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

John Allen

I watched this grenade come over the wall. It's like I could see it for a second, then it disappeared. I could see it for a second, and it was like time absolutely stood still. When I was in this blackness of not seeing and not hearing, I knew absolutely that this was death. I had mental issues, I had emotional issues, and I had real physical issues. I was a complete psychopath. When I got out, I thought social media and content creation were just kind of fascinating.

Sam Parr

How did you decide that was a worthy way to spend your life?

John Allen

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. I was obsessed with it. Despite the many failures over the course of probably six months or so, maybe a year, of just awful cringe videos that went nowhere, on a whim I thought, "You know what? I'm just going to shoot a quick video." I left my phone in the room for a couple of hours, came back, and I couldn't even open my phone. It had over 5,000,000 views in a matter of...

Shaan Puri

A few hours... so you built this empire quickly.

John Allen

I went into this feverish phase, constantly telling stories on TikTok—3 a day for 30 days. Then we were up to like 7,000,000 subscribers on TikTok, and then I shifted to YouTube. And here we are. What's one thing you...?

Shaan Puri

Can you teach me to be a better storyteller?

John Allen

It's something that people love and hate. If you're going to tell a story...

Sam Parr

Sean, have you ever seen the Mister Ballin channel before? I asked you if he should come on.

Shaan Puri

No, when I found out you were coming on as a guest, that's when the research started. I went to your TikTok first, then I went to YouTube, and I started watching some other stuff. I love the genre, but I'm not crazy about it. My brother-in-law is nuts about these spooky stories. He does something I don't even understand. You gotta explain this to me. There's apparently a YouTube channel that takes spooky stories from Reddit and then reads them using text-to-speech, like robotic text-to-speech. He'll listen to this thing for like two hours straight! I can't believe that he does this. But when I saw that, I was like, "Oh, that's like people who are far on the deep end of loving this type of content."

Sam Parr

I've definitely done, like, on a Saturday where I've got to do chores or something like that and run errands. I've done a 6 to 8 hour marathon of "Mr. Ballin." What's your consumption rate on your channel right now? Is it just through the roof?

John Allen

That's a Nick question. So, Nick does everything with the exception of telling the stories on camera. I'm completely out of the loop with virtually everything else. I just sit down and tell stories. Nick is the guy for literally every other question in terms of the growth of the channel and metrics. That's Nick; that's Nick's wheelhouse.

Shaan Puri

Dude, that's **nirvana** for content.

John Allen

Oh dude, where you can just...

Shaan Puri

Sit down, you just record, and then you disappear. Everything else happens magically. Yeah, that is what every content creator wants.

John Allen

And we'll get to this, but he came in when I didn't know how to grow my channel beyond just me. I was so burned out. Nick came in when it was just me, and I think I had an editor and maybe a topic finder. That was overwhelming for me, you know? I was deleting all the emails that came in from people trying to do business with me. I just deleted everything, so I had no idea how to figure out if it was good or not. Then Nick came in and was like, "Oh dude, I'll help you," and he grew the business.

Sam Parr

How big were you when that happened?

John Allen

We were significant on YouTube, but I personally was at a place where I was just jumping in. It took me about 26 hours, give or take, to make one video in the first six months I was on YouTube. I was doing anywhere from 3 to 5 videos a week. At the same time, you know, I'm married and I have 3 young kids. I was completely negligent in all duties besides content. My wife is a saint and picked up everything else. But I was doing, you know, the math—over 100 hours of just constant grinding at all hours. Even though the channel was in the millions and we had, by all accounts, made it as a YouTube channel, I was so close to being like, "Dude, this ain't worth it." I'm in my thirties, I have a family, and I've done well for myself, but this is like the worst thing ever. It was around that time that I thought maybe all those people emailing me could offer something that would help me grow. I swear to God, I was just mass deleting emails because it was so stressful. People were trying to pitch me, and then I saw an email come through that said, "You know, fellow combat veteran here to help." I'm a military guy, and I immediately thought, "Okay, this guy I could talk to." I didn't know who he was or what he meant by help, but I opened his email. He said, "Yeah, you know, I'm a day-to-day manager with Mr. Beast. I have experience in traditional talent. I'm not looking to sign you or really do anything, but I just saw you're a vet. It's rare in the space, and I'd be happy to help." So I immediately hit him up and said, "I don't know you, but my life's falling apart here, man. I have all this great stuff happening with YouTube, but I can't manage it. I'm losing my mind." That began what turned out to be the reason that the Mr. Ballin 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 literally that month. I remember talking to my wife and saying, "I just don't know if this is worth it." But Nick came in, and I handed the reins of virtually everything over to him. He scaled the company; we have over 50 employees now. We have a slate of shows. I show up to the studio, and just somebody else hits record while I tell stories and then leave—because of Nick.

Nick Witters

The thing too, Johnny, is that every creator on the planet starts it all by themselves. Everything lives and dies on their shoulders. So, even just letting someone in to tweak a title or give advice on a thumbnail is just like the highest level of anxiety that creators can have too.

Shaan Puri

Did he say that you were working with Mr. Beast before that?

Nick Witters

Yeah, so I got hired to be the right hand for the CEO over at Knight Media. Reid was Jimmy's main manager, and I got recruited to be Jimmy's number two, or Reid's number two. I was running day-to-day operations with Mr. B. Before that, I had no clue about anything on YouTube, so I was learning everything from the "Michael Jordan of YouTube" and then applying it in real time, in real practice. Before that, I was in law school, became a lawyer, and did a military stint.

John Allen

So, Nick, when he got out of the military, completed 90 combat missions in Iraq as an open turret gunner. I don't know if you're familiar with this, but nowadays, when you're overseas, you are in an enclosed bomb-proof vehicle, like an MRAP. This huge, up-armored 60,000-ton vehicle has a remote-controlled gun with a screen in front of you. That's how they do it now. Nick was in Iraq when it was an open turret, meaning it was just him hanging out there. The turret gunners are the number one target while rolling through on patrol. So, Nick is doing this extremely dangerous mission set, comes back from Iraq, gets out of the military, and goes to law school, which is a whole thing. 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 let him work for them. No one is taking his calls. He's showing up in his one raggedy suit, trying to make an impression. He's this pretty yoked dude with tattoos all over him, and no one wants him. Finally, he gets the attention of one of the partners, who says, "Alright dude, you come here all the time. You can work in the mail room pushing the mail cart." The dude quickly ascended and was working with talent, killing it. So, Nick is a highly persistent guy who just does what he wants. It's pretty amazing.

Shaan Puri

We got to know Jimmy because we do an event with him every year. We call it **Camp MFM**. I would say the first year we met him, his crew was a lot of like his friends or his cousin. That's great because you get high loyalty and camaraderie, but the operations were obviously busting at the seams because he's growing so fast. Every single person there had never done anything like this before. For a lot of them, they had never done anything before. It's like, you're all 23, you're all 24; everybody was so young. We went back this year, and his right-hand man, Sean, is this guy who's like...

Nick Witters

Sean Hendricks

Shaan Puri

Sounds like it reminds me 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 had this grind mindset. He isn't enamored by the idea of Mr. Beast; it's not like he's trying to be a part of the cool scene. He sees it as an operation that needs to be run well. 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 this story, but for one of our companies, we hired an ex-military guy to be our head of customer service or something like that. It was a remote job he could do at home. I think he had a leg injury, so this was a good fit for him. This guy transformed our entire business. At first, he started in customer service, but he would just notice everything that was broken. You know, it's a Sean company; everything is broken. He would find the next thing that was broken and just DM me in Slack. The best part was he wouldn't make you feel bad about fixing stuff. He would just give me these military phrases. He'd say, "Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast." He'd hit me with that in the morning, and I would be like, "I don't really know where that applies, but I think it applies to everything in my life now." He was like my guiding mentor, basically, from the customer service department. It was amazing.

Sam Parr

Alright, so a lot of people watch and listen to the show because they want to hear us tell them exactly what to do when it comes to starting or growing a business. Really, a lot of people who are listening have a full-time job and they want to start something on the side—a side hustle. Now, many people message Sean and me and say, "Alright, I want to start something on the side. Is this a good idea? Is that a good idea?" What they're really just saying is, "Just give me the ideas." Well, my friends, you're in luck! My old company, The Hustle, put together 100 different side hustle ideas, and they have appropriately called it the **Side Hustle Idea Database**. It's a list of 100 pretty good ideas. Frankly, I went through them and they're awesome. It gives you how to start them, how to grow them, and things like that. It provides a little bit of inspiration. So check it out! It's called the **Side Hustle Idea Database**. It's in the description below; you'll see the link. Click it, check it out, and let me know in the comments what you think. Well, I think John went on Chris Williamson's podcast and told the story where I think a grenade exploded near you and you almost died. It was a really bad situation, but you were like, "It was kind of cool though because I saw tens of millions of dollars worth of elite training go into play." When I got hurt, my guys did exactly what they were supposed to do. It was like clockwork. You're like, "It's so cool! I can actually see all of this happening." I guess, with a lot of the military guys, it seems that goes into play with business, particularly when they're like, "Dude, I'm used to grenades; that shit's easy."

John Allen

Yeah, it's true. A grenade basically landed between myself and a few of my other teammates. It detonated. One of the things that happens in my limited experience in combat is you can get shot several times. You don't just immediately collapse to the ground unless it's a headshot or something. You can get shot and become a superhuman for like 30 seconds. It's one of the most bizarre things. We're engaging these guys, and in this absolute chaos, they lobbed the grenades over the wall to our side. I remember watching this grenade come over the wall. It's like I can see it for a second, then it disappears. I can see it for a second, and it was like time absolutely stood still. I'm not making that up; that was my experience. It's like I'm witnessing my death. Here comes this grenade. I know it's a grenade. It's like my brain has become hyper-focused on what's happening. Then I remember thinking, as it came closer to my head—this all happened in a fraction of a second—I remember thinking, "Boy, if it detonates here, it's going to blow my head off, and my mom won't be able to identify me." I just hope this falls below my head. So even though it's going to kill me, at least they can see my face. I can have an open casket; my family can see me. But, you know, it reached my head, and I'm just bracing for death. Then, you know, it's lights out, lights on, lights out, lights on. It falls, hits my shoulder, and begins to travel down to the ground. I remember having this thought when it was at my torso, again in this fraction of a second, thinking, "Phew, my face will be intact, and now it's going to blow me in half, but at least my mom will see her son's face." But it makes it to the ground, and now I'm thinking, "Holy cow, it might just blow my legs off. I might live through this." It hits the ground and detonates. I can only compare it to... first of all, I'm prepared to die at this.

John Allen

So, I was just ready for whatever happened. There was no pain involved, but it felt like somebody took a handful of rocks and just threw them as hard as they could at my back, my hips, and my legs. It was zero pain; there wasn't even really shock. Even though we were all seven of us in the lethal range of this grenade, we just think that it was basically muffled or deadened slightly by being in sewage. By the way, I got E. coli as a result of this because sewage was shot into my body. But yeah, I collapsed to the ground, and then all hell broke loose. I mean, of the seven of us that were behind this wall, six became incapacitated, down to the ground, like unconscious or badly hurt. Our medic, who also is a SEAL, he's incredible. His name is Kyle. He would tell us later on that everybody goes down. He knows that there are multiple enemy combatants literally on the other side of the wall, and he's like, "I just went into flow." You know, he began rescuing us under a hail of gunfire. Rounds are coming in, rockets are being fired overhead, and I'm barely conscious. Our medic just began pulling people out under the hail of gunfire. My memory, which it would take years to learn what actually happened because my memory was not accurate, was that I felt like the rocks were hitting me. I kind of looked up and was waiting for a combatant to come into the alleyway we were in and finish me off. Then, somehow or another, I was pulled like 10 to 20 feet away and brought into this alleyway. Kyle, the medic, wound up putting tourniquets on my legs and saving my life. But years after the fact, Kyle and I, we didn't speak following this whole thing. It was so traumatic. We came back to the United States separately, and we didn't talk for four years. It messed with all of us. But when I sat down with him, he would tell me that after the impact, after the detonation, he said, "I looked and I saw you on the ground, and I thought at first you were on a sheet of ice." He was like, "That doesn't make any sense because it's not cold enough." That's when he realized I was actually in a puddle of blood, face down, and he assumed I was dead. In terms of triaging the situation, he couldn't work on me; I was the lowest chance of survival. He was like, "I left you to die. I thought you were dead already." Then, after the others had basically been pulled out, somebody came back and pulled me up. I remember being sort of in and out of consciousness. My memory of this, I think, was fairly accurate because I got brought, basically, here's the tea: I got brought to the stem of the tea, if you will. We're still getting shot at, and I have these—they're called quick-release tourniquets—sitting on my kit. They're literally on you so that you can quickly access them to stop the bleeding. You actually put them here to save your life, and I didn't have the strength to break the rubber bands because I'd lost so much blood. So, I'm sitting there, no one's with me yet. I've just been dragged here and left, and rounds are coming into the alleyway. I had this moment where I could see everything; I could hear everything. But then my vision completely went. I went blind; I couldn't see anything, and I could only hear. Then the hearing turned into what sounded like a helicopter: "Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh." And then I went to nothing, and I had this...

John Allen

Where it's... I'm in a void. I can't see anything, can't hear anything. I know I'm still alive, but I compare it to when I was 7 years old and I fell rollerblading. I badly broke my collarbone. The second I hit the ground, I stood up and said to my dad, "I broke my collarbone." At 7, I don't think I ever even thought about the fact that I had a collarbone or even knew that it was called a collarbone. But it was like your brain is like, "Yep, that's what happened." It's something traumatic, and you know it immediately. When I was in this blackness of not seeing and not hearing, I knew absolutely that this is death. It was just matter-of-fact. I couldn't believe it. I had just gotten married, and my wife and I had put off the idea of having kids until after this deployment. I thought, "I can't believe that's what's going to happen. I'm going to die here." One of my final thoughts was, "I wonder if in the newspaper it will say John B. Allen killed in action, or will it say Jonathan B. Allen?" It was just weird thoughts, like, "Will my obituary make a national newspaper or just a local paper? When are they going to tell my wife?" It was just so weirdly matter-of-fact, and it struck me that just as much as you know how to live without thinking too hard about it, it's the only thing we know. You are ready to die; you just don't know it yet.

Sam Parr

When you face that, I imagine you have some type of questioning, like, "How do I want to spend my time? Life's short." Does that mental clarity kind of carry with you for a decade?

John Allen

Honestly, it has, oddly enough, even though I tried out and became a SEAL, I actually felt like I was somebody that was constantly turning down opportunities in fear of failure. It was almost like overcompensation to try out to be a SEAL to internally right that or balance that out. I had shot down so many opportunities. But after this near-death experience, it's like anytime there's an opportunity, no matter how big, no matter how scary, no matter the opportunity to fail, I do actively think about the fact that, like, "Bro, you're gonna die." And it's going to happen. It's going to be a matter of fact, and it's going to feel like, "Holy shit, I can't believe I'm dying." And that's it; that's the end. That is the thing that I think about—not the fragility of life, but the matter-of-factness of dying. The same way we live every day and we don't think about it. You don't wake up and think, "Oh, I better live today." You just do it. The same shit happens when you die, and it's going to happen when you probably aren't even expecting it. It's like, "There you go, you're done." So I carry that. Just to close the loop there, after I got medevacked and was safe, they debrief you after you're taken out of the country for an injury. They asked me, "So, what are your takeaways now that you've survived this ordeal?" I said to the commanding officer, "You know what? In real time, I watched what Navy SEALs do under fire. Not me; I was completely worthless. I was incapacitated on the ground. But I watched millions and millions of dollars in training, like in practice, and it was beautiful. It was like the training works." So that's actually used as a quote by that guy. He said, "The training works."

Sam Parr

When you're deciding to build Mister Ballin's studio, first of all, going into business, going into content creation, and then building a media company, how did you decide that was a worthy way to spend your life?

John Allen

Basically, I fell backwards into this. 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 with the team, but I had mental issues, emotional issues, and 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." When I got out, in an effort to get myself a civilian job, I wound up connecting with this guy named Jordan Selleck, who's this investment banker in New York turned entrepreneur. He said, "Man, you gotta network." So, I started going on LinkedIn and networking. I didn't even know what I was doing; I was just randomly messaging random people. Before long, I had met enough people that there was this idea to have a networking event in New York. I invited some people who were also leaving the SEAL teams to come with me to meet some business people in New York. It was pretty open-ended, and I wound up giving a couple of, I guess, a speech, if you will, at this weird event with about 50 people. We called it "Elite Meet," and it was meant to just be this one-time event. I gave this talk about, "Hey, in the room right now we have these veterans, and here's what they bring to the table." Jordan, who was there with me, talked about what the business people had and what opportunities they were looking to fill. It was great; 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." So, I ended up making that my job. For a couple of years, I was the CEO of Elite Meet. To shorten the story, the pandemic happened, and our charity was largely event-based. We 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; the world shut down. Around that time, I was looking at other pathways to live my life, and I thought social media and content creation was just kind of fascinating. It's one of the few places where it's fairly obvious that, unless you really buy into this idea that algorithms are totally leaning one way or the other, ultimately content creation is a big meritocracy. You can create content with no platform, no nothing, and 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 at that.

John Allen

To capitalize in whatever way you want to, I tried cashing that lottery ticket for a while. I was doing some cringe, weird sketch comedy on Instagram and LinkedIn. I was even doing dance videos as a middle-aged dude on TikTok, getting made fun of. It was horrible; nothing worked. I thought, "Boy, I got this. I'm going to be a content creator." I had this document on my computer with two files. One was titled "TikTok Ideas" or "Content Ideas," and it had, no kidding, about 50 pages of single-spaced bullet points of types of content I could create. The other document had a single word on it, or rather, a single bullet point. It just said **Dyatlov Pass**. The Dyatlov Pass is a very famous mystery about these hikers in the 1950s who went missing in the Ural Mountains. They were very experienced hikers, yet they wound up missing. Eventually, they were found, and there are these photos of their campsite that had been desecrated. Their bodies were discovered wearing each other's clothes, with body parts missing, and they were radioactive. One person was even found tucked up in a tree, and there were all these scratch marks at the base of the tree. This was in the middle of the Ural Mountains, where it was just snow and ice everywhere. That same night, there was a Soviet military movement happening. One of the people in charge, who had no idea about the missing hikers, made a report that he had never made before. It coincided with the same time the hikers went missing. He said he saw lights that were basically coming up and down, flashing over that section of the mountain, pretty far away from their position. This guy was trying to find out if there was another military movement happening or if another country was invading. It turns out there wasn't, and no one knows what those lights were or what happened to the hikers. It's this great mystery, and I thought it was fascinating. That's the kind of content I enjoy. When I go on the internet to watch videos while eating my lunch, that's what I want to see. To date, I had been trying to mimic other people's content styles. I was just copying stuff and trying to hit it big on social media, but it was just not going well at all.

Shaan Puri

How many other videos do you think you made before you had that kind of hit and found your lane? I think this is really important. A lot of people expect to just know their lane up front or hit early on. Even if they intellectually realize they probably will have to go through trial and error, failing like 7, 8, 9, or even 11 times in a row is completely demoralizing for the average person. So, how many videos do you think you made before you popped off?

John Allen

On TikTok specifically, there's a slightly bigger version to this story. There was a time between 2017, when I was medically retired, and 2020, when I posted this video that went viral. We were using social media, specifically LinkedIn, to try to drum up support for Elite Meet. We would basically tell stories in text format with a picture attached about veterans leaving the military. I would write stories about their experiences and how they connected to why they'd be a good fit in these types of industries. It was very successful—not viral—but we raised half a million dollars in micro-donations that stemmed from these posts that my co-founder Jordan and I were doing. So, I had gotten a taste of what social media can do. Nothing like what Mr. Bolin is doing, but it was using social media as a real tool. I remember sometime in 2018 and 2019, we were doing all this content centered on veterans and drawing donations for this charity. I decided to kind of selfishly, in tandem, begin posting very similar content—anecdotal military experience type of content—but my own. The intention was not necessarily to draw support to Elite Meet, although that was kind of incidental. It was more about building my own personal brand as a Navy SEAL. However, I drew the ire of the entire Navy SEAL community.

Shaan Puri

Unity, dudes.

Sam Parr

Seals hate that, don't they? Which is like super unfair because, you know, I've read the book about the guy who killed Bin Laden. I forget his name. Then there's Goggins, and a lot of these guys, my SEAL friends, they talk shit about people who use "Navy SEAL" as a story. I understand their perspective. Their perspective is like, "It's us. We don't talk about this. We all did this together." But then I understand the other perspective of like, "Yeah, but you just served your country, and you almost died." You're probably looking at not that awesome of a life after you retire because you're bummed out about what you experienced. There's a whole bunch of reasons why it doesn't look awesome once you get out. So I understand that perspective: "Dude, take what you can get and get ahead." So, it's a tough spot.

John Allen

Yeah, and unfortunately, you know, it was a blessing and a curse. Because in a way, when I began posting text stories about how I was, I wasn't intending to come off as like "Mr. Navy Seal," but that's entirely how it came off. Once I made that shift, I was like, "I'm gonna delete all the SEAL content and start anew." I wanted to try my hand at something that is completely divorced from being a SEAL. I posted probably 100 videos that were like... I mean, some did relatively well, getting a couple hundred or a thousand views, but nothing was turning into anything. But I also have this sort of obsessive quality when I want to do something. It's definitely what allowed me to become a SEAL. If you want to be really good at something, you kind of have to only do that. I had this idea that I really wanted to do something with social media, so I was obsessed with it. Despite the many failures over the course of probably six months or so, maybe a year, of just awful cringe videos that went nowhere, I had reached a...

John Allen

Where my wife was like, "Dude, you got to figure something else out here. This is not really going anywhere." She was very diplomatic about it, but we had three young kids—well, we had two at the time. I was at this indoor water park in Pennsylvania with my wife and kids. On a whim, I thought, "You know what? I'm just going to shoot a quick video, a 60-second talk about the Dyatlov Pass." So, I filmed it in my hotel room and left my phone there because we were going down to the water park and I didn't have a way to waterproof it. Me, my wife, and kids went down to the water park. We were there for a couple of hours, and when we came back, I couldn't even open my phone. There were so many notifications pouring in for this one video on my TikTok account, which had no following—it was basically a brand new account. It had over 5,000,000 views in a matter of a few hours, and I was like, "Holy cow!" As you guys have seen in this podcast, I love to talk and love to tell stories. Maybe I can just keep doing this on TikTok. So, I went into this feverish mode, constantly telling stories on TikTok—three a day for 30 days. Then I grew to like 7,000,000 subscribers on TikTok and then shifted to YouTube, and here we are.

Shaan Puri

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. You told a story of you representing our country, nearly dying in war, being saved by the Navy SEALs, and facing a life-or-death experience. I was like, "I like this story." Then you talked about how you came home, got on LinkedIn, and started using your "easy button" to try to post content. You admitted, "I didn't want to be doing that, but I was doing it anyway." Then people criticized you for it, and it felt really bad. They were right. I was like, "I ride with this guy. I love this guy." Because there are so few people on Earth who have lived through war and survived. There might be even fewer people who could look at their actions and say, "Yeah, I don't think so," and not give themselves the benefit of the doubt. Everyone 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 have been something you're not proud of. Ultimately, where it landed you was through doing that. You were like, "Alright, I want to do storytelling on 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. Only when you did the thing that was at the intersection of what you’re good at and what the world is interested in did you find that authenticity.

Shaan Puri

Where now you know there's nobody else doing what you were doing, or very few people were doing what you were.

John Allen

What you were doing there?

Shaan Puri

So, I think there's a lot to learn from...

Sam Parr

How big is your guys' company now? I know you have 40 people, and you're like, what do you have? 8 or 9 million on YouTube and then 3 million on Facebook. I don't even know how much on TikTok now... a shitload.

Nick Witters

With the Mister Balla Foundation and, you know, 1099 contractors that end up rolling up into W-2s, we're almost around 55. Then I would say, fan-wise, you know, he's got over 1 billion on YouTube, over 1 billion on TikTok, and 3.5 million on Facebook. Snapchat, you name it. Oh, and then you have the podcast, which does, you know, 8 figures in downloads a month. So, I mean, I would say the range is about 25 million in fans just for the Strange Dark Mysterious.

Shaan Puri

Goddamn! So, you built this empire quickly. When I do these podcasts, I wake up and think, "Alright, 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. That's the conversation I really want to have. The one thing I wanted to learn from you was about how you built this media company. You do these kind of strange, dark, and mysterious stories. I don't do those stories, and 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. It's about the mindset that has helped you become successful, which I could take even if I'm trying to do something completely different. How can I learn from you guys? How can I learn from a SEAL and the mindset that it took to be successful there, and to be successful with your music company that I might use elsewhere? You said something great on our buddy Chris' podcast. He was asking about being in a rut or how to not get stuck. You said, "One thing I'm good at is if I find something, 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." You mentioned that most people, or other people, could sit there and question what they have. They might think, "We have something that might work," and then get caught up in the details, questioning, "Is there some alternative that's slightly better? Is there something that would check more boxes? How would this work?" I really love that mindset because I think every entrepreneur has been guilty of that at least once, if not more, and is stuck there. Can you talk a little bit about that mindset? What did you mean by that? And maybe share some examples of how you approach that? Sure.

John Allen

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. But just relative to my role in this company, I think that what I was getting at with Chris Williamson was this idea that we are inundated—like anybody online, we are inundated oftentimes with these pretty tropish messages. You know, you just gotta outwork the competition. You just gotta put in the work. It's this whole idea of hustle culture, like just get out there and do stuff. But the unspoken question of most people listening is, "What do I do?" I get it; I need to work really hard and care a lot about what I'm doing. People understand that. But where a lot of people stumble, from my perspective, is just—sounds corny—but like taking action. The idea is that there are so many things that anybody at any time could pursue, whether it's a career, relationship, hobby—you name it. There's an infinite number of things that you could do. People are like, "Well, what's the ROI if I do this?" Whatever it is. I don't think that I set out to be this way out of strategy; I think it's just who I am. If it's good enough, just start doing it. For me, I had this idea, and 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 accomplishing that thing. If it's easy, it's not going to make me excited at the end; it needs to be a challenge. So, something that's hard, something that comes with some level of—this is gonna 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, that you did this thing, that you own this thing, whatever it is. So, it has to be hard, it has to have some level of people being aware—this is again my baseline—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 check those boxes for me. Prior to trying out for the SEAL teams, I had sort of gotten my act together and managed to graduate college. There was a time when I definitely was not on that path. 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." I immediately got in all this trouble my first year. Anyway, I was on this path to flunking out of college and being that guy that totally peaked in high school. But when I was back home in Quincy, Massachusetts, just south of Boston, I was in my mom's basement after basically flunking out of school and getting in trouble. I wound up realizing that, hey, if you want to graduate college, you gotta do it yourself. You need to own your mistakes and go to school and do it. So, I managed to graduate. I took some local classes, went back to the old university, and graduated with my degree. But I had no idea what I wanted to do after college—none. I majored in Philosophy with a minor in English because there was no pre-law degree. I sort of convinced myself that maybe I’d be a lawyer. I was like, "What am I gonna do?" I just had this feeling of, "Well, man, it was really cool to pick myself up by the bootstraps and graduate on my own strength." I began looking for opportunities to continue doing stuff like that. That's where I developed this mindset of looking for things that are hard, things that come with some level of recognition, and things that I might enjoy doing. I found the SEAL teams. I had always been kind of enamored with the military. A lot of my classmates in high school, after graduation, joined the Marines and went off to fight in the wars. I always sort of felt a little bit guilty that I went to college on my mom's essay and pissed it all away. Yeah, I graduated, but I always had this sort of deep-down guilt that I didn't volunteer at the time that many of my friends did. I kind of idolized them. I also looked at the SEAL teams as being this thing that just about anybody—within reason—can try out for. 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. However, it is exceptionally hard to graduate. So, perfect! It's got this incredible challenge. And then if you become a SEAL, well, guess what? No one's gonna be like, "Yeah, but John screwed up in college." It just felt like, wow, that checks every box for me. I went that way, and I became a SEAL. Then, you know, after the military, I still had that kind of mindset of looking for things that I wanted to do that would be hard, have some level of recognition, and be enjoyable. I thought social media was it. It just felt like a big challenge to get noticed by the world.

Sam Parr

I know that, like you, I think your father is a big shot journalist from the Boston Globe, and your mom and sister are as well. Were you motivated by just creating cool stuff, or were you motivated at all by money? Because I haven't... I mean, there's this phrase: "King or rich." So, do you want to be famous, or do you want to be rich?

John Allen

I mean, to be honest, when I was trying really hard post-deleting all the Seal stuff, I was trying to find something on TikTok between dancing and the cringe stuff I was doing. I don't think I necessarily had an exact goal in mind because I truthfully didn't know where it was going to take me. I had low expectations. I think that I looked at it because I was 30 at the time. You know, I'm not like an 18-year-old. I'm not throwing shade on 18-year-olds, but when I was 18, if I was doing social media, it was for fame—to be cool, to be the cool guy. But when I was doing it, I was mostly probably leaning towards money in terms of making this a livelihood. I have kids, I'm married; this would be a really fun way to make a living. But I definitely did not have the thought that this would be an empire worth a million dollars. I was thinking, "Boy, wouldn't it be great if this supplemented my income?" And then, only when this really frankly blew up, I was somewhere in between recognition and money. In the sense that I clearly saw this is when Nick comes into the picture, and I'm about to give it all up. We end up kind of sinking, and we're like, "Okay, we're going to build this thing." It was more about the fun of the challenge, which includes, if you're successful, you can be famous. If you're successful, you can make lots of money; you can have generational wealth. But for me, more than anything, it was this idea that I want to do something that's really **fucking hard** to do. I would say of all the baseline elements I gave you, those are the things I'm most drawn to. Oftentimes, that is the thing—if it was easy at a certain point...

John Allen

To be Mr. Bolan and grow in notoriety and make more money, I wouldn't be interested in doing it. Those are byproducts of the challenge that I often seek.

Sam Parr

Sean, whenever I hang out with guys like these ex-military guys, I feel inspired. I also feel super **fucking soft**. Do you feel that same way? Like, dude?

Shaan Puri

That's not just with military guys; I feel that with the average guys. This is, of course.

John Allen

Yes, I feel that way.

Shaan Puri

Well, I like what he said about having a **highest order bit**. You know, like the orienting function—what is your true north? His true north is basically like, it sounds like you're looking for giant mountains to climb. You're like, "What's the hard thing that I would feel proud of myself if I did?" And then I know other people would be proud and respect me too if they did it. As a byproduct of doing the hard thing, I'm sure there are rewards.

Nick Witters

Yes, and John has always been like that.

Shaan Puri

It's, yeah, exactly. It sounds like the seals, like that conquering social media. Although it sounds goofy, like TikTok or whatever, it 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. So, Sam, what is 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?

Sam Parr

I mean, mine is empty. It's still empty, which is... it was just like money to provide for my family. But once you get past that, it is quite... you're empty when you don't have that. I still, oftentimes, I'm like, "I need this. I need direction." And so that's why when I hear these guys, I'm like, I feel a sense of envy a bit that they have a direction. But I feel slightly directionless. Do you?

Shaan Puri

At the beginning, it was like, "Prove myself." In my early twenties, then in my late twenties, it was like, "Yo, I'd like to have $1,000,000 in the bank." You know, money became the thing. Let me get to $1,000,000, $10,000,000. The richer person I met, I would be like, "Oh yeah, I need that much money." Then in my early thirties, popping out kids, I realized... I went to lifestyle. I was like, "Oh, actually, it's a certain amount of money, but actually, I don't want more money with more stress and time. I want the maximum amount of time, the 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. Now I'm 36, and in the last year, I basically shifted that north again. By the way, I don't think it's bad to shift north. I think you have seasons of life and chapters of life, and they should all be different. You know, 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 where I think your parents are storytellers. It's probably something you learned through osmosis. I think about it like this: What can I do that's just simply me pushed out?

John Allen

To the world, that is.

Shaan Puri

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? Most of my life, I did things for future rewards. I went to college so I could get a good job. I got a good job so that I could make some money. Then I got some money so that I could buy this thing. Everything was this future payoff. 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 with the act of doing it as the reward?" If there happens to be other byproducts in the future, great! But I can't do things that I don't really want to do or that 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. When I started it, I was basically like, "I'm gonna 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's like the only thing that not only just won't make me rich, I planned for it to make me slightly poorer every year doing it. 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? I'm not looking to sell this and then be able to relax and retire. It's like, "No, no, no. I kind of want to keep doing the podcast. You'd have to pay me to stop."

Sam Parr

Do you guys have, for Mister Ballin Studios, a "north star" in terms of how many people you're going to reach or how big the company's going to get? Or is this a business that you're like, "Man, one day we could sell this for like $200,000,000"?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, what do you label the top of the mountain? Or like, how do you... what's the height of the mountain you're trying to climb here?

Nick Witters

The North Star, I would say for the company, as far as being a manager, is always: what's your client's North Star? That's your North Star. As CEO, it's still that, but it's also about what's John and my North Star from the studio. His vision, and I implement and execute it.

Shaan Puri

Well, that's the noble-sounding thing, John. What's the dirty, selfish, ego-driven goal you have?

Sam Parr

Yeah, like surely you guys are sure. Surely you guys are sitting down and you're like, "Man, I think in 5 years we could do $100,000,000 in revenue." Yeah? Or like, is there my...

Shaan Puri

New Year's resolution is to, like, you know, build healthy habits. But there's the dirty, selfish goal of, like, "I want to take my shirt off and see some abs, baby!" Like, come on. I won't say that, but that's part of it for sure.

John Allen

So, I will say that before all of this happened, before I was in college, I always aspired to be a baseball player. I played baseball growing up, not at a very high level, but I played through high school. I was really good in my hometown, you know? I really believed that I could potentially play for the Boston Red Sox; that's my favorite team. And I... so.

Sam Parr

Now you want to own them.

John Allen

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 gonna double back to that. When that dream was shattered, sometime I remember my senior year of high school, I just 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." I'm not... like the dream is over. But I always just thought about like that was the dream. That was my childhood dream: to pitch for the Boston Red Sox. That was it. And so now, like 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, showing you the truth. I look at us as... I'll put it this way. 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 the goal. That's the peak of baseball: playing for one of those teams, for me, the Red Sox. So I love this idea of 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 "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 gonna get there, but I want that level of prestige assigned to Ballin Studios relative to storytellers. And then with that, I want to own a fucking piece of the Red Sox.

Shaan Puri

That's a great goal! Alright, so give me something I can use today. Meaning, you're a great storyteller and you're trying to build a team of the greatest storytellers. Tell me, teach me something that will make me a better storyteller today. What's one thing you could teach me to make me a better storyteller?

John Allen

It's something that people love and hate. They tune into my content, and this is kind of a polarizing thing. One of the things that I'll do when I'm telling a story—if it's not my own, which is like 99% of the stories I've done—is that I don't just resuscitate the facts of the story. I work with a very incredible team of people; it's not just me anymore. We will inhabit that story. I have scripts that sit next to me, but as my producer, who is right over here, will attest to, I'm not reading the script. It's a matter of producing a script that I can then 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 and inside. When you're hearing it, it would almost be like it was my story. The level of commitment is crucial. If you're going to tell a story, **own the story**. Enter the story and don't leave until it's done. People that tell you a story and it sounds like they're just recounting something they heard—that's not storytelling. That's just regurgitating something you heard. If you want to be a storyteller, inhabit the story with full commitment.

John Allen

Where you are literally acting out pieces of that story for your audience.

Shaan Puri

Damn, I'm hyped up! Sam, you are the man. Are you feeling what I'm feeling right now?

Sam Parr

Yeah, John.

Shaan Puri

I once fell in love with this girl in Australia. It's called...

Sam Parr

Love... I fell in.

Shaan Puri

Love with this girl in Australia. She was a dancer and wanted me to come out dancing with her. I said, "No, no, no. I'm not a dancer. You're a dancer. You do that; I'll watch you over here on the side." She said, "No, get over here." She was like, "Okay, hand on my hip," and I put my hand on her hip. Then she goes, "Let me stop you right there." I was like, "Oh man, I already messed up this dance. You're going to move over me?" And she goes, "If you ever touch someone, touch them with intent." I feel like that's what you just told me. If you're going to tell a story, tell the story with some intent. You got to touch with intent.

John Allen

To be touched by the story... I love that.

Sam Parr

This woman sounds awesome.

Shaan Puri

She also told me she wanted to never get married and have a man in every port. I was like, "I don't know if that's a figure of speech or just a lifestyle choice." I don't really want to know what's going on, but I think you're a little too adventurous for me.

Sam Parr

Dude, you guys are awesome! Your team's saying you gotta wrap up, and we appreciate y'all. I've really admired you guys from afar. Come on!

John Allen

Thank you for having us. This is great!

Sam Parr

Alright, that's the pod. We appreciate y'all.