#25 - Jim Penman (CEO of Jim's Group) — How to save civilisation, character over qualifications, and life with 10 children.

Hi, I'm Anna Parker.

And I'm Miriam Chancellor.

Welcome to Big Mistake, the podcast that unpacks the failures and mistakes of top professionals.

So to make us, and hopefully you feel better about the mistakes we all make in our careers and lives, we'll be talking with high performers to understand the behind the scenes and less glamorous moments of the business world. Anna, we're back. We're back with a Big Mistake. It's been a while.

It has been a while. We're back. Very pleased to be back.

I like to focus on quality over quantity, so this next guest is a standout. But before I introduce him, I gather you've got some topics of conversation.

Just thought I'd share a few updates of what's been happening in my life. The most exciting thing is that we got a new swimming pool. And for context, a swimming pool is something I've wanted for an extremely long time. We're going to call it in excess of 25 years. I finally accepted that I was not going to be getting an in ground pool put into our house. So we got an above ground pool. And whilst it doesn't look that great, it is very functional. We love it. All the kids from the neighborhood are over and it is far surpassed how good I would think, I thought it was going to be. As in, I would say it's one of the top five things I may have ever done in my life.

Ever done or ever bought either or done.

We put it up. Me and a mate, we, we put up. We had to dig out the ground, level it, construct it.

So what's the lesson there? If something seems inaccessible, asking yourself, if I was to go about this another way, what, what could I do or how could I make it happen? So yeah, you bought it off marketplace for like what they were like, take it off our hands. You can, you can have it.

A neighbor was giving it away for free. Yeah.

Yeah. But then obviously neighbor was a lot to level the ground and all the.

Rest from start to finish because we had to level the ground and we've had to buy ladders, chemicals, filters, all of this from start to finish, it's been $2,000.

Yeah.

And my friend across the road just got a pool put in. All landscaping, concrete, everything, somewhere between 180 to 200,000.

That is ridiculous. Yeah. The economics of having a pool that you put in your home and only use for arguably maybe three months of the year if you're lucky, just does not make sense to me. I think they, they. Daniel read a study or something that basically said if you swam in your pool every day over summer it would still end up being like $20 per swim. It's just such an investment and we're of the people like, we do not want a pool, we do not want to own a pool, we don't want an above ground pool. To us it's just like the burden of responsibility of owning a pool is just way too great. But it's good to have people have friends that own pools and.

And also this pool is massive. So you've come for a swim in it. It's 4 meters by 8.

Yeah, it's pretty substantial. You definitely feel like you can have a good, good splash around and even it obviously even bigger for the kids, which is awesome. And you have since conducted business meetings whilst reclining on your. Lila, you tried.

I tried to get the On Par founder. So the golf networking organization that we have, I tried to get the founders to, who are my friends, to jump into the pool with me and have a pool party. When they said yes to hanging out at I thought they were saying yes to my pool party idea. So I'd got all the inflatables out, organized this whole thing around the pool party. Everyone turned up and no one got in the pool. So they just stood next to the pool talking to me about strategy for the upcoming year whilst I was in.

The pool swimming while Anna was in the pool. That's absolutely brilliant. And I can just imagine that as well. That's absolutely hilarious. Oh well, I'm thrilled that your lifelong dream has finally come true and I really admire the, the thinking outside the box for how you can make this happen for you and your family.

Thanks. And for the record, my mum had said that no one was going to get in the pool. None of my friends would ever get in the pool. And when she popped over and saw everyone not in the pool having me after I'd been so excited about this pool party, she laughed extensively and said the pool is a monstrosity. It shouldn't be there because she doesn't like the way it looks.

Yeah, but, but I say, you know, function should never get in the way form should never get in the way of function. Like ultimately it's serving a purpose.

And the other thing that you and I got up to was that I had thought to myself, I hear so much about the way that you love classical music. And I'd seen this on what we thought was a scam on Facebook, these invites to this classical music event. And I thought, oh, Miriam will Love that. I've never been to one. I'll get a ticket for Miriam. You were excited. We went along and what happened was that we get there and I. And they start talking about that it's violins and the music's going to be from Bridgerton. And I said, gee, have you watched Bridgerton? You said, no. So I found that hilarious that we were going to be listening to music from a show that you hadn't watched. And I'd been all excited, thinking, oh, I've nailed this. Press present for Miriam. This is gonna be great. How exciting. I'm then sat in this cathedral and it was beautiful. The cathedral was beautiful. What they. The effort they'd gone to because it was by candlelight, was stunning. But after an hour sitting, listening to music that I wasn't overly fond in very uncomfortable cathedral pews, it confirmed to me how I will not attend another event like that again.

And also, can I just jump in here, because to clarify, you use the term classical music and you use the term orchestra very broadly. So I would not. I would describe this. It was one, it wasn't classical and two actually wasn't an orchestra. So one, they were. It was four traditionally classical instruments.

Four.

So it's a quartet playing violin, cello, viola, and.

That'S two violins anyway.

Two violins anyway. And. And they were playing music from a soundtrack. So classical music, in my mind is anything that probably comes like 20th. Pre. 20th century is probably classical. So it wasn't really classical and it wasn't an orchestra. It was a very lovely thought and it was a lovely occasion, but I don't think you should let that dictate. So the going to an orchestral performance is so different. It's just like. Well, for one, an orchestra is huge. You've got different sections, you've got brass, you've got woodwind, you've got percussion. And the overall experience is one so much more immersive. The music is generally more impressive. And you're sitting in seats that are generally more comfortable as well. Yes. Sitting in a wooden church pew is. Is not comfortable. So I just want to say, like, that was a lovely event. You think I shouldn't.

Think I shouldn't write it off?

Yeah, because that was like. I'd say that would be the very, very light version of like, here's an introduction to classical ish music. But this is not really what it's like. But. But like, we'll. We'll give you this light version to give you a teaser for the real thing. But the real thing is so Much more impressive.

I think I left it and I came back and I said to Michael, I said, if I was to do the time again and hang out with Miriam for an hour, either I'm happy to just go hang out on the beach and walk and talk to her or play board games. Of all the ways I would want to spend time with you, it wasn't sat in silence. You might think otherwise.

No. It's like a movie, right? Like, you don't go to a movie to be sociable, you go to enjoy the movie. So, yeah, it's not something you go to spend quality time with someone unless you're like me and Daniel, who enjoy. Both enjoy the music and therefore doing something together like that is. Is of quality time because then you talk about it afterwards and all that jazz. But anyway, the thought was there and it was. It was a lovely. A lovely evening.

Do you think it also shouldn't turn me off wanting to learn an instrument? Because I also came away from that thinking I don't want to learn an instrument because it seems to me like it's qu. Quite introverted activity. The hours that you would have to put.

Absolutely. Oh, yeah, yeah. No, you should not learn an instrument. No, you are not. You are not cut out to learn an instrument. I'm sorry. It is a deeply lonely pursuit that requires a horrendous amount of hours shut in a room by yourself. So, yeah, sometimes I look at classical musicians who might be performing as part of a concerto, which is where you have a soloist and supported by an orchestra, and you kind of marvel at these musicians and think, oh, my goodness, it's so impressive that they can do this. But you watch then interviews with them outside of that context, and they're quite awkward, introverted types because they're basically obsessed with this one pursuit, and that one pursuit requires them to be stuck in a room by themselves for most of. Most of a working day. So, no, you are not cut out to learn an instrument. I'm afraid you have to give up that lifelong dream. If you. If you were to learn an instrument, what would you. What would it. What would it be?

It would. I enjoy singing and I can sing, so it would be concentrating more on my singing ability, which seems to me to be actually an extroverted undertaking.

Yeah, I guess it's the. Yeah, it's. Guess it's why you're doing it. Is it the performance element or is it the music? So here's a good example. Daniel and I both play the piano and we both enjoy it for different Reasons I enjoy learning pieces and getting them to a particular standard so I can then perform them for other people. And I enjoy that performance element. He would never. If he. If no one ever heard him play ever, that would. He would be happy with that because he's purely. Purely doing it for himself. And I enjoy the process, you know, the challenge of having to learn a piece, but ultimately, I like to be able to play it for other people, whereas he is like, nope, leave him be. In fact, he will clam up if you ask him to perform, and he can't because he just. He's so used to just doing it for himself and hates being in the spotlight. So, yeah, people have different motivations for doing it.

Thank goodness for performers like you. So we get to hear beautiful music.

Yeah. Well, I'm a bit out of focus now. Yes. Oh, my goodness, I am so excited. The courier has just arrived. Okay, so get this. I have just paid twelve hundred dollars.

Yes.

For a blend. For a blender.

The Vitamix Thermomix. 1.

Yes, the Vitamix. Have you got one?

You've now entered a cult.

Oh, man.

I don't have one, but I know many, many, many people that have one. And once you get one.

It'S all.

You'Re gonna talk about. It's all I will hear about around you. And it is a true cult obsession with this item. So how have you managed to enter the fray?

Okay, so this context here is randomly. A couple of days ago, I decided Daniel and I, I would make a smoothie, but I don't have a blender, so I just use my stick blender and a big Pyrex kind of bowl thing. And we really enjoyed the smoothie. It was so delicious. And then we've just had them every day since. And I said, okay, we need to bring smoothies into our daily routine, but we need a blender to make this easy, easier for us. And so we started researching blenders. And, you know, you got the nutribullets, you've got other ones, but, like, the difference in price, this is easily double what the next tier down of blenders are. So we kind of looked into it, and basically the reviews and the online, like, communities or the cult.

Yes, that's right. There are massive Facebook communities.

Yeah. They basically say, like, this is, one, it's a lifelong purchase, so it is an investment. And two, it's good for anyone making anything where you want a really smooth consistency, so it can break down things like even, like nuts and seeds into. Into a puree. So it's great at hummus, it's great at soups, it's great at smoothies. And one of this, one of the reviewers that we watched on YouTube said basically your smoothies will go to another level when you get the Vitamix. So we are very excited. So I'm so thrilled and luckily I said that the, the, the courier can leave it at the door because here we are recording our podcast so I didn't have to sign for it. So I will report back next episode. I'll tell you how it's going. How about that?

Perfect. And I'd quite like a video for the Instagram page on how that all works.

Okay. Love it. Will do. We'll will do. So our guest for this episode is Jim Penman who is the founder and CEO of Jim's Group. So you may have. Unless you've been living under a rock for the last several years, you'll no doubt have seen the various gyms trailers around the city including Jim's Mowing, Jim's Cleaning, Jim's Handyman, Jim's Fencing, dog wash, gyms, test and tag, etc. Etc. So this was a great opportunity to interview, I think our first Australian guest. So it was online and he's an impressive guy and one thing that you and I spoke about was the fact that the gym brand which, which is very available online, you get all of Jim and even in this episode, Anna and I was reflecting that some of the most interesting parts of this chat were actually the non business, were from the non business sides of Jim. It was actually more leaning towards his academic interests. So to bring up to speed, Jim runs the largest franchise chain in Australia, Jim's Group. And to put some figures around that, that's over five and a half thousand franchisees across Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the UK with a turnover of approximately 500 million. He is a self published author of multiple books. He is a PhD in history. He runs a and funds a research institute which is a big passion of his and something we talk about in the podcast. He also runs live webinars like Ask Jim and a podcast called Jim's Cast. And he's dabbled or at least commented publicly on local politics as well. So he is, he's a real legend and it was such a treat to have him on the show. People know who he is and he's just very, he's very down to earth. Like he feels like someone that you would talk to. He's like your neighbour, he's almost like your neighbor. Like you'd have that kind of, the chat we kind of had with him felt like the chat you'd have with a neighbor over the fence. He's just such a down to earth guy and very open and willing to share his failures and successes along the way. So we hope you enjoy this wide ranging podcast episode with Jim Penman from Jim's Mowing. So welcome Jim Penman, to the Big Mistake podcast. Jim, we are thrilled to have you on the show today, but as a starting point, a little left field before we, before we start with the Big Mistake. And so I thought I'd start by quoting something you said in a recent Ask Jim broadcast. You said education is really important up until 8th grade, which I gather is around 13 or 14 years old. Can you expand on what you mean by this? And, and for those who are listening to this that might be considering getting into business, what is the best pathway if it's not, say, tertiary education?

The best pathway into business is to, is to run a business of some kind as, as early as you can. I mean, I've been gardening since I was 8 years old for neighbors and so forth. And, and I did all through my university period, which is about 10 years as a part time job. Started off gardening, then got a lawn main lawnmower and developed from there and I learned on the job. So when I went full time in 1982, I knew what I was doing and it was not difficult to get going. So education, look, if you want to go for a job, a large organization where they've got a hundred applicants, they're going to chuck out anybody who hasn't got a certain degree because it just says, hey, this person's got enough sense to stick around not because they know anything or they've learned anything, but I would say business degrees and stuff, which might help you get a job in a large corporation if you want to be an entrepreneur. Waste of time.

And what was what, what did you study, Anna?

Did you Law?

Well, you're one of those special exceptions because you've got to, you've got to study a law degree to become a law.

That's right. I am with Jim to a certain degree that law, medicine, engineering, probably go to university outside of those areas. Probably not.

Yes.

And there's this idea that I've come across recently called degree inflation, which is basically when everyone has a degree, no one has a degree. And so those that come out of university with a degree are now actually having to go for their masters or above to actually differentiate themselves from their peers when applying for certain jobs.

That's exactly the point. There's a wonderful book called the Case Against Education which actually makes the point that I. Apart from very limited areas like medicine, engineering, there's almost no benefit to society in education, certainly nothing beyond high school. But it does help you compete. So in other words, it's like you're in a movie theater or in a theater and somebody stands up. Well, they get a better view but then everybody else stands up. So you're all competing on the same level. So you used to be high school was enough and then you had to have a degree and now you have to have a master's. It's all competing against others.

But.

But you know, like law is a perfect example of that. It's actually quite foolish to even require it. But the law does say you can't be a lawyer without going through this. But you know as well as I do, most lawyers end up their law degree and they don't become lawyers because they don't know how to do anything. In fact, if you have first newly minted law graduate trying to get a job, it's very, very, very difficult to get a job. However, you have a year or two of experience under your belt and suddenly you are ultra, ultra employable. Basically because when you come out of a law school you don't know anything.

Correct.

In the old days people just used to do an apprenticeship like Banjo Patterson, he was the lawyer because he learned to apprentice at a law firm. That was quite simple.

I will say though that university, doing law at university and then I did subsequently become a lawyer for 10 years really does hone your critical thinking in a way that lawyers don't have much tolerance to teach and train critical thinking.

Yes. Well, there's also to show going outside of law, let's go to education in general. You look at the, the people talk about the level of advantage you get in terms of income from having a degree. Now what's really interesting about that is you can do two and a half years of a three year degree and you've got virtually no advantage at all. So you spent two and a half years at university learning critical thinking and all kinds of wonderful stuff. But when it comes to the workforce it makes no difference because it's what's called a parchment effect. There's very, very little. And people can do, they can audit courses for free. It's not difficult. You can learn all the stuff you want to without paying a cent. Virtually nobody does it. Why? Because there's no parchment at the end of it. So it's no advantage to employers. I personally when looking for staff members, I don't even get to that stage. I couldn't care less what qualifications somebody has. I want to know experience to some extent, but mainly what I know is character. What kind of person are you? And I'm more interested in what you did in your part time job. You were a scout master or were you volunteering for some group or something like that? That's more relevant to me.

Anyone can get a Harvard school education because they don't actually take the roster as people are entering. They're not checking that you're actually registered with the university and yet no one walks in off the street. Because university is largely about signaling to your point, Jim, it's about the parchment at the end. That's what people are signing up for. Yes, exceptions as we've discussed.

Why do we spend trillions of dollars on all this higher education which has no benefit to society? It's simply a competitive thing. The one area we should be spending money on is apprenticeships. At the moment we're desperately, I mean, I mean we are not overloaded with psychology graduates and art historians and sociologists, are we? It's not as though people are crying give me more sociologists. Nobody wants them. But what we do need is more carpenters and more plumbers and more electrician and more people with practical. And they're the ones that have been desperately short supply. Trouble is, if you want to go and be a do an apprenticeship, you have to accept a much lower wage for several years. Well, that's not a very good situation. I'd much rather take the money away from subsidizing all these useless arts degrees and put it into helping people to become. Get real jobs, become in trades, for example.

And there's also the, what's the word? The connotation of certain pathways like at school, I remember university is considered the gold standard and so anyone that isn't aspiring to go to university and get university entrance is conceit is seen as a bit of a second rate citizen because, oh, you're only wanting to go and do a gap year or you're wanting to go and do an apprenticeship or you're just going to go and work in a business like you know that that was seen as not as admirable as going to university. But to your point Jim, I think employers are far more interested in reality of the, the person, their character and any creative ways they've thought about pursuing education and experience without it being inside the four, four Walls of a, of a classroom.

In my company we actually tend to use the old system. We, we get people from the ground floor like the mailroom idea. I don't even know my top people, what their education is. Joel that you've had a contact with, he's. He actually I think he's almost completed a law degree but it's completely irrelevant. He started in a very basic job in gyms, just hauling files around and stuff. I mean it was temporary, minimum wage, everything. He's now one of my top managers but he's entirely self taught and he's brilliant at what he does, but no degree or anything.

Jim, what do you think about. I know you've got certain views about this is probably a good segue and we will get to your big mistake. But I don't want to miss this opportunity to ask you about what your concerns are regarding work ethic because what you're talking about there and Joel relates to that. What are your concerns with this current generation? Because my impression is that people are not willing. These graduates coming out of university are not willing to work in the mail room.

Yes. Well, actually you've got a plummeting work ethic at every stage. There's things like the General Social Survey which asks people questions like what do you want from a job now say 50 years ago we asked people that question and most of them would say, you know, a job that's meaningful, that has some purpose that I can get involved in. These days the more common question is I want money, I want security, danger of not being fired. And the work ethic is dropping. And this is kids at the same age. And you can see generation by generation it's gone down and down and down. And the last generation there's this book called Igen that I read recently by a lady called Jean Twenge which talks about this youngest generation born since about 1995. And they are very, very low down in their attitude towards work and also things like marriage and family and so forth. They're very, very individualistic. It's all about wealth, it's personal status, it's leisure, it's security. They're very different people. It's very alarming from what's going on. They're also not very interested in marriage and family which is also indicates of their current fertility trends are going to keep on going down. I'm actually working on a book right now about the collapsing fertility rate and the changing characters behind it.

It's fascinating stuff. Jim, let's pause there and jump into your Big mistake. So when we say big mistake, what comes to mind?

Well, the thing that comes to mind is it's very difficult to choose. It's like saying, what food do you like? Well, I like chocolate and I like this and I like this. I have made so many coffee colossally bad, stupid mistakes. It's kind of difficult to, to pick on one that, that really stands out, I think. I mean, when it came to this, I think the, the worst thing that I ever did was, was when I was completing my PhD or not completing. I got knocked back the first time. I, I was sort of running a mowing business, but I was doing it in a very lazy way. I was sitting around, you know, reading science fiction from a beanbag and, and, and supposedly managing this business where other people were doing this work for me. And basically I went from a situation where I was financially well off to one where I was deeply in debt and just completely wiped out financially. Just lazy, stupid. I don't know. I look back and I think, how on earth can you do such thing? And then I got married and then I had to work because I had to support my wife and then children pretty soon and I had no choice. And I've sort of worked ever since. But that was a really, really bad move on my part.

What led to that?

What?

Do you remember the decision making at the time?

Well, I was sort of distracted, I suppose. I was pretty attached to my girlfriend, my fiance, and we couldn't get married at that stage. And being Christian, we couldn't live together. So it was, I don't know, I was just distracted and motivated and up myself and I thought I was too, too good to be out there mowing lawns. I mean, that sort of stupid elitism thing. I don't know how I, I got into that ridiculous state of mind. I look back on that person and I just, I just can't imagine it. And sometimes you can't imagine what you did in the past too. You look at me, why did I do that? I couldn't possibly imagine doing that now, no way. But I did.

So paint us a picture. You've, you've got the lawn mowing business, you've hired some subcontractors to do the law mowing for you, is that correct? And so they're doing the mowing. Then what happened between them being your contractors and then you getting into debt. What was the sequence of events there?

Well, I was kind of borrowing through my parents, actually. Not front end directly, but that they looked after the loan for some reason. I couldn't let the loans go, of course, and I just thought, I just thought I could be a manager. I just thought I could be the person to manage things. But I wasn't really doing very much work and I just kept on borrowing more money so I could keep this thing going. And what I was doing was building up a lawn mowing ground which in the end I could, I could sell and get my money back, but I had somebody else selling it for me and he sold the business and he pocketed the money, disappeared. So my whole business just got disintegrated, got stolen. But it was because I was so.

Lazy and so what did you miss? What did you miss? What were the signs that something was wrong that you should have paid more attention to?

Well, the fact that I was going, I went broke. That's a pretty obvious sign of something going wrong. Money's a poor goal, but it's a good sign of what's happening. If your money's going down and down and down, you've got to think, hey, where you're going deeper into debt, you got to think, this is not good, there's something wrong with this. I just can't comprehend it, Miriam. I just don't know. I look back at that selfish, stupid man and I thought you thinking I can't even comprehend the viewpoint now as to why I did it. But I am actually by nature I am pretty lazy. It really is. I'm not one of these, my people who are really hard working by nature. My son Richard, my oldest son, he's a, he's a ferocious worker. He just works and works. He was like ducks of his school, which I never was or anything close. Brilliant and just dedicated. He's got a top job with Google right now as a programmer. He's, he's. Or my daughter Jasmine, she's a real high achiever. She just works all the time. She must work 80 hours a week and she's just brilliant at everything. I'm not like that, I'm not, I'm naturally bone idle. I have to sort of kick myself and I say, get out here. But you stupid man, get up, do this, do some work, come on. And then I, and I beat myself up and the result is I sort of do tend to work fairly hard and get a lot done. But it's more, it's not a natural work ethic, it's more just sense of obligation, a duty, like an obligation to my franchisees, particularly to my staff, to my family, to mankind. With my research program, you know, I get up at 5 in the morning and work on my book and this kind of stuff. I, I push myself to do things.

So that sense of obligation. Do you ever wake up and say, I really just don't need to do this anymore. I've lived a lifetime of hard work. I could just stay in bed for the day?

No, no, I, I, I, I couldn't imagine that any more than dying. Because one thing I do know is that kind of attitude doesn't make you happy.

That's right.

You've got to have a sense of purpose. Like, I don't necessarily want to do something like, like the book. It's about half my time now. It's this book. I was just doing it before I spoke to you on the phone, before we caught up. But I do know that if I don't do it, I'll have this nagging feeling of guilt and bad feeling and I won't be happy. Even though it's hard to get into it, once I get into it, I get this immense sense of satisfaction and accomplishment and I really feel great. And I know that when I work consistently, I am much happier. It's just hard to do it like exercise. The same thing. You don't always want to get exercise because it's, it's, you know, it's hard and it's, you'd rather lie around in bed. But, you know, if you do get up and you do that weightlifting and that running in my case, or squash or whatever it is, then, then you feel better. You've got, you've got to make yourself do things that are good for you because in the long run, you and the world be better off. I've got a lot to achieve. I've got about 20 years of life left. I'm 72. I'll probably leave it to my good health. Early to mid-90s. I have got so much I need to achieve in that time. I cannot afford to take a day off.

Where does that drive come from, Jim? Because I think to Anna's earlier question, a lot of people in your position would go, okay, I've done my dash. Like, this is me. I've built my empire, my family have provided for. I've already left a legacy. And you could absolutely say you've already got a legacy in place. Jim, where does this, you use the word guilt if you don't get up and do these things that you feel obligated to do, where does that drive come from?

That's something happened to me in my early life, which I'm afraid I really can't explain in this particular environment. I'm going to put it in my book, in this, in this fertility book, the Birthright Plunging book that's coming out. Something very odd happened that you do not want to discuss in a normal podcast.

This is like danging something in our face and like saying, no, I'm not going to tell you.

If I tell you no, look, you'd understand if I told you. I'll tell you when you're off the air and you'll understand why I didn't want to say it, but it's, it's very, very bizarre. I had an experience that took several years. Something happened to me that changed my character in a very fundamental way. It made me very driven in some way, maybe very interested in children, made me very religious. Something happened which was really crucial, amazing, and it changed my character. It always comes down to character. I've got that kind of a mentality that, that has this. I'm very opposite to my family. I'm crazy about kids, always happy, and they're just not interested at all. Strongly religious. I'm an evangelical Christian, very serious about that. I'm just, I'm an entrepreneurial driven in a way nobody else in my family is. I'm very different. There's one, there's one event, but it comes down to character. There's a certain kind of personality that's important.

Speaking of children.

Yeah.

I'm always interested that your children presumably had a very different upbringing to how you were brought up in some aspects, and yet you've mentioned how driven and how hard working they are. What do you think caused that? Because I could also ask them the same question, that presumably they didn't need to work as hard as you did because they were born into an entirely different set of circumstances.

I've got 10 children basically in two different trenches, and what I'm talking about is the oldest children of each. So that's an oldest child phenomenon. My oldest children, generally speaking, your oldest children tend to be the most hard working, the most conventionally successful.

Anna's smiling because she's the eldest, of course. Meanwhile, I'm saying this is, this is hogwash. No, I'm the youngest.

But the second children tend to be more innovate more, go against the stream, more innovative, more. More radical. And the youngest ones tend to be the charmers, the really nice ones that everybody loves, which does fit in my family too.

Oh, very good. Okay. Well, here we are. Well, actually, Anna, are you satisfied with that spot response? How. What you didn't. You kind of avoided the question, Jim.

I think you avoided the question and.

I do want to.

You would. You were just saying that by virtue of. But by virtue of being born first, you are naturally gifted with hard work and ethic and grit.

Yeah, well, it's to do with. Yeah. Position in the family sometime. They reckon there's all sorts of psychology behind it, like you identify with the parents, this kind of stuff. I, I don't know. But it is a pret. Strong pattern if you think about. It's very, very widespread that your oldest children tend to be the more conventionally hard working.

So as a parent of so many children, does that mean that you just leave the eldest children alone and you say, you've got this. You were born, you are going to be hard working and then you focus your attention on the other children because you're thinking, oh, they're not like my eldest.

You, you tend to be harder on them. I think, I think that's generally the case. You demand more of the older children. As the young ones come along, you say, oh, well, they'll be all right, you know. But I wouldn't say any of my children were slackers particularly. They're all, they're all, they've all gone to university, they're all hard, they're all working, you know, they're not, they're not. It's just that the oldest one tends to be like workaholics and the others not quite so much. And the youngest ones do tend to be very charming. It's just nature. They just charm people. Like my, my youngest son, Aaron, who's about to turn 16, is, is just. He's just incredibly likable. Now he's not very bad at maths actually, for some reason, which is a family. But he's not lazy. But he's not a workaholic either and.

Maybe he's got the strength of the charm. So a lot of things naturally come his way through that. I've just finished reading the Charisma Myth and it talks about how we tend to think people that are taller than average and more attractive than average have an advantage. And they do to a large extent, but it's not the sole factor in success, it's a contributor. And maybe those people don't have to work as hard as the rest, but there are great instances of people like Churchill and Martin Luther King Jr. Who weren't particularly tall or neither particularly physically attractive, but yet they achieved great things and were full of charisma.

Most of success is Character, I think birth order contribute in various ways, and most of it, it's character. Intelligence matters far less than people think. Beyond about 125 IQ, they reckon it makes no difference at all. People talk about Einstein being a genius or something like that. Well, he was probably fairly smart, but reality was he was. He concentrated on the same subjects. He thought about them so earnest for so long. It's much more to do with. With focus, with. To do with what your interests are, with how hard working you are, how unconventional you are, those kinds of things. Character is everything.

During the intro of Miriam when she talked about you, she said that you got into local politics briefly and your face and your noises was a bit of a scoff and your face did an interesting expression when Miriam talked about local politics. Do you want to expand on that?

I don't know what my face was showing when I talked about it. But look, I got very political during COVID because we have a premier, Dan Andrews in Victoria, who decided the best way to cope with COVID was to shut down the whole state, including independent tradies. And I know you had that in New Zealand too. But it was an excessive reaction. It was stupid. His own department sent out guidelines previously saying that independent tradies could work because there's no good reason. We don't infect anybody. If you go and mow somebody's lawn and you don't touch them or speak to them or go anywhere near them, you're not a danger to public health. And every other state allowed this. Victoria didn't. Now, interestingly enough, we had the worst lockdown of any state in Australia. We also had the highest death rate from COVID of any state in Australia. So it was a stupid policy. It made no sense. Council workers were allowed to work in groups hours. So I got very irate about that and made a big fuss about it. And strangely enough, in the beginning, I was actually held down too. My daughters wouldn't even speak to me for months. They were so angry that I was. I was going against the government. But actually public opinion shifted with time. People thought, this is crazy, this is stupid, what's going on. So that was basically my baptism of. I'm also very interested in other topics, like housing. I think we've got terrible problems. You actually do better in New Zealand because you've had some changes took place. One good thing your previous labor government did was to. Was to relax some of the ridiculous zoning laws which make houses so expensive and rent so difficult. A couple of my kids went to rent a place. And there's 40 people turned up to rent an ordinary apartment. 40. And they were so desperate that I actually put a letter in. I said, okay, just to get my kids, I'll, I'll pay the entire year's rent in advance. And they still didn't get the place. I mean, it's ridiculous. And rents have gone high, mortgages are ridiculously high. And the only reason that's happening is because there's so many stupid zoning regulations. So I get very beat up about that too. It basically forces up the price of housing and who benefits? It's terrible. People who've got houses get richer and richer because they've gotten more and more, but young people can't afford to buy them.

What was their reason for turning down a year's worth of rent?

I don't know. It just didn't accept it. They tried to get me to put in things like my, my. Okay, what was your. Can you have testimonials when you're from your last free tenancy? Well, I can't give you that because I haven't rented a place. I've been a landlord for so long. I mean, I own my own house, for heaven's sake, as well as many other houses. How can I give you, how can I give you testimonies for my landlords? I don't have any landlords. That kind of stuff. It just didn't. And they wanted my last three paychecks, which is a bit difficult when I, when I run a, a multi million dollar business. It just doesn't work that way anyway, stuff like that. Yeah, the problems of being a multi millionaire trying to rent a house that's. You should have such issues.

Yeah, yeah. Who knew, who knew there'd be such challenges? Well, actually, speaking. Speaking of being a multi millionaire, one, One thing that I've heard you quoted a couple of times is that it doesn't happen naturally, it doesn't happen overnight. And you say it's all about the micro decisions that you make. Can you expand on this? And I'm particularly interested in Jim Penman today. What micro decisions or habits have you formed that are your non negotiables? But firstly, just on the micro decisions and how that relates to business.

Well, it's just that people sort of think they have this idea, here's this guy pottering along, mowing lawns and sudden thinks, well, what if I franchise it? Okay, I'll do it and Sonny's a millionaire. It doesn't, it doesn't work that way. It's. When I was mowing the lawn. I was thinking all the time about things like, like a big task in mowing lawns is you've got to collect the grass. So, okay, you got to put your, your grass bag in a way that you can save time. If you can save yourself one pace before you enter the grass bag, then you've, you've got that much more time, you can get things done. And then, you know, how do you shave off a half second going around a tree? How do you save time navigating between jobs? Just thousands of tiny little habits to become more and more efficient of what you're doing. And then when you employ people, you think, okay, how can I choose people better? How can I support them? How can I look after that better? And then you launch your franchise and you look, look at franchises and you look at mistakes. So why people failing? Why is this region working? Why is that all the time? One of the things I'm very keen on is that I, I give my phone number and my email address to all my franchisees at training everyone. And I say, you ring me, you contact me if you've got any need. And I say it again and again. And after one month I actually write them a letter. Automated say, how you going? I asked them about pay for work guarantee, our system of guaranteeing income. And then most of them respond back to me. But I, in a, in a given day I would get several franchises approached me about all kinds of things. Now that's actually good in the sense I can help to look after my franchisees and see problems with them and things, things are going wrong. But the other thing it does is tell me how I can improve. Why is this happening? What could we do better? So there's not a day of my life goes by that I don't think about, ask myself that question, how can we improve? And the biggest difference between good operators, the best operators, and the poorest is not to do with how hardworking they are, but hardworking helps, or intelligent they are, it doesn't hurt. But what is their attitude towards change? The good operators are the ones that are always looking and saying, what can I do different? How can I improve? How can I improve? They're always learning, they're listening, they're thinking, they're trialing things. The ones that fail are the ones when something goes wrong. They say, well, it's not my fault, it's the client's fault, it's the system's fault, it's Jim's fault, it's a franchisor it's somebody else who's a fault. And because they do that, they don't look at what they can do different. Because you can't affect other people, you only affect yourself. Even if other people did do something wrong, what's the difference? Okay, it's like, for example, when a franchisee sends a quote to a client by email and it goes to spam, okay? Now that's, in a sense, that's the client's fault because they had a spam foot have said it wrong, they weren't checking it. And then the client complains about the fact they didn't get a quote, which is the black mark to the franchisee. And so the franchisee says, well, that's not my fault, it's their fault for not doing it. But no, it is your fault, because our system clearly says you don't just send the quote to the client in an email, you back it up with a text. And if you didn't text it, then you were at fault. And that can be a permanent black mark on your record unless you can work out a way to modify the client down the track of it. Okay, that's just an example. But I get this all the time, every day I get these kinds of comments. I say, okay, what you got to do is you can't affect the client having spam emails, but you can affect what you do. Or when you ring a client and clients complain you didn't ring them, okay, what you should have done when you couldn't get through, you should have sent a text and the text should have said, hi, this is Bill from Jim's Cleaning or whatever it is, tried to call just now. Please call me back. So you don't just ring, you don't message up. You follow the system. So you're always looking at ways how you can improve, how you can do better yourself and not just blame somebody else.

Managing all these different people, having these calls that come in, all these questions from your franchisees, does it not make you think to yourself, I can do it better? How do you pass that off? I think that's always a problem with delegation, where the person will think, I can do this better, I've got this. How do I actually let them go make their, their own mistakes and figure out the business their way?

Well, the real point, Ada, is that I don't think that way because I am breathlessly incompetent. Almost everything. I mean, seriously, there's not, there's very, there's very little that other people can't do. Better than me. You know, look at something like Joel with social media. I mean, this guy's a whiz. He really is brilliant at what he does. You've had some, these interviews yourself. You've seen that's, that's all Joel's doing. I don't even, I don't even follow social media. I don't, I don't read it. I just get secondhand what he tells me about it. I don't know anything about that. I'm a complete moron when it comes to social media and how it works and all the rest of this stuff. And it comes to things like management too. I have much better managers and my accountants and my fun people are much better at doing what they do. My wife's actually better at hammering nails in. Here's the builder. So she, she's better at that. There's this, there's really stuff. All that I'm particularly good at. There are very few things that I can do. Like I am. I have this, this very driven attitude for improvement service. I'm very passionate about my franchisees. I really, really want them to succeed. And I'm endlessly so. I'm good at that kind of innovative stuff. And I'm not bad at the PR stuff too. Like, I can rattle on for hours about nothing, as you, you've seen from this interview. So it's. But there's not much I'm good at, seriously. So I know the biggest problem a lot of people have is they're so good at doing everything that they don't delegate. But for me, it's easy because I can say, oh, well, I'm hope you do it.

What I'm picking, what I'm picking up from this, going back to this idea of micro decisions is we're starting to touch back at that point on character, that a person's response to a particular decision, no matter how small, over time, leads to their character. Is that a. Is that a fair comment, Jim?

Yeah, we build character day by day with different habits. There's wonderful books. I always recommend books because I'm a great reader. But there's books called Atomic Habits or Tiny Habits, which are wonderful in those kinds of things. To a large extent. We are what we build ourselves, we make ourselves. You learn things like that stupidity that I went through back before I was married and that terrible habit, and I now have habits that don't let me do that. Certain kinds of obligations and things that I built into it, like the way I handle emails. I'm very rigorous about Answering emails. I do it very efficiently, very quickly. I have a way of doing it. But I clear my E box. So any franchisee wants to reach me, they can get to me and I can give them a swift answer. There's those kinds of habits and principles and you learn or like exercise. Like I get up and I make sure I do half an hour of exercise a day. Not today, because I'm playing squash, but normally I get up weightlifting, half an hour in the treadmill, cold shower. You have that kind of pattern of behavior that you develop and you, and you build it in. Because when you, when you do a habit, it kind of the way the brain works, it sort of thickens these neurons in your brain, these particular pathways, they become and becomes easier the more you do it, the easier becomes. So you actually change your own brain by the things you do.

And maybe, Anna, that goes back to your point with how do you trust people to take on responsibilities that you know that if you were to do them yourself, would receive, would. Would achieve a positive outcome? And I guess the point there with Jim's earlier point is that by having systems, you know, going back to the, the email and the text and the ensuring it doesn't go to spam, it almost removes the need for intelligence or even, dare I say, competency in a particular area. Because you've always got. You fall back on the system. And if the system works that it takes the thought out of the equation and you're not relying on people's judgment. It's just follow the system, follow the system, follow the system. So I'm imagining Jim, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, but. But those systems lead to greater consistency of service.

Yeah, that's right. It's all about systems. It's all about software. It's about physical systems, but also systems of behavior and habit. And I emphasize this all the time too. Every day. I'm the only person. We have a system of internal complaints which has really been extraordinarily helpful. It's massively increased our lead flow as our complaint dribble has dropped. Things like surveys and monitoring complaints and stuff. I'm the only person that can actually delete a complaint. It's one of the few jobs I tried to get somebody else to do it. It doesn't work. But I'm constantly dealing with this and then trying to pee people. I say, no, I can't delete this complaint because he didn't text or because this was the wrong approach or why didn't he say this? Or why didn't she do that? So I'm teaching people all the time and I'm also driving this through. And then when I do talks at our training sessions, I always, I try and drive through these points and you just repeat them again and again. So yeah, people become. It becomes automated. But our levels of complaints have gone down dramatically. You know, in free, in pre franchise days, we were getting like a hundred that every lead we get, we get a complaint. It was a shocking system. And then some years into the franchise, when we had people who were more motivated, we, it was dropping to about five complaints to 100 leads. And then. And as we put better systems in place and surveys and monitoring and everything else and coaching and better induction training, that's dropped and dropped and dropped. It's now a fraction of a percent. It's like more than 99% improvement over what it used to be. And that's not one thing. It's just a whole series of things. And we've got some software changes coming over the next few months that I am firmly believe will drop that by at least half. Eliminate at least half of our complaints in various ways. Things like automated systems that remind franchisees when they haven't run the client back or haven't turned up and ways of messaging clients and confirming the appointments and all kinds of things. We're spending millions a year on software to establish better habits, but to integrate them into the system. It's all about systems. It's all about habits. You can't, you can't live without habits. If you tried to live without habitual, you'd be hopeless. Like driving a car, for example, is, is all about habits. You don't even think about it, do you? Because you just, you just do this and you do that and your mind's wandering off somewhere else. It's so automated. Or even walking, if you think about it. If you actually tried to think about what you're doing with your hands, with your feet, you'd probably fall over. It's automated. You've got to automate what you do at every level. Your own personal habits and your systems in your business.

Now, you shared a mistake way back. We've heard and talked about that. Can you think of something recently which made you stop in your tracks? You've got all these systems in place. You have all these methods that make your life easier, but something that makes you, that make you go, oh, wow, I can't believe I'm still making mistakes even at 72.

Well, yes, I could give very recent examples, but My most characteristic mistake actually is rushing into new ventures that I don't really understand. I've tried, done so many different things which in retrospect were just stupid because I don't understand what they're doing, like setting up a factory to build fiberglass trailers, which was dumb. What do I know about factories and so forth? Or trade exchange we tried to set up, or the tourist venture. There's all kinds of things that I've tried to do. I jump into things and then find I was setting up an institute to teach psychology, partnership with an academic. And there are so many things I've rushed into. But I look at me. Mistakes happen all the time. Just last week it was a problem to do with my wife runs our conference center and there was something about some bills and I sent off a rather terse email copying her into somebody else about some bill that hadn't been paid without actually checking on the fact that they don't just got it the previous day. So she got quite upset about this, which is. I had to apologize. But I mean just. You do stupid things. So. Okay, next time can you please think about it a bit and just work something out before you send off something like that. My wife loves me and I adore her. So we, we got over it. But still.

Jim, talk to us about this, the idea of. Or the theme of rejection. Because what, what prompted me to reach out to you was someone in my Network liked a LinkedIn post of yours and I read it and subsequently went and read other posts of yours, particularly during the early part of your story. This idea of rejection cropping up time and time again. Firstly, could you explain a bit about how that has played out? And, and yeah, how's it, how has it played out in your life? And how do you look back on that time?

Sorry, I don't know what you mean by rejection. Rejection of what?

Rejection. Oh. So the story that came to mind was you were denied by your competitors, they weren't going to buy your weren't going to buy the business. And then there was another one that's escaped me. That's okay. If you think it's a, if you think nothing jumps out, then we can move on. If that's.

It's just, it's just more about how you're dealing with ways that people will say no to you in your everyday. So you'll have this idea, you'll want to execute it, and then something will stand in your way, you'll hear nose, you'll face rejection.

Well, I mean, I don't know, I've had some pretty big rejections in my time. I spent like how many, seven, eight years getting a PhD, which I thought doing this work, which I thought was very innovative and, and really changed the way you should look at society. And in the end it was a complete fiasco and failure. I, nobody accepted what I was saying was correct. I didn't even get my PhD. They actually knocked me back. They thought the thesis was so radical. I went back just a little while later and I rewrote it and I did get it accepted, but, you know, I completely crashed out of an academic career because they basically said, who is this flaky idiot who thinks he understands history better than anyone else? That's a complete rejection. And you know, are you talking about more than a decade of my life developing this with a complete aim to be an academic and then to be told, go away, you silly man, you don't know what you're talking about. That's a pretty severe rejection, isn't it? After you spend a decade doing it. But what I did was say, okay, if you're not going to support me, then I will support myself. So I'm going to go out and I'm going to become insanely rich enough to be able to fund my own research institute, including into areas like biochemistry and biology, which I know nothing about. And that's what I did. And since I was an impoverished part time gardening contractor, deeply in debt and all the rest of it, it didn't seem very likely at the time, but I was determined I was going to do it and I just did. I'm now spending something over $3 million a year on a research program into these areas. That's how I cope with rejection.

Yeah, I mean, but that's a good point because how do you know? I think sometimes rejection is a form of feedback. Not always, but it can be a form of feedback that the thing that we are trying to pursue is destined to go nowhere. So do we listen to that rejection or do we dig our heels in and try and find an alternative route at that point of time? Jim, what was going on in your head? How did you know that this is something that you did want to pursue instead of really listening to the voices that were saying you were very radical too radical.

Because I believed in my work and nobody gave me any reason for saying that it was wrong. I mean, I said there's certain patterns in society, there's certain things that are happening in this way. Nobody could tell me this is wrong because so, and so now they all just looked at me with a blank incomprehension and said, you know, who are you? One of the comments of my original PhD thesis was, if this was a magnum opus at the end of a distinguished career, then you know that. Okay, all right, you know, he's got a right to speak, but who is this guy? He's a young whippersnipper who. Whippersnapper who doesn't know who is he? How can you possibly say that? All the historians are wrong. See, if you ask me for reasons like why the first World War took place, you go to historians and they'll give you about 15 different reasons, all about geopolitical conflicts and the murder of the Archduke Ferdinand and all the rest of it. I'll give you all these reasons for it. And I'm saying no, actually, the reason that it happened, it's got to do with the same pattern as lemming cycles. It's a lemming cycle. It's a way that populations cycle into population bursts and declines and at a certain state they become very aggressive. So we're talking about lemmings. I mean, that's not. But nobody could tell me what was wrong with my ideas. So I thought I was right. But then in other areas, like for example, when I started this factory making fiberglass trailers, people were telling me, eventually, this is a stupid idea, Jim. And I said, well, you're right too, it is stupid, let's drop it, let's get rid of it.

So you must just have a sense of what is right and what is inaccurate. Is it that compass of knowing when the rejection or when the, the failure is a good indication of, in, of reality and when it is, when it is not. Because obviously for the trucking business that you thought, yeah, okay, they're actually, they've got something here. But for your research you thought, nope, this is, there's something here. I'm going to pursue this further.

Well, it depends on people's reasoning, doesn't it? So, for example, the way I used to think about is this. If I have a room full of professors telling me that I'm wrong and I'm some silly student, PhD student, then I'm not interested. But if I have a 10 year old kid telling me why I'm wrong, this, you predict this and the evidence shows something different that's interesting to me. I don't care who says it, I care what their reasons are. Now, it was pretty obvious with the factory and with the other things that I did that I didn't know what I was doing after a time and I should have picked it up earlier. My wife actually is a lot more smart than me about these things. She. She had a much clearer idea earlier on that this was not a thing. I should be getting bolded. But. So she's quite canny in her own. Lightly. But yeah, you just have to make a judgment. But if you think you're right, you just have to go for it. I mean, what else can you. What else can I say? In the end, it comes down to your own judgment. But it's always important to listen. People give me your reasons why. I don't. I just. I don't just want your opinion. I want that you think it's wrong. Why? Why is it wrong? And if somebody says to me, well, it's wrong because. Because, you know, history has nothing to do with biology, well, that's not a good reason to me. But if you say it's wrong for you to go into building trailers because you know nothing about fiberglass trailers and running a factory or anything else, well, that's a pretty good reason. So I'd like listen to you now.

There was a point early on in the Jim Penman story that you. And this is. We've already started to talk about it with your early academic interest where you had to decide what was going to be a hobby and just an interest and what was going to be a career. How did you approach that decision and how do you look back on it now.

When you're talking about my research? That was never a hobby, that was a passion. I started thinking about such thing when I was like 14 years old. Somebody gave me a copy of the Palpatine wars by Thucydides, which is a magnificent book, and I've read several times since then. And I became fascinated by the idea of decline. I read a lot of Roman history even as a teenager. So I was interested in why civilizations collapse. And I thought I could see there were signs that we were going to be going through a similar phase ourselves. And that became an absolute passion for me even from my teenage years, from the age of 16 years old, I wanted to know. I felt there was a problem. I could see it. I remember sitting and watching the moon landings in 1969. We were in the assembly hall in school and it was all exciting and I had uneasy feeling. Something's going wrong. This is not going to continue. We're in trouble. So that was my idea. And I went to university. No idea. And I started to notice patterns and I started to follow it up I believe that our society is in really, really serious trouble going in a very wrong way. And I believe, I understand now after half a century of research as to what's happening and what can be done about it. So when you look at something like that, that affects the whole future of the human race, not, not least my own children, my own children and grandchildren, then it's something that you've got to dedicate your life to until somebody can show me I'm wrong. And they haven't so far.

But this passion wasn't at this point of time of your. This point, early point in time of your life, you couldn't pursue it because you were denied that the academic post and you needed money. So you had to correct me if I'm wrong, park it and pursue something that was actually going to bring you an income. What was that decision process like?

Well, there was no choice. I couldn't do anything else. I had to make a living. I had a wife to support and very soon a family. We started having kids pretty quick. So I just had no choice but to focus on my business. But I never gave it up. I just never. What I used to do was I would, I would like. I worked fairly hard on my business, but I would always grab a date here or there and I'd go down to local university and look in their library and read up on, on primate behavior, monkeys and apes and so forth. And I would, I would get up early in the morning and I would put on the gas fire in the middle of winter and I would, I would be writing. So I never, I never dropped that. I never, I never stopped having that passion, that interest in it. And I would. Reading and thinking. Considering by the time I came back to it, I learned a lot, a great deal actually, that I didn't even know in my PhD thesis. So even when I couldn't, even prior to the research institute, I could still do things. I could still be learning, I could still be listening. I should still be growing.

So that's an encouragement to people who are perhaps in a similar situation where they are torn between pursuing a passion and needing to earn a living, that it's not a one or the other that you can actually pursue both in parallel. I came across a phrase not that long ago that said something like, we drastically overestimate what we can accomplish in a single year, but underestimate what we can accomplish in a decade. So if we think about our life in terms of these big chunks, we think, oh, you know, I have to have my life and Career all sorted out and tied up with a bow by the age of, I don't know, 40. But you know, to your point, Jim, you're 72 and you have great ambitions for the last 20, you know, 20, 20 years of your life, which shows that there's this, there's a time and place for things and just to say to something, say something is something's, time is not now, doesn't mean it won't be in future.

Yeah, you just look, if you believe in something strong enough, you just got to pursue it. You just got to, got to, you just set your priorities, you make sure it happens. I, I, I don't know any other way to think about it. I, I, I just couldn't imagine to me to abandon what I believe in and not can pursue it, not to keep on working for it. It'd be, be as unimaginable as jumping into a pot of acid or something. I mean, you just can't, I can't even comprehend how you could think that way. I can't even, I can't imagine in any sense retiring. I just cannot, I just can't. It's impossible.

So I want to know the answer to the question, how do we save civilization? Jim, what's your one to two sentence commentary or pitch?

Okay, very briefly, we're going through a change of character, which has a lot to do with, with wealth and the competitive nature of our culture and the individualism and the selfishness and those kind of things too. And it's basically, it's a biological pattern which was evolved to help our species cope with food restriction and plentiful food. It's a biological, and what it has to do is what's called dopamine receptors. If you get excess, like if you, if you're under cocaine, for example, and you get, you take cocaine, it puts a burst of dopamine into your brain. And your brain doesn't like the imbalance of dopamine because dopamine is a wanting chemical. So what it does, if you push dopamine into your brain, your dopamine receptors actually dampen down. They become less density, less dense, less sensitive. And so you need more and more dopamine, which is why you need more and more cocaine to feel, to feel good. And that's why it causes all these terrible problems with addiction. And you actually feel worse and worse because your receptors are actually getting less and less dense. And the more cocaine you take, it's a descending spiral. Well, in a very real sense that's what's happened to the entire society. We've got this affluence, these other kinds of behaviors that are causing our dopamine receptors to become very much attenuated, very dense. And that's causing a lot of poor behavior, including we don't want children in a marriage as much. We don't work as hard, we're not as idealistic, we're not as. We've lost our religious faith, we've lost our ability to discipline ourselves. It's all part of a basic structure. What we've got to do is to figure out a way to restore these dopamine receptors, particularly what's called the D2 receptor. Now that I know that sounds very technical, but that's actually what. What's happening. And we are one of got a research project. We're in a currently. One of the things we're doing right now is we're actually testing thousands of different drugs. And you do that by having little cells and you put brain cells in them and then you put these different drugs in. It's all done by robots. And you look at the epigenetic changes, the changes to the way the genes function. And so you look for things that are associated with food restriction, which is how we, how we have animal model for this. And that's probably far more technical than you would like to see.

Yeah, no, it's fascinating. As I said last night, I was cluing up on what on earth epigenetics was, and I have a very superficial understanding. But what strikes me about the findings or what you've just said then is that it makes a lot of sense that we're not designed to be under constant stimulus. And actually our body does well when we deprive it of certain things for certain periods of time.

You're completely right, actually, and that's exactly what it is. We're not designed to have our body constantly hit with these dopamine surgery. It actually has a lot of clues as to why you should live a good life too. How you can get mental health and happiness. What you've got to do is to do the things that avoid these short term dopamine fixes. So you don't take drugs, you don't take even things like marijuana, you don't drink alcohol as far as you can avoid it. You don't have junk food. And you do the positive things, the cooperative things that you build community, you build relationships with people, you go to church, if that's possible for you. You become involved in religious, you live your life for a purpose, Jim.

You haven't mentioned. You haven't mentioned One of the biggest dopamine hits, of course, which is smartphones, which a leading doctor just came out and said it's the biggest public health crisis for decades.

You are absolutely perfectly correct. Smartphones and social media, especially social media, that goes for likes, because liking is a sort of a boost. Every time you get a, like, you're getting a dopamine boost. Also video games, another thing too, that's the same kind of effect. You can actually see the changes in dopamine receptors just by playing a single video game. So all these selfish, individualistic, competitive things that you want to do because in the short term they feel good, are actually dampening down these dopamine receptors and making it making us feel worse. You've got to reverse that. So as an individual, you live a simpler, purer kind of life. Like example is money. All right, you want to know how to spend money to become happy. It's very simple. One thing you don't do is you don't go out and buy a better, bigger car, bigger house, boat, expensive holidays. These things are all boosting your status. And it's a short term fix. But it's like a cocaine, it's like taking cocaine. It's the same thing. It doesn't make you happy because you're always competing and there's always somebody richer. If you're going to spend money, a better way to do that is to spend it on relationships, on experiences, on community. But you know, the best thing you can do with money? This is scientists will sell you this, give it away to a cause that you are personally involved, which is my research program, also my church, for example. That's evidence. And that's exactly the problem. You get to get away from thinking me first. Do what feels good. No, don't do that. Sex, for example, okay, Any kind of promiscuous sex or porn is really, really damaging. The only kind of sex that's good is with an intimate partner because you build that bond with that partner. There are very clear lessons to the way you live. And one of the things I've discovered too is that by living this kind of lifestyle, I'm an extremely happy man. I mean, it might seem like my life is pretty hard and driven in some ways, but by always doing the things that I need to do or trying to do rather than the things that feel good in the short term, I actually have an enormously great level of satisfaction. And anybody can learn this. The principles are quite simple.

They are, yeah, shallow. Happy versus Deep happy. I'm reminded of the book Stumbling on Happiness, Jim by a guy called Daniel Gilbert, which is touching on a lot of what you spoke about. But actually, speaking of books, I had this epiphany recently because Anna and I are both like you, we love to read. And I had this realization that kids these days do not read. They do not read for pleasure. They do not follow their curiosity. The books have been replaced by these divisive devices that are filling their brains instead of ideas and lessons from history and what we can learn from other people and their views and philosophy and ethics and all this kind of thing. So, yeah, I find it deeply, deeply saddening as well. But one thing I was going to ask you before we head on to our final question, which I'm going to hand over to Anna to. But I'd love to ask, as a father of 10, and I know you have this deep interest in population decline, what do you say to those that are, say, in their 20s and 30s, who, for whatever reason, think it's irresponsible to bring children into the world?

Well, objectively speaking, the world's probably safer than it has ever been, really. But I think it's a rationalization. I honestly do. The people that are. They talk about despoiling the planet and so forth are the ones that live the most materialistic and superficial lives anyway. I mean, you can live in a very much lower carbon footprint if you live more simply instead of having all this expensive stuff that you waste money on. So I think it's a rationalization. I think people are saying that because they don't want to have children, because they're not as interested in having children, which is part of this same problem, that we have these. Under these insensitive dopamine receptors. And so children are less interesting. So you rationalize it by saying, oh, well, you know, I don't want. Instead of saying, I don't want to have children because I'm selfish and I'd rather rather focus on leisure and success and all the rest of it, they say, well, I won't have children because I'm a virtuous person who believes in the good of the planet. But seriously, I mean, the right kind of kids, how much more valuable could you contribute to the world than the bringing up the right kind of child who can help deal with these problems? And I certainly see my own kids that way. They're going to contribute. They're not going to be drags on the planet. They're going to make the world a better Place.

Awesome. Anna, over to you.

A bit of a spoiler for listeners. We talked to Jim before we clicked record and we talked about this end question. And the end question is always what's the worst piece of advice you've been given? And Jim replied saying, I've been given, given plenty of bad pieces or worse pieces of advice and I don't listen to anything. Which I loved that comment. But we are going to hold you to account and if you can think of some of those terrible pieces of advice that you've never listened to, I still think the listeners would like to hear it.

Okay, well, as I was saying before, I don't really need to listen to bad advice because I make my own mistakes. I'm very creative, looking at ways to make do stupid things myself without anybody else need to tell me what to do. But look, the only thing I could come up with that was very bad advice. When I was looking at setting up my franchise back in 1998, 1989, I went to see some lawyers and knowing what I do now, that was nine months of wasted effort. But one of the things I had problem with them is they were always telling me, when you're setting up a franchise, you've got to give yourself control, you've got to give yourself power to do what you need to do. You and what they said, I was trying to get this contract that I wanted that would be very, very favorable to franchisees, get a lot of power. And they kept on saying to me, you're being too nice. You've got to give yourself, they talked it flexibility, you're being too nice. So they want, in other words, you want to be able to control things. And I said, no, I want to be able to have a system that'd be so good that you'd have to be mad not to want to join it. So I put a whole lot of stuff in the contract that they said, this is idiotic stuff. You can't do this. Like for example, I gave my franchisees the right to build their business without limits, without increasing their fees. They had absolute right to territories which I couldn't break, but they could work wherever they wanted to. They had an absolute right of renewal. All this stuff in all these couldn't take the rights to service regular clients, often without them, their, without their consent, which other systems did. I didn't want any of that. So they kept on saying, you're being too nice. And they said, you're going to change this because you're going to find this is totally impractical that you can't give. Nobody does this. This is not proper franchising. So you're going to want to, you're going to, going to take power back with time. You know what did the absolute opposite with time I gave my franchisees more power. I said, okay, you can change to a different franchisor if you're not happy with yours, you can vote out your franchisor, you can veto changes to your own manual, you can actually veto in new contracts any sale of Jim's group to any other entity unless with your written permission of majority of franchisees. Right. This coming just recently. So over years, instead of following this really bad advice, I did the complete opposite. And I truly believe that's a very big clue as to why we're successful. Because in the end maybe I do have less flexibility and things I can't do. At the same time I've got a system that people can look at and I say, wow, this is really fair. Let's join.

Awesome. Well, Jim Penman from Jim's group. Jim's mowing, Jim's Cleaning, Jim's fix it. Man, it is wonderful to have you on on Big mistake. It has been a real treat and a very discursive conversation, I think you'll agree. But hopefully we've touched on some subjects that you found of interest to talk about and more importantly that are of interest to our listeners. I know that I've got a lot out of this conversation. What comes to mind or what? My key takeaways are build systems that make it easier to deliver quality service, character is more important than qualifications and have lots of children. There you are.

I love that last one because they're a lot of fun.

Yeah, awesome. Well, Anna and I are both in the thick of child, child rearing at the moment so it's a, it's great, great encouragement. Oh, wow.

Sorry. How many kids have you got?

I've got one one year old. We're at the beginning of our building our family. James is, is nearly one and Anna.

I have a five year old daughter and a one year old son.

Oh, good on you. That's great to hear.

Awesome. Thank you Jim. We wish you all the very best with your mini projects and we look forward to seeing this new book. When is it due to come out? Do you have any plans for that?

Probably towards the end of the year. I could do it quicker but we've done a whole lot of research projects. Right now it's going to be called Baby Bust which are actually very relevant to actually demonstrating some aspects of this.

And if you're not already, do follow Jim on LinkedIn and subscribe to his newsletter because there are some lots of inspirational stories and practical takeaways for business owners and employees alike. So thank you so much, Jim. We wish you all the very best.

All right. Thank you.

Sam.