When Jackie Aina started
her channel in 2009, she was living in Hawaii and serving in the military. As
her channel began to grow, she made the decision to step away and pursue
YouTube full-time. Here's what her experience in the Army taught her.
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a lot of people don't think
that makeup
artist youtuber US Army
veteran like how
do they mix and they kind
of don't but
there are definitely some
skills that
you know I think that any
veteran can
can argue that being able
to serve your
country and make that
ultimate sacrifice
is going to position you in
the real
world and to really having
valuable
skills I joined in 2008
like shipped out
went to basic training went
to AIT came
back and then I was in the
reserves and
my life was in shambles
okay
figuratively speaking and
literally I
was actually married and
living in
Hawaii because I was in the
reserves it
also meant that I had a lot
of free time
to do other things so I was
you know
living on this island and
not really
happily married and I kind
of was just
like looking for like an
outlet
creatively and just
something to like
take my mind off of how
unhappy I was at
the time and I discovered
you too but at
the time it was more like
oh my god like
I would just binge watch
videos and then
my best friend everyday
would literally
be like why don't you just
start your
channel and I was like nope
not
interested nope not
interested no but I
shot her down like so many
times and
then finally I was like I
guess I don't
really have that much free
time for
anything else so I might as
well just
start a YouTube channel so
that's
literally what I did
every color you could
imagine it
eventually got to a point
where I was
like okay what's gonna be
you know I'm
not quite stable here yet
but I really
feel like something's gonna
pop off so I
gotta decide right now what's
it gonna
be and I just didn't want
to take the
risk of cuz once you
reenlist it's like
what am I gonna say it's my
first
sergeant like a first
sergeant googles
calling me like you know
that he's gonna
be like bye get out my
office and so I
decided to walk away
because these
careers were both kind of
growing at the
same time but one started
to take off a
lot faster than the other
and then after
I left I would say a year
later it was
when I got my first viral
video in my
channel really took off
professionally
the military taught me so
much about
being a youtuber being a
businesswoman
being an artist just being
a decent
human being for me I just
learned that
like there's always a
bigger picture you
know you may have a really
annoying
manager in your real world
job and you
just kind of learn to like
stick with it
keep going I think that it
taught me how
to set a goal and like
smash it like a
lot of people didn't think
that I would
be able to make it in the
military a lot
of people like laughed at
me they were
like what the heck are you
doing I
didn't come from like a
military family
or anything so I was really
like kind of
one of the first people in
my family to
really do something that
was like not
normal and so I set a goal
and like I
just needed a change at
that time in my
life and I did it I think
it's also
taught me to be extremely
grateful and
to not complain about
something so many
things I don't complain
about because
I'm just like I could be in
heels or I
could be back in Boots so
what's the
Realty laughing I'm just
like I'm not
gonna complain I'm not
gonna complain
and yeah I feel like it
aged me a couple
more years it's like
everyone's like
you've been married you
went in the
military you started up
they're like how
old are you 40 I'm like no
I'm 31 then
like you lived like all
these lives and
I'm like yeah I do feel
like I'm kind of
seasoned in a way but you
know I also
wouldn't trade sir
for anything if I could
relive it I
would I would it wasn't
incredible eight
years
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