57. Joel Primus: Author of Getting Naked

Hello, BookThinkers family, and welcome to episode number 57 of our personal development podcast, BookThinkers Life-Changing Books. During each episode, I interview one of the world's top authors. And as a listener, you can expect to discover new books, new mentors, and new resources that you can use to achieve more and live better. In this episode, I have the pleasure to interview author Joel Primus. Joel is an entrepreneur among things. He is the founder and creative visionary behind Naked Underwear, where he raised over $17 million and then successfully merged his business with an industry-leading company, exiting back in 2018. Then he started a travel clothing company, which launched one of the most successful Kickstarter apparel campaigns of all time. A very impressive resume, if I do say so. And our conversation today is all about his new release, Getting Naked: The Bare Necessities of Entrepreneurship and Startups. I love the title, and I also love the subtitle, and I also love the COVID of the book. So you'll have to Google that and check it out. Joel is one of those people that I could sit down with and chat about business and personal development, self-help, all of those types of things, and time just kind of flies by. So we had a lot of fun. He's very well-spoken and definitely a student of the world. Please enjoy this amazing conversation with Joel Primus. Joel, thank you so much for joining the Book Thinkers Life-Changing Books Podcast. How are you doing today?

I'm good, mate. How are you?

I'm doing really well. For those in the audience that are not familiar with you and your story and your book, can you please introduce yourself to everybody?

Well, As you said, my name's Joel, as we just joked, not Joelle. I wrote a book called Getting Naked, which is a book about a startup that I had for underwear called Naked Underwear. But the sort of double entendre of the name is it's about how to take a business from inception to sale, selling the whole business, but also the personal journey that you go on. as a human being, living your life through entrepreneurship, and how you remain true to who you are or find yourself way back to who you are.

Yeah, I like it. The subtitle of the book, The Bare Necessities of Entrepreneurship. And quick funny story for you, I guess, before we dive into some, some juice here. I love to differentiate my book reviews. And I considered doing it in just my underwear. So I didn't do it, but there's another guy in the book community, Mike at Underdog Books, and he always does crazy stuff like that. So you'll have to get him a copy of your book and maybe he'll do a book review in his underwear.

That's, that's like one of the stories, like for, oh gosh, 8 years, the better part of 8 years, people just called me the naked guy. And whether it was like Dragon's Den, which is your guys' Shark Tank, or whether it's some sort of media appearance, everyone always asks me to strip down.

Well, we will definitely, we will definitely get into the Dragon's Den story because there's a lot of good lessons in that. And I'm sure it's a funny story when you recall it verbally as well. So the first line of the book is something I wanted to touch on. You basically throw it out there that the cold hard truth of entrepreneurship is that 90% of entrepreneurs that start the journey will not be successful. So Why did you decide to start the book like that?

Well, you know, I actually originally hadn't started the book like that, and my co-author Ben Coles is like, you know, you need to really get them hooked on this reality that they need to read this book. You are the solution to that problem, right? And sometimes when we're— we don't always think about that when we're writing a book or writing a blog or doing a podcast is like, what problem are we solving for people? And the problem I'm solving for people is that there's that gusto. I once went to the Development Bank of Canada called the BDC, and they said literally like, people come in here with a business plan that has pizza stains on it from a night of drinking and eating pizza and brainstorming and think we're going to give them money, right?

Yeah.

And so the point of that is that We all have really good ideas that deserve, I believe, to be in the world. We deserve to realize our dreams as entrepreneurs. But the reality is, if we don't run a good business, if we don't do things correctly and learn from our mistakes, we'll be punished in the form of a failure or— maybe better put, an iteration. In other words, this idea in and of itself didn't work, but if we tweaked it and iterated it, maybe we got it to a place that was successful. But it's not supposed to be negative, Nick. It's, you know, it's like this, this, like the stocks, you know, Stockdale Paradox. Have you ever heard that?

I don't actually. I don't think so.

I think I got the name right. And it was this, this general who was captured in the Vietnam War. And he, as a prisoner of war, had to frame optimism and positivity in the reality of his situation. In other words, he believed he would find his way out of this situation, but he couldn't say when. He couldn't set the expectation, I'm getting saved tomorrow.

Mm-hmm.

He had to find that. And that's really what the spirit of that is, that, you know, you have to be— this isn't about negativity. You have to be optimistic, but you have to have realism inside of that to be successful as an entrepreneur.

No, I love the balance. And I think it's very important that you threw that out there at the beginning of the book. I mean, you said in the book too that you've read hundreds of business books or hundreds of books in general. And a lot of these startup books, the authors are out of touch with the reality of startups and entrepreneurship. It's tough. And the only other book that I can really think of, and I've read hundreds of them as well, that addresses this in the beginning of the book is The E-Myth Revisited by Michael E. Gerber. And he says sort of the same thing. Look, this is a really difficult road. And the E-Myth is the idea that entrepreneurship has ballooned into this stoic person that stands against all odds. And that's not the reality. It's really, really, really difficult. And you can't just do it overnight. So it's a really important message that you threw out there.

Yeah. And the thing that we always forget is that, and this is one of the things that investors, I learned early on during one of my very first public investor pitches. This is actually post-Dragon's Den. It was actually, it was after, it was during a Q&A on a Dragon's Den viewing party. So again, that's Dragon's Den is a show where you pitch investors for, much like Shark Tank for your American listeners. And I'm pitching this egoically and selfishly, like, please fund my dream. And what I didn't realize was that it's not my dream I'm selling to an investor. I'm selling their dream to make money. And, you know, this is one of those things that when you look at this again with entrepreneurship, it's not your dream to bring a product into the world. Yes, it is. But more importantly, it's the customer's dream of what they want, what problem they want solved, what product, what awesome sweater with all the flags of the world. Wanted, that they, that they want, that you're solving for. And so when we're entrepreneurs, it is, yes, it is on us and it is on our passion, but we have to remove our biases in order to really be successful with what our customers want and what our investors want.

Well, about halfway through the book, you have some great tips for the funding journey. And so we'll dive into that in a few more minutes. But still, back in the beginning of the book, there's another metaphor, and it comes from a quote that I can't really recall. But I do remember you writing that the road to success and the road to failure are the same road. And at first, that threw me for a loop. And then I started to think about it. And it actually became one of the main talking points in my video review on Instagram. So could you explain that to everybody? Because I think it's very powerful when you reframe everybody's expectations like that.

Yeah, and when did— I think that was one of the quotes that came to me much later, like, you know, sort of when you're going through revisions of the book and then all of a sudden you read this quote somewhere like, oh my gosh, that is the perfect quote to add into this. And the quote, essentially, I'm paraphrasing it too, is that they're the same road, one's just longer. And which one do you think is longer? The road to success is longer, right? And in other words, Even if your business is struggling, you only fail when you quit. And but the quitting piece, this is where, again, another harsh lesson I've learned that COVID actually really helped drive home, is that we have to be open to iterating our businesses. I mentioned this, you know, just when we first started talking. In order to you know, your first idea not necessarily being your best idea or being the idea that has been thought out to its fullest in order to be realized, you know, in the world. And the founder of Instagram talks a lot about this, talks about how Instagram as we see it today was not his initial idea. And then when he put it out there and people started commenting and etc., it came into this new thing that we see today that's a multi-billion-dollar success. So if we keep going down the road, applying the things that we've learned, we will eventually find our way to some measure of success as defined by us. That does not mean you're going to be Jack Dorsey or Mark Zuckerberg, but it does mean that you can achieve that if you keep going. And that, as I've always said, it is the journey of our lives, you know. We don't have a choice but to keep going down that road, right? We're still going to go, and, and whether or not we take a detour, you know, we get— we're going to find our way back to that same place. And so the only failure is, is leaving it entirely and saying, I'm done, I think.

Yeah, no, I agree. I— my mind works in metaphors, and I teach in metaphors a lot of the time, and that road metaphor It's the first time that I had ever read about it in a book. And I can picture so many different ways that you could use that metaphor to help describe entrepreneurship to somebody who's just beginning. I mean, for Book Thinkers, I wish somebody told me, and they probably had and I didn't listen, but I wish somebody told me how difficult it was going to be and how many different product iterations we would have and how many different ways we would try to monetize this business. We have pivoted so many times. And here we are with a podcast. We didn't start the podcast for years into this journey. So the iteration piece is very important. And I'm happy that you talk about that in the beginning of the book as well. There's one other thing right out of the introduction that I'd like to have you sort of summarize for everybody, which is this salt story, because I love, you know, just like you, I was very foolish when I first started this journey. And I think it was almost required I mean, I'm so happy that I was foolish because if I wasn't so ignorant, to use a different word, I probably wouldn't have started this journey in the first place.

Yeah.

And that's—

this is one of the challenges that I see in our world today where, you know, before it was our parents and our teachers who told us what we can and cannot do. And now we live with that inundation every day. who's better than us, or inadvertently, right, through social media, through people's posts of they're traveling more, they're living their best life better, and, you know, all that different stuff. And it kind of mirrors back to us this, this sense of, um, not being good enough. And that not being good enough is actually the, the starter. It is the— it is in part the fuel that we can use to go explore and be curious about our lives, be curious about our potential, be curious about where we can find ourselves in our life. And so if we knew everything when we started day one, well, some stuff we just wouldn't start, right? If Book Thinkers as an example, if somebody told you how hard it would be, you might be like, oof, maybe that's not the right idea. But that foolishness That ignorance, to borrow your word, gives us the space to feel fearless in approaching this idea. And what's critically important, and much akin to what you do, is to transform that foolishness into the varying degrees of wisdom that we have in our lives, right? And I use that word maybe too generously, wisdom, because I think that it takes a long, long time of a life well-lived in learning and failure to truly understand what it is to be wise. But the point being, you know, not making the same mistakes in its simplest form. And so, so that's where I say that, like, going back to that pizza example at the very beginning, there's a, there's a beauty in that. There's a foolishness in that that says, hey, maybe. And then all of a sudden the world says, whoa, nope, sorry. Like, in the case of the banks, like, no, I'm not giving you money. And that begs the question, do you want to keep going? Every time you bump up, it begs the question, what do I need to learn to do better? And do I want to keep going? And so, you know, we transform that foolishness to a place of knowing on our journey. And through that, we— that's where we can find our success. And the salt story, if you wanted me to summarize that—

I would, yeah.

Is I was— I had wanted to summarize the metaphor of the water too, because we're talking about these journeys. And I thought the river metaphor to the ocean was a great one. Maybe we get to it at the end, but it's in the book. And the salt story was one I read in a book called A Gentleman in Moscow. Have you read that book?

I have not, but I've heard of it.

It's— I don't even know if I'm saying his name right— Amor Towles. Towles. He was a banker turned writer. And it's about this sort of rush, sort of— Russian prince, if you will. He's not, he's not a prince, he's— but he's a man of high, high stature, and he, he kind of speaks out against the government or supports someone who does, and he gets banned, or what is it, he's put on house arrest in a fancy hotel, and he lives almost the entirety of his life in this hotel. But he's this wonderfully positive man, and he has all these great adventures and encounters in this hotel. And And so again, I didn't find this story in a business book. I found it in a novel. And it's the story of a young man who his father's a successful merchant, and he has 3 sons. And the youngest of the sons— well, the older 2 sons are given these beautiful ships, and they're allowed to go embark on their own quests to become men and make names for themselves, and they're given everything. You know, they're given gold to trade, they're given furs, they're given jewels, and they get the greatest ships and the best crews, and they get to go to the best destinations. And the youngest son says, hey, what about me? You know, what do I get? And they kind of laugh at him. Why they don't like their son so much, I don't know. That didn't make any sense to me. But anyway, he— they kind of eventually give him a rickety little sloop and a scurvy crew and And, you know, an empty ballast and say, sail south until the sun never sets in winter, or something like that. In other words, sail to where we doubt you're going to find anything. And so, you know, that, that sets the stage for this young man who has been called to action, if we borrow the hero's journey as an example, and, and he's going out to face, to find his destiny, and he doesn't have much. But he's determined. And he comes across an island on the way that has salt. Now, salt, as all of us know, as from his home country, is plentiful. So he doesn't— it's not a commodity that has any meaning to him, not just like it would to you and me, Nick. But because he has nothing, he decides to take this salt and he fills the ballast of the ship with it. And so now he's got all this salt and he keeps sailing. And all of a sudden, he does come across a kingdom. And in this kingdom, he goes and he goes to the king and the king says, what do you have to trade? And he says, I have all this salt. King says, I've never heard of it. See you later. Well, you know, not to be denied, the young man visits the kitchen that night and knowing how salt tastes, he sprinkles salt all over the food. And the king that night at dinner is like, why does the tomatoes taste better and the mutton tastes better and everything tastes better? And he goes and asks the chefs and they have no idea. They said, but the young man came in and At the end, the king ends up— the young man ends up going back to his kingdom with, you know, a pound of gold for every pound of salt that he had brought with him. And the point of that story from a marketing standpoint is that, you know, he found what was called product-market fit. So he went out and he found this product and he found the customer that was looking for this product. He found a market that needed this product. And even though they needed it at first, much like all our business ideas, the customer didn't realize they needed it. And so we had to convince them they needed it. And he made something from nothing by kind of sticking to his guns. So that's the story. And I thought it was— I put it in the book because I thought it was a fantastic representation of an entrepreneur's journey.

I do as well, which is why I asked you to bring it up. And again, it was the first time I had read that story. And I love teaching in story form and metaphor. So yeah, you need to become, or you need to take that adventure as a fool before you can become a master. And you kind of sum it up nicely in the book that way. So I really enjoyed it. Now we'll dive into your entrepreneurship beginnings, a hot, steamy night in Lima, Peru, which, by the way, I spent some time in Lima, Peru last year, in a very underrated city. I had a really good time there. And I can only picture you underwear shopping on a date in the middle of the night in Lima, Peru, at one of those little market stands. And I'd love to have you paint that picture for everybody.

So the— do you want the whole picture?

Yeah, I don't mind. Yeah, you know what, it shows the rawness of your story, and I think you should paint the whole thing.

The— thanks, Nick. The, um, the one thing I love about entrepreneurship and is when I get to meet entrepreneurs and we do, we look at a lot of acquisitions now and looking to buy sort of early-stage companies. And I love hearing their story. I love hearing that first moment that they decided to start. But even before that is the first moment the idea entered their mind. Because there's a delta. And we talk about this in the book. There's a delta between when the idea hits and when we act upon it. Rarely with me, I just usually just act on my own. I'm kidding. But, um, so, and these ideas, they come in the most amazing places and unexpected places. And I, and I always push people to go out and live their lives and see what ideas come to them versus trying to just jam an idea into the world because you think you need to do something. I think that the world will always give you great ideas. And so I'm in Peru trying to film a travel film with my brother, and we're at this nightclub. And it was like, it was my— I was like a disciplined long-distance runner. So I was like naive as anyone you could imagine at 21, like I'd lived under a rock. And so we're in this nightclub. It's one of the first times I'm ever in a nightclub, and we're having a good time. And I see my brother, and he's like making out with all these different people. I'm like, is that like— what, what's happening here? This is so strange. And turns out everybody that he was making out with was, was a prostitute, and, uh, they were trying to elicit his services, or vice versa, I don't know. And all— but we didn't have any money. And so whether or not he wanted to, you know, partake in nefarious activity or not, we— he was going to get himself into some trouble. And so we had to get out of there. And so we, we left, like, like literally, I, I like put a lasso around him if I had one, and we dragged him out of this, this nightclub. And, you know, now we're out in the streets and we wanted to kill some time. And so I started walking this market and I found some underwear and I needed some. I'd been on the road for 3 months and like, you remember, Nick, like the— now you probably travel with like a bit of comfort, but some of those first trips probably were—

Yes.

You know, and so like I had like 3 pairs of underwear from home that were all tracked. So I like, I needed it, right? And then I bought this stuff and I was like unbelievably amazed with how soft it was. And all of a sudden my wheels start turning. It's like, wow, there's this amazing fabric. It's called Pima cotton. And then I hiked up Machu Picchu in it and I didn't love how it performed. And so my mind started spinning. It's like, how do I take the performance fabrics I was used to as a runner and marry them back to this really soft fabric and create something that was so comfortable you couldn't feel it called Naked. And that, I mean, that was— we're talking over a period of months that idea matured in my mind. But I actually instinctively that first night, I bought 3 pairs that I didn't even touch. Just instinctively, it's just like, I don't know why I did this, but I did it. And I love hearing that when entrepreneurs share their version of that story, when they just didn't know why they were just Instinct? Like, what was yours? Like, what— when you started BookThinkers or another company, was there like an instinctual moment for you?

Sure, I'm happy to detail it. So I was towards the end of my college experience. I had been a very average student or below average student in college. I went to the University of New Hampshire, and I loved partying. I loved hanging out with my friends. I loved the gym. I loved playing basketball. I knew I wanted to be successful in life. I had amazing parents who were very capable, and I was just very average. And so I took a sales internship going into my senior year, and over the summer I started working at this software company. And I had developed some sort of rapport with the director of sales at the company, and so we hung out and we talked a lot about business and life. I took a couple business trips with him where we would talk for a long time. And over the course of that summer and that relationship, I had very limited responsibility at the business. So I had a lot of time to think about my future coming up on senior year. What am I going to do upon graduation? And I knew my grades weren't going to get me into anything special. So I needed to develop some more social skills and I needed to do it fast. And so I'm in this internship, and we're hanging out. And over time, he starts to introduce me to some podcasts. I'd never listened to any podcasts. But these were longer form shows where people would talk for an hour or 2 about business and life and personal development. And that was interesting to me. And he could see that. And so I started to share with him more and more about my view of school. And I said, look, I hate it. I'm in this internship, not even really doing that much, but I'm learning so much faster in this internship than I am in the classroom. And I had run a couple house painting businesses as internships in previous summers. So I went around, I did door-to-door sales, I hired my friends, we did house painting and everything like that. And I said, and I got so much more experience from that than I did from the classroom. And I'm going to a pretty decent business school. Like, it's accredited, it's a great school. There's really competitive people around, the professors are great, but I just don't like it. And he said, you should try personal development books or business books, because what they do is they condense decades of information into days. So if you want to learn faster, if you want to stay engaged and you want to make sure that you're driving a million miles an hour and your eyes have to stay on the road, try these books. So I, I was pretty insecure about money at the time because I was again in business school. I had no money. Everybody's talking about these huge jobs they're getting, and I had no potential for that. So I read a couple books on money, and I read Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki, The Richest Man in Babylon by George S. Clason. Then I started to pivot a little bit into The Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey. Then I started to pivot into the self-help world. I read Think and Grow Rich. I read The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Now, senior year, So now I'm actively in my senior year. Again, the class load isn't great. Now I'm totally distanced from, from school. And I was meeting up with my friend Alec. Now we read in the book Think and Grow Rich my senior year that if you put 2 people in the same room that are heading— headed in the same direction, so kind of like 2 minds in the same room, you can create this 3rd mind. They called it like a mastermind group. And we were fascinated by the idea of what could happen if you just put these minds in the same room and you whiteboarded things. I mean, that's what we literally did every single weekend. And we had both run these house painting businesses. So, we got a little flavor of entrepreneurship, but it was kind of like fake entrepreneurship. And so, we were interested in that. And over time, and I don't know who recommended this, but we started to write down things that bothered us on a weekly basis. And then when we'd meet, let's just call it on Wednesdays, We would discuss the things that we didn't like because we read that entrepreneurship is all about solving problems. And I was posting about these books everywhere. I mean, all my personal social media, everybody saw a very definitive inflection point in my life where I went from ego to impact and I went from insecurity to stability and I went from unfulfilled to fulfilled almost overnight because of these books. And I was implementing everything. So anyway, to make the longest story ever where I'm rambling right now short, I will, uh, I told him one week, hey, like, I hate that everybody asks me the same questions. What's a good book for this? What's a good book for that? What'd you think of this book? So we started a website together where we posted my biggest takeaways and his biggest takeaways from the books we were reading. So if somebody said, Hey, I see this spark in you. did it come from? I would say, go check out my notes on Rich Dad Poor Dad and see if you want to read it. And here are all the books I read in order. And so that's where it started. It started as a place to document this little inconvenience that I had, which was saying the same information over and over again. And so over the last 4 years or so, we've had a lot of ups and downs and lefts and rights, and the business has pivoted many times, but I'm still in that kind of truest expression of those original moments, which is I really value progress. And I've learned that I really value helping other people make progress. So if I can connect them to books that can make them more fulfilled or stable or more money or healthier, better communication, like that's my bread and butter. And so that's kind of my early story.

Did you think, did you think you were going to monetize it when you started it at the very beginning?

It's a good question. I don't really remember. I don't, I don't think it was a priority, right? But I think we kind of had like that throw something up there and see if it sticks mentality. Like, yeah, this could be something that gets monetized. Like, why aren't more people my age reading these books? Let's— but it wasn't the first priority.

Cool. And that's not a bad way to start for people, right? Is, um, Is just through just seeing, just dipping your toe in the water, because there's this sense when you talked about, you know, feeling insecure, feeling average. There's this, there's this momentum that builds around you when you complete something, even if— and I'm not talking about like where you are today, it needing an end date. I'm like, you launched the thing. It left the brain, it left the heart, and it ended up in the real world. And I think that that's just such an empowering step to take, you know, to leave theory behind and execute something just to feel what that's like. And then you can decide, what do I do with this thing? Right?

Yeah. Yeah. And I think going back to our story, before I wrap it up, we, we worked at this for a few months before we really gave it structure in life. And It was only a few months, so it's probably shorter than a lot of other people who have ideas. But yeah, eventually we went through the process of going on legalzoom.com and getting one of my other friends involved and using 99designs.com for a logo and consulting with friends and family in the lawyer patent space to understand what we should do there. And I bought a couple like short little books on the difference between an LLC and a C corp and like all that kind of stuff was just very scrambled. But then, you know, by that time we had the idea, hey, we're going to make some money here. And so it, it only took a couple of months. But yeah, it was a fun journey. And I agree, like, it's important to get it out in the world because every day that the journey goes on, the likelihood that you're going to stick around increases. And that's a really, you know, I've learned that over the last few years as well.

Very cool. Very cool. Yeah, it Gives me chills, man. It gives me chills. It's, it's one of those things where— and even, and even the, the part about just the reading the books, I, I had the same thing. I was— I had something that happened my flight. I was in Thailand, and this is pre, pre the South America trip. Um, and I was in— I had to be in Bangkok for like 10 days, and I had no money. I had zero money. I'd spent every penny. I think my parents had lent me enough to pay for the plane ticket home. And so all I could do was sit in my, my hostel room. And in Thailand, I'm sure you've probably been there a million times, you can buy all the reprinted— like, they've— somebody's literally just gone and reprinted this book, and sometimes words are missing or cut off. And I bought like 20 books, and I just sat in this room and sweat my ass off. And apologies.

Right.

Like, I just read. And then, you know, hearing your story, and I was reading Chip Wilson's book— Chip Wilson's the founder of Lululemon, unbelievable success story— and he was in Alaska. He had left college and he was in Alaska and he was working on a pipeline. And it was kind of like you said, your internship thing. For some reason, just wasn't a lot of work on him. He was there, he's getting paid. And all he did was read for like 12 months or something like that. And there's just this, this rite of passage that is like the one of the biggest gifts in our lives when we get to go through that moment, and then obviously continue it on. But that, that one first moment when it's just like you're introduced to the wisdom of generations upon generations. Love it.

Yeah. And that moment for me, uh, was similar to yours. I mean, I had started that position and I didn't have a lot of work. And there was a Barnes& Noble that was probably a 20-minute drive. And I remember on one weekend or lunch break, I went over there and I got that stack of books that I had just mentioned, those 5 or 6 books. And I spent most of my days reading. I really did. It's so crazy to me. And if somebody stopped by, and I had a little office in this building, if somebody stopped by and asked me what I was doing, which didn't happen very often, I'd say, listen, I'm new to the space. I'm educating myself, kind of sharpening the saw. As they would say, as Stephen Covey would say in The 7 Habits, which I probably learned right in real time. And you're so— it's so true. Like, you become aware of this world that you didn't even know existed. It's very powerful. So because we probably have a lot of people excited, and maybe they've had ideas that they've been germinating on for a little while, uh, what recommendations do you have? Like, when is it time to start to execute against the idea that you have?

That, that's— I talk about, like, as I've gone through my own life, now I'm a father. And there's different, there's different seasons in our life, right? And each one of those seasons has obviously a different flavor. And I always say that whether or not you're just, or whether you just dive in. or how you crawl into this idea or you're jumping or sprinting or whatever is circumstantial to where you are in your life and your risk tolerance. I have always been of the mind that I could lose it all tomorrow and restart. It doesn't— yeah, I might be, I might be bummed, but at the end of the day, I have learned that that these things can happen quickly, they can happen slowly, but they can always happen, and it's never too late to start or restart. So I'm sort of— the point of that is I'm sort of fearless in, in always kind of jumping in when I like something. But for most people, I recommend doing what you did. I recommend first sitting with the idea And you actually quoted this in your review, and getting really, really quiet. I'm sure you've read Stillness Speaks, Pico Iyer.

It's great, actually.

It's like, it's one of those TEDx books or TED books, and it's super short. And there's a great TED Talk from him on the same subject. And he talks about this idea of stillness, not specifically meditation, Just being still. And this is something I think we don't do enough. And when we do, because meditation, thinking about the law of attraction, is very intentional for a lot of us. There's a— there's often an objective involved. And when I'm talking about stillness, I'm talking about no objective.

Mm-hmm.

I'm talking about just being quiet. And just sitting with that idea to, to see what comes up in your mind. What are the fears? What are the insecurities? What are the hopes? What are the dreams? Um, what do you think the problems are going to be? You're not necessarily trying to think about those things. You're just, as they come, you're like, okay, okay. And after a time, I feel like when I coach people or They get to this sort of clear answer. Yes, I want to do this. And this is why I want to do this. And the why is really important. And because, as I say in the book, that why can be money, that why can be fame, that why can be, I just really don't want to work for somebody else. I just want to control my own schedule. That why can be anything, but it helps inform how you're going to approach this thing and how far you want to take it. And once you've done that, it's— I call it taking a leap or even just shipping something. It doesn't have to be perfect. It has to be out there so that you can test it, so that you can iterate it, so that you can gather feedback on it. You know, we talk about how many versions of the iPhone, how many iterations on a product over time, the thing becomes that mastery, right? But in the beginning, it doesn't have to be. And so many people, I feel, get caught up in the fear of it needing to be perfect before they jump into it. Just right. It will never be just right. So take as much of a risk when you've got to that place as you're willing to take. For some people, that's forming the LLC. For other people, that's going to get a $25,000 bank loan if they have assets to— or, you know, a situation where they can get it against. For some, that's investing $100,000 of their life savings into their own idea. Picking where you're comfortable and making that step. And now all of a sudden you're in it, right? You know, go back to the salt story example. Your boat's at sea. Now what are you going to do, right? You're going to keep sailing it? Are you going to turn around and go home? But you're at sea. And when you're at sea, everything's— everything changes, right? The world starts responding to you differently now that you've taken this action, and it's going to challenge you and it's going to welcome you. It's going to provide hills and it's going to provide, you know, easy downward slopes. And so, but until you've done that, until you've cast away, you're— it's, it's just, it's not real yet. It's, uh, it's just in your head, right? And so I just, I love people to take that leap and then decide where they're going to go with it. So.

No, it's, it's fantastic advice. And again, I love the metaphor around the ship. Like, once you're at sea, you're at sea. And so you need to get out at sea to figure out whether or not you want to go home or whether or not you want to keep going. And that— this whole emergence of side hustles has been really important. You talk about this in the book a little bit, the importance of having a second job while you build it out and learning how to work twice as hard as you probably used to, or have it— we're treating your other job as a little bit of a side hustle. I mean, it's important and it's very possible nowadays. Like, people didn't really think about those things 20, 30 years ago, but now it's just common. Everybody has a side hustle. So it's good advice.

Yeah, it was— I don't know where I got this number from. I think it was a newsletter. But, you know, average million— the average millionaire has 7 income streams. And, you know, you're just— they're just contingencies, right? You're, you're not banking it all on one. The other side to that is as I'm sure you know, Nick, is that, you know, divided attention can be challenging to an idea. So you have to be really strategic, I think, about how you do that. And it has to be done because we all have to live for our families, you know. And it also shakes the idea of entitlement. It shakes the idea of well, I just, you know, I just— the world's going to give this to me. It's like, no, the world's going to make you work for it, and it's going to ask you every day how hard you're willing to go for this thing. And there's a shift, and there's a shift that goes from working your butt off to working really, really smart. And I think that— and what I mean by that is the same result is coming in for less output. And you do have to make that transition, but there are There's a good push in there.

There certainly is. You, you say in the book that it's a humbling experience, and it's truly humbling experience. And the divided attention thing reminds me of another topic that you talk about in the book, which is opportunity cost. So I think most people in the audience, if they're teetering on the idea of executing against an idea, opportunity cost is a very important factor for that. If you have a full-time position, Are you okay shifting some of your attention away from that? Will you be able to maintain that position? And are you willing to lose it? To what degree? How much of your attention are you able to shift? And then once you've shifted some of your attention and you're out at sea and you have that opportunity to go back, do you push a little bit farther? And if you go to sleep every night— and this is kind of where I go with my advice around this area— like, if you go to sleep every night and it's bothering you, that at the end of your life, when you look back, you didn't make the leap. You should probably push a little bit farther, go a little bit farther, don't turn back yet, and see what happens. And yeah, that's what happened with you and me and everybody.

Everyone you're listening to, right? I mean, what the heck are we here for if we're not here to explore what is here for us, for our others, for for our human potential, right? You know, ultimately, I think that there's another aspect to that journey, which is letting go and releasing ourselves of our worldly dramas and troubles. But part of the point of getting there, in my view, is to test the waters. And the reality is the safe route is no safer than the dangerous route. You just, you're unfortunately, you're lying to yourself that, that it's safer. And but, but to that point, it's, it's to be content and at peace and happy with whatever route you choose is the most beautiful part. But, you know, I just, I do meet many people who have this, this desire still burning inside them. And it's gonna burn until you let it out. It's not gonna let you know, it's there. It's your heart's calling.

Yeah.

I just want people to feel comfortable— or not comfortable is not the right word— feel empowered that they have, even if they feel average or whatever else, and borrowing that again, but to go after it. Because all of us feel that. You felt average. I've struggled with insecurity and anxiety and depression for years at different, um, different times in my life. But here I am. You know, these things don't have to block us. And, and that's what I want for people to just follow their hearts.

As you're driving down that road, and there's a blockade in front of you, you've got to figure out how to get over it or around it or do what you got to do. Get unconventional. Hello, Book Thinkers family. A quick word from today's podcast sponsor. Today's episode is sponsored by Audible. Audible is the leading provider of spoken word entertainment and audiobooks ranging from bestsellers to celebrity memoirs, business, and my favorite, personal development. And as part of Audible's partnership with us, we're actually offering listeners a free 30-day trial. This trial includes 1 credit good for any premium selection titles you'd like on the whole platform. So that's pretty much any book, including the one we're talking about today. That book is yours to keep even after the trial is over. Now, this trial also includes access to Audible's Plus catalog of podcasts, audiobooks, guided wellness programs, and Audible Originals. You can listen all you want, no credits needed. Now, everyone on the Book Thinkers Instagram knows that I love physical paper books. There's nothing better than having a book in your hand, scribbling notes everywhere in the margins. I kind of tear those things up. But I've been completing an additional 20 to 30 books every single year using Audible by listening when I'm in the car, doing chores around the house, or while I'm on my morning walks or runs. You could take advantage of this free trial by clicking the link in today's show notes or going to www.bookthinkers.com/audibletrial. You will not regret it. Now back to today's episode. So we've flown through our time so far, and there are tons of other questions that, that we sort of left unanswered that I had written down, which is totally okay because we expanded on a lot of things I didn't think we would, and I'm happy that we did. To give some closure to the podcast though, we did mention a couple things that I want to make sure we go back and touch on. One example of that is the Dragon's Den experience. So To kind of fast forward your journey, you end up going into business with a friend and you name it Naked. You have this struggle to get the actual trademark and name Naked. You do it and you go to Dragon's Den. So what happens then?

Right. So, you know, this is, this is a good example of taking a leap. And as I say in the book, maybe I leapt too far. Um, David Deida in his fantastic book, The Way of the Superior Man talks about living on your edge, and living on your edge is where all the magic happens. But if you go past your edge, that's where you fall off the cliff. Another metaphor for you. And if you're not there, then you don't have that exhilaration of being on the edge, right? And so what the story sums up to, not understanding my business and being punished for it on national TV. in front of millions and millions of people. And what it came down to was, I went on there and I thought that my idea and who I was as a human was good enough to convince a savvy angel investor or a shark, depending on how you want to describe it, to hand me over some money. And I didn't understand how ownership is valued inside a company, how much money $100 grand would buy them, what percentage of my company, and how they would value that. I didn't understand that. I didn't understand the true potential of my underwear business as related to the value of the underwear business in Canada, in America, globally, and realistically how much I could capture of that. Because that underwear business is broken up into different sectors. Some of that's men, some of that's women, some of that's premium, some of that's Etc., etc. And so I just was like, I was standing there in my underwear because the producers, I had to do it in my underwear, and I'm just taking shots in the head of, you know, this I don't have the answer to, that I don't have the answer to, to the point where they call me delusional and I'm just taking a wild-ass guess. And it was true. I did not do the, the due diligence and research required to deserve somebody's money, just to prove to them that even though it's a risky investment, here's the case why it's a worthwhile risky investment. And I, in the book, suggest that everybody deserves that, including love money, which is family and friends, which is usually the first money in. They deserve the best possible pitch and understanding from you, the entrepreneur. Not just the, hey, it's a great idea. Of course it is. But how are you going to execute? Because execution of the idea is everything in business. You know, what was Google's, like the 18th search engine?

Hmm.

They did it the best. Name, name the other 17 before it, right? I mean, what, you can probably name 2 of them, right? So that's the point, is who does it best is who wins, not who does it first and not who, who has the idea first.

Well, as a big fan of the show Shark Tank, I can picture you there. I actually, I don't know why I haven't gone back and watched the episode yet, but I know it's available, so I could go back and watch that, right?

I think, I think you could. Yeah.

I'll go find that after and maybe we'll throw a link to it in the show notes because What you did was you leveraged that embarrassment and you leveraged the lessons that they taught you and you moved forward and you turned into a success. So I know we've got a hard stop in a couple of minutes. Can you take a minute and sort of sum up some of the other general lessons that people might learn in the book, where you are today and how people can get in touch if they want to learn a little bit more about you or your book?

Yeah, I'll bring that point back to the one you just made back to the road metaphor that we talked about at the beginning. And if you just keep going down the road, the difference between success and failure— this isn't kudos to me. There's a whole, there's a whole aspect of my insecurity and ego that propelled me forward after that Dragon's Den failure. That's another podcast entirely. But the point was, I didn't give up. I took the lessons. And what ended up happening was, well, when 3 million people see your, you know, you go out there, you've taken the leap, you've, your ship has set sail, somebody might like it. And that's what happened for me is some people did see the show despite my getting roasted and said, hey, let's, let's take another look at this in a non-boiler room atmosphere. And so continuing down the road. A negative turned into a positive, and we were able to secure our very first financing, you know, 6 months, 8 months, I can't remember, after the show, right? When I thought it was done, but I wasn't giving up. And if I just sum up, you know, again, this idea of entrepreneurship as a journey, I think that every experience that we have as entrepreneurs gives us a chance to face ourselves and to unwind a bit of that baggage that leads us to— or that personal baggage. So, you know, we face the dragons, we get called delusional. What do we do with it? Our business partner disappears because they, for whatever reason, what do we do with that? Or, you know, a product fails. What do we do with that? And it gives us a chance both personally and professionally to cultivate the best version of ourselves as an ever beautiful evolving thing throughout our entire life, never-ending. You know, we just get to keep learning and keep doing it better. And entrepreneurship is like the daily dose of that 100 times over, right? And so The point I'm making is that if we're aware, if we're self-aware on this journey of entrepreneurship, the windows of opportunity to self-improve, to grow, to grow into a person worthy of achieving that goal, worthy of that success, it's, it's a, it's, it's a beautiful path to take. So.

It is. I love it. And so for people that want to learn a little bit more about you or the book, they're interested, they're on the hook, they love these stories, uh, what can they do? Where should they go?

Right now, uh, it's just available on amazon.com.ca. Uh, eventually in the next couple of months, we'll be rolling out Barnes& Noble chapters, Indigo, etc. But right now, amazon.ca, the Bare Necessities of Entrepreneurship and Startups. getting naked. You can go to my website, joelprimus.com/book/. You'll see all about the book there. And on Instagram, that's generally where I hang out.

Well, I really enjoyed our conversation today. I think we see things in a very similar way, and I'm sure we could unpack travel stories and entrepreneurship horror stories all day long. So thank you for coming on the show. It was a pleasure, and I'm sure we'll be in touch soon.

You too, Nick. Thanks.

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