Empowerment Issue January 2018 | Page 53

MADEINC time and energy into your children but then you understand that putting into what you believe is going to be fruitful and multiply for them is what’s most important. MADE: What drives you to keep going when it gets tough? AJ: My children for sure. It’s like once you have kids you don’t see yourself anymore. You understand that you have to be responsible for somebody else. I have two little babies that I have to be responsible for so now it becomes even more of a motivation. When they get older and understand what you’re doing, I want them to be able to say my mom worked really hard to get to where she’s at. She went through this to overcome that. They’re going to go through things too and and they need to know and understand how to get out of those situations and have the motivation to say well if my mom did it or if someone else did it, I can do it too. For me, I can’t really fall and if I do fall it can’t be for a long time because I have two little beings looking up to me. MADE: What’s been your proudest moment in business thus far? AJ: Just what I’ve done with my brand and my wine. I had no idea what I was going to do. I just kind of woke up one day and got this message from God like what are you going to do with this brand? I could just sell it but I realized that it’s supposed to be bigger than that. So when I really honed in on it, and focused on what this is supposed to be and once we started we just kept going. To me that’s my proudest thing. I’m giving back. I’m helping people, I’m inspiring other people and that’s the proudest thing that I’ve accomplished in my business venture. MADE: What advice would you give to a single mother who wants to start her own business? AJ: Whatever it is she wants to do to keep on doing it and seek the answers as far as doing your research and learning your options. Don’t let someone tell you that you can’t do it. No matter how hard it seems when you’re doing the research. No matter how hard it made-magazine.com | probably will be, you can do it if you really want to. Also, keep going. Pray on it and ask God if that’s really what you’re supposed to be doing. MADE: What’s your outlook on 2018? AJ: I see my brand coming all the way together. I‘m going to be writing a book and I want to incorporate that with the wine. Everything that I’m doing is to inspire and to give back and to help people with the things that I know. I see myself growing in 2018 and I see the wine business growing and honestly, I just really see myself happy. That’s all I really want. I don’t want to get in anybody way, I want to stay in my own lane and I want to help other people and I want to be happy that’s it. 2018 is going to be a positive year and a year of change. FOLLOW APRYL JONES ON SOCIAL MEDIA @apryljones + learn more about her wine at aprylwines.com. 53