Former Navy SEAL MrBallen survived a grenade blast that left him traumatized, then became a viral content creator after a random TikTok hit five million views overnight. He posted three videos daily for a month and built seven million TikTok followers by telling gripping, polarizing stories.
I watched this grenade come over the wall. It's like I can see it for a second, it disappeared. I can see it for a second, and it was like time absolutely stood still. And when I was in this blackness of not seeing and not hearing, I knew absolutely that this is death. 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. How did you decide that was a worthy way to spend your life? 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. 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. So you built this empire quickly. I went into this feverish, like, constantly telling stories on TikTok, 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. What's one thing you can teach me to make me a better storyteller? It's something that people love and hate. If you're going to tell a story,
