John Allen never set out to become a media founder. The former Navy SEAL was medically retired in 2017 after a grenade injury in Afghanistan, leaving him in his early 30s with a pension, a wife, two young children and no clear next step. Today he is the face of MrBallen, a storytelling empire with 11.4 million YouTube subscribers, a top-ranked podcast and a SiriusXM deal reported to be worth as much as $70 million.
Allen's path into content creation was accidental. For a couple of years after leaving the military, he co-founded a charity that connected veterans with employers through in-person networking events. When the pandemic shut down gatherings in 2020, that work dried up and he found himself with nothing to do.
Finding the format
Influenced by Gary Vaynerchuk's advice that everyone should be making content online, Allen started experimenting. He mimicked whatever was trending on TikTok, including dance videos and what he now describes as "all sorts of cringy content." Nothing worked.
His breakthrough came during a family trip to an indoor water park in March 2020. Allen realised he had never tried making the kind of content he actually enjoyed watching. He had always been fascinated by strange, dark and mysterious stories, including the 1959 Dyatlov Pass incident. He filmed himself telling a one-minute version of that story as if he were talking to a friend, posted it to TikTok, and put his phone away.
When he checked his phone a few hours later, it was overwhelmed with notifications. The video had more than 5 million views, and commenters were asking for more. Over the next 30 days, he posted three stories a day in the same format. As lockdowns pushed audiences toward short-form video, his follower count grew into the millions.
Moving to YouTube
By late 2020, fans were asking for longer versions of the stories, so Allen turned to YouTube. His first video flopped. His second, a personal story about an unexplained experience he had at age 16 in a New Hampshire cabin, succeeded despite rough production. The backdrop was mustard-yellow, a dog barked in the background and the audio was poor, but the authenticity drew viewers in.
"The lack of production, I think, in some ways gave the story itself more credibility," Allen told Fortune. "It's like, this is just a random dude saying what happened to him."
He passed one million YouTube subscribers by the end of 2020. An unexpected boost came when makeup creators started using his audio in get-ready-with-me videos, sending new audiences to find the source. Through 2021, Allen operated as a team of one plus an editor, posting three to five times a week and living off AdSense revenue. A single NordVPN sponsorship early on paid about $1,000, which he thought was a strong deal at the time.
