From Navy SEAL To Viral Content Creator - MrBallen’s Insane Story

If you create the right thing at the right time, it's like a lottery ticket and it goes viral, and then it's your chance at that point to capitalize in whatever way you want to. So I was obsessed with it. So despite the many failures over the course of probably, you know, 6 months or so, maybe a year of just like awful cringe videos that went nowhere, on a whim I was like, you know what, I'm just going to shoot a quick video and I leave my phone in the room for a couple hours, come back, and I couldn't even open my phone., and it had over 5 million views in a matter of a few hours.

We were like significant on YouTube, but I personally was at a place where I was, I mean, just jumping in. I mean, I was, it took me about 26 hours, give or take, to make one video in the first 6 months I was on YouTube. And I was doing anywhere from 3 to 5 videos a week. And at the same time, you know, I'm married, I have 3 young kids. I completely was negligent in all duties besides content. My wife is a saint and picked up everything else, but I was doing, you know, I mean, do the math, 27, like over 100 hours of just constant grinding, like at all hours. And so even though the channel was, you know, in the millions and we were, you know, by all accounts had like made it as a YouTube channel. I was so close to being like, dude, this ain't worth it. Like I'm in my 30s. I got a family. Like I've done well for myself, but this is like the worst thing ever. And it was around that time that I'm like, maybe all those people that are emailing me, maybe they can offer something that will help me like grow. Cause I swear to God, I was, just mass deleting emails because it was so stressful. Like people that were like trying to pitch me and I saw an email come through that was like, you know, fellow combat veteran here to help. And I had like, I'm a military guy and I'm immediately like, okay, this guy I could talk to. I don't know who he is. I don't know what he means by help, but I opened his email and he's like, yeah, you know, I'm a day-to-day manager with MrBeast. I have experience in traditional talent. You know, I'm not looking to sign you, not looking to, really do anything, but I just saw, you know, you're a vet. It's rare in the space and I'd be happy to help. And it's like, I immediately hit him up and I'm like, I don't know you, but my life's falling apart here, man. Like I got all this great stuff happening with YouTube, but I can't manage it. Like I'm losing my mind. And so that began what turned out to be the reason that the Mr. Ballen thing did not fade into obscurity. I mean, I'm a great storyteller, but I cannot grow a business. I couldn't have done this longer than like literally that month. I remember talking to my wife and being like, I just don't know if this is worth it. But Nick came in and I handed the reins of virtually everything over to Nick and he scaled the company. We have like 50+ employees now. We got a slate of shows. I show up to the studio and just somebody else hits record and I just tell stories and I leave because of Nick.

So Nick also, when he got out of the military, so he does 90 combat missions in Iraq as an open turret gunner. So I don't know if you're familiar with this nowadays, when you're overseas, you are in an enclosed bombproof, like MRAP, this huge up-armored 60,000-ton vehicle with literally a remote-controlled gun that has a screen in front of you. That's how they do it now. Nick was in Iraq when it's an open turret, like it's just you hanging it out there. And the turret gunners are the number one target, like as you're rolling through on patrol. So Nick is doing this extremely dangerous mission set, comes back from Iraq, gets out of the military, goes to law school, which is a whole thing. And then he ends up deciding he wants to get into entertainment law, But he has no idea how. So he just begins pestering WME, one of the biggest talent agencies in the world, to like let him work for them. No one's taking his calls. They're like, he's showing up in his one raggedy suit that he's got, like trying to make an impression. He's this big yoked dude with tattoos all over him. No one wants him. He finally gets the attention of one of the partners. He's like, all right, dude, you come here all the time. Like you can work in the mailroom, pushing the mail cart. And the dude quickly ascended and was like working with, with with talent, like killing it. So Nick is a highly persistent dude who just does what he wants. It's pretty amazing.

Sounds like it reminds of you already, Nick. I think he is ex-military as well. He was just like super operational, just an adult in the room and just had this like grind mindset. And Like you, isn't like enamored by the idea of MrBeast. It's not like, isn't trying to be a part of the cool scene, sees it as an operation that needs to be run well. And I, you could just tell his whole life got better by surrounding himself with more people like that. Sam, I don't know if I ever told you the story, but we, for one of our companies, we hired an ex-military guy to be like our kind of like head of customer service or something like that. It was like an at-home, it was a remote job he could do at home. I think he had like a leg injury. So this was like a good thing for him. And this guy transformed our entire business. Like first he started in customer service, but he would just notice everything is broken because, you know, it's a Sean company if everything is broken. And so he would find that the next thing's broken and he would just be DMing me in Slack. By the way, the best part was he wouldn't make you feel bad about fixing stuff. He would just give me these like military phrases. He'd be like, slow is smooth and smooth is fast. He just hit me with that in the morning. And then I would be like, I don't really know where that applies, but I think it applies to everything in my life now. And he was like my guiding, you know, mentor basically from the customer service department. It was amazing.

Basically, I fell backwards into this. I mean, I, I got out of the military in 2017. It was a medical retirement that was due in large part to this injury I've just described. I wound up deploying one more time in the team, but I had mental issues. I had emotional issues. I had real physical issues. I was a complete psychopath by the time I was being effectively told it's time for you to wrap it up here in the Navy. And when I got out, in an effort to get myself a civilian job, I wound up connecting with this guy named Jordan Selig, who's this investment banker in New York turned entrepreneur. And he's like, man, you got to network. And so I started like going on LinkedIn and networking. Didn't even know what I was doing. I was just like randomly messaging random people. But before long, I had like met enough people that there was this idea to have a networking event in New York. And so I invited some people that were also leaving the SEAL teams to come with me to meet some business people in New York. It was like pretty open-ended. And I wound up giving a couple of, you know, I guess a speech, if you will, at this like weird event with like 50 people. We called it Elite Meet was the name of the event. And it was meant to just be this one-time event.. I gave this talk about, hey, you know, in the room right now we have these veterans and like, here's what they bring to the table. And Jordan, who was there with me, he talked about what the business people had and what, what offered opportunities they were looking to fill. And, and it was great. Like a few people got hired as a result, but ironically, nobody was asking me about getting a job because the assumption was, this is your job. You run this networking event. And so I ended up making that my job. And for a couple of years, I, I was the CEO of, of Elite Meet, but to, to shorten the story. The pandemic happened and our charity was largely event-based. You know, we've literally had these big networking events that we would cultivate over many months and we couldn't do events anymore because no one could do anything like the world shut down. And it was around that time that I was sort of looking at other pathways to, I don't know, to live my life. And I thought social media and content creation was just kind of fascinating as, I mean, it's one of the few places where it's fairly obvious that You know, unless you really buy into this idea that algorithms are like totally, you know, leaning one way or the other, ultimately content creation is a big meritocracy. You know, ultimately you can create content with no platform, no, no, no, nothing. And if you create the right thing at the right time, it's like a lottery ticket and it goes viral. And then it's your chance at that point to capitalize in whatever way you want to. And I tried, uh, I tried cashing that lottery ticket for a while, doing some cringe, like weird sketch comedy on Instagram and LinkedIn. And I was doing like dance videos. I'm like a middle-aged dude doing dance videos on TikTok, getting made fun of. It was horrible. It was like nothing worked. I was like, boy, I got this. I'm going to be a content creator. But I had this document on my computer. I had two documents that was like TikTok ideas or content ideas. And on one document, it was like, I'm not kidding. Page, like 50 pages of single space, just bullets of ideas of types of content I could create. And then I had this other document that had a single word on it, or it was like a single bullet point, and it just said Dyatlov Pass. So Dyatlov Pass is this very famous mystery about these hikers in the 1950s who go missing in the Ural Mountains. And yeah, they're very experienced hikers and that wind up missing and then they're found and there's these photos of their campsite and it's been,, you know, desecrated and their bodies are found and they're like wearing each other's clothes. Body parts are missing. They're, they're, uh, they're radioactive. Um, there were, there was one person that was like tucked up in a tree and there was all these scratch marks at the base of the tree. This is like in the middle of like the Ural Mountains. Like it's just snow and ice everywhere. And that same night, like there was a Soviet military movement happening. And, uh, and one of the people who was in charge, who had no idea about these missing hikers, made a report that he had never made before that happened to coincide with the same time these hikers went missing. Where he said, you know, I, I see these lights that are basically coming up and down and flashing over the, over this section of the mountain, like pretty far away from our position. And that this guy was trying to find out, is there another military movement happening or is another country invading us? And so it turns out there wasn't and no one knows what those lights were and no one knows what happened to these hikers. And so it's this great mystery and I thought it was fascinating. And that's the content that I like. Like when I go on the internet to look at video, when I'm eating my lunch, that's what I'm going to watch. I'm going to watch videos like that. And to date I had been trying to mimic other people's content style. I was just copying stuff and trying to hit it big on social media and it was just not going well at all.

Yeah. And unfortunately, you know, it was a blessing and a curse because in a way, when I began posting, you know, text stories of, you know, how I was, I wasn't intending to come off as like Mr. Navy SEAL, but that's entirely how it came off. And once I made that shift, I was like, I'm going to delete all the SEAL content and start, start anew. And just try my hand at something that is completely divorced from being a SEAL, I posted, I did probably hundreds of videos that were like, I mean, some did relatively well, getting a couple hundred or a thousand views, but like, I, I, nothing was turning into anything. And, but I also, I have this sort of obsessive quality when I want to do something and it's, it's definitely what, you know, allowed me to become a SEAL. It's like, you, if you want to be, if you want to be really good at something, you kind of, you kind of have to only do that. And I had this idea that like, I really want to do something with social media. And so I was obsessed with it. So despite the many failures over the course of probably, you know, 6 months or so, maybe a year of just like awful cringe videos that went nowhere, I had like reached a point where my wife was like, dude, you gotta like figure something else out here. This is not really going anywhere. She was very diplomatic about it, but we got 3 young kids, or we had 2 at the time. And I was at this water park in Pennsylvania, this indoor water park with my wife and kids. And on a whim I was like, you know what, I'm just going to shoot a quick video, like 60-second talk about the Dyatlov Pass. And so I film it in my hotel room and I leave my phone in the room because we're going down to the water park and I didn't have a way to waterproof it. Leave my phone, me and my wife and kids, we go down to the water park, uh, we're there for a couple hours, come back and I couldn't even open my phone. There were so many notifications pouring in for this one video on my TikTok account that had no following. It was like this brand new account basically. And it had over 5 million views in a matter of a few hours. And I was like, holy cow, like, as you guys have seen on this podcast, I love to talk, love to tell stories. Maybe I can just keep doing this on TikTok. And so I went into this feverish, like, constantly telling stories on TikTok, uh, 3 a day for 30 days, and then was up to like 7 million subscribers on TikTok and then shifted to YouTube. And here we are.

Well, let me tell you one thing. This is going to tell you a little bit about you and a lot about me. You told two stories just now. Yeah. You told a story of you representing our country, nearly dying in war, being saved by the Navy SEALs, facing a life or death experience. And I was like, I like this story. Then you talked about how you came home, you got on LinkedIn, you started, uh, using your, the easy button to try to post, you know, content. And then you admitted you were like, I didn't want to be doing that. But I was doing that and I didn't care. I wanted to do it anyways. And then people shit on me for it and it felt really bad and they were right. Yeah. And I was like, I ride with this guy. I love this guy. Cause, uh, there are so few people on earth. There are a few people on earth who have lived through war and survived. There might be even fewer people who can look at their actions and say, yeah, I don't think, and not give themselves the benefit of the doubt, right? Everybody gives themselves the benefit of the doubt. Everyone gives themselves the charitable interpretation. I really love how honest you were about what you were doing and how that might've been like something that you're not proud of how you did it and how you, you know, ultimately where it landed you, which was like through doing that, you're like, all right, I want to do storytelling, social media, maybe you kind of had a taste of it, but then you tried to make it by copying what others were doing on TikTok. And only when you did the thing that was like the intersection of like, you know, what you're good at and what the world is interested in, you found that authentic point where now, you know, there's nobody else doing what you were doing, or very few people were doing what you were doing there. So I think there's a lot to learn from that.

What's the Mr. Ballen Foundation and, you know, 1099 contractors that end up rolling up into W-2s were almost around 55. And then I would say fan-wise, you know, he's got 9+ million on YouTube, 8+ million on TikTok, 3.5 on Facebook, Snapchat, you name it. So I think, oh, and then you have the podcast, which does, you know, 8 figures in downloads a month. And so, I mean, I would say the, the range is about 25 million in fans just for the Strange Dark Mysterious.

Goddamn. So you've built this empire quickly. And, you know, when I do these podcasts, I wake up and I think, all right, what am I excited to talk about and learn about genuinely? What am I actually selfishly interested in? Because that's what makes for the best podcast, honestly, because it's, that's the conversation I really want to have. And the one thing I wanted to learn from you was like, you, you've built this media company and you do these kind of like strange, dark, and mysterious stories. I don't do those stories. I'm not necessarily trying to build a media company, but there was one thing you said that really stood out to me when I was kind of going down the rabbit hole and it's around what is the mindset that's helped you become successful that I could take even if I'm trying to do something completely different, right? How can I learn from you guys? How can I learn from a SEAL and the mindset that it took to be successful there, that it took to be successful with your media company that I might use elsewhere? And you said something that was great. Uh, you were on our buddy Chris's podcast and you said he was asking about, you know, being in a rut or how do you not get stuck? And you said, you know, one thing I'm good at. Is if I find something, you know, I have a basic outline of what I want to do. As long as something checks enough of the boxes, I don't overthink it because you said most people, or, you know, other people could sit there and question what, you know, we have something that, that you think might work and you could sit there and question and say, is there some alternative that's slightly better? Is there something that would check more boxes or, or how would this work and get caught up in the details? I really love that mindset because I think that is a, every entrepreneur has been guilty of that once, if not is stuck there. Can you talk a little bit about that mindset? What did you mean by that? And any maybe examples of how you approach that?

Sure. So I mean, to be clear, definitely in terms of getting the business to 55 employees with a slate of shows, that wasn't me. I might be the face of it, but Nick is absolutely the architect and the guy who runs the business. Um, but just relative to like, you know, my role in this company. Yeah, I think that what I was getting at with Chris Williamson was this idea that, you know, we are inundated. We, like anybody online, uh, are inundated oftentimes with like these pretty trope-ish messages. Like, you know, you just gotta outwork the competition. You just gotta put in, you just gotta grind, like hustle culture. Like it's, it's this whole idea of like, just get out there and like, just do stuff. And it's like, but what do I do is oftentimes the unspoken question of most people listening is like, I get it. Like I need to work really hard. I need to care a lot about what I'm doing. I, people get that, but where a lot of people stumble from my perspective is just sounds corny, but like taking action. But the idea is like, there are so many things that anybody at any time could pursue, whether it's career, relationship. Hobby, you name it. Like there's an infinite number of things in some ways that you could, you could do. And people are like, well, is it, what's the ROI if I do this, whatever it is. And I don't think that I set out to be this way out of strategy. I think it's just who I am, which is like, if it's good enough, just start doing it. And so for me, like I had this idea and so I have a baseline of things I care about. I want something to be hard enough that if I do it, I'll feel really proud of doing that thing. Like if it's easy, it's not going to make me excited at the end. Like it needs to be a challenge. So something that's hard, something that comes with some level of like, this is going to sound vain, but I think we're all pretty human here. Some level of recognition for doing the thing. It's not the reason you do it, but you do want people to be aware that you struggled and built this thing. You did this thing, you own this thing, whatever it is. So it's like, has to be hard, has to have some level of people being aware. This is again, my baseline, people being aware of me accomplishing it. And then also I want to have some level of enjoyment doing it. The Navy SEAL teams are a good example of one of those things that checked those boxes for me. Like prior to trying out for the SEAL teams, I had sort of got my act together and managed to graduate college. There was a time where I definitely was not on that path. My, my mom wrote my college essay to the college that accepted me. My grades were so bad, but the essay was so good. She's a professional writer. That the college actually contacted me and was like, your grades are not enough, but boy, that essay, you're in the door, buddy. And then I immediately like got, I got in all this trouble my first, anyways, I was on this path to like flunking outta college and being that guy that totally peaked in high school. But when I was back home in Quincy, Massachusetts, just south of Boston, Mass, I was like in my mom's basement after basically flunking outta school and getting in trouble. I wound up realizing that, you know, hey, if you want to graduate college, like you got to do it yourself. You need to own your fuck up and like go to school and do it. And so I managed to graduate. I took some local classes, went back to the old university. I graduated, I get my degree, but I had no idea what I wanted to do after college. Like none. I majored in philosophy with a minor in English because there was no pre-law degree because I sort of convinced myself that maybe I'll be a lawyer. I was like, what am I going to do? And I just, I had this feeling of like, well, man, it was really cool to like pick myself up by the bootstraps and like graduate on my own strength here. And I began looking for opportunities to kind of continue doing stuff like that. And that's where I kind of developed this mindset of look for things that are hard, look for things that come with some level of recognition and things that I might enjoy doing. And I found the SEAL teams. It's like I had always been kind of enamored with the military. A lot of my classmates in high school, they, after high school, joined the Marines and went off to fight in the wars. And I actually always sort of felt a little bit guilty that I went to college on my mom's essay and pissed it all away. And yeah, I graduated, but I always had this sort of like deep down guilt that I didn't volunteer at the time that many of my friends did. And so I kind of idolized them. I also looked at the SEAL teams as being this thing that like, just about anybody, you know, within reason can try out for the SEAL Teams. It's not something that requires a whole lot to get in the door. I'm generalizing, but it is relatively easy to try out, but it is exceptionally hard to graduate. And so, perfect. It's got this incredible challenge. And then if you become a SEAL, well, guess what? No one's going to be like, yeah, but John screwed up in college. And it just felt like, wow, like that checks every box for me. And I went that way and I became a SEAL and then you know, after, after the military, I, I still had that kind of mindset of looking for things that I wanted to do that would be hard, some level of recognition and enjoy and have some enjoyment. And I thought social media was it. It just felt like a big challenge, you know, to, to like get noticed by the world.

Yeah, exactly. And it sounds like the SEALs like that. Conquering social media, although it sounds goofy, like TikTok or whatever, is one of the most competitive merit-based things you could go compete in. What's a race that a billion people are competing in? You know, that's one of the few. And so like, Sam, what is your, what's your version of that? What's the highest order, you know, the orienting thing when you decide what are you going to devote your time and your talents to? Do you know?

Do you? At the beginning, it was like prove myself, early 20s. Then like late 20s was like, yo, I'd like to have like a million dollars in the bank. You know, like some money became like the thing. Let me get to a million, 10 million. And the richer person I met, I would be like, oh yeah, I need that much money. And then early 30s, popping out kids. I realized I went to lifestyle. I was like, oh, actually it's a certain amount of money, but actually it's, I don't want more money with more stress and time. I want like the maximum amount of time, least amount of stress, but still be able to do whatever the hell I want. So enough money to do that. So that was what I would call lifestyle. And now I'm 36 and in the last year, I basically shifted that north again. And by the way, I don't think it's bad to shift your north. I think you have seasons of life and chapters of life and you should eat. They're all not all the same, you know, like having a lot of fun was really important in college for me. That was the true north right now. It's basically enjoyment. So what I'm trying to do is figure out what is the most me thing I could do? Like you were saying, these are the stories I'm interested in and you come from a background. I think your parents were like storytellers and it's probably something you learned through osmosis. I think about it like this. What, what can I do? That's just simply me pushed out to the world. That is my most, my highest orienting function. And then the filter is basically, am I doing this because doing it is the reward, or am I doing this for some future rewards? And most of my life I did things for future rewards. I went to college so I could get a good job, and I got a good job so that I could make some money, and I got some money so that I could buy this thing. Everything was this future payoff. And now I'm like, oh wait, I don't need to do that trade. That's a little silly. Why don't I just do things where the act of doing it is the reward? If there happens to be other buy products in the future, great. But I can't do things that I don't really want to do or kind of suck today because I think they might pay off in the future. I don't do those anymore. This podcast is the best thing I've ever done. And when I started it, I was basically like, I'm going to lose. I wrote down in my plan, this should lose about $10,000 to $20,000 a year. I'm comfortable with that. So it was like the only like non, not only just won't make me rich, I planned for it to make me slightly poorer every year doing it. And ironically, this is the thing that's done the best. It's been the most successful of all the projects. And I'm willing to do it forever. This is the only thing I do that I'm not looking to exit, right? Like, I'm not looking to sell this and, and like, then I'll be able to relax and retire. It's like, no, no, I kind of want to keep doing the pod. You'd have to pay me to stop.

There's— I don't think that is in terms of a selfish goal. Yeah. Like that would be the thing. I would want to own a piece of the Red Sox, but actually I was going to an analogy and then I was going to double back to that. When that dream was shattered sometime, I remember my senior year of high school, I just like said it out loud. I'm like, yeah, I'm probably not going to play for the Boston Red Sox. And I was like, oh, fuck. Like, that's true. Like, I'm not like the dream is over. But I always just like thought about like, that was the dream that that was my childhood dream, like pitch for the Boston Red Sox. That was it. And so now like that we're at this place, you know, Ballin Studios is at this place where, you know, when he's talking about recruiting the best storytellers in the world. It's actually a little bit different than recruiting. I look at us and this is my, take my shirt off, show you the truth. I look at us as like, I'll put it this way. If you, if you're a baseball player, you're an amateur baseball player, like I was, you don't aspire to be the best independent baseball player in the world that you're going to be by yourself, just being the best. You want to play for the fucking Boston Red Sox or the Yankees or whatever it is you want to play for. Like that's, that's the goal. Like that's the peak of baseball is playing for one of those teams. For me, the Red Sox. And so I love this idea of like thinking about that dream I had and kind of angling it so it's applicable to storytellers where there really isn't like a really prominent, like, that's where the fucking storytellers go. Like that's the place. That's the stamp of approval. That is the ultimate place. If you're a storyteller in some capacity, if you are under the Ballin' Studios umbrella, boom. You've made it. Like, that's the equivalent. I want us to be that. I want to be the Boston Red Sox equivalent for storytellers. And so I don't know how we're going to get there, but I want that level of prestige assigned to Ballen Studios relative to storytellers. And then with that, I want to own a fucking piece of the Red Sox.

It's something that people love and hate that tune into my content. This is like, it's kind of a polarizing thing. But one of the things that I'll do when I'm telling a story, like if it's not my own, if it's somebody else's story, which is like 99% of the stories I've done is I don't just resuscitate the facts of the story. I, and with a very incredible team of people, it's not just me anymore. We will like inhabit that story. It's, I don't like, I have scripts that sit next to me, but like, as my producer who's right over here will attest to, I'm not reading the script. It's a matter of producing a script that I can then like become a part of. I will begin espousing what people are thinking or what people could have been thinking or what could have been said in certain situations that I have no way of knowing., but I am so committed to telling that story that I have learned it both outside as much as I can inside. So that when you're hearing it, it would almost be like it was my story. Like the level of commitment. If you're going to tell a story, own the fucking story, like enter the story and don't leave until it's done. People that like tell you a story and it sounds like they're just telling something they heard, that's not storytelling. That's just regurgitating something you heard. You want to be a fucking storyteller. Inhabit the story, full commitment to the point where you are literally acting out pieces of that story for your audience.