EXCLUSIVEJackie Aina Admits She Is 'Self-Made With an Asterisk' Following Her Journey From Beauty YouTuber to Businesswoman
Jackie Aina has worn many hats throughout her life amid her transformation from a content creator to a successful businesswoman.
The social media star initially built a following sharing beauty tips, reviewing products and giving honest advice to her over 3 million subscribers.
Jackie Aina's brand FORVR MOOD collaborated with Crown Royal.
"You can have 10 million followers or 20 million followers, but in the business world you still start completely from scratch," Aina exclusively tells OK! while discussing her partnership with Crown Royal.
As she grew online, the YouTuber quickly became a trusted voice within the cosmetics industry and her experience on social media allowed her to gather information about "small businesses and brands" over time. However, she shares she chose to always review the products that she did "with extreme caution and careful consideration."
Jackie Aina is a beloved beauty influencer.
"I knew how it felt to work directly with small businesses, brand founders, and a lot of times founders pour their heart and soul into stuff," Aina says. "So, when you recommend something that means something and when also when you disown something, I need to give a clear why."
Jackie Aina admits she is 'self-made.'
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Aina's celebration of community and her Nigerian heritage is also an integral part of her digital footprint, but she reveals that the expansion of her empire wasn't done entirely by herself.
"I don't want be too overly critical of the term 'self-made' because technically, I am self-made," she shares. "But it's self-made with an asterisk because what they don't tell you is that you will only get so far by yourself. It's physically impossible to get anywhere without outsourcing certain things, expanding and hiring a team."
"We all have the same 24 hours, but the reality is I can't do it by myself," Aina explains. "I could be the brains behind things, but at the end of the day, I have a million different ideas and I can't execute all of them."
"It's gonna take a successful team to say, 'Hmm, maybe actually we wait for year five or something like that, or year 10 or that's a terrible idea, let's keep working on something else," she shares.
Jackie Aina is focused on expanding her business.
Aside from creating her empire, Aina gushes over FORVR MOOD working with Crown Royal and Black Girl Ventures.
"It's Crown Royal Baby, so the bar is high," Aina exclaims. "This is the first collaboration that we've ever done with FORVR MOOD. This is awesome and huge, and when they first approached us with this partnership, they already knew about my personal and professional work as a Black creator, a small business co-founder and entrepreneur."
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"They had already had this idea of working with someone and they came to us and said everything about me, my story, and both mine and Dennis, my co-founder, our brand. They said 'literally everything about you guys really resonated with what we wanna do and what we wanna accomplish,'" the creative gushes.
Through their partnership, Aina and Crown Royal will be making a donation to the alcohol brand's charity partner Black Girl Ventures — an organization dedicated to providing underrepresented founders with access to community, capital and capacity.
