Starting up a business? You’d better ditch your girlfriend

“In the first three years of running a business, you have to be selfish,” says Emmanuel Jones, whose brand is now worth an estimated £6m. “If you swan off on holiday, you’ve got the wrong attitude.

“Your business will only survive if you give it your all.”

Emmanuel Jones admits that he had to make sacrifices to get his Black Farmer business off the ground – and his relationships suffered as a result. “If you spoke to my old girlfriends, they’d say I was a selfish bastard. But you need to be focussed. If someone is whinging because you’ve forgotten their birthday or you’ve missed an anniversary, dump them.”

“To be an Olympic swimmer, you’ve got to get up at four o’clock every morning and practise, practise, practise. To be a great violinist, you’ve got to practise, practise, practise. If you want to be an entrepreneur, the same rule applies. Your business comes first and everything else comes second. It’s as simple as that.”

The Black Farmer brand is stocked in Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Morrisons. Read how Emmanuel Jones convinced the supermarkets to stock his sausages by clicking here.

Wilfred Emmanuel Jones was interviewed as part of the My First Million series, sponsored by Orange. Listen to his vodcast here.

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