Meet Sophie Tran

We recently connected with Sophie Tran and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Sophie, thank you so much for opening up with us about some important, but sometimes personal topics. One that really matters to us is overcoming Imposter Syndrome because we’ve seen how so many people are held back in life because of this and so we’d really appreciate hearing about how you overcame Imposter Syndrome.

I’m honored to be a daughter of two trailblazers who can only be described as legendary. Their work in Vietnamese American diasporic media shaped culture for the Little Saigon communities all over the world and later their contributions to Vietnamese children’s educational programming were renowned globally. They built an empire with their bare hands only for it to crumble as technology offered new ways to make illegal copies of their products. I had always admired their work and vowed to resurrect what was theirs and continue their legacy like a phoenix rising from the ashes… except for I’m not a phoenix. I’m just a regular girl who got to witness many key moments in Vietnamese American media history, who knows many people and whom many people expected to succeed and be great one day. You would think growing up with many important people telling you, “I can tell you are going to be ‘a somebody’, someday” would be inspiring but instead it felt like a lot of pressure for a kid.

This imposter syndrome I felt prevented me from doing many things for fear of failure and letting down all the people who believed in me. How can my parents come to America with nothing can be so successful but I was born here, got the best education, best experience, best mentorship, and best support can not achieve the same greatness? I have always introduced myself as Sophie, daughter of The He Tre (my parent’s company) for people to know who I was. When will I get to step out of their shadow? After college, I made a few half-witted attempts at resurrecting their company by digitizing their programs and putting them on YouTube. Then the loneliness of working on projects solo became rough as my energetic and social 20-something-year-old wanted to be in a fast-paced work environment with colleagues and teamwork.

Finally, in my 30s my own baby daughter Aria became the muse for my lifelong dream of continuing my parents’ legacy resurfaced. As a new first-time mom, I knew it was time that my daughter get more exposure to the Vietnamese language and I had an inspiration: Ms Rachel, a YouTube preschool teacher whose videos were filmed at home in front of a green screen, many times the green screen was not even removed in her earlier episodes, yet she had my daughter’s full attention and was teaching her so much. I thought to myself, hey, I have years and years of on-screen language teaching, and it’s something I can easily do at home with Aria as a mommy & me bonding activity.

I was so busy with work so I told myself that right after the Holidays & Lunar New Year season, I would start our mommy & me project. When I finally finished my full season of hosting TV shows and events another Vietnamese Ms. Rachel popped up and then another! The buzz in Vietnamese language mom groups was everything I dreamed of for my own programming. It made me both happy for the cause and jealous that I wasn’t the one to fill in that need for the community fast enough. Other people were living my dream.

I decided that this was the flame that I needed to get me up and running. If there was a moment that people finally paid attention to Vietnamese children’s media it was now and so I announced my intention for a kids’ show before I even started filming it. Family & friends who know my history instantly were excited and spread the word. Immediately I got support from colleagues and connections who believed in me. Not only did the Vietnamese community knew about my parents’ legacy but they knew about my work in media for the last decade and many were excited for me to apply my experience to shows for babies and kids.

Suddenly the announcement that was intended to capture attention and hold my spot while I worked on my lifelong dream became a burden as I experienced imposter syndrome. As I worked to film my first episode, I kept deleting and refilming, over-criticizing myself, and feeling like everyone would be disappointed with my work because they expect so much. The two other “Vietnamese Ms Rachel” creators reached out to me separately and shared their stories of how they got started. One even said she grew up watching The He Tre and was inspired by my family and really needed to have content for her own children to learn Vietnamese. I shared with them my hesitation and discontent with the first episode and they both said the same thing: they felt it too.

The way to overcome imposter syndrome is just to do it, learn from it, and move on. Nothing is perfect the first time around. Both my two new friends told me just to finish the pilot episode and release it. To this day I am not proud of my first episode… but I am proud of my new episodes and the only way I could’ve gotten here is by taking that first step however imperfect it may be. With each episode, I learned things about myself, my daughter, and the audience that helped make my next better. With each episode, I gained more subscribers, support, and volunteers. With each episode, I upgraded my equipment from audio to visuals to music. There is no way I could’ve done that all in my first episode and I’m glad that I had my two fellow mamas who were uniquely in a similar position to push me to be better. Thank you Chao BabyOi & Bebao for being the first 2 mamas in an amazing community of parents with a shared mission and vision of teaching our children the Vietnamese language. To this day, whenever anyone tells me of their imposter syndrome I just tell them to just do it, learn from it, and move on and if you do it enough, one day you will realize that you are not an imposter. You are doing exactly what you are meant to be doing.

Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?

Mommy & Me Vietnamese started off as a Youtube learning channel for babies, kids and parents but has evolved into an influence on Vietnamese culture appreciation on social media as well as in person. In the past year, Mommy & Me Vietnamese has become a place for parents to find learning resources for their children from books, toys, games, dolls, programs and books. We even host pop-up events on Zoom and in person for kids to meet Ms. Tran, Co Pho, Baby Aria and Chau the Ox and learn about Vietnamese traditions.

You can watch our content for free on youtube.com/thehetretv or simply search Mommy & Me Vietnamese
and find us on Instagram for our latest updates on resources or events at @mommyandmevietnamese

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

Growing up on film/TV sets and studying film & TV officially since the 7th grade at an arts school and then working in TV for a decade after only to be making content that looks like other content creators who didn’t have all these things made me realize that all those other things don’t matter. Of course, it made my life easier that I didn’t have to look up how to do every single thing so I saved a lot of time, but what really matters is:

– Passion: You must love what you do so much that time or money doesn’t matter to you. You can spend so much time working on your project and still feel like it’s not enough. You can basically be paid nothing and still enjoy what you do.

– Never stop learning: You are continuously growing on this journey and always working on bettering yourself, and your craft.

– Grace for yourself: Take it easy on yourself. You’re not perfect and your product can not make everyone happy. Just allow yourself to make mistakes, even if it is publically and then learn from it and move one.

How can folks who want to work with you connect?

I’m always looking for people to work with because I believe with collaborative efforts we can grow a strong community for our children to get support. Mommy & Me Vietnamese is a growing brand but we still lack a lot of resources in order to be better and make and bigger impact. Whether you would like to sponsor our show or have resources we can use from locations like offices, businesses, restaurants, places that we can feature in our show, or if you have products that help kids learn, from toys, books, and games we’d love to collab with you to create more exciting programs for kids to learn about the world. You can email us at mommyandmevietnamese@gmail.com

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @mommyandmevietnamese
• Facebook: mommyandmeVietnamese
• Youtube: thehetretv