#ASKJIM 10/01/22 Replay with Jim's Group CEO, Jim Penman and Joel Kleber

That's great. Thank you very much. You definitely embarrassed me and Jim up here. You can see Jim's going red and myself as well. And as Jim has said at the start, we weren't expecting many people to be here because it's January 10th and we didn't know how many were coming. So thanks for hanging around and giving a heap of questions as well. So if you are watching online, please make sure you like and share the live stream. We're gonna try and whip through these from our people who have new franchisees who are in the audience tonight. I've also got a couple here. I wanted to ask Jim as well, just at the very start, because if people submit questions prior, we like to give them precedent. So without further ado, what I'm gonna do is read these questions first from the audience during the week, and we're gonna then basically call out your name, come up to the mic, get yourself on our Facebook, YouTube and podcasts and all that sort of stuff, and then ask him question. If you want to ask him as well, a rebuttal question to what you asked him, please feel free to do so as well. At the end of the night, we give surprises. There'll be five of them for the best questions, so you get a fair chance of getting something at the end of the night. So, Jim, first question I've got during the week, I'm going to give this one from Adam Bainvich. So you can submit these online via Instagram and TikTok and all that sort of stuff. Hi, Jim. When you started franchising, were there franchise consultants back then or just lawyers and a lot of questions to ask other people then? The second part was also with computers being very limited compared to today's technology, how did you cope? And were you constantly asking annoying solicitors and franchise people to learn? So that's from Adam.

Well, there may have been franchise consultants around, but I didn't ask any of them, just lawyers.

And how did you go after lawyers?

That was very frustrating. As I said this morning, trying to get lawyers to give me a contract I was happy with was difficult. I got on a contract from VIP and I thought, oh, no way. I hated it. So I couldn't even use it in any way. I had to get done from scratch with all the peculiar things. Took me nine months.

What about the computers back in the day?

If I'd have known what I know now, I would have spent a lot less time with lawyers, a lot more time working on computer technology. Because when we first started it, it was Very manual process. Because the way that we work at gyms is we have a blackboard where you actually put down the work you want in the suburbs and stuff. We used to do all this manually. It was only. And that would cost so much. That actually meant that the business ran at a loss initially because it was so expensive. And it's only after we automate that process that it started to become a lot more cost effective. So, yeah, in retrospect, I should have spent a lot more money on it and a lot less money on lawyers.

Have you told the story about the blackboard itself? I know you've just mentioned it briefly.

Well, the blackboard was originally a blackboard. That's why actually we still called it a blackboard, but it was actually written down so you'd have all your franchisees and how much work they wanted and everything else on the blackboard and you had a list of the suburbs they covered. So when a job came in, it'd be taken and put on a bit of paper and then you'd have to put it into a little like a lunchbox with all kinds of dividers in it and that would go. Then be phoned through to the franchisee. It was really, really manual. It couldn't have lasted like that for very long. It was just right at the beginning. What we do at gyms really wouldn't have been possible before the age of computers.

We've got a lot of people chiming in the comments and questions, which is fantastic. We'll try and get to as many as we can. Maybe just an update as well. You had a bit of an interview today, didn't you?

Yes. Spoke to Channel seven.

What was that about?

Well, there's a lot of complaints about gouging people charging ridiculous amounts of money. So the point I made to them was, well, there's a big demand for services these days and we actually, you know, we actually encourage our franchisees to charge more. I really made a different point to what they said, and my point was that there's incredible opportunities within the service industry, home service industry, and that people should be aware of that.

I didn't watch the news tonight, but if I watched the news tonight. Please put in the comments. If Jim was on. I think the Djokovic. Djokovic stuff took a bit of senesium. I've got bumped to tomorrow, I reckon, so we'll hopefully see you on a moment.

I'm supposed to talk to VAW tomorrow too.

Hopefully see you on a Friday.

I think it's good. And the Point I make to the public is that we're not about being cheap we're about giving great service. We are not low priced. I want to get that message out there I want to get the message to the public so that they want tubers price they don't contact us we don't want that business And I want to get a message obviously to respect your franchisees. Hey you can make an awful lot of money.

I've got another question as well from Paul Marr. During the week he basically said fun question as a man that is based his early career on lawn care what's your favourite type of grass for aesthetic look and what was your least favourite to mow a bit of couch buffalo. What was it?

I really don't know about as far.

As they're the two I know so that's the only ones I said it's easy.

I really like trees better than grass to be quite honest.

So you know do you have a favourite grass at the moment? What was Melbourne lawns in your area?

Buffalo was a really hard one because it gets very dense and the mower sinks into it your rotary mower so very. I was never crazy about buffalo. It's very resilient. It is but as far as the trouble is with any grass is that no matter what you put in the weeds and stuff get in and it all changes to something quite different eventually anyway I don't mind as long as it's neat.

There you go. Thanks for that one Paul.

Alright cool.

Let's get into people's our new franchisees questions here. We've got a hell of a lot of them which is fantastic. So the first one I'm going to read out is from Ellen. Where is Ellen? Ellen hand up.

Cool.

So whilst Ellen's coming up here this.

Is a good question when it comes.

To the mic just so we can microphone up the at the front there. Yeah it's all right you gotta be standing up attention for a little bit.

Yeah we want everybody to hear your lovely voice and so Ellen's from Dogwash.

Coming up and it's a really appropriate.

Question if you like to make it a bit clearer. Okay, put it down here.

As a beginner I want to know what do I need to do to.

Be better than good. I want to be like exceptional franchisee.

How to be an exceptional franchisee? Good question.

Well most of our franchisees are exceptionals. All right, well what are you doing? Look, it's just what I was talking about this morning. Ellen is ringing back clients ultra fast turn up when you, you will just be a nice sort of person, which I'm sure you are and do a good job on their dog. To be honest, the levels of service out there are so poor. Her reputation is just by being quite reasonable. But as to being exceptional, it's got to do with personality. Beyond that, if you're the kind of person that the dogs like, obviously I presume you're a dog lover or you wouldn't be doing this and just a nice person to get on with. A lot of it's just relationships. We find that people are much more sensitive to things like that than they are to price. It rates fairly low and particularly when it comes to dog wash because dogs are very much like children. People are very protective. If the dog likes you, they don't want somebody else. I don't care if they charge half as much. They want you and they really, really want to keep you. So there's a very, very high customer loyalty with in dog washing in particular.

Great question. Thanks for that, Ellen. Thank you. If you guys have got a follow up as well, if you question you can ask Jim on the mic. It's no problem. We've had someone ask like six back and forth. It was a bit of an argument. It's not too bad but you can do that if you want as well. We've got a lot of comments and questions coming in as well, so. G' day Riley.

Adam.

Hey. Dar's tuning in saying all the best for the New Year, past 1000 franchisees, cleaning group last year and then Sean Cowie saying Jim, can you private message me back? Email jims.netshaun and he'll respond to you.

Cool.

All right, let's get into another question here from our new franchisees in training. So this one's from Daniel. Where is Daniel? Daniel right at the front from Jim's Dug Wash. Hello, Jim. My question is really simple. I want to ask you how can you at your age at the moment.

So how can you being that energetic?

I want to learn from you. How old do you think Jim is?

Uni 70. That's right.

I'm 61. So I learned what you are going to do.

You got a way to go. Look there's better than you, Jim. It's interesting. Everybody looks better than me.

I said looks fitter than you, not.

I looks fitter, looks better. Exercise very important. I have at least half an hour a day worth of vigorous exercise. At the weekend can be several hours working on my farm. So it's really important. Keep your weight under Control, which if you've got a physical job isn't so difficult, like what you will have. And a lot of it's just doing something that you love. If you enjoy your work, you don't really work a day. It's just fun. And I used to enjoy mowing lawns and gardening. That's why I did it, because I love the outsource. I would never work inside if I could avoid it. So yeah, keep fit, watch your weight and do something you really, really enjoy. Having a happy family life makes a lot of difference too.

So I have to make myself more hard working.

Well, the nice thing about what you do though is that in your own business there's no real reason you should retire. Like for example, we've got quite a few franchisees in their 70s doing very physical work like lawns and so forth. Really?

You're one in 80 year old in cleaning. Yeah, one Michael Vanar is his name.

Just turned 80, just at his 80th birthday. So quite a few I thought myself is old enough.

You're only young. We've had people start at 68 like.

Ian and you're a mere child in short pants by the standards of these guys. But it's true though, I mean, look, one of the great tragedies of my mother's life is that she was a relief teacher and at 65 she was basically sacked from the education because she was too old. And that was terrible for her because she wasn't working five days a week. But she loved what she did, the principals liked it, the kids liked her and the education program said, no, you're too old. She threw on the dust heap and she became less active, her mind went down and she eventually became senile. I reckon if the education had a grain of sense and humanity, they would have let her keep on working as long as she was capable. And then she would have had a much, much better old age. She wasn't short of money, but it was terrible what they did to her. I'll never forget that. The great thing about your own business is that in 20 years time when you're 81, you can still be washing dogs. Now you might not do 10 dogs a day, but maybe you'll do 12, 15 dogs a week. Enough to keep yourself interested and active and a bit of income and everything else. I don't see why I don't believe in retirement. I mean you look at people like Rupert Murdoch and Warren Buffett, both of them in their 90s and still going strong. And one of the things about Those guys is. They're both very fit. Like Warren Buffett has a racquetball court which we'll shortly have in a few months time.

He still eats a cheeseburger and Coke every day. Can of Coke.

Yeah, but he's still fit. He's fit and Ripen Murdoch the same thing. So I intend to be going active in my 90s and I hope you will too. Yeah, sure, I'll go with you.

We had a guy mowing start at 72 last year and I think in his first week he turned over 2,800.

Yeah.

As a 72 year old. In his first week in mowing, Ian.

The mowing guy beat us in Sega. He said he made more money mowing lawns in his 70s than he ever had working as a manager firm Bunnings in his younger life. So anyway, thank you very much.

Thanks for the question, Daniel.

Good questions.

Really good one.

There's quite a lot of stuff online about this kind of stuff too. I've done a few interviews and things. Talk about aging and stuff.

We've done a whole thing on fitness. So if you want to know if Jim's for half an hour, I think was fitness and diet and you go right through what you eat. And we do have a day in your life as well.

I've never felt more fit, more active and stuff. I just really. My wife's 17 years younger than me and she complains she can't keep up with me.

She just.

I walk too fast and everything. Too fast. I'm always impatient, always got new ideas.

You are very impatient. How aggressive.

I'll tell you something else too. It's a really good question. Another thing, it's important to keep your mind active. I read all the time, I listen to talking books. I'm really actively engaged in all kinds of stuff. So I'm always coming up with ideas, always changing things.

You said the last two years you've been changing more.

Yeah, we've made more changes in the past two years than we have in the previous decade. And it's just, I reckon reading when you're out on the road doing something. Listening to a talking book is a fantastic thing. It keeps your mind occupied and it's something to listen to, interesting and stuff. It's a wonderful thing to do. Even mowing. You can do it these days because we have electric mowers which are quiet you couldn't back in my days. But these battery powered mowers are great. I recommend to anybody do that even when you're traveling between jobs. Listen to something. It's fantastic.

Speaking of mowers, we've got Darryl here. Where's Darrell with his question? Darryl. So the people online as well with the questions and comments. We will get some, I will get some. I just want to get. To make sure. As many as we can from our.

We tend to get good questions from our live audience. Always good.

Jim, what was your. What was the brand of your first mower? Brand of his first mower? Victor.

It was a Victor. No, sorry, hang on a bit. Was a. No, I think it was a Pope actually. An orange pope. Okay.

Because the photo we put online, you got the green, you got this old green looking thing and some people either guess Massport or Victor.

No, no, that was way back. My first moab was about 1960. 1974. 1974. 75. I think it was a Pope. I think it's actually in the book somewhere. Yeah, well, yeah.

Thank you.

But I'm a great believer in battery powered mowers now, I can tell you that.

Look at the trade day coming up in March, March 19th. We're going to have a whole bunch of stuff. So if you are vic based or even in the state.

That's not just mowing, that's. That's everything. You know, dog wash, we got cleaning, we've got all kinds of things. Things. We're going to probably have a thousand people on site we reckon so we.

Are just interested in general. Come along on March 19th. We'll do a lot of stuff on social media, updating and all and good.

Stuff for the kids too.

Like there'll be some rides there. Believe it or not there's going to be some rides here. Fireworks, I think a lot of free food. Yeah, there's a lot of stuff.

It'll be a great day.

Yeah, thanks for the question. Good one. Cool. Next one here we have is from Miguel. Where's Miguel? Miguel is from the cleaning group.

Jim. Have you ever thought of having Jim's first aid as a division?

Jim's first aid as a division, Jim.

Never thought about it actually. I don't know.

They do first aid packs in test and tags. The test and tag and fire safety do first aid packs. But as regards to more than that there's. Yeah. While you're thinking, Miguel, what type of.

Services because every three weeks you gotta get a. You gotta do a first aid course at the meetings.

Like the training stuff.

You will save so much money. Instead of getting someone. We're actually launching a registered training organisation. We're just in the process getting that Set up. We'll have our first courses going in a couple of months and first aid will be one of the first ones we do. So we're actually going to be teaching people to do all kinds of stuff because we can teach them first aid, but we're going to do courses in first aid. We'll do courses in dog grooming, in horticulture, in all kinds of carpentry, all kinds of things like that. One of the reasons for that is to get either workers for our franchisees who are always desperate for good people, or else to put them into franchises themselves. But yeah, we will be doing that.

Yeah, Jim's first aid would work. Absolutely. Yeah.

Well, it'll be there. It'll be a first aid course. It'll be a good course too.

We won't tell the supplier who does it currently though. They don't know anything about it. No, hopefully not Washington. Thanks for that one, Miguel. Cool. Got a lot of comments on the on here as well. I just want to get to a few things that taking the time. So a lot of people saying g' day and Happy New Year and stuff from Brendan and someone's gone, where are you guys? We're at head office today, which is great. We can be in here, which is fantastic. Everyone's got masks and all that sort of stuff. Got one here from Lee Sutterby which is probably a good one to read out. Just the current franchisee.

Yeah, I know Lee. Lee, yes, he emails me often.

There you go. Current franchisee jumping on. So he's gone. Jim, why does a possible complaint now automatically generate a one star rating for the job that is not from the customer? The job will not go ahead and now cannot be done. Changed, Cannot be changed. Thanks from Lee.

A complaint by itself doesn't generate a one star rating. In effect, a one star rating generates a complaint.

Right.

So if a customer puts down one star, which indicates what their response basically said, B for bad, that is actually that becomes a complaint and we'll put down if we know what it's about. But sometimes a poor star rating can actually be. They give us A. And what they mean is it's a bad price. So if we find that out, we'll delete the complaint and just change to a price rating which is not a complaint.

So is that one leaking just email you or has he been in contact with you?

Lee emails me constantly and puts it.

On the Facebook office. That's not a problem.

It's all right, we have a process. Lee doesn't always agree with Lee. And I don't always agree with each other about what a complaint means, but I do knock off some of his complaints.

Well, for transparency, if you ever got a question you want to put Jim on recording, you can do it on this platform is the way to go. Bailey Sutherland as well in the comments. He's gone real quickly. Best job for mowing, gardening, slashing or once off mowing. Bailey's a young fellow. For mowing round. The best job, he says, the best job for money. Is it gardening, slashing or one off mowing, mowing jobs.

Ah, slashing, slashing. I used to, towards the end of my mowing career back in the 80s, just when I was just before I launched the franchise and I had subbies and so forth, I only used to do two jobs. One was slashing. I had this big self propelled deutsche slasher and the other was clearing gutters because I could like bear in mind, this is the 80s, this is more than 30 years ago. I charged 90 bucks for a job. It took me half an hour. I thought in those days $100 an hour was pretty good money.

What's that for inflation now? Probably double at least. Yeah.

So I could make really, really good money and.