doing it with no mentor, no roadmap and no one to call. He did not find himself until he was 40 years old. Everything before that was figuring it out.
Today Steven is the founder and CEO of Dynamic Capital, a company that has deployed over a billion dollars in working capital to more than 15,000 small businesses across the US and Canada. He serves the businesses that traditional banks turn away — the mom and pop operations, the minority owned businesses, the women owned businesses, the ones with cash flow but no collateral. His philosophy is simple. The businesses that survive long enough to become great are the ones that never run out of cash.
In this episode Steven and Sean get into what it actually takes to build from nothing, why the CEO must always be the number one salesperson in the organization and the three non negotiables every founder needs to lean on before they build anything else.
This Episode Explores:
✅ Growing up in Edison New Jersey watching his family transform from lower income to middle class in real time
✅ Throwing paint parties and promoting nightclubs in Miami to blend fun and finance in college
✅ Buying bars on Washington Avenue and learning that early success without systems will knock you on your ass
✅ Why he did not find himself or his real path until he was 40 years old
✅ Founding Dynamic Capital to serve the businesses traditional banks refuse to touch
✅ Why minority owned and women owned businesses were the first ones he chose to fund
✅ How Dynamic Capital looks at gross revenue instead of net profit and what that means for small business owners
✅ Why the CEO must be the number one salesperson in the organization and what happens when they are not
✅ Don't let a little success cause a lot of overhead and the other rules he lives by as a CEO
✅ The three non negotiables every aspiring founder needs before they build anything else
🔗 Connect with Steven Edisis
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stevenedisis/ (https://www.instagram.com/stevenedisis/)
Dynamic Capital: https://www.instagram.com/dynamiccapital/ (https://www.instagram.com/dynamiccapital/)
Follow REAL Mentors Podcast
Instagram: https://instagram.com/realmentorspodcast (https://instagram.com/realmentorspodcast)
Host Sean Martin: https://instagram.com/theseanmartin (https://instagram.com/theseanmartin)
Who has been a guest on REAL Mentors Podcast
Names identified in recent episode analyses. Showing up to five guests.
Tim Kittelstad
Coss Marte
Jennifer Hernandez
Andrew Sallee
Luis Omar Figueroa
Reach and audience
Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.
YouTube views
295,286
Score snapshot 15 Sept 2025
Apple Podcasts (US)
5.0 / 5
4 ratings
Spotify
5.0 / 5
2 ratings
Podcast Authority Score: 49 / 100
A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.
Quality
51
Social presence
0
YouTube
86
Engagement
32
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