Influencer
How YouTube Creator Jake Tran Scales A Multi-Channel Media Business
At just 25 years old, Jake Tran has rapidly built a prolific career and multi-million subscriber media empire in the creator economy. The entrepreneurial YouTuber’s success stems from his ability to carve out unique content niches that other creators overlook or avoid.
His main “Jake Tran” YouTube channel boasts 1.8 million followers, anchoring a combined audience of over 2 million subscribers across his three properties. He differentiated himself from the pack by boldly exploring taboo topics around money, power, and crime that most shy away from. Strategic mentorship allowed Tran to scale his initial one-man operation into a high-output video production machine.
Now, the upstart media mogul is leveraging his successful “Evil Food Supply” channel, with nearly 300,000 subscribers, as a launchpad for his all-natural “Evil Goods” skincare product line, which provides a clean alternative to mainstream synthetic personal care brands.
How His YouTube Journey Started
Tran’s passion for YouTube began at a young age. “I grew up watching YouTube as my main form of entertainment. So, middle school, high school. It was always my dream to be a YouTuber,” he explained.
His initial attempt at making YouTube videos centered around taekwondo martial arts, which he practiced competitively. “The first time I did YouTube, I tried making a channel around the martial art taekwondo because that’s what I did back then. I was a competitor and a coach. I did it for about a year. It didn’t really work out because I didn’t know what I was doing back then.”
After a hiatus to attend college and work as a web developer, Tran returned to YouTube with a new approach. His breakthrough came when he adopted a faceless content style.
“I discovered how beneficial doing a faceless channel would be…I could control every single frame on screen to make it look interesting and visually appealing,” he said.
This unique format paid dividends quickly, leading to his first major viral hit—a video about popular finance YouTuber Graham Stephan. He shared it on his Instagram. Just from that one shout-out, the video grew to 100K views after a few weeks.
Money, Power, Crime
Tran’s content evolution was shaped by his desire to differentiate himself in the crowded YouTube space. “Again, back then, I was still trying to find my style…I had to find something that other similar channels weren’t covering to give people a strong enough reason to watch my content over theirs,” he explained.
His breakthrough came when he ventured into exploring taboo topics around money, power, and crime. “One day I watched a documentary on war profiteering, like making money off war. And I found it so fascinating…I decided to make a video on war profiteering anyways, just to scratch my own itch. And it happened to be like my best-performing video at the time,” the YouTuber recalled.
“That kind of led me down the route of doing more of money, power and war crime. Because on one hand, there was no other channel covering the stuff in the same angle that I was covering.”
As his channel gained traction, reaching hundreds of thousands of subscribers, Tran hit a ceiling as a one-man operation. “I was still doing everything myself…It would take me around 5 to 6 days to make one video, which is why I was only able to post once a week back then,” he said. “If there was a month where I just missed one upload, my income would crash by like 25%.”
A pivotal call from an unlikely mentor helped Tran scale his business. “One day, randomly, a guy emails me, wanting to get on a phone call, and he said he was the president of Jordan Belfort’s companies, the Wolf of Wall Street.”
The seasoned executive coached Tran on building a team. “He started teaching me how to outsource and grow a team. Where fast forward to today, we put out way more videos…I went from investing like 5 or 6 days of my life into a video to just like a few hours per video,” the YT star said gratefully.
Crafting Relatable and Engaging Content Is His Mantra
When it comes to continuously creating resonant, engaging content for his audience, Tran emphasizes the importance of ignoring competitors and charting his own path.
“I think one big thing is not paying attention to competitors, because I’ve had a few moments where I would get wrapped up watching like some copycats or my competitors, and I would end up like trying to make my own version of a video they made. But it would never end well,” he said.
The YouTuber finds much more success by tapping into his own original perspectives and interests. “I’ve always found the best luck when I just ignore everyone else and find the video idea that I would want to do versus trying to catch up and copy others.”
Tran believes copying competitors is a losing strategy that will always leave you lagging behind. “When you’re copying someone, you will inherently always be behind them… So that’s really big advice – nothing good ever comes from copying competitors or trying to catch up to them. You have to find your own way.”
While collaborations can provide an initial boost, Tran feels that consistently compelling content is what sustains an audience in the long term. “Even if you blow up from a collab and get all these new subscribers, if your content isn’t good yet, they’re going to get bored and forget about you. So focusing on just making really good content is much more important than collabs.”
Venturing Into Skincare Products With Evil Goods
Jake Tran has leveraged his successful YouTube channel to launch his new natural skincare products brand, Evil Goods. “My second channel, Evil Food Supply, we make documentaries exposing how bad the food system is in America and other health-related stuff that’s terrible in America. So we’re launching a products brand underneath that channel. The product line is called Evil Goods,” he explained.
The inaugural Evil Goods offering is an all-natural moisturizer made from beef tallow, manuka honey, olive oil, and skin-benefiting botanical extracts.
While the ingredient list may seem unconventional, Tran aims to provide a healthy alternative to conventional personal care products laden with synthetic chemicals and hormone disruptors. “If you look at every single skincare product, any personal care product from deodorant to even toothpaste or lotion moisturizer, they’re all absolutely terrible for you.”
He continued, “I think fixing your personal care products, like cleaning up your personal care products, is just as important as your diet because your skin absorbs all the stuff you put on it as well.” His goal is to revive ancient, time-tested natural ingredients. “People have been using stuff like olive oil, beef tallow, honey on their skin for centuries. So now we’re kind of bringing back the stuff that worked for centuries, but putting a modern twist on it.”
The entrepreneurial YouTuber’s impetus behind Evil Goods was both professional and personal. “My vision is to have a whole line of natural alternatives to everyday stuff we use from laundry detergent to everything else you can think of.”
With his own successful product to promote, Tran’s influencer marketing approach is shifting away from sponsored content.
Where To From This Point?
Looking ahead, Tran sees his business ventures, such as the Evil Goods product line and his coaching program, becoming a bigger focus alongside content creation.
“Both the coaching program and the physical products, those will make up a lot more of my business in general versus solely making videos like I have been for the past few years. So a lot of my focus will be on that in the future,” he stated.
Tran still aspires to launch new YouTube channels and may even return to being on camera occasionally. “I spent all these years making faceless videos just because it’s more scalable, more profitable. But maybe in the future I might just make more videos of me on camera for fun.”
For creators looking to follow Tran’s entrepreneurial footsteps, he emphasizes the importance of creating something unique that fills an unmet market need rather than copying others.
“If you look at successful entrepreneurs outside of content, they’re always successful because they found a need in the marketplace that wasn’t being met and they fulfilled that need,” the Evil Goods creator explained. “You really have to approach content as any other business.”
His advice: “I would say start thinking about what you want to sell now, because sometimes it takes a long time for you to find the right idea…You have to be very intentional about finding a gap in the marketplace and fulfilling it.”
