Is it time for your business to get naked? We answer this question and more in this episode of Incorporating SuperPowers as host Justin Recla shares his time with guest Joel Primus. Justin and Joel explore some of the concepts of what it takes to be an entrepreneur and how to cultivate balance in your life. Joel also shares his book, Getting Naked, where he discusses his journey as an entrepreneur and coach. Join Justin and Joel in today’s episode and discover how you can get your business naked.
Welcome back to Incorporating SuperPowers. I am Justin Recla. Today, we’re going to Get Naked. Yeah, you heard me right. We are going to Get Naked. We are going to explore some of the concepts of what it takes to be an entrepreneur and how to cultivate balance in your life, not only just as an entrepreneur, but just all around. I mean, when you’re an entrepreneur, you can’t separate out your life from what you do in the world and how you show up in the world. It is who you are and that takes a lot of courage and it takes a lot of understanding of who you are in that.
My guest today has actually written a book on how to Get Naked. That’s right. My guest today is Joel Primus, and we were talking just before the show, just a lot of the similarities in our own journeys, everything from chickens to the band that he shares his last name with. Just a lot of good, good energy here. I’m excited to explore this concept of getting naked in his book, of getting naked in his journey with entrepreneurship. Joel, thank you so much for being here today.
My pleasure, Justin. Thanks for having me.Â
This is good stuff. You and I have talked a little bit. Let’s bring the listeners into the conversation that we were having. Your book went live in February. It’s called Get Naked. Talk to me a little bit about that journey. Why did you write the book?Â
Yeah, that’s a good question. Everyone is asking me that these days and my answer is just I wanted to write the book. I wanted to read as an entrepreneur. It was because I made so many, many mistakes, both personally and professionally, on this 10-year journey building a company that was inspired by a trip to Peru where I got some underwear and ended up on Canada’s version of Shark Tank and then raising millions of dollars in listing on the NASDAQ and then divesting. There were just so many pain points that became opportunities for growth, but I wanted to always say that if you don’t know to ask the question, then you don’t get the answer you need.
I wanted to make sure that entrepreneurs were armed with all the questions and as many of the answers as possible from the day, an idea lands on your heart to the day you sell the company and how to follow that journey. It’s sort of a half how-to book, half coming of age story for entrepreneurship.Â
Folks, this is where the cause of the Get Naked is, it comes into play. You have to get real with yourself, right? Because there’s nothing that’s going to grow you faster than becoming an entrepreneur. Although, I might say running your own podcast and podcast network might be the same. But in order to succeed in that, you have to get real. You have to Get Naked with yourself. I love the fact that you wrote a book about your own experiences. I’ve got to ask, I’ve seen the book cover, is that you on the front cover?
That’s me a few years ago. I shot that cover.
Take a look.Â
I think we were talking about it before the show, Amazon doesn’t like my cover and neither does Facebook. I got prohibited from Facebook the day the book launched. Half my ads have been blocked. Amazon’s refusing to run any ads for me. I was like, “I used to run underwear ads all the time. I don’t know what’s changed here.”
Because you got the word naked in it. There’s no human factor. There’s no human decision and it’s all keyword-based and they blocked automatically. They don’t take anything in the content. It’s absolutely crazy. But folks, you got to take a look at the book because it’s Joel on the front cover. He’s got some words covering up some things, but other than that, it’s him. What I love about it is the visual representation of you on the book cover naked, but the contents of it as well are your naked journey through entrepreneurship. I absolutely applaud you for having the courage to write that book and sharing it with the world.Â
Yeah, man, I appreciate that. The idea of the cover was to show that I’m telling all. I’m exposing all. I’m not hiding anything in this story, and where that gets back to that concept of getting naked is I’ve come to understand that in order to be happy and present in our lives, we have to free ourselves from ourselves. We have a lot of concepts that we believe aren’t ours. They were imposed on us. We have a lot of labels that have been given to us that aren’t ours and there’s this painful, chaotic, breaking free of those labels and those concepts and trying to get back to what your own heart, and notice, I’m not saying mind, your heart says this is what you need to do because I believe the labels and the concepts live in our mind. They don’t live in our hearts.Â
The book, sort of the breaking open of it is on this journey of success and money. I nearly lost my marriage. I hadn’t seen my daughter in almost two years because I was traveling 200 days a year on business. It took a series of very tragic events, including the death of one of my best friends, for me to really realize what I was doing and rediscover what was important to me in my life. It is a how-to entrepreneurship story startup book, but it also dives into this other side. I really hope that entrepreneurs who read it do ask themselves the important questions like, why am I doing this thing? What is driving me to these insane levels of self-sacrifice and anxiety and can’t separate myself from this business in any way? I really want entrepreneurs to ask themselves those questions.
Folks, these are the questions that matter because it’s in that seeking, it’s in understanding what those questions are that you’re going to get the clarity so you can remove the things from your life that no longer serve you, the things that are holding you back and the things that are stealing, robbing, and the things that you’re giving away that you don’t want to give away. This is such good stuff. We’re going to dive down this rabbit hole a little further because I want to explore some of that journey with you in that space. But before we do, we need to go on break. Where can our listeners go find more information about you?Â
Joelprimus.com. if you just hit the book tab, that’s where you can see all about the book.Â
Fantastic. Folks, go take a look at Joel’s book. If you’re an entrepreneur, if you’re thinking about being an entrepreneur, if you already started and you’re stuck, pick up the copy, read through it because there’s going to be important lessons in there for you to glean. Stay tuned, we’ll be right back.
To listen to the entire show click on the player above or go to the SuperPower Up! podcast on iTunes.
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