#ASKJIM 08/12/21 Replay with Jim's Group CEO, Jim Penman and Joel Kleber

Cool. Hey, everyone, welcome. Number 120. I've lost count, so I'll just say more than 110 now. So what we do is we're back live at training week, so if you have a question or comment, make sure you leave it into the gyms group live feed. If you are watching on one of the other pages, like Jim's Mull and Jim Penman, we will see it in the Jim script page. So please leave it in there as well. Got all the questions here from everyone in the audience tonight who's at training. So we're back in person for training. I think we've got 40 or 50 here on site. Yeah, yeah, it's been great, Been fantastic. So what we're going to do, guys, we're going to start off first, though, with a question that was left via our website. So we do have Ask Jim on our website where people can leave questions to you prior. So this is from Adam Bainbridge. So Adam Bainbridge says. Hi, Jim, when you started franchising, were there franchise consultants back then or just lawyers and a lot of questions to ask other people? Also, with computers being very limited compared to today's technology, how.

How did you cope?

And were you constantly asking annoying solicitors, franchise people to learn from Adam Bainbridge?

Well, there may have been franchise consultants, but I never consulted anybody, that's for sure. What I wanted to do was very different and the biggest problem was getting lawyers to agree with me, as I was saying this morning in training, to my vision of what franchising should be, which is a contract that's very heavily weighted towards franchisee rights. So what was the rest of the.

So then the other one was about, you know, with the computers. So computers are very limited to today's technology. How did you cope?

Well, they were very useful because in the system, actually what it talks about in this book is in the beginning it was very, very heavily manual and it cost so much that the whole system was running at a loss. So we had to actually computerize to make it worthwhile. And things like being able to put type in the computer and then have it electronically sent out was massively useful for us. That made all the difference in the world. It would be very difficult to do what we've done now without computers. If I'd have known what I was doing. And I often think if I went back in time to 1988 and could do the whole thing over again, I wouldn't worry so much about the lawyers because they really just write a contract of some kind. And get it going. But I would have spent a lot more time getting computerized right from the beginning.

I was going to say about the franchise agreement. So does everyone here before come to try and read their franchise agreement? Nothing wrong with saying you haven't because we. Nothing wrong with all.

Has anybody here actually read the disclosure document?

Yeah.

I have very strong arguments with the government about what they've done to protect franchisees. The only useful thing that I can see is that when you want to buy a franchise, franchisor is obliged to give you a list of current franchisees with their phone numbers. That's useful. But these disclosure documents are just. They're just a feeding trough for lawyers and business analysts. What I've always said the government should do is set up a system where every franchisee is polled every year, like what we do with our franchisees and the results made public done by a third party. And then you get a thousand times more benefit to potential franchisees because there's some good systems out there. And Jim's isn't the only one. Well, I think ours is a good one anyway. But there's some really, really bad ones too, and people don't have any way of telling.

And the contract and the manual, you change regularly, right? It's not outsourced or anything. If there's something you need to change it.

When we change the manual, we've actually put two proposals for a manual change in the latest newsletter. And tell us you don't like it. If a majority say no, we'll knock it back. So that's commonplace.

Cool. The other thing I want to address everyone as well, we do some posts on your Facebook page. Now, you give me a bunch of social media posts and I'll post them up there. They're generally meant for Twitter, but we started putting on Facebook and the one that triggered a few people was the cryptocurrency community. So I don't know if anyone here has cryptocurrency or anything like that. Bitcoin, Nothing like that. Anyone?

Yep.

Someone does. So you had a few people from the crypto community come after. I'm going to have 200 people in the comments section. I'm going to read a few of their comments out to you. When you said your position about cryptocurrency, someone says, how is that any different from normal money, which is made from something that has no real value? Then someone says, I don't blame you for not understanding, but it's far more open, fed, transparent and moral than the current financial system.

It is more advantageous if you're a. You want to sell arms or child pornography or something. I mean it's really good for that. Or blackmailed. It's really good for that kind of stuff. I agree.

And someone goes here, Jim's boomer posting. So you get a lot of boomer posting comments. I don't know if you've heard that meme before and all that sort of stuff.

What's a boomer posting?

Boomer posting. Like you're a boomer. So it's like, okay, boomer, we're a booming generation. Someone says here, Jim, you are right.

Back in the day when people used to breed, unlike today. Another guy goes, I got 10 children, you know, actually I'm like, I'm like a mini boomer all of myself.

Jase goes, here, where is it? So Jim, you are old, I get it. But go against crypto and you go broke. So I think you're doing all right bank balance wise.

So yes, I hadn't noticed. Going broke actually going against crypto. Yes, well.

But he's interested.

I think you're more likely to go broke in crypto. I get stuff in my mailbox all the time from China Coin and crypto and all Ethereum and all this kind of garbage which I try and filter out but it's difficult. You know, why do they do this? They're doing this to pump up the currency so they can make a swift buck and get out. To me it's quasi criminal. The whole thing it's just speculation for its own sake. And I would say to anybody at all, don't get involved in crypto. It's a stupid business. You may make money, you're far more likely to lose it. If you really want to blow your money, go down to the casino. It's probably got better odds.

We're going to take. Was it Jim Coin? People say I'm going to take Jim Coin. Sort of Next minute we got a few. I'll read one more. This is an interesting one. So Tyler's go sigh another dinosaur that doesn't realize evolution required to make the next steps towards the future. By your opening statement, Jeff Bezos should have never started Amazon as there is no real social value. Ridiculous. Crypto's young financial sector.

Why on earth is not as being able to buy things online any comparison? You're actually creating an industry. You're helping people to buy stuff. I love online stuff. I use particularly Amazon all the time but for books and things. And I think it's fantastic. It's a Great asset to me. It's helped me in my life and my business. What on earth does cryptocurrency do? It makes some people, the smart speculators and pushers rich. Yeah. And most people lose money. It's just a nasty form of gambling. The whole thing is manipulated and I don't think it has any social value. The only value of crypto is sometimes it can be good for things like certain kinds of contracts because the code actually encompasses the contract. There's got some value in that. But as a form of currency, it's a terrible system.

Blockchain and smart contracts.

Right, smart contracts, yes, that's a different thing altogether. But that's not speculating on currency, treating it as a currency. And it goes up and down wildly. I just saw today currency has gone down 20%. What's changed? If you want to do something useful with your money, invest it in a business best of all, but even put it on the stock market, do something that's got some value to society. And I really reckon it's immoral, it's wrong, it doesn't have any value and it's just ordinary punters being manipulated and being screwed by the people who've got the know how and the quasi criminals who run all this stuff.

So what we'll do, guys. So we always address this. So anyone who leaves a comment or things for Jim, we do address. So I had to read them out to get them out of the way. So what we can do now is we've got some questions and comments in the Facebook live stream, which we'll read out in a minute. So what I'm going to do though is start with a couple of our audience questions here. So the first one is from Jonathan. Where is Jonathan? Jonathan here.

Yep.

Cool. You want to come to the mic or do you want to start from there? Yeah, we'll get your face on the screen.

We're actually getting a throne mic. We haven't got it yet, so you have to have to come here.

Coming from England, it's delayed with the shipping. All right, Jim, just, just want to know, is it you on the logo?

Yeah, that's right.

Is it Jim on the logo? A lot of people can't believe it.

In fact, if you look up my name, Jim Penman, you'll actually see a picture of me with a beard and my hat against the old logo with a trailer with the old logo that's actually from that picture. So there you are.

I found a lot of photos in the office today from like, probably early 90s with you. So I'm going to post a few of them online actually on Thursday. So I'm going to scan them in and post them online. So the next one we've got here is from Justin. Where is Justin? This is a good question. I'd be interested to hear your answer on this one. Hey, Jim, what's the fastest growing franchise? And will cleaning beat mowing? Who told you to say that? No, no, no, I did. Okay.

What's the fastest growing division? I really don't know what's going fast? I'm not quite small units. Laundry's only started about two months ago and they've already got about eight.

No, 20 something.

20, yeah. Laundry is going gangbusters in absolute terms. Mowing is still growing the fastest. In fact, we've grown about 50 or 60 since the first of July. So it's going very, very fast. Weather cleaning is going to beat mowing? Nah, I don't think so. I think mowing's always going to be number one because that's my regional. I've got a sense for it. In the early days of gyms, we used to talk about bleeding green. If somebody was a real gyms person, they bled green. That was the way because green was our color. But I know Haydar's chasing mowing like mad with the clean division. But I tell you what, Dog wash is going well too. Who's from dogwash? I know there's people around here. Yeah, that's going really, really, really well. I reckon Dog wash going to have a thousand one day. Isn't that right, Rachel? That's right. We're aiming for it. It's got unlimited work. It's a great, great division. So I think there's a lot of great divisions. We actually. I don't know if you know this, but if you look in the walls of the, of the, the conference centre where you were today in the lecture theatre, you actually see posters up on the wall. The number of posters tells you about the division. So if you get to 50, you have one. One poster on the wall. If you get to 100, you have two. 200 is three. And I think 1,000 is going to have four, though we haven't quite done that one yet. So you can actually, as people get these milestones, the hundred is a really big one. Then they get their second thing and we do have a bit of ceremony for it.

We're planning to death out there. 1,000 franchisees.

That's a thousand for the entire cleaning group.

So we've got A few comments here in the comments section we're going to read out. So one from deep says, good evening guys. Hope you're doing good. I met with Rocky last week regarding franchise information. One of the best dense franchises I've seen. I'll be working with him soon. Great guy. Rocky from Jim's Handyman to be a plug there for Rocky in the office.

Rocky is a good guy.

He's a good guy. Luke o' Neill's gone. Hey guys, I hope you're well. So this is from a current franchisee, Luke.

He goes.

I've purchased a second Jim's Mowing territory. I'm just wondering if there's a possibility of linking the two territories into one login for Jim's Jobs. It is rather frustrating having to go from one to the other to see the leads. Jobs, etc. From Luke. It's a good question.

Yes, it is, actually. Look, that's the sort of thing you need to let us know about. You can send it to infotechimps.net or send it to me jims.net and we'll look at putting it in the system. We're currently spending around $5 million a year on software development. We're investing many times more than all of our rivals put together in it. And Jim's Jobs is a part of it. It's already a good program, but it's becoming absolutely monumental within a few months. Sometime next year you won't need any accounting package. It'll do it all.

That's the plan, right? Because a lot of people have Xero or they have Myop to get it out, right?

We shouldn't need any of that kind of stuff. And we'll do all sorts of amazing stuff. One of the things I didn't talk about this morning, but by early next year sometime we're gonna have a system whereby, if you wish, if you're using teams jobs, you can actually let the system know when you've got spare time in the day and it knows where you're going to be and that the system or the call center will actually book the job straight into your diary. So if it knows that this afternoon you've got some spare time and you're not too far away, like five minutes away, it'll just book the job in. It'll tell you, you just got to turn up.

We got one of you as well from Julian Perry's gone here. Hi, Jim. I'm 16 and have started a small mowing business mainly doing small body corps, which is good. What advice Would you give me to get more work? Already doing body corpse at 16, which I think is pretty good.

I think it's a great start. I started working at 8 in my first gardening job. Look, amaze your customers and every day look at how you can do it better. That's the one bit of advice. Look, I have no great talent for business. I made more stupid mistakes than anybody I know, which I talk about in this book to a large extent. And there's even more. There's. But I have the attitude right from the beginning I said, how can I improve what I do? And that is the real secret to it. How can you amaze your customers? Well, how can you do a better job? How can you. Yeah, how can you increase your rates? Because charging cheap is not the way to run a business. Great quality is. About to run a business. And then work out ways to approach the neighbors and so forth. Maybe just mow somebody's. When you're mowing the nature strip, just do a bit on the nature strip over there. Just do it really nice and neatly, let the customer be impressed and let's see the difference between their place and what you're doing. Just amaze customers. You'd be very surprised how easy it is to make a living doing this at 16. You've got a great start. I didn't really start full time until I was like 29 and I've done all right. But imagine if I started at 16, how much better off I'd be.

That was a good one there, Julian. Great question. So what we do is we've got prize view as well, guys. So anyone who's left a question here at the end. The monopoly, the teddy bear and the cards we give away, those malopolies as well in time for Christmas are probably $40 cost price for franchisees and for Zors and for anyone. So they're really good to give to your customers as well. Alright, the next question here we've got is from Emily. Where's Emily? Emily here? Yep. Cool. This is a good question, Emily. Like this one.

Hi, Jim. So my question was did the fees and franchisees stop during the COVID lockdowns?

Question. Did the fees and the franchisees stopped during the lockdown?

Yes, they absolutely did. I know one of our competitors in New Zealand actually made a practice of charging franchisees for fees during the lockdown when you were legally unable to work. And there was a big fuss in the media. There's not one person in gyms would consider that to be even feasible. It didn't even cross anybody's mind. We just had a system, as the government said, lockdown. We suspend the franchise fees completely. You know, one of the things about it too, and this is something I'm very proud of, not from myself, but from a franchisor's point of view. They stopped paying fees, they stopped charging fees. Every franchisee was completely suspended, but the franchisors still kept on winging them. I heard this again and again. In fact, during that lockdown, when the franchisors got no income at all, they were actually spending more time ringing franchisees than they had when they were getting paid because people were under a great deal of stress and they wanted to look after their own people, which is very characteristic. And most franchisors in gyms are really, really good people and they really care. And I think it was horrible what happened. It really was, particularly in Victoria when we were shut down for two months. But, you know, when we had people who were in really serious difficulties, other franchisees just came round to them. We had one girl who was actually a student, so she had no government support. She was doing dog wash. She couldn't work, and people gathered around. People were giving her food vouchers and stuff and all kinds of things. We actually made a bit of money, but minor. We also said if she had got evicted from a host, which is a possibility, she would come and stay here in the conference centre for no charge. So she got through it somehow, and last I heard, she was making $4,000 a week. So she's doing pretty well. But I think it was really heartwarming. I remember one test and tag guy in Victoria rang me up and he just said, jim, how can I help? He said, look, I can't work either, but I'm pretty well off financially. Are there franchisees that really need help? He was just willing. Even though he was out of work himself, he was willing to help out. I felt really. I never felt so proud of my people as when that happened.

I know. Rachel, you did a lot of. You did a lot of Zoom quizzes and stuff, like every week or even more than that, weren't you? You and Mike did it as well. You're doing, like, weekly stuff, or even before that, just trying. Everyone engaged. A lot of franchises were doing the same thing. What else were you doing during that time?

Phone calls, Zoom. We just had game nights and then we had phone calls, Zooms game nights for those who can't hear because Rachel's not at the. So, yeah, it was good. Wasn't. Was A terrible time. It was very, very stressful because I was talking unlike someone like Daniel Andrews sitting comfortably in Spring street, away from it all with all his fat cat advisors around him. You know, I was in touch with the people who were really suffering and hurting at the ground level. But in a sense it put out the best in everybody.

We've got some more comments online. So we got From David, Dave McDonald's gone here. Hello Jim. How many people in training today? How many people in person?

So in person it's about 40.

40 something. Mic, is it all?

50 and 50.

50 and 50. So around 100 in total.

So it's a good training session. 100 is good.

There's gone with a follow up question as well. So if you are watching online or even here, guys, you want to ask Jim a question, put it into the comments section here. We will get to it. So David's gone here. This is a bit of an obscure one. He's gone. Jim, what do you think the biggest risk to humanity will be in the next 10, 50 to 100 years? Cryptocurrency. Next 10, isn't it?

Nah, sure, if anybody wants to know what I think about such things. Www.buyhistory.org and you can also get a link through the Gyms website. I believe that our civilization is going through a similar kind of decadence that happened to the Roman Empire and for similar reasons, which is to its wealth and urbanization. And it's an extreme danger to our society and to the world in general. So that's not what you expect. It's not global warming, it's not cryptocurrency, it's not anything. I think it's a very great threat. In actual fact, one of the things that's why this is important is because this is based on Ph.D. i did back in the 70s and early 80s which came to this conclusion, that came to the conclusion that this is a biological process and ultimately an epigenetic process. So I'm actually funding a research program through La Trobe University which is looking at the epigenetic basis of character and looking at ways to reverse this problem, which would help with a lot of issues like drug addiction and so forth. And so yes, that is the biggest danger we're facing. And actually I say after that the biggest danger we're facing is genetically engineered viruses, which is what I believe the COVID 19 is. I don't know if anybody's read a book called what really Happened in Wuhan? Just finished it and it makes a very, very convincing case this was a deliberately genetically modified virus modified by Chinese scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology to be really, really, really easy to catch. And it was accidentally released. Obviously they didn't mean to. But this is the first biological weapon to be and I think that is a huge, huge danger for the future.

And Leonline's going to Jim's drug cancelling maybe you can start that up, help combat what you think is going to happen.

Jim's drug cancelling Except I think actually if we can do this thing properly, we could actually change people's nature so they wouldn't want to. The problem with drugs and a lot of things like that is that people have very short term thinking. They're thinking what could I feel good to do right now? What we want to do is to get to a situation where they think okay, what do I really want to achieve in life? And if you really think long term, you're not going to do things like take a lot of drugs or drink alcohol to excess or throw away your money on gambling or cryptocurrency or all the other stupid things you can do to waste your time and your money. You will think long term, what's in the best interest, work hard on the business, get an education, do something, marry, have kids, this kind of stuff. Do something for the long term benefit of yourself and society. And what this change should do, if we can work out the epigenetic triggers, we can actually help people to have that kind of long term character. So we'll take away the need for not just counseling, but actually take away the biological basis of why people get addicted to drugs.

What people might not know is that that's where you're when you wanted to build the business and use the funds to go into to do the buying.

Essentially what happened, I did my PhD in 70s early 80s and I meant to be an academic. And because my theories were wildly radical, there was no chance of a job. I realized that eventually and I was broke, deeply in debt. And I said before that time I'd never thought of making money as a goal in life. And I said the only thing I can do is to build a business that's going to be successful enough that I can afford to fund my research. So I've done that. And about 10 years ago I launched my first program through professor at La Trobe University. And in those days a quarter million dollars a year, as I said, now it's blown to a couple of million dollars a year. And as the business grows, I intend to put More and more into it. I live actually quite simply. I don't have any desire to have a lifestyle of the rich and famous. My car that I drive is probably worth $5,000. I'm notorious skinflint. But I love my research. I think that's my major aim and passion in life, is to achieve something in that area.

We'll get a few comments in response to this one as well. Someone goes, wow, that's interesting. Didn't know you had a PhD then. Dave Stewart's gone. Jim, what are you worried about? Are you worried about Omicron or is it just a lot of hysteria? Which is a follow up to what you were saying before.

Omicron could be bad. We don't know yet. That's the thing. Very early indications are it's highly infectious but not particularly serious. It might even be positive because viruses with time tend to become more benign. Like even diseases that really kill the disease are like examples I could give. But they tend to become more benign with time because the ones that allow the host to live a bit longer and carry the infection are going to actually do better than the ones that kill your hosts very quickly. So that's always this tendency. And I think this will happen with COVID 19 as well.

Cool. We've got a few comments in there which are a bit more detail we'll get to in a minute as well. So we got one here from. Is it Camille? That dog wash question? Camille? Yeah. It's a bit of a shock when I just say your name out of the loo. It's Camille from dogwash.

So do you see a demand in a James Barber potentially in the future? Because we have dog grooming, so Jim's Barbers. Yeah, yeah, sure, sure. I think it'd be a good one.

You'd be the first customer. Jim's Barbers.

I've got to me, it's a search and destroy. There's hardly anything left up there now. My wife cuts my hair, actually. Before I joined, before I married her, I used to. I used to cut my own hair. What I'd do sitting at my computer, I'd just reach out and something. I'd get a pair of scissors and cut it off. And when I met my wife for the first time, April 20, 2001, the first thing you'd notice about me, I had the most appalling haircut you could possibly imagine.

Not too bad. I've got some photos up there which I'm gonna post on Thursday for some throwback stuff.

It wasn't too I was dressed in these shabby old clothes. My jacket had oil stone cause I was cooking for my kids and I drove this most decrepit old car. She thought this guy's got no money at all, he's in poverty. He's in poverty. Still married me though.

You'd fit him pretty well in Brunswick and Fitzroy now. He'd be a pretty cool hipster I reckon with those sort of shaggy clothes and the old Kingswood.

Well my wife cuts my hair now so I look a bit more respectable.

But was there a Jim's Mobile hairdressers at one stage or wasn't there or. No, they had never been.

We tried a lady called, she wanted to under her own brand though and it never worked okay. It's one of the experiments when we did we tried using a different brand because we thought it wouldn't work. Well I think Jim's Barbers would be a good one.

Jim's Trims.

Jim's Trims. Yeah, Jim's Trims. No, seriously. Probably for men more but you think about it like what my wife does is good. I just sit at the kitchen table and do something else and she just cuts my hair and takes the bath.

She used the old Peter's ice cream thing. Does the haircut you do.

I haven't got that kind of hairstyle anyway. Doesn't look like it but she does it. It takes about what, 10 minutes now compared with the bother of going to a barber. Isn't that a great. Wouldn't that be a great service? People haven't got that much time and I reckon you go into a business and you could just cut people's hair and you could do it and you could charge them. I don't know. 10 minute cut could be Jim's Dog Watch.

You do the cross division.

20 bucks that'd fit out 60 bucks an hour type model. I reckon that'd be good.

Yeah. Well Jim's Dog Wash could do Cross Divisional put themselves down for the Jim's Trims leads as well.

I don't know, the blow dryer would probably work fairly well but yeah, have.

A bath at the same time, you know some people might need that actually.

There'S probably at least 100 divisions we could do. It's more a case of finding someone to start them up and put the energy into it.

Jim's Trims there it is an opportunity for someone to start it up there. But a few more questions and comments in the feed here as well. So we've got one from Adrian Smith says hi Jim History always repeats itself. Jennifer Thixton's gone in. Not a question. Just want to say thank you to Jim. I wouldn't be where I am without Jim's. I couldn't be more grateful to be able to do what I love every day. So Jen's from Dogwash in most Melbourne. We've got Willie from over in Canada. So we do have Jim's mowing in Canada. He says g' day Jim. Groundskeeper Willie saying hi from Canada just salted the snow which is salted for the snow in the forecast. So they've got to deal with snow over there as the mowing franchise in Canada.

Well, I don't know Willie, we probably want to swap it but you're gonna have some of our heat and we're gonna have some of your snow. Wouldn't do any harm at all.

Absolutely. So guys, we've got one here from. Where's Terence Terry? Terrence Terry. He just left. All right, well this one is a pretty. This one's up your alley. Very scientific question. He's gone. What's your opinion of Darwin's theory of evolution?

Oh yeah, I'm a big hot evolutionist actually. I really love evolution theory. My ideas about society are very evolution based. It's to do with the reason that civilization becomes decadent is actually because of a mechanism that was evolved to control animal populations relation to food. That's where it comes from. So I'm deeply into biology and I was since the age of about 15. I always think that's look to evolutionary explanations for everything. Evolution's an amazing theory. A wonderful theory.

Going from Jeremy Lynn's gone. Have you heard of the TikTok conspiracy? You're not on TikTok though, are you Jim? I know we've got TikTok for you. You're pretty big on that. That ancient Rome wasn't real and that there was no Roman Empire. The theory states that it was all the Greeks and the Romans were actually a nomadic group with no empire. Hence the name Roman in brackets of Roman.

That's right.

I don't know if he's being sarcastic. It's a legit one.

Yeah. And the earth is flat and the moon is made of green cheese and then there's Qanon with a pedophile thing from a basement from gongs. There's a lot of stupid theories around, I must say all that sort of stuff.

So no, definitely not buying into that one. No. So we've got one here as well from Blazegone. Have you read Beyond Good and Evil as well. You read Blood Books?

No.

All right, cool. So we got one here, another one from Ash. Is it from Ash here? Ash is coming up. If you have got a question or comment, guys, make sure you chuck them in there. We will get to them as well.

My question is, what is your best tip for the beginners?

What division are you going to be, Ash? What division?

Gym's cleaning.

Gym's cleaning. Yeah.

It's what I said this morning several times over. Ash, look to what you do every day and ask yourself the question, how can I do it better? That is the one thing that makes all the difference. Just constant look at what you're doing. The best people are not those who are the smartest or the best educated or the best looking. I mean, come on. It's people who just look and say, what can I do? How can I do this job better? How can I do this job faster? How can I do a better job? How can I cut down traveling time? How can I make my customers more delighted? It's that process. And I do this every day of my life. Every day I ask myself that question, including weekends, including holidays, including Christmas Day. I never, ever, ever stop asking that question. And it's surprising. You just. There's no upper limit to how far you can go and how much you can improve. No matter how good you are, you can still do better. You have a better business, more lucrative, more fun.

Has anyone seen that video of Jim saying that online at all? So if you ever need that inspiration, go to the YouTube channel. We've got that pretty much exact word for word from the show.

I say it a lot.

Yeah, you do.

But it's so important, actually, it's the difference between the good people and the not so good people is so much in that one attitude. The ones who are not doing so well will say it's the fault of somebody else. They've got to change. The good people say, what can I do? Okay, somebody was difficult. What should I have done different? How could I handle that client better? What can I do differently next time? That's the secret of it.

That's a great question. Check out the YouTube channel or Jim's profiles. We have that exact clip. If you ever need motivation or reminders.

I've been talking to some wonderful people who've actually been in business and at dinner tonight, and I think you've got some great potential in what you've done in the past. In the business that you run, you've got that kind of business mind. You could do very Very well. You might actually surprise your.

Great question. Some good words of encouragement there from Jim. We've got some more comments in the feed, which is fantastic. Keep them coming. Scott Francis, gone. There is so many people who look up to you, but who do you look up to? First day of training today from Scott Francis. So welcome.

I just finished a wonderful book called Catch of the Decade, which actually you recommended to me, and it's just amazing. I just finished that a few days back about people who did Catch of the day and they're one of the founders of what's now menulog was called different name.

Scoopon as well. I did as well.

Scoopon. That was a great book. I really admired those guys. Other people I admire a lot are people like Dave Packard of Hewlett Packard. That's a great book. I admire Bill Gates, actually, which is controversial. Again, I get a lot of prank about that one, but not so much. I mean, he's a great business leader, but he's also a great philanthropist. And I think the model of what he's done of looking at how you can most profitably use money in the most in the best possible way to affect the maximum number of lives, things like bed nets in Africa, those kinds of things. The Gates foundation has actually already saved millions of lives. I think he's the single most admired person for me in the whole planet for what he's done. Just finished a book of his too, about global warming and so forth. There's many people I really, really admire, I think the Netflix founders, people like Reed Hastings. That's great, too. There's a wonderful book called no Rules Rules. I would recommend to anybody that you read a lot and you listen a lot. Talking books are fantastic. I was talking about this at dinner tonight. If you're actually out there working and there's not too much noise, have a talking book hunger and listen to great ideas. And the more you listen, you just pick up things from all over the place. Just ideas, inspiration, and different ways of looking at things. It's fantastic.

A lot of franchisees I know in mowing especially listen to mowing podcasts. A lot of lawn care and garden shows and stuff. And I listen to horticulturalists and stuff all day.

We are so blessed. This little thing here is an absolute, absolute magic. This is worth so much to me. Wherever I'm going, I'm listening, listening, listening, listening. I've had so many great books that I've just read just recently, like Whatever happened to Wuhan? I just mentioned to you another one called Red Roulette. Which is about some of the way that business and politics work in China, which is really, really scary stuff. And so many brilliant. Another one I've read called San Francisco, which is about drug addiction and homelessness, particularly in San Francisco and elsewhere, and the way that current policies aren't dealing with it.

You'd be in their top 1% for how much you actually consume, wouldn't you, surely? Didn't you get some 10 free credits or something like from that?

Yeah, I do, actually. They keep on giving me these massive number of credits and I read them all in a few weeks. It's great. I think talking books are fantastic, but I also read fiction, too. I just looked at the fiction. There was one. I was reading a book called the End of Man, which is about a virus that wipes out 90% of men on the planet and how that changes things. That was interesting.

To make things a lot better.

Well, it was interesting. I just love reading all the time, listening. And also things like A New Scientist, the Economist, Atlantic Weekly, Australian. A lot of good stuff in there.

How quick do you read, though, because you get through all that sort of stuff while listening.

I read very fast, actually. I was a bit short of sleep last night, so I read about half a book on coke.

The drink.

The drink, okay, right, yeah. Not the dessert.

No, no, no, no, the drink.

It's very interesting, actually, and about how it originally had cocaine in it and how they changed the formula and how they did it and the different people and the personalities were involved and it's a lot of great stuff. And the New Coke fiasco and what happened and how that was the worst mistake, you know, you all know about New Coke, how they changed the formula to make more like Pepsi, and it was disastrous. But in actual fact, it was also a great business because it actually locks it. Because that furore about the change of the formula actually boosted the sales of Coke enormously when it came back. And the strange thing too is that I didn't realize until last night when I was reading this, is that the taste of New Coke, which was designed to be more like Pepsi, which is a bit sweeter and more smooth. Actually, dieted Coke actually tastes a lot like that. So diet tastes. Actually, Coke actually tastes a lot more like Pepsi. Now, I don't believe in diet drink because I think artificial sweeteners are really bad, but this is something I discovered last night and how they handled that whole thing and what it meant and the kind of mistakes they made. It was really fascinating stuff. I was just lying there Reading because I couldn't sleep and I was reading this wonderful book about all the trials and travails of Coke and I finished it just early this morning.

There you go. Does anyone else do that in the audience? Give it a go next time when you get up.

I really recommend it. You know, one thing, we were talking about that today. We've made more changes in gyms over the past two years than we have in the previous two decades. Everything's changed. The way we support franchisees, the software that we use, the way with our vision for it, selling franchises, a whole stack of stuff. And I reckon so much of that is just driven by reading and listening and always being bombarded with new ideas. Look, I'm 69, I'm supposed to be some conservative, has been. I've never been more flexible, more alive, more energetic in my mind. And I really think that keeping yourself obviously physically fit is very, very important, but also intellectually in your mind, be flexible.

A few comments and questions here, which we'll get to in the comments section, but one here from Wei. Where is way, what division are you going to be? Wei? Which division? Which Gyms Cleaning. Gyms cleaning. My question is, is it easy taking over a franchisee's business? Is it easy taking over a franchisee's business?

Well, you're buying a split, aren't you?

No, the whole business.

So what do you mean? Oh, no, you're buying an existing business?

Yes. With customers?

Yeah, with customers. It's actually good if you can do that way because it's. It gives you a basis of regular clients, which makes it very difficult. I think you told me they're making about $200 per week, is that right? So that's a good basic income, so that you know, you've got, you know what to do, you know how much to charge, you've got a good basis of clients, you can get extra work to build on that because you should be making a lot more than that, obviously, fairly quickly. But yes, it's a very good idea if you can buy a split or a resale at a reasonable price, it's a really good way to get going because in one month's time I'm going to send you an email to ask you how you're going. And my bet is that you'll say you're doing very well, but she has to speak into you too. This is a lady who spent accounting degree, haven't you? And been to the uk, studying there at the University of York and stuff. And I just think you've got great. Both of the ladies that I was talking to at dinner will do really, really well.

Great to hear a few questions and comments in line, which I'm going to get to real quickly. So, Pasindu's gone. What are your thoughts on franchisees responsibility towards the franchisor and vice versa, specifically, or especially when representing a brand from Persindu.

Your franchisee responsibility to the franchisor? I never think of it that way.

Yeah. And vice versa when.

Well, franchisors have responsibility to franchisees because you're looking after your clients, your frontline clients. So that's very strong obligation, I would think. Franchisees have an obligation towards everybody, towards the brand, to their franchisor, but also to their fellow franchisees, those around and those far away, because everything that we do affects everybody else. If you go out and give fantastic service and you're doing cleaning, for example, that means to say that when somebody wants their dog washed or their lawns mowed or their building inspection done, they're more likely to call us. On the other hand, poor service has a dramatically big effect. So, yes, I think we all have a responsibility for each other, But I think, to be fair, most franchisees do think that. They really do. They feel a sense of responsibility to each other. And what I was talking about, what happened during the lockdown, is a perfect example of that. And I'm often warmed by stories like a franchisee who's new and just an experienced franchisee takes them under their wing and they'll spend half an hour, an hour talking to them in the evening, just guiding them through things. I hear a lot of stories like this and it's wonderful, it really is. It's not something that we can really control, but I think the culture of gyms lends itself to that kind of idea that we look after each other, we help each other. And I think the kind of modeling that franchisors does, their example of how they care for their franchisees actually tends to spread, and that example does tend to spread, so that franchisees look after each other as well.

Now, Pisino, if you want more details on that, just put it in the comments. Sorry. And we'll get to it as well. So someone's gone here. Carl Smith's gone. You should pull a Coke and just change the whole system just so you can change it back and have the same boom in sales. Carl Smith, very creative, very clever. There's someone in. Sean Gamble's gone. Jim, I have a great idea. Now, I recognise Sean's messaged Us with an idea. So maybe you want to talk about the people who get. I get one a day. I. I've got an idea for Jim. How do I get onto Jim about this business idea I've got?

Well, they're very easy to reach. I have one today, actually. Somebody was approaching me. It's something to do with a system for getting people insuring their car again, covering costs for their car or something like that. I couldn't quite understand it, but I just couldn't see any way it would fit. I get it all the time. Yes. Many, many different ideas. The thing about it is, people think that ideas are what matter. They kind of have this vision of, here's Jim mowing the law. Why don't I franchise? Why don't I franchise this thing? And suddenly I'm a multimillionaire. It does not work that way. The idea of franchising is pretty bloody obvious. What's tough is the mechanics of actually doing it. And that's not one decision. It's a thousand little decisions. And I'm like that. I know I come into the office with Joel or Rocky, and I'll come up with, I've got an idea about something, and they swap their hands.

I know all the steps you've got.

To go through these days. I get them to do all the steps. You know, I just think of the idea they do our hard work, but fundamentally, there are so many great things we could do, and it's just having great people, you know, Like, I noticed the building inspections today. I don't know if anybody stayed for dinner, but that was just basically one person who came to us and I hadn't really thought about as a division. And then Paul Comerford came and said this was, I think, probably about 10 years ago.

2011.

Yeah, 2011. He said, look, I'd like to start this division. I looked at his background experience. It sounded good, and he sounded like an okay guy. It's the biggest building inspection company in the country. Ten years later by one guy with one idea. But the thing about Paul is he's had the gumption and the focus to keep on improving what he does. He's developed a great system. And Building Inspections owes a lot to us, obviously, in our generality of the way we work. We owe so much to him, too.

We surveyed people on a napkin at an auction. That's how it sort of started, I think. He came into you with a napkin and had some stuff scribbled down, and away it went.

Well, that came up with some fantastic innovations. One of the best ones they ever did was, which I really love, is that you do a building inspection basically on spec for free. This is working through the agent. If a person wants to look at the house, they can pay to see the building inspection. Now, the great thing about that is you can actually sell it multiple times. So instead of doing it just for one person, you do it on spec, but you could potentially sell it five times over. So they've done things like that. They've developed some really, really good software, which Paul's paid for out of his own pocket. And he's a long, long way from getting his money back from the franchisees. But by the time there's 500 franchisees, I'm sure he will. So there's just that kind of mind. And you look at people like Sharon Connell in Dogwash. Sharon is one amazing lady. She's absolutely astonishing. She started as a cleaning franchise. How many years ago was it? Rachel? 2013. Yeah. So like, eight years ago, she came, she bought a cleaning franchise, she became a franchisor, she became an incredibly successful franchisor. Then I went to her and said, rachel, I'll offer to give you the dogwash division and the certain. And Rachel's actually the franchisor, she actually looks after the franchisees. So that's why. But the thing of it is, Sharon is astonishing. She's actually the method she's used that we teach everybody else in franchise door training. We teach Sharon Connell's method for selling and supporting franchisees because she's so good at it. Or Haydar Hussain in cleaning. Haydar was a cleaner. When he came to us, he was actually cleaning floors. He was mopping floors, cleaning toilets. That was his job. He had a business with just working for himself. He's now got over a thousand franchisees in the clean division. And this guy is.

He went from cleaning to cleaning up.

Cleaning up, yes, that's right. You see his place, actually, I joke about his place out west somewhere. He says, the only building on Earth you can see with the naked eye from Mars. It's not quite accurate, but it's a huge place. I've been there.

He's worked hard for it, but he's made a lot of people money.

You've got these people with these great ideas, but it's not just one, one idea. It's constantly working on how can I improve? How can I do better?

So we've got a couple of comments in here as well. And get to. So Keith Graham says, jim, are you doing anything over the Christmas Break.

We're going down to the beach for a few days.

You don't sound too enthusiastic about it.

Nah, nah, to me, I reckon, you know, back in the. In the. In the 1650s, Oliver Cromwell tried to. Tried to get rid of Christmas and I'm a great favor of that. I think we could get rid of Christmas. Old bloody country stops dead.

You find it really frustrating, don't you? Because obviously the office is shutting someone in there.

I don't know what to do with myself between Christmas and New Year. It's really, really difficult. It's the hardest time of year. I love my family, I see my kids and I love my wife and forget about Christmas. I don't know, I just like to keep going all year round. I didn't even like taking days off.

Yeah, I know. You don't like it, do you? You get really frustrated when you get sick, don't you?

Yeah, well, I don't get sick very much.

You don't?

But no. Look, as a Christian, I believe you should keep the Sabbath. But I can't do it. I can't not work on Sunday. I just can't. It's too difficult.

Then we got one in from Paul Sanders. It's amazing to see the 4,000 franchisee milestone then. 4400. 500, sorry, passed in 2021. What do you think we are capable of in 2022, Jim? From Paul.

Well, if we don't, I'd be very disappointed if we don't go past 5,000 reasonably early in the year. We're growing very fast right now. I mean, this is one of the best attended training sessions we've ever had. And we're launching some new things next year, like a registered training organisation, which we think is going to be a great recruiter. We're going to be looking at getting people from overseas. We've got so many ideas about how to improve what we do.

Why do you think it is, then? Because I know for 10 years it was around 3850, then all of a.

Sudden we were at three years. We were stuck at just over that level. Yeah, I'm not even sure exactly. Sometimes I wonder about this, Covid, if anything closes down because you shut off the borders to immigrants, which is a great source of our franchisees, as so many people here can attest to it. But we've done amazingly well. I don't know, I think we're just getting better. We're just learning new things. People like Sharon are teaching us so much and better systems of support, how you Reduce attrition, which is the biggest big thing. You know, we signed so many franchisees that if we didn't lose any franchisees, how many franchisees do we sign in a typical year?

170Ish, maybe 870. Be more now.

So if we didn't lose anybody, we'd be going whoosh, like that. We'd have 10,000, 15,000 franchisees in no time. So what we're always doing is what can we do to keep people on board? And we do all kinds of things with long established franchisees trying to find ways to make them feel more. One of the things we're doing with Jim's jobs as an example is we've got a system that will allow you to make it very easy to sell regular clients. What we like to say is that franchisees, and typically, very commonly we get a system where a franchisee has all the regular clients they can cope with and they stop taking work even in their territory. What we'd love to be able to do is to go to them and say, okay, pick the six clients you've least interested in, the most furthest away, put them on the market, sell them, knock out all your fees for the next two months and then take more jobs in territory and then do it again and again and again. So you're not only wiping out your fees, but you're also taking more and more compacted leads, more and more back into where you are, reducing your travel, that kind of thing. That's due to happen early next year. And we think that kind of thing will help franchisees to or.

Well, we're going to crack 300,000 unserviced leads this year. We're at 291. Yeah, 291,000.

So if we can get more franchisees taking more work, especially in their territory, that's going to be, it's going to be magic.

So we've got some more questions here. So one is from Liam. Where's Liam? It's a good question, Liam. We heard a lot about the books but I've never heard an answer to this one. So we'll see if he answers. Hey Jim, I know you're just a little bit of a bookworm.

Yes.

I was just wondering what are your top three self development books that you could recommend? Do you read much self development? Listen to my self development.

I've got a very concrete mind actually, Liam. I usually like to read about what people have done. So books like I've mentioned before, the one book I'd read on Franchising before I started gyms was behind the arches about McDonald's which was really interesting and a lot of the principles behind them. McDonald's is a brilliant company. I want to let my kids eat the food. But as a French hugging organization, as a training organization, they are fantastic. They are the best. They're the ones we all admire very much. I look at just the kinds of books, business stories of startups like Netflix and Twitter and all these books, just how they got going and what they were doing and that also this one I just mentioned before, catch of the decade is fantastic because it's really. They started with a stall at Croydon Market. That's how they began. And it shows exactly how they did it. And getting up on the thing and spruiking the whole thing and shouting out and all this kind of stuff too. And amazing guys.

Atomic habits is one. Atomic habits I'd sort of say is.

Self development, I think in terms of self development. Atomic habits, which is great. That's one about how you develop good habits of thought. And it's a lot of the, that's a lot of things that I actually practice myself but also other ideas I had how you set good habits and get rid of bad ones.

Stephen Conroy the Seven Habits.

Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. That's a great one too. So I think that actually those are probably a couple of good ones to start with. But I would read everything that you can. Not just about business too read about economics and politics, all kinds of things. There's one book I really love called the Case Against Education or some name like that. Selfish Reasons to have More Kids. I like books by economists too. I just like reading everything and listening is so easy because you waste so much time if you think about it, what you're doing, all kinds of things. Why not have your mind come alive with books? But start with those two and actually if you, if you jump on my Facebook feed, you'll see I regularly recommend books that I've been reading and talking about them and if you just got to go back a bit and you'll see more books to recommend you could ever possibly get through. But reading is incredible. Books are amazing. It's one of the greatest blessings of the modern age.

That's a good question. We've got one here from. Is it Haresh? Sorry if I'm saying his name wrong. And just one quickly one online as well. Jim, basically Dave McDonald's saying come up, no worries. And we're going from. David says some of my best friendships have been Started in the last six and a half years in gyms. I talk to like minded people about motivations and like mine, I probably spend an hour a day talking to one franchisee. It's the last time every year. Wonderful.

Dave's a great, great franchisee. Cool. Hi, Jim. Hi. I'm from Cleaning. I have two questions. One is what is your favorite movie and what do you do in your free time?

What's your favourite movie and what does Jim doing his free time? He listens to book at Coke when he gets up at night as he does.

I like a lot of movies actually. I like Dances with Wolves is one of my favourites.

That's the movie? Yeah. Dances with Wolves, Yeah. I've never seen that. I don't know why I'm surprised to hear you say it, but I've never seen it. But is that Kevin Costner or something, isn't it?

Yeah, that's right. I must have seen it about three or four times. I would love that. It's just a great story and a great. The way they portray the Sioux. It's completely unhistorical actually. If you know anything about what the Sioux were really like, that is a very weighted view of what actually happened and what they were like. But it's just a wonderful story. Great love story, great scenery, just great music and it's very, very heartwarming. Look, there's so many. Actually I've got something in here, but my favorite. I'll actually put this on.

Yeah, sure. Give it to me.

Yep, give it to you. There's about. I've got about 20 of my favourite films listed. I don't know if we have got. How much time have we got Left?

We've got 10 minutes but you've got to do a radio interview tonight as well. So. 8, 15.

Look, I'll tell you what, I'll just give you a bit of an idea of that.

You're listening to your phone in your book. So Jim's just looking up his list. Is it a favourite series or movies?

Spider Man 1. With great power comes great responsibility. I love spider man 1. The rest of Spider man is mostly rubbish. Spider Man 1. Spider Man 2. The. That's the one with. What's his Name?

Spider Man 1. The very first one.

First one.

Tobey Maguire.

Tobey Maguire. I love those two films, I really do. And the idea of self sacrifice and the way that he does the right thing even when it's unpopular. I think it's a great message. Gladiator. That's really just an amazing Story also very unhistorical. People will get a funny idea from that. But in actual fact, most of the time, gladiators actually survived the combat. They only had about one in five would die. But anyway, it's a great story. Family Man, That's a really fun story. It's about the difference between being family and single and stuff. It's just a great story. Chariots of Fire, very inspiring story. Amazing Grace, which is about William Wilforce, who stopped the slave trade. Jurassic park, the original one. I think that scene when I first see the dinosaurs is just absolute magic. I love it, I love it, I love it. My kids get so annoyed at me because every time we see that, I say that I would build Jurassic Park. He said, dad, we know. You've said it before. Last Samurai. I love that.

Tom Cruise, is it.

Tom Cruise. The sense of obligation and duty and discipline. And that portrayal of samurai life, again, very historically biased in terms of Shadow Warrior. That's a Kurosawa film. Again, talking about loyalty and obligation. Butterfly Effect. That's just an amazing thing. Shallow Hell, which is about.

About Shallow Hell with Jack Black.

I like Shallow Hell. Yeah. It's about the importance of inner beauty. This is. This is the film where he actually gets sort of cursed or blessed. And he only sees women for their inner beauty, not their actual beauty, which is just really interesting. Kenny, it's about a plumber.

You like Kenny, right?

I love Kenny. 12 Angry Men, which is a really old one about a jury system. And it's again about. About standing up for what you believe. There's one person in the jury who has a different view and he will not be. And he turns everybody else around and he actually turns the whole case around. So moral courage. Like Spider Man. About time, which is, to me, just a great love story. I just enjoy that so much. The Sum of all our Fears, which is about nuclear blast and so forth. And the Iron lady, about Margaret Thatcher.

There you go. We've asked for one, but we've got 20. I didn't know you had a list in your phone. So there's.

There's. There's more, but those ones, I. I don't know. My tastes are really weird all over the place at the moment. My wife and I are actually watching an American sitcom, of all things, which is How I Met your Mother, which we really enjoy. I don't know why.

What do you reckon of it? It's good.

We like it. I really enjoy it, actually.

I think people. Because when you say, like, I mean all this business and stuff. I think you're really serious. But you do have a funny side. Like you do like watching Ricky Gervais stuff. You do like all these other things.

I do, I do. Which is strange since he's in touch and he has a go at Christianity all the time. But he's very funny. What's that one invention of lying. The invention of lying. I mean it's totally anti Christian film but it's so hilarious because it's about a society where nobody lies. They just tell each other the truth. You have these amazing conversations. I love Ricky Gervais, he's so funny. He's a stand up too. And we'll get a list of that sort of stuff. Well, I do in my spare time I work on my farm. I really enjoy it. Go spend a few hours clearing blackberries and. And digging ditches and all kinds of things. Is really fun. I play computer games. Not a lot, but maybe an hour a day.

What are you playing at the moment?

I play Conquest, which is the most primitive old style game you could possibly imagine. You just have this little map and you conquer other people, which I enjoy a lot.

Never go into Call of Duty or anything like that with the headset. I don't have a twitch channel or something like that.

No, I like strategic game. Rise of Rome is not there anybody played Rise of Rome. That's good. I always like to play. I don't like playing the Roman style. I always played the Greeks. Just played one game quite recently and I got the Greeks united and all together and conquered and then I went and beat up the Romans at the end of it. I just conquered and looted the city of Rome. That was very satisfying. I'm much more in favor of the Greeks than the Romans in historical terms. So it's nice to be able to rewrite history.

Massive passion is history as people would know if you get a PhD in history. Massive passion with it. But you can play online. So one other question here is from Dan. So this is the last one for people here which is fantastic. So where is Dan with this question here? Yep, cool. Got a few comments online. People saying do Jim's movie reviews, all this sort of stuff. So we'll clip those up and put them online as well.

I think my taste might be a bit strange actually. But I can only say what I like. They're not popular obviously.

Jim, the festive season's quickly approaching us. Just wondering if you've got yourself something special for Christmas yet, whether you're going to get yourself a good present. Can you get Yourself a good present? That's a good question. We haven't had that one before. Do you buy yourself. What would you buy yourself besides audible presents?

I'm terrible on presents. I don't really like getting them either. The only present I really, really like is one of my kids to do something that they bake themselves. Like my son Aaron, who's the most wonderful kid in the world. Don't tell him I said that. He does these beautiful things he had done with a Greek helmet and just telling me how special I was to him and this kind of thing that to me is more than you couldn't buy that you couldn't get a better present for a million bucks than that.

Well, if you go to your home office, you've got. That's what you've got. You've got pictures from all your kids and stuff on the wall. We've got a video online of that as well. Yeah, we're doing that because I keep trying to get you to buy yourself a Tesla but you won't do that. Just, you know, you love electric cars but you'll never buy yourself a Tesla.

My next car will be electric.

Will it?

Okay. But this car myself has still got. It's still got a few. It's still got 100,000 K's to go. But I like driving car. Driving a car which is not worth anything because it doesn't appreciate.

We've got Adrian Smith's going for the question here real quickly online, which most people here would be interested in as well. What's the best way to employ someone? Working in a gyms mowing franchise or Jim's franchise in general? How can they find someone? Best way to employ them. Subby or employee?

Employee is best. But you just got to be persistent. That's the hard part. There are good people there. They're not easy to find. You just got to employ somebody. Find the best you can. Give them a go. It doesn't work out, try somebody else. Don't give up. That's the greatest lesson. Don't give up. People get discouraged. They try a couple of people and it doesn't work out. There are great people out there now. When you've found somebody good, you look after them, you're nice to them, you give them a bit of a bonus. You buy them lunch, you make their interest exciting. Dan, Carl's great on this kind of stuff.

Dan's on Tuesday.

He's coming on Tuesday. Tomorrow you'll hear those who in training will hear what Dan has done and he does things like he does celebration events for them after they finish work and he does things to make them happy and cheer them up and just.

Well, Dan took a lot of the macca's standard operating procedures and put them into his mine ram, which he seriously did.

Dan's an amazing guy. He's got like six workers. He doesn't work in the field anymore, but he's got these guys. He's actually bought with us a mowing region in Queensland. And his six guys are so good, they're just looking after his business for him. He's got something like a 4.8 star rating which for having six workers and not directly supervising is amazing. It just shows you what you can do. He's an incredible guy. See, the thing of it is too, I myself as an operator was never anything like as good as Dan Karl. There are people who, like Sharon Connell, who can sell far better than I can. I think one of my great strengths in business is that I'm not really good at anything. I just find people who are good at doing things that I'm not good at. I don't know anything about social media and I rely on this guy to do everything to do with social media. It's not my area. I don't really understand it very well. I'm not good with it. So I find great people in every area and try and learn from them. And I think one of the greatest things in business, one of the most underappreciated attitudes in business is humility. It's the ability to know that you don't know everything and you want to learn from other people and respect other people's abilities and don't try and be the person who knows a lot. And I think actually it's a benefit that I am so incompetent at most things that I have to find people who are good at them. I've got some great staff too. People talk about franchisees and franchisors, but I've got some absolutely brilliant staff who are just so loyal, so dedicated. They're so full of initiative. Real entrepreneurs like this guy, like Joel, he actually started, I don't know if anybody knows his story. He started doing some very basic on a casual work.

I was a paralegal, gym two day a week law clerk. I was doing sort of skilled, sort of skilled stuff. The point is you can say unskilled for the.

But what happened was that he. Then when that job ran out, we got him a job helping the guy who runs the insurance. And I used to go into Insurance because I wandered around the office a lot and he would talk to him about websites and all kinds of things. And I was just impressed by the fact that he took the initiative to do this. And so now he's actually one of the senior managers in Jim's group running our social media and a lot of other things too. So people can progress very well. It's important to appreciate when you've got good people.

I think that's the thing though, what you said, Jim, because of who you are, people think you've got a. You might have an ego or something, but you don't. Anyone can come to you from any level for an idea. Franchisees come all the time with ideas and all that sort of stuff and you implement it, don't you?

Yeah, I know. Somebody actually emailed me yesterday. I don't know, it was on Sunday night. I was ringing somebody and there was a problem with the Jim's jobs and I said, what is it exactly? And I wrote it down and I wrote to Kerem, who runs the IT and copied to this guy Grant, and I'm going to talk tomorrow morning about what we can do about this particular issue. There was something that he didn't think it worked. It doesn't work so well on a tablet, he's said. And there were certain things that were missing out. So I want to talk to the camera. How can we improve on that? So there's good ideas coming all the time. You just got to listen to them.

Absolutely. So we'll do. Guys, we'll leave it there. Thank you very much, Jim, for your time tonight. Thanks for the questions as well and for hanging around. Really appreciate it. Now we've got three prizes here.

Yep. Yeah, that's right.

The prizes I've remembered. So we've got the monopoly here, which is generally. Which I think is the best.

You can choose which prize you want. If you win a prize, can I give you my favorite question? I like the one about the greatest danger facing us in the future. I love that one. Who was that?

That was online, which means we have to post it to them and find out do you want to give it to them online? We can do that.

I think they deserve. You can give this prize to somebody else too. But I reckon that person deserves whatever.

I'll get them Buy History because that's probably more relevant to that. What you want.

Right?

Okay, we'll do Buy History. That person online.

The person online, the new book, when it comes in. There's a new version.

There is actually. I'll Hook him up. I'll DM that person. But people here, we want them to get the Monopoly here. We can't be sending that one online. Okay, so did you have anything that stood in your mind? Yeah, self development. I had that flavor from Liam. So, Liam, which one would you like? You can either have the monopoly, the bear or the mowing cards. Yeah, that's a smart choice. Believe it or not, people don't go with this one. For some reason. They get it.

It's only good if you want to play Monopoly. Yeah, it's a real fun version, though. We played it once for on the video. It was really good.

You're welcome. No worries. And we also now we've got the bear and the car. Which other ones was there, Jim? I liked the movie one because I didn't know you had a list of your favorite movies.

Who was the movie? Who asked about the favorite film?

Was it Haresh? Was it Haresh?

Yeah.

Which one would you like, mate? The bear or the playing cards? And we'll get the bear with your division shirt on it. So whichever division you're going to be in, which one would you like or the cards? Which one would you like? This or that one? Which one would you like? The card is good. The cards. All right, cool. Take the cards. No worries. You're welcome. What about the last one there, Jim, for the bear?

I don't know. What do you think? Who do you think's the best? Anybody got any ideas? Any thoughts about what was a particularly good question?

I'm trying to think from here. The theory of evolution was good, but I don't think he's here. A few questions here. What about the Jim's. The one that generated the Jim's trims idea. Camille. Yeah, that's Camille. Camille. Camille, Yep. Alright, so what we'll do is we'll get the boys to put a. What division are you going to be? Jim's Dogwash or cleaning? Cleaning. We're gonna put a Jim's cleaning shirt on for you, but we'll give you the bear. Cool. Alright. Can you make sure we arrange that? Alright, so we do this every training week. So if you want to jump online, like we have franchisees who come in, punch stuff on, these are made in a podcast as well. So we do have a Jim's grip podcast called The Jim's Cast YouTube channel, all that sort of stuff. Merry Christmas. This is the last one for the year and we hope everyone here has a really good Christmas and all that sort of stuff. And make sure you catch up with Jim during the week and Tuesday and Wednesday. And thank you for hanging around, and we hope you have the rest of a really good training week. So thanks for your attention tonight and your participation. Thank you.