Saskatoon man is the TikTok of the town

Phil Eagle can TikTok with the best of them.

The Saskatoon man has more than 814,000 followers on the social media app and, by Christmas, likely will have more than a million followers.

Even Eagle can’t believe his popularity.

“When I started TikTok, I started like anybody else,” he told Gormley this week. “I downloaded the app and I started making videos and then one day, I made a video about relationships and it just blew up. I had over a million views and it went crazy. I kind of took it and ran with it. I started speaking about my relationship with my wife. I started talking about anything that I could learn. I was being a sponge for information and putting a comedic twist on it. It just snowballed and turned into something absolutely huge,” he explained.

Eagle – who also has nearly 11,000 followers on Twitter and around 40,000 on Instagram – tries to offer followers (and newcomers) a lighthearted look at life. Most of his videos are about relationships, but he also has offered his take on restaurants as well as self-help tips to viewers.

The first time one of his videos drew one million viewers was in February, but he used the lockdown caused by COVID-19 to hone his craft.

“I aim for 50(,000) to 60,000 (views) at my minimum,” Eagle said. “A hundred thousand is where I’m happy. I probably hit a million views on a video once every couple of weeks. My highest video is at three million.”

That one, he said, ranked the dances that girls do “when they try on a new dress or take a bite of food or when they put on a dress that has pockets.”

Eagle didn’t say if the material for that video was derived from his wife, but he did give her some credit for his popularity on TikTok.

“She helps me a lot,” he said with a laugh. “I often will show her my videos and say, ‘Can I post this?’ And she’ll say, ‘Yeah, you can,’ or, ‘No, that’s ridiculous. Delete it.’ She’s my final line.”

Eagle was born in Saskatoon before moving to Red Deer a couple of years ago. He was working in the hospitality industry when he had what he called an “earth-shattering” experience.

In June of last year, the then-29-year-old suffered a stroke.

It prompted him and his wife to pack up and move with their two young children back to Saskatoon – and it also allowed him to turn himself into a TikTok sensation.

“I was able to hunker down and say, ‘Hey, what can I do to fill my time and what can I do to provide value to Planet Earth?’ And I chose this,” said Eagle, who noted he’s nearly 100 per cent recovered from his stroke.

“A lot of it has been healing through this time and really getting better as I’ve gone along, which has been one crazy journey. TikTok has been able to fill that supplemental income for us and make that work for us in that time.”

Eagle hopes the advice he offers in his humorous videos can help others get through their own rough patches.

He noted people who post videos on TikTok usually find a niche and that has happened with him. He has noticed the content that isn’t about relationships – the motivational and self-worth material – doesn’t do as well in terms of views.

“I really, really, really like to build people up and I think that TikTok is a great platform for me to be able to do that for people,” said the man who posts as @phileagle_.

“A lot of those times, those are around my minimum 100,000 (views), when I really wish those videos could get to a million because I want as many people to see this stuff as possible.”