We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Baotran Tran a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Baotran, appreciate you joining us today. Getting that first client is always an exciting milestone. Can you talk to us about how you got your first customer who wasn’t a friend, family, or acquaintance?

At the time I was still working as a nurse, but wanted to start a little side hustle that could allow me to be creative while earning some extra cash.

After a week of binging TikToks about UGC, I scrapped together a free UGC portfolio website via Canva in about a week and saw that many other UGC creators were working with this one particular brand.

When my portfolio was finally launched, I sent out a bunch of cold email pitches to many brands that I saw had worked with other UGC creators previously including the one I initially mentioned and actually got a positive reply within 24 hours!

I could see a little bit of what the email contents were in the notification, so before I opened it officially, my heart was racing because did I really secure my first client already within 24 hours?! My hands were physically shaking as I was typing my reply because of the adrenaline…

I ended up signing a contract of $300 for 3 UGC videos!

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

My name is Tran! I’m 26 years old and am currently working as a creative strategist and user-generated content creator. In short, I get paid to make TikToks that I don’t have to actually post.

Brands use UGC to post on their own social media and also to repurpose as ads, and they higher regular people to be brand representatives or rather “avatars” to make at-home testimonial and demonstration videos about their brand or product. These videos are supposed to resemble the organic content you already see on Instagram and TikTok, but is actually sponsored content that brands artificially create.

One thing I’m proud of is that I’m a first-generation immigrant who was the first in my family to graduate from a 4-year university. I was never formally trained as a marketer, and was completely self taught while working full-time as a neuro ICU nurse. Despite this, I was able to successfully transition from healthcare into marketing within 2 years time.

I took what successes I learned as a UGC creator and created a step by step roadmap that I share with other creators who are looking to streamline their own creative process and transition into becoming high-earning UGC creators too. I teach them everything from business management, campaign management, brand communications, negotiation skills, to the more technical “how to create good content that brands actually pay for” skills.

This means my day to day consists of training other creators, filming videos for brands as the on-screen creator, and also being the project manager for other social media campaigns on behalf of brands.

I’m grateful to be sitting at the intersection between creators, brands, and consumers! My work allows me to gain so much relevant insight that I can extract and share with more inexperienced creators to hopefully grow the industry as a whole.

People with my volume of creator and brand connections usually become agency owners so they can capitalize on their monetization opportunity – however, I’ve never been someone that leads my business money-first. I lead it lifestyle-first and prioritize having a business with enough passive systems that allow me work-life balance. Owning an agency would make me responsible for way too many things and would pull me away from the things that make life worth living, in my opinion.

So instead of becoming an agency and “controlling” creators, I give creators the tools to manage themselves.

And even though I probably don’t make as much as I could, I actually really enjoy my current business model. I always get to be creative, I’m helping people gain valuable, marketable skills to build their own business, and am actively leading my industry without ever feeling like I have to compromise my time with loved ones and personal hobbies.

I really like the quote, “Great leaders don’t create more followers – they create other leaders,” and I feel like by sharing my secrets to success and helping produce more quality creators and business owners, it allows the content creator economy to grow as a whole.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

As a first generation Vietnamese immigrant, healthcare and tech are pretty much the only industries our families approve of us being in because it provides “stability.”

I had been working as a part-time UGC creator and full-time nurse for 1.5 years before I decided to “pause” my nursing job to travel for a few months. I never intended to actually fully quit. But a 3 month pause became 6 months, became 9 months, became 12 months.

And because UGC is a line of work you can do from anywhere in the world, I was able to build out my UGC creation and coaching business to 3x the income that I was making when I was still doing nursing.

I was enjoying it so much, but during this hiatus, my family would always be asking when I was going back to nursing, and I would always tell them “next month,” but would procrastinate re-applying for jobs every time the next month came.

Because I was making more money something I actually really truly loved doing, the natural course of action would be to continue pursuing it full time. But the mentality that I was conditioned to have by my family made me somehow feel like a freelancing job that makes 3x more was still not considered as stable as a worker bee job in healthcare.

I felt immense guilt and shame because if I had admitted (and acted on) the fact that I never wanted to go back to nursing, that I was disappointing my family who sacrificed everything to come to the US in order for me to throw away a 4-year degree that they never got the chance to even earn.

It took 12 months for me to come to the conclusion that I needed to lean into my new passion, and that I needed to carve my own path without letting the limited mindset of my upbringing control me. And since mentally letting go of that guilt and unapologetically telling my family that I was never going back to nursing, I have reached incredible heights with my business including:

– Signing the biggest contract of my career with 2 huge companies
– Being offered (and turning down) 3 FT positions that paid +$150K/yr
– Being invited as the official UGC representative to teach TikTok’s partners
– Hosting the biggest UGC networking event and first UGC workshop in the industry

And many more to come

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

100% of the opportunities I have is because I started sharing my story on social media. When I was first getting into UGC, there was not that much content about it on TikTok or Instagram at ALL. And because I had gotten my first gig in 24 hours, I felt like perhaps I had some insight to share about my process that could help others navigate an industry that didn’t have that much information out there yet.

I decided I would create videos that I personally would have liked to see if I was starting from zero – I made my content super easily digestible, easy to follow along, and allowed my audience to lead the rest of my content with their questions.

I was getting a ton of positive feedback, which encouraged me to keep posting education videos.

I didn’t focus on view metrics – I focused on the comments and centered my next videos around the previous video’s questions. By prioritizing your current active followers, you learn to create better audience-centered content and views/following/partnership opportunities naturally grow over time.

My biggest pieces of advice is to not let perfection paralyze the post. At the beginning, getting it done is more important than getting it “right” because you need to first get into the habit of being consistent. Lead your content with generosity. The content I post is so transparent that to some, it feels criminal to share so openly. But I feel like the more genuine you are about helping people regardless of any gain (or fear of getting your content stolen or other making more money than you), the more like-minded people you will naturally recruit to get behind your cause.

The rest (including money and business opportunities) will naturally follow.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://tranugc.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/tran.ugc
• Other: https://tiktok.com/@heyimtran

Image Credits

Creator Confidential 2024 (Canada, Toronto), TikTok Creative Bootcamp for Agencies 2024