MrBallen recounts the moment a grenade nearly killed him during his time as a Navy SEAL, describes the mental and physical toll of returning to civilian life, and explains how he stumbled into content creation and went viral with 5 million views in a matter of hours. He and Sam touch on his obsession with storytelling and how he scaled to 7 million TikTok subscribers in 30 days before moving to YouTube.
Speakers: MrBallen (guest, Navy SEAL turned viral content creator), Sam Parr (host)
The Grenade [00:00:00]
MrBallen: I watched this grenade come over the wall. I could see it for a second, it disappeared, I could see it for a second — and then it was like time absolutely stood still. When I was in that blackness of not seeing and not hearing, I knew absolutely that this was death.
Coming Home [00:00:15]
MrBallen: I had mental issues. I had emotional issues. I had real physical issues. I was a complete psychopath. And when I got out, I thought social media and content creation was just kind of fascinating.
Sam: How did you decide that was the way to spend your life?
MrBallen: If you create the right thing at the right time, it’s like a lottery ticket — it goes viral, and then it’s your chance to capitalize in whatever way you want. So I was obsessed with it.
Going Viral [00:00:35]
MrBallen: Despite the many failures over the course of probably six months, maybe a year — just awful, cringe videos that went nowhere — on a whim I was like, “You know what, I’m just going to shoot a quick video.” I leave my phone in the room for a couple hours, come back, and I couldn’t even open my phone. It had over 5 million views in a matter of a few hours.
Sam: So you built this empire pretty quickly.
MrBallen: I went into this feverish mode — just constantly telling stories on TikTok, three a day for 30 days. And then I was up to like 7 million subscribers on TikTok. Then I shifted to YouTube, and here we are.
On Storytelling [00:01:05]
Sam: What’s one thing you could teach me to make me a better storyteller?
MrBallen: It’s something that people love and hate. If you’re going to tell a story —