Let’s face it, women are complicated. We have all these hats we wear on a daily basis. I know I go from mom to wife to blogger to social media consultant to daughter to customer to friend to vet to cook to… well you get it….ahhh, all those hats. But you know, I love them all and I love what each one brings to my life. One thing I have learned in this world that I have immersed myself in is that no matter which hat I am wearing, the power of a look, a smile and words can build me up or tear me down in a matter of seconds. I also have found that there is no better support group nor enemy than women. I don’t understand the latter of that, however Jaime Primak Sullivan, one not so southern belle of the Bravo reality show Jersey Belle, is on a mission to reach those that need to be heard in a tell-it-like-it-is daily web series #CawfeeTawk.
I first chatted with the Jersey native back in July of 2014, right before Jersey Belle aired and I fell in love with her straight forward, no apologies attitude she put out there on the show, which she proudly produced and starred. She made us laugh and cry, but most of all, she made her audience think. She shared being there to hug her friends through tough life battles like infertility, or giving the necessary wake up call to a friend falling in love too quickly with “Mr. Right Now”, and ultimately she showed how she balances her family and her successful career in Public Relations. Having the opportunity to catch up with Jaime to see what she’s up to now was a treat, and she had quite a lot to share.
#CawfeeTawk with Jaime Primak Sullivan
The last time we actually spoke was right before Jersey Belle came out. So much has happened between now and then. Tell a little about Jersey Belle leading you to where you are now with #CawfeeTawk and what else you have going on, get me up to speed for the last basically year plus.
Okay. So much has happened. So I launched, I say launched #CawfeeTawk but the truth is it was never meant to be like I never envisioned it to be what it is. I just couldn’t respond to all the fan emails that I was getting and it seemed that people valued what they valued, what they were really relating to me was how real they felt I was in comparison to a lot of other women on reality television because my show wasn’t scripted. Those are my real friends. I think that’s evident in a show whether it passed or not passed. They were writing me all these emails like “can you give me advice on this? I wish I had a friend like you. Nobody sticks up for me” whatever it was. And I couldn’t respond to all of it. One morning on August 20th I just made a video. I just said “good morning and welcome to #CawfeeTawk.” I’m a coffee junkie. I sit on my chair before my kids get up and I drink my coffee and I made this video and 8 people watched it. I felt very accomplished. I thought “wow, I really made it.” 8 people watched my #CawfeeTawk video, I am famous. Meanwhile, a million people a week were watching Jersey Belle. I was more impressed with the 8 that watched my #CawfeeTawk. And then I did one the next day and the next day and then 18 people watched and then 80 and then 800 and 8,000 and now 80,000. I think it’s proven to me that women are ready for a shift, like kindness can be cool again. We were created to work as a team, to be a village, and somewhere along the line we got so just blurred. It became us versus them, the haves and have not. It used to be that the worst thing a woman had to deal with at work was maybe a chauvinistic thought or something like that. Now, there’s the mean girl mentality. It goes from high school to college to jobs. The bullying doesn’t stop in 6th grade, definitely not. And when I was on Bravo, people would suck me into all of these Bravo web reviews,and bravo this and bravo that. I was very hesitant because it wasn’t my world. It wasn’t my space. And then I started to see that women are not very nice to each other online. It’s heartbreaking for me and I just felt like I had nowhere to go to celebrate my success and my show without having people ask me if I think Theresa is a piece of sh!t or whatever. I’m just like “this is awful. Who wants to deal with this?” So many men came up to me and say…29% of #CawfeeTawk watchers are men. That’s large. That’s a high percentage. And I talk to men all the time. They stop me in airports and they go “hey I know you. I watch your #CawfeeTawk” and I go “does your wife watch it?” And sometimes they say yes, and other times they go “no, I watch it because I have daughters or because whatever.” They all have their own reasons for watching it. But the number 1 thing they tell me about my show Jersey Belle and #CawfeeTawk is men they enjoy watching wrestling or boxing or a good gore fight or whatever, but they don’t want that in their women. They’re not turned on by watching women, drunk women scream at each other on television. They don’t like that. What they connected to the Jersey Belle was women who had read relationships and spoke nicely to people. I think that’s the reason why it works for men. I think the reason why, I hope that what people…#CawfeeTawk keeps also morally in touch because there are times that Jersey Jaime wants to come out and I want to rip somebody’s head off. I think about “is that really the person that I want to be? Is that the person I want my daughters to see?” And the truth is no. It’s not. Having all eyes on you now too kind of holds you accountable, not just your family and close friends.
You’re putting your life online. So you basically are being held accountable by lots of people. Little bit of pressure?
It’s a lot of pressure. I’m not going to lie, it’s a lot of pressure because I feel like I never get to have a bad day, which is why I remind my #CawfeeTawk watchers all the time that I’m a work in progress and that I struggle the same way they struggle, and there are days I wanted to kill everybody and there are days that I’m not strong enough to do this, whatever the case may b, but they get it. But I also watch with Bethenny (Frankel). She did Bethenny Ever After and she sold America this whole experience about finding love and making it work and then she got divorced a year later and I watched America turn on her so quickly and I realized that’s where the pressure really started to come in. It’s like you can’t say that you’re one…it’s kind of sad because as women we should be able to say “listen, I believe…” Bethenny should’ve been able to say “listen, I believe in happily ever after. I genuinely believed in it but it didn’t work.” America is not that forgiving. It is a lot of pressure to always keep my head up.
Right. I can’t even imagine the pressure that you must have because I know, having small kids, and now you have Charlie involved too by having her videos up every day.
Yeah. I don’t really see it that way but I guess technically…yeah, and of course you are setting a good example for your children. You want to be a mom that they can be proud of.
Some of her videos are amazing, I mean they carry some pretty powerful messages. You never know what you’re going to get with her, so it’s pretty awesome when you get that moment where you’re like “holy sh!t, she just said that.”
I’m telling you that kid, to tell you seriously, she is 4 going on 40.
How did you get connected with Yahoo Parenting, because you have a huge audience on there now?
I do, yeah. Actually they reached out to me, the editor of Yahoo Parenting before it launched. I’ve known her for years as a publicist and she was a fan of the show and she was a fan of my candid life. And from there it just sort of she reached out to me and say “what are your thoughts? Are you brave enough to do this? We’ll need real honesty from you.” And I was like -that’s all I can give. And she was like “awesome!” I was voted the #1 blogger for Yahoo Parenting.
I saw that. That’s quite the accomplishment.
Yeah. And listen, not everybody loves me. If you read some of the comments, people are like “she’s selfish. She’s this. She’s that.” But I think as long as you get people talking about the issues, I’m fine with it.
Well if you didn’t have anybody saying anything negative, it wouldn’t be real. So it shows exactly why you’re real.
My mom likes to remind me that she’s my only real fan.
Of course. Funny. Whenever you’re writing on Yahoo, you’re focusing a lot on marriage and parenting and how women treat other women. Are you finding that most of that following as well is mostly women or are you finding you’re getting the men audience on there too?
Well I just renegotiated my contract with Yahoo to keep writing for them for another six pieces, and it’s because a lot of their Yahoo audience is coming over to read my pieces. So I think it’s fairly mixed in men and women. I do think women gravitate towards parenting pieces more than men, just in general, because we tend to think we’re doing it wrong a lot more than men do. So we are looking for other parents who think they’re doing it wrong. My husband and I would say probably give zero thought to whether…when he lays his head down at night, I don’t think he’s thinking about did he give enough attention to all three kids, whatever. I think he’s thinking “oh golf is on” and I’m feeling awful because I didn’t give my middle child as much attention as I would’ve like to or whatever the case may be, I forgot to put snack in somebody’s bag or whatever it is and I beat myself up over this, whatever.
That’s almost a perfect he said, she said type of series. Has he considered that at all?
Yeah, totally. It is amazing to me how different my husband and I can see situations.
Any chance of seeing Jersey Belle come back, you have a lot of fans asking….
Well…..
Well if there’s an announcement to be made…wink wink….but let’s talk about how you are also touring and doing talks with Keurig.
Yeah. I’m a Keurig brand ambassador. They love #CawfeeTawk. They love what it stands for. I’m incredibly lucky because I get to go to these cities, meet these women who believe in the human connection like I do. They believe in social responsibility. They want to be kind. They tell me all the time like “I feel like you’re the best friend or sister I don’t have.” And that’s a huge, you know Tara, being welcomed into people’s homes every morning is an amazing gift, because I work in entertainment and I know how hard networks work to find talent that America will trust enough to bring into their homes every week, so I don’t take it for granted at all that thousands of people have made me part of their morning routine, and now international. So many fans in Australia and New Zealand, Ireland, England, who watch at night. They comment, they go “I watch #CawfeeTawk at night but I’m fine with it. Night night”
That’s fantastic. Who would have thought, like a year ago, that this is the path it would have been, knowing where you started and what you talked about and what you wanted your goal to be, coming out of Jersey Belle, you exceeded those goals tenfold by leading you to #CawfeeTawk and now being on Yahoo, your voice is so much bigger than it ever could’ve been alone on Bravo. That’s awesome, Jaime. Kudos to you.
Thank you. And I feel incredibly grateful and I’m blown away. I’m looking around my office right now and I have #CawfeeTawk mugs and travel mugs. People order them every single day. They believe in the movement. They love the planet. I mean it’s such a safe…if ever you just want to feel good, go to my page and read some of the comments and see the way other women speak to each other.
Are you kidding? Honest to God, I do that all the time. Even this morning, as I had my little notes out to prepare to speak wit you and I hit your #CawfeeTawk video from this morning just so I had you playing in the background. It’s a feel-good thing and it’s funny because my girlfriends will actually ask, “have you watched Jaime’s #CawfeeTawk today?” Because you kind of become part of our inner circle of friends through that and that’s really cool. I love that. My friends will even say “did you see Charlie tonight?”
Oh my gosh, I love that. That makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside. Even for someone like you, who I value so much professionally, it’s such an amazing thing that…so many people in our business wouldn’t physically do an interview if somebody…this isn’t like newsworthy to them but they take the interview because they themselves watch every time and they love it so much and they know what it’s given to them and I just…I don’t know. I don’t want to sound like a cheese ball because I’m not, but I’m ridiculously blessed. And I just signed two agreements for two new shows produced. And I’m going to continue to make TV that people can feel good to watch. There’s not that much of it on right now.
It’s true. Especially women, they’re hungry for that support. It’s crazy how it seems like it’s almost natural for a lot of women to tear each other down, but each one is still hungry for the opposite. Why do women do that to themselves? And it’s been proven. Basically you’ve proven that through Jersey Belle, through your #CawfeeTawks, through the interaction. The message that you’re trying to get out there is clear and women are hungry for it and you’ve proven it. That’s awesome, to be able to see a shift in that because there’s so many of those reality shows that we’re all too familiar with, that they’re all tearing each other apart, and it gives you a headache. I can’t stand when that’s on TV. I change that stuff because who wants to hear it? It’s nice to hear the positive and it’s nice to be able to connect and relate to it because even though a lot of women I feel gravitate towards that, that’s not their lives. They don’t have that drama and yelling and screaming and tearing each other apart on a daily basis, so why do you want to watch it? You got to watch things that are edifying.
Right. And that’s exactly how I feel. My issue is that if you’re watching something where you would feel horrible if your children walk in, then there’s an issue.
Agreed.
It’s like at the same time, I’m not a goody-goody. I don’t want to ever give the impression that I’m goody-goody. I curse more than I should. I probably yell more than I should. That’s my staff here, sitting in my office. But the truth is that I try to push them to the best version they can be. I’m learning. My tools are not 100% where I’d like them to be. But that’s what #CawfeeTawk is all about. That’s why the tag line is “real women are a work in progress” because we are.
But that’s part of your appeal too, Jaime, that you’re not perfect and you don’t try to pretend to be. You are who you are and people accept where you’re at, then move on. But don’t talk bad about it, and that’s kind of the big message there. If you have nothing nice to say, it kind of goes with it.
Right.
I can’t help but to completely love this woman. Get more of Jaime via her social media platforms and make sure you watch #cawfeetawk and see for yourself what all the TAWK is about. Here’s one of Jaime’s videos that I love for she shares her heart on how she feels about women shaming other women. See for yourself why I adore her and join the conversation.
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