Getting Naked

Do you want to be an entrepreneur? Are you serious about starting a business? Are you seeking to build a business you love, and live a life of purpose without driving yourself to burnout? Joel Primus will show you how.

From the small country town of Abbotsford to the skyscrapers of New York, this book shares the hard-learned lessons and captivating story of the start-up that beat all the odds, Naked Boxer Briefs, a Nasdaq publicly-traded company that had A-list celebrity endorsements, raised over 17 million dollars, and sold its product in department stores around the world, including Nordstrom and Bloomingdale’s.

Part memoir, and part entrepreneurial start-up manual, the book delves into the personal sacrifices required of an entrepreneur, exploring the vital links between mental health, family, finding balance, and being true to you who are through it all.

The life of an entrepreneur is an uphill road with sharp turns and hazardous conditions. It’s all too easy to lose both yourself and your business along the way. Getting Naked is your personal road map to business and personal success.

GETTING NAKED REVIEWS

Joel Primus systematically takes us on a guided tour of the ins and outs of entrepreneurship. But Getting Naked is so much more than a cheat sheet for navigating the foreseeable and unforeseeable twists and turns of business ownership. It’s also invaluable preparation for elegantly embracing and contemplating the difficult positions within which we find ourselves in business. And, as if that’s not enough, it’s also a guide for how to thrive as a human being.

– Dr. Jason Gordon, Author of Like a Finger Pointing to the Moon, Herbalist, Educator and Yogi.

Getting Naked is a frank and compelling read about the highs, lows, and never giving up until you achieve success!

– Kevin Horek,TV/Radio Host of Building The Future

Insightful, entertaining, and relatable. Joel takes you on the rollercoaster ride of building a business from nothing to going live on the Nasdaq, with lots of helpful lessons along the way. This book is a must-read for all budding entrepreneurs!

– Alyssa Wiens, CFP, Sun Life Financial

I highly recommend entrepreneurs read Getting Naked! In fact, I think my first startup would have gone much differently if I had this book prior to starting. It’s a ton of fun, informative, honest and touching.

– John Finley, New York Based Entrepreneur and Finance Executive

Joel Primus and Bennett Coles write about entrepreneurship from a place of passion, honesty and realness. Getting Naked exposes the ups and downs of a starting, growing and selling a business from the eyes of a founder. It’s as entertaining as it is informational and packed with wisdom about business and what’s truly important in life.

– Cameron Atlas, Musician, International Speaker and Executive Coach

As highly entertaining as it is educational and honest, Getting Naked is an entrepreneur’s story, the good and the bad, delivered at high speed but couched in thoughtful lessons and advice. I rarely read “business books” but I thoroughly enjoyed and highly recommend Getting Naked. Especially for young and aspiring entrepreneurs, this book will help you on your way.

– Edwin Blewett, Economist and Angel Investor

Getting Naked is an incredible how-to guide for start-ups. It’s also an honest and wonderfully entertaining reveal of the deep importance of cultivating consciousness as an entrepreneur. Joel shares his journey through his first start up, Naked, and how as an entrepreneur you can discover your purpose and what’s truly important in life.

– JV Crum III, Host ConsciousMillionaireShow.com

Joel shares a raw emotional account of his life story & entrepreneurial journey filled with stories and lessons learned from the trenches, highs and lows and everything in between. A great read especially for any entrepreneur about to start their own journey. Naked leaves nothing to the imagination as it’s all laid out in black and white!

– Praveen Varshney, Varshney Capital

A Personal Note from Joel Primus. Author of GETTING NAKED.

Dear Entrepreneur,

Whether you’ve started a business before or this is your first time around the block, I mean you! I’ve spent the last 10-years of my life writing the book, GETTING NAKED: The Bare Necessities of Entrepreneurship & Start-ups

This project is the culmination of everything I’ve learned over a decade of being an elite athlete, raising millions of dollars for startups, raising a family, working on personal self-development and, of course, building and selling businesses. Coming from a small farming town in British Columbia, I couldn’t have imagined traveling to nearly 30 countries, moving my business headquarters to Madison Avenue, uplisting a company on the Nasdaq or dining with NBA superstar Dwyane Wade!

This book is a road map of how all that came to be and more! Entrepreneurship is a journey of self-discovery and through my challenging, sometimes devastating, experiences I share balanced perspectives, powerful mind shifts and simple yet effective strategies that will help you start and grow your business, as well as thrive as the human being you want to be.

Entrepreneurs today struggle with anxiety, depression and overwork. We’re getting sicker and living more and more unfulfilled lives. I know, and I share my personal stories of ending up in hospitals from work stress and exhaustion!

One of my missions is to change how people view entrepreneurship and to discover what is truly important and meaningful in life. My other is to help you intelligently grow your business. GETTING NAKED is your first step towards activating a positive change in the way you grow your businesses and follow your dreams, while living your daily life.

The first part of the book asks a lot of questions and focuses on real experiences, to get you thinking like an entrepreneur. The second part of the book is more instructional, with some basic principles I think every business person should know. The final part of the book is experiential again, with some concluding questions that are worth thinking about as you consider the long game.

I’ve filled this book with many lessons and experiences, as well as ideas and tips for specific tasks like: starting a business; raising money; building a company and a brand; having shareholders; dealing with clients, business partners, failure, and radical change. We’ll dive into understanding what’s essential and what’s not in both your business and your life, as well as how to be a great (or at least decent) business partner, spouse, and human being on planet Earth.

We’ll explore this all by travelling through the startup journey of my first company, Naked. I’ve read hundreds of amazing books but most were written so many years after the author’s experiences that I felt they were out of touch with the realities of being in an entrepreneurial start-up. That is why I started writing this book (more as a journal initially) the day I started Naked—I wanted to write the book I wish I could have read when I was starting my first company.

Writing GETTING NAKED has been an immensely rewarding experience for me and I’m elated to share these lessons with you.

To Your Success,

What Awaits You Inside GETTING NAKED

Entrepreneurship is a Journey to Self-Discovery and within the pages of this book you’ll find many ideas to move your business forward, provide powerful perspectives on life and entrepreneurship, tools that can transform your personal reality, and insights that will stay with you a lifetime. Here are a few to look out for…

• Why do 90% of businesses fail and how can you avoid it?

• How to recognize and follow your vision and passion

• How and when to take the leap into starting your business

• How, when and why to raise money

• How to pitch (and what it’s like to pitch “Naked” on national TV!!)

• Building the company’s core principles, values, establishing your “WHY”

• Setting objectives, setting processes

• Building an incredible team culture and growing a team

• Dealing with failure

• Establishing essentialism in your business & life

• Cultivating work life balance

• Mental health & entrepreneurship

• Selling your company

• Dealing with radical change, both personally and professionally

• Learning how to let go

• An Appendix of all my favorite entrepreneurship resources, books and tools.

ABOUT JOEL PRIMUS

MORE REVIEWS

Getting Naked is a book where practical wisdom intersects with an entertaining narrative that I could state with certainty, is going to change the lives of many who read it indefinitely and propel them towards fulfilling dreams, and for some, achieving success.

I consider myself a seasoned entrepreneur, yet, I learned important lessons from reading this book. The clear insight into the folds of an entrepreneur’s psyche, what makes them react to a stagnant reality, decide to change it, control it, unleash its potential is truly remarkable. Then, along the entrepreneurial path, there are the lessons learned and the questions that need to be asked in order to truly face uncertainty and difficult planning.

Getting Naked is many books in one and a delight to read. It will teach you and force you to face yourself, adjust your philosophy about life, and look at your inner mirror for a better understanding of where and who you were, and where and who you have become upon the entrepreneurial journey. Read it. Positive change will follow.

– Anwar Sukkarie, Engineer and founder Loopshare, Saturn Green System and Webtech Wireless

Joel Primus’ Getting Naked is an insightful journey into the heart and mind (& soul) of a young entrepreneur covering a decade of his experiences, with all the twists, turns, ups and downs of being a founder. Told with honesty and passion I recommend reading and learning from Joel’s first hand experience if you are about to start your own journey or have already started it.

– Grant Lawrence, President Valhalla Angels

By demonstrating that the inevitable entrepreneurial tests and challenges are actually our path, rather than something in the way of our path, he empowers us with a mindset that embraces the full spectrum of the human experience. He arms us with critical thinking and directed inquiry that prepares us for the situations that must be, and can only be, uniquely embraced by each of us on our own. And in so doing, he infuses energy and unstoppable spirit into what we grow to appreciate as our own journey of a lifetime. Through this book, the privilege of our business opportunity and the blessing of our lives reveal themselves to us more profoundly than ever.

The stories and anecdotes Joel shares in the book not only give us laughs and lessons, but make it clear that framing entrepreneurship as a spiritual journey comes from his direct experience as a creative and a seeker. He has earned his stripes in the trenches of the business arena and has embraced those dark nights that are inevitable for any seeker to be deemed worthy of being called a teacher. These come together in a way that make it obvious that Joel’s business life is his spiritual life. And it’s clear that his guidance comes from experience and sincerity.

So many great leaders become successful by bringing together more than one passion into a life’s work that is unique to them. Getting Naked etches Joel Primus as a voice of consequence in the world that brings entrepreneurship and spiritual questing into one path. His command of this material instills confidence in us. That when the time comes that we face those moments Joel foreshadows and comprehensively maps out, that his words and reminders will be just what the doctor ordered.

Anyone starting a business or involved in the business side of their own worldly endeavors would unquestionably benefit from this book.

– Dr. Jason Gordon, Author of Like a Finger Pointing to the Moon, Herbalist, Educator and Yogi.

This book delivers on so many levels! Whether you’re an artist, entrepreneur or growing your career inside a company you’ll find valuable insights, lessons and inspiration. Getting Naked is a book full of the important questions we either don’t know or all too often forget to ask ourselves personally and professionally. It’s also part must-have practical startup guide and part ode to entrepreneurism. I loved it!

– Adam Besse, Chief Creative Officer, Agency Media

An entrepreneur, filmmaker, athlete and author, Joel Primus is the founder and creative visionary behind Naked Underwear. He helped raise over $17 million, establishing retail distribution at Holt Renfrew, Nordstrom, Hudson’s Bay, and Bloomingdales. Naked completed a merger with Australian-based industry powerhouse, Bendon Lingerie, with Joel exiting in 2018.

Recently, Joel co-founded Kosan, a travel clothing company which launched one of the most successful Kickstarter apparel products of all time—reaching nearly $1 million in sales in 30 days. At 27, he was named one of BC Business “Top 30 Under 30” entrepreneurs and is also an author and award-winning documentary filmmaker.

Once an elite long distance runner, he now enjoys daily training, meditation, and time with his family on their farm outside Vancouver.