Many dream of hitting it big on the internet, but few actualize it.
Some plan for it, eschewing college for an incubator house with a gaggle of other influencer hopefuls diligently collabing day and night. Others capture lightning in a bottle, uploading a raw and random moment of absurdity, emotion, or humor and watching it repost like wildfire.
Then, there are the digital artists—folks intentionally baring their creative soul for the comment section to celebrate, jeer, or leave intentionally blank.
Ethan Tran, the 23-year-old creator living in New York as @Ethan.Uncurated, falls into this category. With a business school degree and competing job offers at two of the world’s top ad agencies right out of college, he could have followed the more conventional path to success.
But when he started posting his own visually sticky, creatively contemplative, existentially relatable videos to social media, his success took off. With an alternative path blooming before him, Tran suddenly had an opportunity to excel on the road less traveled — the Digital Age dream of being full-time internet famous.
Leaving the certainty of the corporate world in favor of self-employment was never Tran’s plan, but leading an expansive life often requires a calculated leap, both in creative and financial decisions.
With a style all his own, Tran’s breaking the cynicism of the internet and channeling his creative restlessness into a bonafide fan base, multiplying his audience by 10 in the short span of a year.
Get inspired with Tran’s starter pack of the time and technology investments enabling him to transform his creative passion into a full-time career.
Starter Kit Investment 1:
Finding your voice
In early 2022, the Austin, Texas, native started uploading videos to TikTok as something fun to do after long days at his art department job in advertising, sharing his green screen thoughts on everything from artists he found inspiring to technical videography tips to deep dives into professional chess drama.
Roughly a year later, Tran posted his first “uncurated thoughts” video, a micro-film showing him in the dappled sunset, quick cut to different backdrops in his home, overlaid with soft, slam poetry-style musings about his imposter syndrome.
“This scrappy, fun look, with these self-taught techniques, helped define my style,” Tran tells us. “It was just born out of years of trying different things with different mediums, like graphic design, photography, stop-motion, videography, whatever.”
These videos did steadily well on TikTok, but in March of 2023, he started uploading them to Instagram Reels and watched them really take off. In a matter of months, his following ballooned from 20K to 200K.
On Instagram you can now find him regularly modeling fresh streetwear, reclining in his artfully decorated room, or waxing poetic in a friendly deadpan tone about the paralysis of perfectionism. After all, the success of short-form video platforms has taught us that the less perfect something is, the more authentic it will be perceived.
“In the beginning, I made these videos because I was struggling as a creative person to understand what was going on in my brain. I wanted to see if other people had similar thoughts and feelings,” Tran remembers. “It was cool to see how uncurated thoughts resonated with so many people.”
It all started with an impulse to make something that represented his interior life, even though he was becoming known in his little corner of the internet for sharing other peoples’ art and adventures. With this new approach, he was expressing something that felt entirely his own.
Just as everyone’s path to success looks different, so does their operational approach. “Your process is your superpower,” Tran says. “It’s important to accept your own way of creating, whether you’re borrowing from other artists or doing things your own way. Don’t think you’re copying anyone and try not to compare.”
Starter Kit Investment 2:
Budgeting for your own excellence
Even as he learned about the inner workings of the ad business during college, Tran has always been a visual creative: a photographer, cinematographer, videographer, poet. So naturally, his starter pack integrates plenty of high-tech gadgets. Additionally, there are stylistic accents and tools to ensure all his content captures feel very “him.”
- The green screen effect
- Dried mangos
- His 26-megapixel mirrorless film camera
- His wireless mic (“It cost around $400, but audio is so important that it was worth the investment.”)
- Portable SSD card
- “Definitely a bag that looks cool but can carry plenty of things.”
- And one more thing, clothes! “Since I’m on camera so much, the right outfit contributes to a video, because it helps to build my world.”
Taking on all of these purchases at once might result in a sticker shock moment for a nascent creator, but there are ways to help reduce the stress around these types of entrepreneurial investments.
Chase cardmembers like Tran can utilize My Chase Plan to take on bigger investments ($100+) and pay for them over time in equal monthly payments with no interest, just a fixed monthly fee. From the online account dashboard and mobile banking app, users simply select a recent eligible purchase identified by the “Pay over time” option, where they can select from available payment plans.
Cardmembers can also simulate plan options prior to making a large purchase, helping to budget for these investments in a more manageable, consistent way. These investments, from small to large, are ones that will make an impact in a million little ways, just as Tran says.
“One of the biggest things for me is reinvesting a lot of my money into things that help my process become better,” he says. Like the wireless mic, the right outfit, or a bag that easily totes all his gear from car to plane to shoot location, creator-critical purchases frequently exceed the $100 range, making many of them a great fit to pay over time with My Chase Plan.
Starter Kit Investment 3:
Being unafraid to deviate from “The Plan”
Throughout college, Tran made all the conventional “right” choices, including majoring in business at the prestigious University of Texas at Austin B-school. “All my friends were doing it, and it just made sense to me at that time.”
Simultaneously, he pursued photography, cinematography, and filmmaking in class and on his own, directing shoots for campus fashion magazines, producing spec shoots, and building up an impressive portfolio that landed him a coveted internship at a top advertising agency based in the US. “The internship taught me so much about how and why content takes off, but I didn’t have anything to really show for it.”
Upon graduation, Tran stayed the course, working as a junior content creator at another top ad agency, spending his days directing shoots and his evenings editing and writing short-form personal videos, capturing them on weekends or nights where the light was still workable, then putting them out into the world.
As the videos took hold on Instagram, a feasible financial path opened down the road less traveled. Brand partnership offers started rolling in, and suddenly, he could afford to turn his side hustle into a full-time gig.
“I loved working in advertising, but I was working these long stressful hours on client jobs,” he tells us. “Trying to make content on the side, it became difficult to manage both things at once. I looked at the numbers, and it just made sense, so I took the leap.”
At the time this article was written, Tran had left his job about a month and a half prior, but still cites advertising as a major well of inspiration, including “things that leverage cultural relevance or humor especially.” As you would guess from his aesthetic, fashion editorial is another large portion of his internet moodboard, as well as exploration and travel.
“Travel really gets my brain working in new ways. It’s definitely something I’ve invested in more recently, whereas when I had my job I wasn’t able to,” he tells us, calling out how easy it is to plan for significant purchases as a Chase cardmember. He’s already prepping for an epic 2024 trip to Japan, Taiwan, Vietnam, and Singapore, all photogenic locations for new posts.
With the high costs of travel, My Chase Plan is a great option to help budget for airline tickets, hotel lodging, stylish souvenirs, and occasional “treat yourself” meals. You can even make these budget decisions easily from the Chase mobile banking app.
Starter Kit Investment 4:
Making stuff, even if it’s bad
As a cinematographer, writer, director, and designer, Tran says, “I continue to latch onto the idea that I need to be a master of all trades, because that’s what it takes to be a content creator.” The pressure of artistic perfectionism is a running theme throughout his videos, and as the analytics show, he isn’t alone in these anxieties. One of his videos calls on the audience to “make stuff, even if it’s bad.”
We see Tran shot from different angles, intercut with intimate screenshots of his desktop projects in progress. It’s all about quieting the inner (often hypercritical) voice, quelling the pressures of making something every follower will love and allowing yourself to play around with ideas.
He says this video is the perfect example of his creator mantra.
When Tran shot it, he just wasn’t thinking about it too hard, but watching the raw footage back with the eye of a creative director, he noticed a bunch of annoying details he wished to change—his outfit, the framing. “But then it’s so interesting because it also leads into the message of the video, like making something even if it’s bad.”
“As a creator, you can afford to be slightly imperfect; that’s so different from being an art, commercial, or film director, which is when it makes sense to shoot for perfection.”
A content creator also needs to be more prolific than a film auteur or an advertising creative, because feeding your subscribers with new entertainment is imperative to keep them coming back. “If I’m posting every day, or if I’m even posting once a week, you can’t be that meticulous with each thing. Otherwise, I’d never put anything out.”
It’s an important lesson to internalize: perfection is the enemy of creation. Anything great begins with a simple idea, even if the execution is TBD. Arming yourself with the right tools—technical, psychological, and financial—is the first step. You might end up channeling your creative passion into a living. Making investments in your creative self? Learn more about My Chase Plan.
This article is a sponsored collaboration between Chase and G/O Media Studios.
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