Joel Primus: Co-Founder of Naked Revival

Kara Goldin 0:00
I am unwilling to give up that I will start over from scratch as many times as it takes to get where I want to be I want to be, you just want to make sure you will get knocked down. But just make sure you don’t get knocked down knocked out. So your only choice should be go focus on what you can control control control. Hi, everyone and welcome to the Kara Goldin show. Join me each week for inspiring conversations with some of the world’s greatest leaders. We’ll talk with founders, entrepreneurs, CEOs, and really some of the most interesting people of our time. Can’t wait to get started. Let’s go. Let’s go. Hi, everyone. It’s Kara Goldin from the Kara Goldin show. And I am so excited for my next guest. We are here with Joel Primus. And I’ve actually kind of followed not stalked, I would say, but I’ve heard about Joel over the years for sure. He is not only the founder of a company called Naked, which you may have heard of, but he is no longer with Naked he is launching a new company called Naked Revival. And he also is an author of an incredible book, which really takes the reader on the journey of building an incredible, incredible brand and startup. And just a little bit of background. Joel is Canadian. He came from very humble, he says beginnings with the initial one style and single color product sewn by his friend’s grandmother, which is just awesome as a backstory. And scaling partnerships with major major retailers like Nordstrom and Saks Fifth Avenue, went on to be listed on NASDAQ sold the company I mean, so, so incredible, but his book really takes you on the journey of what that takes. And it’s a lot it’s a lot being an entrepreneur, I get it and a lot being a founder and the The buck stops with you, as I always say so. Very, very excited to dive in and talk to Joel a bit more about his journey and also about his new venture. So welcome, Joel.

Joel Primus 2:17
Well, thanks for having me. And I’ll start by just saying I, I got just picked up this little beauty here. Oh, yeah. For those who just listening, this is Kara’s book. And I just came. So I only got through the first chapter. But I love your John McCain story.

Kara Goldin 2:35
Yeah, no, definitely, it will probably really resonate with you on so many levels. It’s, it’s funny, because when I was chopping the book, this was my, this was my journal for many years. And so that’s how I sort of dealt with all of the challenges that I was dealing with along the way that I thought, you know, I’m just gonna write about it, and just see if stuff starts to make sense over time. And then ultimately, it ended up becoming a book. And the first thing I heard was that nobody wants to read about entrepreneurs. And I was like, really? I did. That’s, I think they do. And it’s right. And it was, I mean, I’ve heard from so many people who are either in it, who have been in it, or who are thinking about it, or maybe their kids are going into it, and they’re trying to sort of evaluate it. So I think you’ll get quite a bit out of it and really resonate with you. And obviously getting Naked is such an incredible book, too. But before we get to that, I would love to talk a little bit about you and sort of your backstory, you’re an elite athlete turned serial entrepreneur. How did that all happen? Right?

Joel Primus 3:50
Yeah, accidentally, which is the way I think all things sort of happen. Right. And I, so I was, um, I had represented, you know, I was really fortunate that I represented Canada internationally when I was still in high school. And then I had a full ride scholarship, which was the dream really, right. And then I wanted to go to the Olympics. And then in my freshman year of college, right after I just qualified for the World cross country championships, which would have been my second world team. I was on a run, beautiful run in the winter is one of my favorite trails. And I stepped in so it’s also horse trail. And this this this perfect storm of conditions there had been a rainfall. And so these horses had created all these sort of pothole type things in the trail and then the next morning it had frozen so they were hard. And I I stepped in one and I ruptured my Achilles Ouch. Now that is a recoverable injury, but I wasn’t really able to recover from it for a variety of reasons. What I’ll just be very honest upfront was, I had, I had actually become anorexic in my freshman year of college because I, I gone there and I thought, everybody’s skinnier than me. I’m too big, and I was like 123 pounds or 225 pounds. And so I went down to 117 pounds by under eating. And my body was so wrecked, both inside and outside. And then I had this injury and when you are malnourished, being malnourished, it’s harder to recover from these things. And I ended up getting multiple stress fractures and hernia all in in this attempted recovery. And eventually, I kind of lost my mind threw in the towel and decided to no longer run, I was going to hitchhike across the country and just kind of say goodbye to everybody. So long story long. I was in Peru. And here’s what I don’t live in Peru. The hitchhiking journey had sort of spiraled into this global travel adventure. And I was in Peru, and I needed some underwear. One could imagine who’ve, you know, just the traveling for that long, but the underwear gets a little bit a little bit questionable. So I bought this amazing underwear from a street vendor. And I was like, wow, this is incredible. This is so soft, better than anything my mom ever bought me. And then I hiked up mash up shoe wearing and it’s like half and it doesn’t really perform. And so the wheels started turning and I started to think, Okay, how do I take the stuff that I was used to as a runner, the technical stuff and marry it back to this comfortable stuff. And create something that’s so comfortable, you can feel it, and the name Naked. And in that moment, I became an entrepreneur, I didn’t realize it right. But there was this other driving force, and then I’ll end the story. And it was I hadn’t dealt with the loss of padding being a runner. And I was trying to fill this void inside myself with anything else. And so entrepreneurship for me was born both of you know, necessity is the mother of invention as well as sort of insecurity is the mother of motivation in some cases, right. And so I just became the runner self, my runner self in my entrepreneur self, which was, you know, meant idle full in and some of those unhealthy things that had led to things like anorexia were not dealt with. But here I was, you know, head first into this thing. So that’s that’s how it all started for me as an entrepreneur.

Kara Goldin 7:44
So interesting. So were you actually sourcing then from Peru? I mean, did you meet people along the way is that sort of how the, the initial product started. I,

Joel Primus 7:55
I didn’t what ended I you know, when and I wanted to later on, but what ended up happening was when I got home, I literally Googled how to make it. And a bunch of local factories came up in Vancouver. And so I ended up working with some Vancouver factories, and I ended up being connected to this fantastic mill knitting mill in Italy. That’s where I ended up sourcing the first fabric from for Naked. The Peruvian stuff was going to come later. Because I wanted to kind of harken back to those roots. But it you just as an entrepreneur, you’re it’s the road that you’re on is kind of it’s like the yellow brick road unfolding one brick at a time in front of you and you’re kind of adapting as as it goes. So it was within a blink of an eye. I’d had this idea I Googled how to make underwear to the thing you intrude with my friend’s grandma’s so this pair with this fabric that we found we then had a factory and next thing you know, I’ve been asked to go on Dragon’s Den, which is your shark tank in the States. And so it all just It all happened very, very quickly. Which, you know, not sure it wasn’t good. But that’s how it that’s how it went down.

Kara Goldin 9:07
That’s why I’ll and so did you have a product at this point? By the time you were going on Dragon’s Den? Were you actually selling product by the time you made it on the show? No, no, I

Joel Primus 9:18
had five protocol. I was wearing one of them. They told me if you want the show to air, you need to pitch in your underwear. Which you know TV right it’s all about views now it’s all about clicks. And so I had those and then I had for the Dragons the rest of the prototypes, but these were not vetted prototypes, which all of this would later come back to bite me in the ass Pretty. Pretty hard.

Kara Goldin 9:43
So interesting. So So can we talk about that like so you had five skiers and you’re on Dragon’s Den you think you know you? Obviously you got some money Correct. From Dragon’s Den. Well,

Joel Primus 9:58
you know, here’s let me Let me backpedal just a little bit here. So one of the things that I try and I try and preach, I guess about being an entrepreneur, if you will, or just starting a business is though, is you just have to start. And you have to start. And you have to trust that as the intentionality of starting, will create the domino effect of things happening for you. All that while all that is happening, you know, it’s not just this wonderful, universal, cosmic serendipity where everything that you want is, right, there’s also a lot of shit sandwiches, you got to eat along the way, every day, as I’m sure you know. So this is, um, I believe in starting and seeing what happens and, and trying to figure out these problems as they arise. So we do the show. And I’m called delusional by one of the dragons, but one of the other dragons. And I was, by the way, I was delusional. And one of the other dragons said, I think a brand like this comes around once in a lifetime. Now, we couldn’t get a deal done, because the deal that was offered to me was for 100% of the company. So I was giving away the company day one. Now, looking back, I probably would give myself the same deal. 15 years later, now that I think about it. But anyway, when the show aired a lot of there was a lot of interest. And I leveraged that interest into getting into stores, you know, I would I stores had seen it, some stores called me other stores that hadn’t seen it, I would call and I’d say Hey, you gotta check this out. We’re on national TV, you know, we’d be a great brand, and they’d see it like, oh, yeah, you know, and that was the days where like, they weren’t counting metrics. So the idea of you being on TV was like, oh, maybe this brand does have some some popularity and exposure. So I, I ended up getting this big order from this very important store, kind of like the Neiman Marcus or the Saks Fifth Avenue, your side of the of the border. My side, it was called Holt, Holt, Renfrew. And they offer me this 20,000, or sorry, this this 4000 unit order, but they tell me to make 20,000 pairs. Because reorders, right. And so my business partner is like, we are not making 20,000 pairs of underwear. Like we don’t have the money, right? We did get some investment after the show, not from the show because of people who had seen it and was like we use all our money is not tested, we have no idea if it’s gonna sell once it hits the shelves. And I was like my hubris, you know, the same gusto that helps me start, you know, put me into a bad position here. I said, we’re absolutely making 20,000 pairs, you kidding me? Like we’re going to be huge. And I remember the phone call and my heart, just sinking my stomach in my throat. I had this investor call me. And he never even had the product yet. And he said, I now know why you call it Naked. Because it doesn’t stay on when you wear it. And I had a product defect in my larges and extra larges. And I didn’t know any I’d never produced a bulk order. I didn’t know anything. And so I had to recall all the product. I had to I literally got in my car drove across the country visited every store that carried the product explained what happened, apologize, told them I was fixing it, and essentially begged for them to give me a second chance. Well, and did they? Yeah, that same investors told me, you know, kudos to him. He said, if you’re honest, and if you are hard working as an entrepreneur investors will always give you a second chance. Maybe not a third chance. But they’ll always give you a second chance. And so I got

Kara Goldin 14:02
that chance. You mean like the retail locations will give you no human anybody?

Joel Primus 14:06
Because I you know, we just essentially we had to, we had to go back to get money from investors to be able to fix the problem. And so I think in general, the spirit of his sentiment or statement was people will give you a second chance.

Kara Goldin 14:23
Yeah, no, I totally, totally agree. We’ve had this this podcast, I think we’re on show number 500 something and and so many entrepreneurs have been on from all different industries. And I think the the consistent thread is people make mistakes. And you know, it used to be I used to hear when we were first putting him into stores that if you ever get kicked out of a store, you know they discontinuous, you you’ll never get back in and I always tell entrepreneurs, you might need a buyer change but he’ll get back in right something will happen along the way and you might need to give it some time. I am but never say never. And I think like, that’s just a another great example that you just gave of, you know, you can make mistakes. And as long as you own it and all of that, but you went on to scale Naked, very successfully raising millions you were on the NASDAQ, you moved to New York? And can you share a little bit about the challenges of VAT whole world? I mean, now you’re in a public company you’re getting, you know, the product is, is doing well, but it’s definitely shifted a bit. I’d love to hear kind of your thoughts as somebody asks you that question, you

Joel Primus 15:41
you sold into VC or to private, private equity or to a merger? I’m not only Chapter One of the book, you remind me who? Yeah,

Kara Goldin 15:50
no, it has not sold. Okay, so I’m not currently Yeah, I’m not currently running hint. I’m not I was a CEO for 17 years. But it was, it’s actually a family office. So it’s not private. It’s not really private equity, although I think that they are kind of like private family

Joel Primus 16:10
office stuff. And there’s a lot of family offices that play in the public space. And I get asked this question a lot. And, and maybe a lot, maybe I’ll answer the question from a, from the standpoint of how one could think about raising capital for their company. Because there, there are two routes, right? Well, there’s three, there is your company, cash flows itself, and you don’t need, you don’t need third party money, you can go the private route, which you know, involves the more common path, which is, you know, love money from family and friends, and then angel money, and then private equity, private equity, VC, family, office, etc, to scale your business, or you can go public. And a lot of people think that the only reason to go public is at the end of the lifecycle of your not the end of the lifecycle your growth, but sort of your past the startup trajectory. And now it’s time to provide a liquidity event for your self and your shareholders, etc. who waited. And that obviously makes a lot of sense, because the longer you wait, theoretically, the more value your company has, what I found. And what I found then was, I was out there banging my head against the wall, trying to raise dollars for this thing privately. And then somebody said, I’ll take you public. Now, there’s tiers of public companies, we all probably know, the NASDAQ certain tiers of public markets, we all know, the NASDAQ, maybe the NYSC. But there’s, there’s the OTC which is a more junior exchange there. So there’s these smaller exchanges that allow for smaller cap and nano cap companies, and how it was pitched to me to take my company public early, knowing that being public has a lot of pitfalls, a lot of a lot of challenges, because you are now operating, you know, Naked, they everybody can see everything kind of, you know, with your balance sheet, and you have the added costs and resources of operating the public side of the company. But there’s also more opportunity to raise capital, because just like some people don’t like boat cruises, because they can’t get off. You know, you’re stuck on for the ride. With being public. This assuming you have liquidity, which means that you’re you know, there’s your stock is selling and trading people can buy in or trade out. Investors who don’t have the, like, the long term horizon of staying with something for a decade might like the idea of only getting you some cash you need and then being able to trade out of that in six months, if they need. So it provides a de risking scenario. And it also increases the various types of structures of which one can capitalize their company. And so we ended up going public, like very, very, very early. Like I think I had a quarter million dollars in revenue when we were taken public, which is absurd, is really absurd. For in the consumer space, less so in other sectors anyway. So I’ve, I’ve always said to, to startup founders, like if that opportunity is on the table, you know, be no the sharks that you’re swimming with, know the game that you’re playing. But if you play it right, you can still step up the growth of your company through these junior capital markets into the senior Capital Markets. Even NASDAQ has a junior board right? Where you might be able to have access to more capital to raise your money and that’s what happened with us is like, we ended up in this really, it was really hard and you you realize as a CEO, you’re in the business of raising money if you’re running a public company, but we ended up getting a lot of interesting exposure and through being public and a lot of our investors became product wares. And a lot of our investors created opportunities for us to grow in, in terms of the retail space. And so it was just, it was just this this thing where I say, Okay, well, now I’m public, I’ll take this, this is my opportunity. bird in the hand versus two in the bush, I don’t know how you feel about that. But, you know, one of one of my mentors has always said, you know, it’s, that’s how you do business, you, you live to fight another day, you take the opportunity, and you operate, you know, and it’s your job. If you say, if an investor gives me $500,000. And then two months later, I say I need another half a million dollars he’s like, but you didn’t do what you said you were going to do. So if you do what you say you’re going to do with the money, you can be successful, and you live to fight another day, and you live to grow and your company can ultimately become successful. And that’s the trajectory that happened for us is one thing led to another and, and we were able to find opportunities, and then eventually list onto the NASDAQ very early on.

Kara Goldin 21:10
Yeah, no, so interesting. And then the Naked brand group ended up, I guess, acquiring and like, how did that work?

Joel Primus 21:19
So I pitched at a conference in South Southern California. And the next day, we only just listed onto the NASDAQ. And I pitched at this conference and told our story. And then I got a phone call from a gentleman who represented an Australian lingerie company. And he said, we’d like to merge with you. Now, again, this is where, you know, you mentioned, you know, like, I just love that sentiment so much that you said, when you know, you get kicked out of a store, you never get back in no, there’s there’s opportunity at every turn, you know, some aren’t the right ones. And, you know, it’s your job to make, take advantage of the ones that are the right ones to attempt to, you know, to fix the ones that are the wrong ones, and just, you know, ignore the noise everywhere else. And, and this to me seemed right opportunity, because they were $100 million company, we were much smaller than that we were single digit millions at the time. growing quickly, you know, we were at the beginning of our hockey stick. But the idea of globalizing our brand was really appealing to us. And there’s this, you know, when you’re public, there’s also value in your public vehicle, like the fact that you are public has value in and of itself, regardless of the business that’s inside the public company. So the fact that we were on NASDAQ was very appealing to that company, because it was a faster track for them, who were at that part of their lifecycle, right, where they wanted liquidity for their shareholders, they wanted to be able to leverage the capital markets to acquire brands, who also wanted the Quiddity. So us this smaller company had this, this giant, ace up our sleeve, you know, sort of speaker wasn’t hidden, but being public provided this this sort of value that we were able to leverage to do this big merger. And they ended up coming on board. And I mean, it was a very tough situation like it was. I’m very curious what your, what you say in your book, but also just, you know, if you could share it with me now, in terms of, if you’ve ever had impostor syndrome, or you’ve ever been in a place where, you know, your company is, is growing, and everybody thinks it’s fantastic. But you’re kind of dying inside because all the change and all the people and this thing kind of feels like oh, my gosh, I’m over my skis here. And I was having a lot of that during the New York days in the merger days trying to kind of come to terms with what was happening. And it’s it’s kind of embarrassing, because that’s not the hotshot view that people had of what was happening. So like, Did you Did you ever have something like that? Kara?

Kara Goldin 24:07
Well, I think the key thing is, is that you somebody told me early on, and I think this is still really valid advice for owning entrepreneurs, that what you have to remind yourself about whenever you’re taking investors in of any kind, right, whether it’s, you know, friends and family or private equity or, or public markets, whatever it is, that you’ve got to do what’s best for shareholders. And so you’ve got to sort of put yourself aside a little bit and, you know, to some extent, it’s like, you know, it’s like parenting, right? There’s stuff that you do that, you know, you don’t want to be the bad guy, right? When you’re when you’re talking. You don’t want to ground your kids or whatever it is, you know, along the way, but you also have to think about what is best in the situation. And sometimes those things are in conflict, right. And so I totally get what you’re talking about. I think part of the reason why I love this podcast so much is that comes up consistently, right. And I think there’s also this thinking amongst larger brands who have never founded a company, and also private equity firms that founders can actually run and scale a company that, you know, Steve Jobs is probably the best example when, in fact, oftentimes companies have a really hard time surviving, without, you know, that pulse that you know, heart, right.

Joel Primus 25:39
You’re you’re betting on Kara, that’s, it’s a fantastic point you bring up, you know, I, I always remind entrepreneurs, we’re taking in money, I said, like, in when you’re pitching them, remember, investors not investing in your dream, they’re investing in their dream to make money, right. And once you take in their monies true, you’re beholden both in a legal capacity, as well as an ethical capacity to honor the interests and do the best you can in the interests of that money. And, you know, when I was going through this, this change over to New York, I had brought on a CEO to run Naked, and I stayed on as president. And initially, I hadn’t thought I was going to, I thought I was going to be, that was going to be it, I was going to be out at that point. And I think that we’re entrepreneurs who are going through these major transitions in their company, where they’re taking on big money, there’s new expectations, there’s new senior management coming in, you know, the way I look at it now is, to your point, I think the entrepreneur has to stay involved in the capacity in which they bring the energy and the integrity of the brand. You know, as long as it scales, and having mentorship in place to allow that entrepreneur to be successful, is probably the better path than giving up the CEO ship early days. Or, you know, if there’s no reason that you know, that that you can’t continue to grow the company that somebody else would do it better than you. I mean, you’ve got it to there, why won’t you get it to the next, you know, the next level? And so I think I probably, you know, I don’t have regrets, but I think I probably didn’t structure that scenario correctly. And, and that put me in a place where I felt a little bit like a fish out of water, as opposed to empowered to really grow this thing to its next stage.

Kara Goldin 27:49
Yeah. And I think sometimes when you it’s sort of like, when you started your company, I’m sure a lot of people had doubts about you, right? That they’re not you personally, but you starting an apparel company, right? You you didn’t have the experience all of these things, and you almost go through that later, right? Because you have people who are saying, well, you’re not going to be able to scale it to this point, yet. You’ve scaled it to this point, you’ve taken the company public, you’ve done a lot, right. But you almost don’t get credit for it, and you believe you

Joel Primus 28:23
want it? Like it was like, Yeah, fluke that That’s right. Like it was an accident. Yeah, there’s this there’s this interesting saying it’s, um, I mean, your whole book, you know, doubts and doubters, right? That’s, you know, and unfortunately, you know, sometimes the will the biggest doubters in our own heads, right, based on the stories that we tell ourselves and totally, and there’s this really interesting reference, I heard to This Just this past week and talks about, like, the delineation between the correct way, and whether or not you like it, and essentially, what that means is that there’s always a correct way to do something, right, a correct way to do something, where, okay, well, I got the company off the ground. And therefore, it’s time to put in those with the the MBAs and and the, you know, the track records and all that great stuff in order to take it to the next level, because there’s a by the book way to grow a consumer product apparel brand, right. And, I mean, that’s a nice story. But the correct way and versus Well, this is the way that I think it should be done. And I’m doing it this way, intentionally, is where I think all the magic happens when we look at all the greats. They broke the mold, there’s no Lake, they demolish the dam. They’re not playing by the rulebook when you think about chat GPT or you think about what Elon has done. And these aren’t things that could follow a simple path and these are things that took a long time to reach a place where the idea was either profitable or, or even validated in a in a very traditional business sense. But they were following their intuition. And they were putting their work ethic and, you know, their own money in, in many of these cases where, you know, their vision was and I think that entrepreneurs have this superpower. And they have to hold on to the superpower, not in a Huber sense, not like in my story I shared about the 20,000 pairs, that was a mistake. But that mistake shouldn’t inform the totality of every other decision I make, it should just be part of the decision making process, right? How can I make these decisions? Using the best thought process possible, but not totally relying on somebody else’s point of view to make these decisions? Right. So anyway, I didn’t think we’re gonna go here. It.

Kara Goldin 30:59
Yeah, no, no, I love this. So I’m going to breeze over this real quickly. But basically, so you sell the company, you’re out of the company, you end up doing some work, including spending some time with your family, you went on this incredible adventure throughout the world. What do you think that adventure kind of taught you before you moved on to this next venture that we’re going to talk about? Yes.

Joel Primus 31:28
Well, what had happened was, so my dear friend was someone who had accompanied me on a portion of the original traveling that I did, he died, I had been his friend for a decade. And I did not know he had a rare heart condition. And he, he was he was on a business trip down to Portland, and he died in he had a heart attack in the car. And that was it. is terrible. And he had two girls, similar ages to my two girls. And the, it really sets something off in me, because I had spent so much time on my business and to be very honest, so little time with my family. So, so little time, I was incredibly I was in, I don’t want to say I was selfish, because I believe that we should pursue our purpose with you know, a lot of hard work and, and vigor. And the problem was, I wasn’t very good at balancing that on the other side of, you know, pulling away and being able to be present. And anyway, so it was, it was about this realization that I sort of missed I made a mistake. There’s this great autobuy or sorry, biographers name’s Robert Caro. And he writes these bios of very, very rich, successful people who have kind of chased power and money, their whole life. And he likens their life, to the life of a salmon. And the salmons whole life is essentially to go back to this one spot to mate and then they die. And they’re just, they’re just dying. They’re just falling apart as they are come from the ocean and enter the river, and then they to get to the place. And obviously, there’s something beautiful about their journey. But at the same time, it’s that’s it. And in Matt Damon said something similar when he, when he won his Oscar, I wanted to 27 and he came home, and he was sitting on the couch. And he said, he looked at this award, and he said, If I had if I had gotten this at 80 Just thinking of nothing else, but getting this award. What a fucking waste that would have been of my mind energy, not the pursuit, right. And so the shift to me became, how do I tap in to making it about the process, and Joan actually enjoying what I’m doing for the sake of doing it, including parenting, including showing my, my children, the world, the way that I had seen it as a traveler and reconnecting us and realizing that time was limited. And so all these things were happening together. And we made this. We took our kids around the world, Lebanon, Vietnam, Taiwan, the Yukon up north and Canada and Argentina and, and it was, it was a dedication to my friend, but it was it was really about trying to make this shift to a different way of of being in my life with them. So I lost track of maybe part of your question in that answer. I do apologize. Well,

Kara Goldin 34:56
I mean, what No, no, that’s great. I mean, why did you go and then What did you learn? And and what do you what do you think you took away? And you I should mention, you turned it into a documentary that won quite a few awards and and pretty incredible. So what do you think is the big takeaway? You mentioned just the journey and really enjoying the journey? Yeah.

Joel Primus 35:23
Well, I mean, I learned that already, I already knew this. But I needed to remind myself, I learned that the world is very different in person than it is on your newsfeed. And on your social media feed. That was really something quite critical. We wanted our children to see I mean, I was in. We weren’t Hezbollah territory, with our children. Right. And I’m not saying that I agree with anything that Hezbollah does or not, but we were there. And we were treated very graciously by our hosts. And so it just, it shifts everything inside of you, it shifts your makeup, it shifts, it shifts, how you see the world, it shifts how you see other people, it essentially dissolves. It dissolves the judgment. You it when you share a meal with somebody in any country in the world, you realize we might have different beliefs. And we might be part of the same species. But in many ways, we’re part of the same tribe, because we all just want what’s best for our children, and we want to be happy. And we want to have love and joy, more than we want to have hate and, and stress and struggle. Right. And, and that we’re all just trying to find that in whatever circumstance we were born into. And I hold on to that, especially in these times, you know, going back to your book that I mentioned in that line that you you said John McCain, you thought about either John McCain said it to you or you thought it and it just had to do with Hey, you know, Democrats and Republicans are there, there’s good people both in both places. And sometimes that’s lost. And it just kind of made me a little bit sentimental reading that section in your book and just kind of remembering that that’s that is the truth of the world. And travel is the best way to do Yeah,

Kara Goldin 37:24
no, absolutely. Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. It’s the best gift you can give your family for sure. But I love how then you took that experience and brought it into created a documentary. So you had never done that before, either. So that is another first for you. And then you went on to really write out and create an author, an incredible book called getting Naked. And I encourage everyone to grab a hold of that as well. As well as see the documentary. But the last thing is your newest company, so Naked Revival, so it hasn’t launched quite yet. Or getting ready to launch, I should say, but can you talk a little bit about that?

Joel Primus 38:14
Yeah, thank you for the opportunity to do so. I’m really excited because this company sort of combines my, my passions for wellness, and living a healthy, healthy life with my love of apparel. And, and so what we do, we have this kind of interesting approach where we, we create a whole bunch of different routines. And things that one might try to be trying to achieve in their life, maybe they’re trying to achieve something with their significant other, maybe they’re trying to be very focused and successful, like you are on your podcast, maybe they want to have a good, they want to change their workout routine, maybe they want to have a better spiritual practice. And I’ve, through my days as a runner, I always had these routines and a routine can kind of help transition you from, okay, I’m dealing with this stressful thing and everyday life and now I have to perform, or now I need to tap in or now I need to be present for my loved one. And so we’ve combined supplements, which I’m a bit of a novice with different modalities like ice baths, and saunas, and certain lifestyle products, with with with clothing with underwear and T shirts, etc. And we’ve created these little, very cool little groupings that you can use to create a ritual routine that will help you become a better achieve the better you that you’re looking for. And I and I want to be very clear by saying I don’t believe that there is sort of a destination end to that and I also don’t believe that anyone On product is a panacea that’s gonna make you smarter, better, younger, whatever, right? They’re just, they’re just things that support you in that path. And ultimately, ultimately, that ends up being an inward journey. And we just want to, you know, be part of that as much as we can. Because it’s something that’s helped me throughout my whole life. So that’s, that’s when they could Revival is and it launches, excuse me soft launches in the middle of May, and then we’ll do the full launch with all the products in the fall. That’s

Kara Goldin 40:32
terrific. So and you are doing a it’s you had mentioned a Kickstarter campaign or not Kickstarter. Oh, yeah. Yeah,

Joel Primus 40:40
I’m different. So I did a Kickstarter once before. And that’s a great way to, to get your business off the ground, we’re doing a crowdfunding, I’ve never done one. I should have mentioned it. When I talked about financing options. The crowdfunding is like a Kickstarter, in which it offers unaccredited investors. So investors who don’t meet the criteria of the Securities Commission to invest because of net worth, or annual income, etc, etc, it offers them a chance to invest a very small amount of money in a startup like 500 bucks, right, on their credit card or whatnot. And I think that’s fantastic. Because I don’t like the I think that that democratizes the playing field of of investment, right? Why should only credit investors get a chance to invest in early stage companies, it puts it into a in a, it puts it in a mode in a vehicle. That is, I mean, if you can afford to, we can all afford to lose 500 bucks, right? So it’s de risked in that sense that you’re not you know, you’re not going too deep. I know. In Canada here, there’s limits on how much you can invest like, you can only invest a certain amount, right? So they try and create these guardrails to keep it it safe. And so I’m really excited because this is, this is a new experience for me in raising capital to do it via this what’s called a reg, a reg. CF, a regulation crowdfunding. Very

Kara Goldin 42:00
interesting. Yeah, we’ve had a few people who have done it on, on the show. Yeah, in fact, I think many of them have use social media to do it, which I think is, you know, really interesting. So you haven’t seen that kind of in the past, but they’ve done it successfully. And, and it’s, it’s super, super interesting. So it’ll be great to see you do that. And obviously, you’re a second time entrepreneur. And I think you’re more than a second time because now you’ve done a film and had to get that launched. And, and you’ve done a lot of your Creator. So it’s a I mean, that’s what I see in you and somebody who really wants to do good and teach and, and, you know, create really awesome things and, and be your authentic self, to which I think that’s very, very clear that you are so that’s, it’s super awesome. So I’m excited. It’s male and female products, as well as like you said, it’s not just clothing, it’s also more than that. So wellness brand, you can check it out, we’ll have everything on the show notes as well, including all of the social handles. But Joel, you are really amazing. And like I said, everyone needs to get a hold of this book, and definitely see the documentary. It’s super, super good. So and obviously we’ll all be wearing Naked Revival underwear when they come out too. But really appreciate it. And thank you everyone for listening.

Joel Primus 43:33
Thank you, Kara.

Kara Goldin 43:34
Thanks again for listening to the Kara Goldin show. If you would, please give us a review and feel free to share this podcast with others who would benefit and of course, feel free to subscribe so you don’t miss a single episode of our podcast. Just a reminder that I can be found on all platforms at Kara Goldin. I would love to hear from you too, so feel free to DM me. And if you want to hear more about my journey, I hope you will have a listen or pick up a copy of my Wall Street Journal, best selling book undaunted, where I share more about my journey including founding and building hint. We are here every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Thanks for listening and goodbye for now.