“Celebrity hairdresser turned endurance athlete. Killed my career instead of myself. Cali sober life,, suicide prevention, & ultra marathons.”
Ben F’n Mollin is a punk-rock, Cali-sober, non-practicing Jew who went from being a celebrity hairdresser to an overweight, functioning alcoholic turned suicide prevention specialist, endurance athlete, and motivational speaker. As the founder and creator of The Ben Mollin Project, he hosts transformational events and speaks on topics such as the mindset of a warrior and finding your power. When he found himself almost $100k in debt, he decided he could either file for bankruptcy or become famous. He became famous after his “Haircuts in the Summer” music video audition landed him a leading role on Shear Genius. After living a life most will only dream about, traveling globally as an industry celebrity, the pressures of balancing work and family had turned him into a ticking time bomb. He hit his breaking point and decided to burn it all down. By 2018, he deconstructed everything, killing his career instead of himself.
In under a year, he lost 65 pounds and completed his first IRONMAN in 2019, becoming unrecognizable to those who had known him. That same year, he ran his first of many ultra marathons, recently finishing a 130-mile race through the trail system of northern Arizona. To date, he has clocked over tens of thousands of miles (and counting). In 2024, a month before his 50th birthday, he paced a record-breaking 70-year-old ultra marathon runner for the last 53 miles of a 100-mile race in Central Illinois. Six months later, on May 9, 2025, he returned to the Sedona Canyon 125 to finish what he started. What had almost destroyed him at age 49 became one of the most profound spiritual experiences of his life at age 50.
A walking art project, Ben grew up in the south suburbs of Chicago in the city of Calumet City, Illinois, with parents who managed their disabilities and loved without condition. Ben, his creative-genius wife Angela, and their martial-arts trained, chess-prodigy son Marco, live part-time in Munster,Indiana, and love to travel in their RV.
To connect with Ben and read more of his writing, head over to: www.benfnmollin.com
Kill the Thing That's Killing You. Click to read Deconstructed, by Ben F'n Mollin, a Substack publication with hundreds of subscribers.
Benjamin Robert Mollin. 5,119 likes · 220 talking about this. Follow me on Substack www.benfnmollin.com
