#ASKJIM 01/02/22 Replay with Jim's Group CEO, Jim Penman and Joel Kleber

Just think everyone's coming.

Hey guys, welcome to Ask Gym. We're back at training week and so we're obviously back with another round of questions. Got about 50 on site in training, another 20 online. So great turnout for training to some questions. We've got a lot. We've had one come in online, Jim, which I thought I'd ask you first to get the ball rolling. So first question we've had is from Luke and it's Jim, you've been into biohistory for years, promising this world changing, epoch defining pill that will cure the world. You answered a question of mine a while ago. The trials for the pill were happening in 2021. No updates last year. What is going on with the pill?

Well, we weren't going to trial the pill because we haven't developed it. What we're actually doing is doing a whole lot of things, basically looking at rats because the beneficial effects will arise if we can duplicate the good side of food restriction. Food restriction has some very positive aspects to it. So what we're doing is we're doing experiments with rats and, and we're trying to figure out how they change and that's to do with things like pheromones to proteins, cytokines, to do with the methylation of genes, microbes, a whole lot of different things. So what we're doing is we're working out exactly how rats react to.

Food.

Restriction and then we're going to reverse engineer it. That's basically the style. So we've got a number of things going. So this year we'll be actually trialing different kinds of pheromones we've identified from the rats urine.

Yeah, I've noticed the, the coffee in the office has had a bit of a change in taste and I'm working way harder than I've ever been before, so I don't know whether these maybe wear the rats. We'll go to our first question from the audience now. And the first question is from Rob. Rob.

Proactive steps, as far as your research goes, what's that going towards and what sort of steps are being taken with your research? Well, like I said, we're actually trying to work out what happens when you restrict food. Also another thing, we're actually looking at what we call eustress. Positive stresses that make people more resilient, more positive, less likely to be depressed, but all to do with the way food affects us. So yeah, we've got an experiment, we've got a research project going, we've also got some animals in Hares actually in Europe which have been going through these cycles, these regular cycles, which is very similar kind of cycles. And we're actually got a project where we're working with the people who are running this to actually test the physiology of the animals. So it's exciting, it's going somewhere. I don't expect to have anything that's, you know, ready for human trials for a couple of years yet, but very optimistic. We're spending a couple of million dollars a year in it. And I hope with time, as the business prospers, we'll be able to do more and more. Yeah. Fantastic. Which is great. By the way, have you got a copy of this book? No, but I've seen you online with that. Would you like one?

I would like one. Do you want to sign it as well? Do you want it signed?

I'll sign it. That's the newest version. By the way, what was your name? Oh, Rob. Sorry.

So while that's happening, we've had Miguel online say, I would like to say hello to Mike Davenport. So Miguel says, hello, Mike Covid. Pete has said Jim's rats test, which is fine, there's a lot of rats tests going around, but unfortunately not the right type of rat test. Otherwise you'd be making a fair bit more money. New Jim has said, what advice would you have for a young entrepreneur who has just started in business?

Look, there's one thing, one thing only, that makes the difference between somebody who's going to be successful and somebody's going to be less successful. And that's the attitude that looks every day at your business and says, how can I do it better? Doesn't matter what it is, doesn't matter what kind of business. It's that constant attention to the little micro changes and you work on those. And that's basically my thing. I'm not particularly great in business and overall, but I've never stopped looking at how to improve things. And I don't know, is he with Jim's?

I'm not sure. I think he may be independent. I've never seen his name before, so he might be new.

Okay. What I would say, if you're with Jim's, obviously you want to go along to meetings and get to know the other franchisees. If you're not, join an association of some kind and get to talk to people who are in business also and learn from them. Certainly that group sharing thing is enormously powerful and it's very inspiring, too. We know people who start with gyms and they go to a meeting and they meet somebody who's making 250 bucks an hour, what on earth are you doing? And you learn from that and you learn from them and how they actually do it and what kinds of things they're doing and the upselling and the different kinds of jobs they do and all kinds of different reasons and ways of improving things. And to me, that's the excitement of business. The funny thing about it is not just doing something like the same. It's constantly changing. That's why it's interesting. It's like having some massive, wonderful computer game that's infinitely exciting and attractive and changeable and you get paid for playing it. I mean, isn't that a great deal? That's what business is to me. It's fun.

That's great. Thank you for that one, Nugent. David McDonald has said good evening. Really looking forward to coming down to the trade day. So we do have Jim's tray day, finally.

That's David from Horsham.

Yes, yes, correct. Fixture fixture antenna, your headphones at your house. Yeah, funny story came out of us, Jim. But yeah, no trade day coming up March 19th. Everyone in the office has put a lot of work in. Got some great supplies coming down. You'll definitely, everyone here and people online, you'll get more details about it. Come down.

It's gonna be, it's gonna be a great day. We've got, we're going to have just got so many prizes. You've got free food, you've got jumping castles, drink everything. No alcohol. But when about yourself? But it'll be a really, really fun day.

Yeah, it's basically three years have gone into planning. We haven't been able to have one since 2019. So it's, it's going to be pretty, pretty big. Next question we have from our audience is Paul. Hi, Jim. What does Jim do after hours? Like, what are your hobbies? What does Jim do after gym?

What do I do? I try out. I don't know if I have any after hours actually, because my day is very. It doesn't really end. I can be doing emails at 10 o' clock at night. But I like playing computer games, not very sophisticated ones, I must say. There's a game I play called Conquest, which is about 20 years old or something, and I play that and I watch Netflix with my wife.

You watch anything at the moment?

Just finished watching Emily in Paris. That was really good.

Nice, very nice. Very nice. So thank you for that, Paul. Next one we have online, Bkey has said, hi, Jim. Why do we need to pay for lead fees even if customers don't respond to the call. Is that good way? So basically, why do you need to pay for fees?

Because it's an incentive. Because we found in practice when we charge leave fees, we get far less customers let down and we get far more jobs coming out of the same volume of leads. And people who don't want to really follow up don't take the lead in the first place. We've had tremendous. Makes a tremendous difference and we know you don't get every job, so we always knock off 15% to allow for the ones you cannot convert. But usually in gyms we convert about 75% of leads anyway. Some of them you don't get. Some of them you wouldn't want because they only want cheap price, which is not what we're after.

Yes, thank you for that, Bea. Willie, groundskeeper. Willie, who came down from Canada last year who said that he just wanted to say that he can't convince his wife to make it down to the trade date. So he was originally planning to fly down from Canada for this trade day.

Wow.

But said he might make it to a future one. You reckon you could be convinced to go to Canada for a trade day, take it over to him?

Well, we find it difficult. We've only got about 60 franchisees in Canada, so I don't know how successful it would be. We could help them to run it locally over there.

Beautiful. Thank you for tuning. I don't know where time it is in Canada Willie, but he's always on. He's. I reckon it's quite late, to be honest.

It was great having him, actually. It really was. Even if Canadians haven't learned to speak English properly and even when they come across here, they still haven't picked up a proper accent, but still they are. Yeah.

Excellent. Our next question is from Phyllis. Phyllis. Why is there an S at the end there?

Doesn't look like Phyllis at all. Hey, Jim, what do you see is going to protect the gym brand when.

You'Re no longer around in maybe 30 or 40 or 50 years time?

Wow, that's nice. 30, 40. I am sitting. I'm spending 70 this year. I probably based on my state of health and everything else, I've got a life expensive of around about 25 years. But I know the big guys are actually working on like Bezos and the rest are working on radical life extension. I'm following that and I'll be if it's possible to go on longer, I would not want gyms ever to be Sold to some big company which would screw it for money. It's very damaging and it's very destructive. I have 10 children and a couple of those, especially my daughter Jasmine, who actually works here, has got very good potential. She's got a great sense of ethics. The actual business value belongs to the research foundation. That's where most of the money will go. I don't. My children are never going to get huge amounts of money from it, but I think I've got some great kids who could actually run it after me. And the main thing is that that's. I would hate to see my franchises let down because I see franchise systems run for the sake of money first. And it's dreadful. It's so destructive, it's so demeaning. It's forcing people to buy stuff for double the price they can get it for. In Coles, it's changing the manual in a way that's really, really unfair to franchisees. It's terrible. I think one of the worst, most destructive ideas is the one that your only responsibility, the business is towards its shareholders, particularly for a franchise. It's franchisees, but it's also staff and clients as well. We have responsibility. Sorry, who asked?

That was Phil.

That's a great question, Phil.

Do you want a book or a bear or some cards? Yeah, sure, go on.

It's really fun, too. I actually played that game and you know what killed me? I was doing really well. I had all of dog wash, I had all of pest control and I had all of test and tags, which is the reds, the yellows and the purpley ones, and they got killed on the green ones, which is rubbish removal for the greens, which is mowing. That was so ironic, I thought, especially.

Since he sold it off. You had that card that was in your power and you sold it.

I sold it to somebody else. That was sad day. It's a very fun game. You'll never want to play normal Monopoly again. Once you've got Jim's Monopoly, it's the best.

Our next question is from Jag. I don't think he's here. He's not here. I'll ask it out for him. He's asked Jim, why are there not many vegetarian dishes at training? Bit of a critique of the food. We bring the chefs out.

Well, there's always vegetarian food around. We had some really nice. What was it today was a lunch or dinner? No, dinner. We had. What was. What was the veg?

Oh, it was like. It was like a lasagna sort of thing.

We had A cannelloni. And we had some of the vegetables which is. What do they call them? Matatoue.

Yeah, yeah.

And there's lots of fruits. There's always, there's always some because I don't eat a lot of meat myself. So there's always something there. We had lunch, we had a Thai curry, vegetable curry, which was really nice and cut in some vegetables including cauliflower and other things. So I think there's a fairly good selection. But Jack, if you, if you feel you missed out, let me know. We'll try harder. But I always insist. One of the things we always, I push with the chef is that there's got to be healthy options. There's always nice stuff, but it's got to be something that's really healthy.

Now I do have a bit of a curly one that came in as well. This was for. From Gordon. He said, hi, Jim. A bit of feedback. I recently inquired about a Jim's Uniform franchise. I have 10 plus years in the industry and worked for others and thought it might be the time to do it for myself. I spoke to Ian Tagg, who was a fine representative of your organization. After explaining the concept to me, I did some additional research and discovered that the Jim Sign and Print franchise also covers uniforms and promotional products. This concerned me as it was basically you are offering two franchises with a strong product overlap, in essence competing with each other. The explanation from Ian was that was not convincing that any inquiry uniform and promotional products at Gym Sign and Print. Gym Sign and Print wouldn't be receiving for corporate support for uniforms and promotional products. Which lends itself to the question, why are their products in the Jim Stein franchise that overlap with uniforms?

Okay, yeah, look, that's a good question actually, and I hope you're watching. Actually, I did respond by email to this one. What this is based on is a fundamental misunderstanding about how gyms work. Every division has services which are not unique, but they are where the division gets priority. So for example, Gym Science and Prints has all kinds of things to do with printing, to do with signs, but it doesn't cover uniforms. Uniforms is covered by the uniforms franchise and uniforms division. Now, the sign and print division can still promote uniforms and they can do uniforms, but if a person, a client was to ring out the office and say, I'm interested in uniforms, it wouldn't go to them, it would go to the uniform division. So every franchisee can actually cover pretty well anything you like. You can cover whatever you want to do. I mean, you can be a clean man, you can do mowing service. As long as you're properly insured. You can do test and tag if you're qualified. You can do fences if you're qualified. But the essence of it is the services that are in the contract. And there's an actual thing called the services. If you have a look at those. That's the definition. That's the first thing. It is actually not unique because any division can offer uniforms, but if a client rings up, it goes to the proper division. Then the other question he asked was interesting. He said, you don't get corporate support. Well, in actual fact, there's nothing in our system that says that we have to deal with gyms exclusively, so.