The Relentless Brooke Jackson

Brooke Jackson is an entrepreneur from Conyers, Georgia who began selling her growth oil, The Brooke Nation Hair Growth Oil at the top of January 2021. She has been featured on Fox, Apple TV, and Roku TV. After launching her brand over 3 years ago, we sat down with Brooke to see how this all came about. 

King: Who is Brooke Nation? What exactly do you do for the people who have no clue who you are and why we're interviewing you? 

Brooke: The Brooke Nation started with me pursuing to become a musical artist and stuff like that and that turned into starting a business. But, the business didn't start because I just wanted to start a business. I've always had a business mindset and always thought about different business plans. And I've tried different things, too, like lip gloss and it didn't last long. *Laughs* Starting a business is something you're supposed to be very passionate about and comes naturally to you, something easy, something that you enjoy as well. When I was having problems with my hair journey and wanted to take better care of my hair, I wasn't looking at my hair journey with a business mindset. I was just trying to take better care of my hair. I was creating hair products for myself and trying different hair oils to see what myths worked and what didn't. It was just something that I made to use at home, a “do-it-yourself” type of thing, and it turned into people asking me what I used in my hair. So, I was like, let me make it a product for people to buy. So, the BrookeNation Hair Growth Oil became available online on January 1st, 2021. From there, I continued selling and promoting the oil to family members and friends. People eventually wanted the oil in different states, they wanted it in stores. So, that's when stores like Citi Trends reached out to me. Around Black History Month, they were looking for black entrepreneurs. They ran across my Instagram page and offered to have my products in their store. I got offers from Stonecrest Mall, various hair vending machines, and beauty supply stores around the country as well. From there, I just continued promoting my product because I never wanted to pay for any promotion. Everything has been organic, and I’ve been focused on giving my “Mane Team” AKA, customers, what they were interested in. I also have a hair journal that came about after asking my customers how their hair journey was going, and always wanting to know updates on their hair journey. I'm always in tune with my customers and want to know how things are going.

King: We talked about this briefly on the phone the other day, but tell me about the early process of making the hair oil and shampoos. You told me you were trying mayonnaise and honey and a bunch of other weird things. I think the people need to understand that this wasn't an overnight success story. What was that early process like?

Brooke: You know the early process of the oil was a lot of trial and error, and also trying oils that were already on the shelf. I wanted to make sure that my products stood out from the other products. One, I wanted to make sure that my hair oil had a great smell to it because I've tried other oils and they had a bad odor or a certain smell where when you apply it’s meant to be washed out. It's not something that you apply daily to your scalp. And I wanted a product that you can apply day and night because I want people to apply it consistently. I also was concerned with the consistency of the oil, and how it absorbs into the scalp. I've had allergic reactions to oil running down my forehead, so I wanted to make something that was okay to apply on my scalp and if it did run down, it would be okay. I've had people use it on their eyebrows. I've never done it, but they've been getting great results out of it. I also wanted all my products to be natural, organic, and a product that could reach that community. Brooke Nation will always grow, repair, protect, and nourish your hair. That's what I wanted. The shampoo, conditioner, oil, everything dealing with my products. That's what we're working towards. We want to grow it, we want to repair, protect, and nourish it all in one.

King: Who is the Mane Team? How do you stay so well connected to these people? What made you take customer service to a different level in your eyes?

Brooke: Treating them like they're not customers. Treating them like I have a personal relationship with each one of them. That's why I'm always asking them how their hair journey going. I want it to feel more personal because when I dropped the product, it wasn't something that I was just dropping on a whim. It was because people were asking what I use and I wanted to know how their hair journey was going alongside my hair journey. Also staying connected with them is going out in the community, you know, meeting people and sharing my hair journey with people and handing out samples. So, I gave us a name so that it was more personal instead of them being just my customers. “The Mane Team” just stuck. It's a team of us that use the product. And anybody who uses Brooke Nation products is a part of the Mane Team. I have great relationships with them.

King: What has been your favorite moment so far over these past two, almost three years? 

Brooke: I would say when Yandy Smith from Love and Hip Hop made a video using one of my products. I had no clue that she would tag me and tell everybody what product she was using and advocate that her daughter Skylar loved the product. And I was just like, so shocked like what? Not she made a video about me. And then I had one where Kendra G was on live hosting a single’s show and I went on and people on the live looked at my page. Kendra noticed that everybody kept saying that my page looked good and wanted to know more about the products on my page and what I sold. But, I guess the best one was definitely the Yandy Smith shoutout because she's a local star.

King: What is your favorite product in your catalog? Is it the hair oil, shampoo, conditioner, or hair bible?  Are you working on anything else that you enjoy? 

Brooke: Definitely my baby; the hair growth oil because that's where it all started. But I do hold pride in and love my hair journal because I had to sit with a publisher and write out on paper what I wanted the book to look like. So that was a cool process to do my book. 

King: So, we hear you recently married the business, and you've had a baby with the business. You and the business are locked in for life. However, when Brooke Nation isn't healing scalps and repairing damaged hair, what is Brooke Nation doing? I know you make music for fun from time to time. 

Brooke: I really like making content. It just went very well with the business and being creative. But I feel like on the weekends, it still feels like it's about the business. I'm kind of a homebody, really. People are telling me that I need to get out.

King: I saw you stepped out a little bit on your pimp stuff recently. Was that Latto’s Party?

Brooke: Yeah, I got an invite to that. That was nice. I really wasn't going to head out. I was a little scared about what the environment was going to look like, but I was very impressed. It was very organized. It didn't feel weird, but, um, for the most part, I can’t get out by myself, you know. I'm around that age, I'm trying to date you know what I'm saying? 

King: Yeah, it's a weird time for dating.

Brooke: I don't think anybody trusts themselves and I don't think anybody trusts anyone else. But, yeah, you can trust in my business. It ain't never steered me wrong and it guarantees two to five-day hair growth.

King: *Laughs* What's the takeaway you want the people to get from you as a person and not just your business?

Brooke: I want people to see a down-to-earth person, very passionate about her work and what she does. I’m very friendly on a level that makes you feel like family, like we know each other. Because there's a lot of customers I've met in pop-up shops and we've made videos together and people think my customers are related to me. And I have to respond like no, that's just a stranger. People can feel the energy when somebody's passionate about something and it's a good kind heart doing it as well.  

King: What's something that you want the people to take away from Brooke Nation as a businesswoman? 

Brooke: Being consistent and passionate about what you're doing. And if you're not being genuine about what you're doing, nobody's going to support what you got going on. You have to be consistent with anything that you're doing in life, school, work, or business because somebody's going to know when you're genuine. People are going to support you, and not just support you, but also come back to support and tell others. They might not be shopping but they're going to eventually shop with you or they're going to tell somebody else about it regardless of them purchasing or not. Keep putting it in their face, they’ll keep seeing it. It's gonna run across the right person, just keep throwing it in their face.

King: I like that. I think a lot of people are going to want to hear that and need to hear that. Let’s talk about how you stay the main or mane topic in the eyes of the media. Because you're a content creator at the end of the day, though you have a business, you're still a content creator, and being in that realm can make things somewhat distracting, so, how do you stay in your lane? How do you make sure you're not blindsided by the outer-worldly BS that comes with what you do?

Brooke: With my content, I try to incorporate things that are trending. So, whatever video or sound is buzzing, dances, or weird questions, is how I try to engage them. I have to trick them into thinking, it's one of “those” videos and by the end of the video, you're like, wait, she's talking about hair. So, yeah. I'm switching the topics and making it about hair. 

King: Yeah. And it's been working. I don't know if you feel like it's been working, but outwardly looking in, it's been working. This was a great interview. It was nice learning about how you got here. Starting off making music and selling certain products and figuring out what worked and what didn't work and ultimately what path you wanted to take and taking that path. I think that's what's confusing or conflicting with a lot of people nowadays because everybody's starting a business. Everybody's got a clothing brand, selling lashes or a nail tech so, the question is on if they’re going to be consistent and how badly they want it. Are people going to be willing to hear no? Some people expect to start a business and immediately blow up, you know? So are they willing to go through the steps that you went through? I think this interview will show this isn’t a random girl who started selling this hair oil and everybody is just buying it now because she's a content creator. This is months and months and years and years of effort. So this was great for me. I hope you enjoyed this. 

Brooke: Yeah, this was the most intimate interview I've had out of all the ones I've had so far.