Check Out Jonny Tran’s Story

Today we’d like to introduce you to Jonny Tran.

Hi Jonny, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
As a child, I grew up extremely introverted, shy, and awkward. I chose to spend most of my days playing video games at home and was terrified of the idea of meeting people and doing sports. I had difficulty talking to strangers, making conversations, and being comfortable with myself.

This all changed in 5th grade when my older cousin taught me my first dance move, the baby freeze. Something so simple completely altered my life for the better. For the first time, I felt proud of myself for being able to do a dance move and it was unique to me because not many of my peers were into bboying/breakdancing or dance in general.

At this point, I threw myself into dance, watching YouTube tutorials everyday and trying to train myself to be better and learn more about this fascinating new hobby! It became everything for me. It was the way I made friends, my identity, and my passion. Thanks to bboying, I was able to meet so many people and begin to develop as a person throughout my middle school and high school life.

Dance was my life and I pursued it with every fiber of my being. I went to college for kinesiology, but dance was always in the back of my mind. I knew what I truly wanted regardless of the pressures of my family to have a stable career and future. I knew dance was much more difficult to be successful in, but I loved it too much to care.

As I continued on this journey, I knew that social media was the key to making a name for myself as a dancer. So I made it my job to learn as much as I could about growing on social media and developing my online presence.

Fast forward to the beginning of pandemic. Everything’s closed, morale is low, I’m not working steadily, and I’m feeling much less motivated to dance since I can’t be with the community. Stuck at home all the time, I had to look toward other ways to be inspired and output my creativity. I picked up sewing, I started getting back into some old hobbies like tricking/gymnastics, and I consumed more online content.

Finally, in August 2020, I took a chance to download TikTok and see what the app was about. I made a few posts for fun to see how it worked, and they completely flopped. But, I found something interesting in myself as I started using the app. I started having fun experimenting with different types of content. I wasn’t scared to try new things and this was really big for me.

As luck would have it, I started gaining traction on TikTok with dance, kpop, and fashion/transitions! Suddenly everything started skyrocketing thanks to that! TikTok grew exponentially, my Instagram started gaining traction, and before I knew it people started calling me “influencer” and “content creator”.

I began creating content regularly on TikTok, IG reels and started Twitch streaming. Suddenly, content creation became a huge part of my life because I discovered how much I love it. New opportunities started popping up out of nowhere and it showed me that there might be a future in this for me.

Nowadays, I regularly create content and hope to go full-time in it! It’s become something I truly love and want to find a future in.

I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
Getting to where I currently am has definitely been a rocky road and a difficult venture. Not everything was sunshine and rainbows, and it was never truly easy. The hardest things for me were my parents, mental health, and burnout.

Growing up my parents never fully approved of my love for dance. They were always worried about making sure I had a solid future by following the “traditional path.” They wanted me to have stability for myself and to be successful. Dance was something unknown to them. They didn’t know how profitable it was, and it scared them because I wanted to pursue it. As a result, I never felt comfortable telling them about all the dancing I did. It was always disguised behind school or another activity. It was difficult because I never felt fully supported by them, but I knew it was out of love and concern for my future. When I decided to take the leap with content creation, I decided to come clean about everything I had been doing for the past years. I told them the whole story about my journey. Up until this point, I rarely mentioned dance, and I never mentioned TikTok and my progress on the app. After sharing this part of my life with them, they started to see that I might have a future in this, and they finally started to become a little more supportive. They opened up to discussions and overall, I felt like they were finally proud of me.

However, I’d say the hardest part about this whole career path was mental health and burnout. Pursuing a career so heavily related around social media has its perks but also has its downsides. It became too easy to get caught up in numbers, in how content was performing, and how my peers viewed my work. Seeing posts not get as many likes, seeing friends not support me as much, and not reaching my own expectations affected my mental. It got hard because I started being down on myself and believing I wasn’t a good content creator. I overanalyzed my work and judged it too hard. It really demoralized me and made it difficult to want to create content. However, I felt like if I didn’t keep on going, I’d be drowned out by everyone else and forgotten. So I kept pushing forward, burning myself out and bringing myself down. This kept continuing until I reached a point where I knew something had to change.

What helped me break out of this was the support of my friends and fellow content creators. Talking to them, hearing their kind words, and them guiding me towards a better and healthier mindset was the best thing that could have happened. It reminded me how important having a support system was, and it reminded me to review my progress and my journey as a whole, rather than letting these small moments determine everything. I learned to put my value in myself and to take a break as needed. With how fast-paced social media is, it gets easy to lose yourself in needing to keep up. But pacing myself and taking breaks allows me to have longevity with content creation.

As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
As a creative, I specialize in transitions, fashion, dance, and twitch streaming/gaming. As broad as these all may be, they make me extremely happy pursuing them!

Most of my work and following revolves around TikTok. There I’ve become known as the fashion/transition guy because of the cool flips and tricks I do. Mid trick, I will edit myself by cutting to a different clip of me doing the same thing in a new outfit. I’ve managed to make them fairly seamless and, thanks to that I grew a lot on TikTok and became known through there. As a result, this helped fuel my love to learn within editing and fashion.

However, I also love to dance and let that show within my content. On Instagram, I let myself shine as a choreographer and dancer. I teach a lot of class and take a lot of dance class, so I’m always eager to share that with my following! This is the passion I grew up with, so it always holds a special place in my heart. I love letting my dance show within all of my content and having this “trick” up my sleeve.

What I’m most proud of is the fact that I’m able to use my following for amazing causes. In particular, I was asked by the City of San Jose to participate in a vaccination campaign. This allowed me to spread awareness and education on the vaccine and hopefully inspire others to get vaccinated. This was huge for me because I got recognized by the city and was able to make a positive impact in my community. In addition, I’ve also been able to participate in an AAPI fundraiser which raised $4,000+ for various fundraisers and organizations. This allowed us to support victims and those in need, and it made me extremely happy to give back in my own way. I don’t often get to do this, so being able to gather support from all sorts of different people was huge for me!

I think what sets me apart from others is my determination and drive. I’m in it for the long haul and I love being able to work in content creation. I feel like I’m always thinking about content and the next thing I can do. I’m consistently excited to go back to working on it, and I’m always looking for new things to do. This constant discovery and childlike exploration is what helps me grow and continue to develop. I feel like it really lets me itch my creativity by taking part in unique and fun projects.

What does success mean to you?
Success will always mean something different to everyone. My perception of success is different from my peers and my parents. I think first and foremost success is based off your happiness. It’s whether you’re happy and enjoys what you do. But I think success can be deeper than that.

Personally, I define success as your ability to progress towards your goals. One thing I get too caught up in is the end result when in actuality, your progress is infinitely more important. You might never reach your goal, but that doesn’t mean you didn’t achieve something worthwhile. Maybe your goal changes, maybe your life takes a different path, or maybe you just fall a little short. Regardless of all these, the fact that you have become better than you were yesterday, a month ago, and a year ago counts for so much more.

Making progress and constantly improving is extremely important and is my definition of success.

Contact Info:

• Email: lejonnytran@gmail.com
• Website: lejonnytran.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lejonnytran/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/Lejonnytran
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/lejonnytran
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/user_details?userid=_i42Ph5UwBZMNCIDvnNsuQ
• Other: linktr.ee/lejonnytran

Image Credits:
Chrystal Nguyen – @chrystalirene Kevin Chang – @thechangvin Lauren Tran – @mylinhlaurenphoto Eric Lu – @ericxluser