#ASKJIM 101 Live from Training with Jim's Group founder, Jim Penman and Joel Kleber

From Jim's is why we are so expensive. Has been a lot of this on social media lately, apparently.

Well, actually, as I said this morning, we have a pretty strict policy that we don't require our franchisees to buy from us. In fact, if any franchisor, we did find one franchisor in the past who was doing this was actually putting a margin on stuff they were buying in the diggers division. And one of the reasons they no longer. No longer divisional franchisors. So it's actually not true. Now, the fact that there's rumors floating around is neither here nor there, but I challenge anybody to say to show this is happening at any level, it's actually a big thing. We do at times require people to buy a certain quality of goods. For example, if you want to put an antenna up, you can't buy a cheap Chinese knockoff, which will not do the job as well. But if you can get something that's the same quality as the one that's recommended, well, then go for your life.

It's a third line forcing issue, isn't it? It's called third line forcing, which is thermal.

Well, some franchises do that kind of stuff. I know at McDonald's you can't just buy your supplies from anyone. McDonald's don't actually make any money out of it too. So they have a very ethical system. But in our case, we just simply say as long as it's the same quality, anything you want.

Yeah, I'm pretty active on socials and I've never seen that a lust tag or anything as well. So I'd love to see where the franchisee is seeing that to show us so I can actually.

So look, there's a lot of negativity out there. I think sometimes, you know, it's all great and fun being students, but competitors feel pretty stretched at times. They really feel we're a juggernaut. And, you know, it's because there's 4,000 plus individual people. So sometimes they resent us and you can't blame them for it. But, you know, there's good quality independence out there and you know, God bless them. In fact, when the. When Covid came last year and we were shut down in Victoria by our beloved premier, I actually spoke up not just for our own people, but for all the independent contractors. I was a spokesman. Many of them actually wrote and thanked me for that because there was nobody else able to speak for that particular group in the community. So people don't always like us, but we try and look after them. Anyway, absolutely.

So we'll get a couple more questions that came through online. So we do have an Ask Gym on our website where people do submit questions. I've got a couple of good ones which we decided to hold over. So I'm just going to go two, then we'll go to everyone in the audience with their questions. Now, this guy must have been very young, so this is a bit of a joke from Alec. He's gone snag rolls or meat pies. What do you like?

Well, I'm basically vegetarian, so neither.

What about vegetarian pie? You ever tried one of them?

I don't like things. I don't even like the taste of meat very much. I eat a bit of seafood, Right. But occasional tiny bit of chicken, but I don't really like the taste of it. So that's not much of an answer, is it?

So no, that must have been from a young fella, that one. And another one from a young person, I reckon. This is from Nicholas Zulich. He goes, how old are you? Why do you have no beard? And can I stroke your beard? So if he's asking you why you got no beard, that's the question right here. That's what came before I had a beard.

The answer to the last question would be no. Apart from my wife, I don't think anybody's getting that close to me. I turned 69 this month, actually, so there you are, 70 next year. Why do they have a beard? Well, I've answered this question many times, but it's all to do with women. Like other men, we're totally. Isn't that right, guys? Controlling and controlled by women. When I was younger, I had a fiance who liked beards and so I grew a beard to keep her happy. 21 years ago, I found myself single, not through my own choice. And it's starting to go a bit grey. I don't need to look any older than that. I gotta find a wife. So off it came. But nothing to do with anything else but women.

That's the story.

I'm very happily married for 20 years now, so there's no desire to change that.

So we. A lot of questions and comments coming online, which is fantastic. So keep pumping them in there and we'll get to some questions online. If you're doing it. Ed Sutherland's gone. Are you doing more TikTok videos? Absolutely, Ed. So we're doing a lot more of that with Jim doing stuff. I think you out there having a go at BlackBerry's got around 150,000 views. Just on TikTok, which is pretty cool. Yeah.

They like some of this stuff. I like one where I smashed the. How many did the one where I smashed the rowing machine with the sledgehammer.

That's on 40,000 now when I've uploaded it there.

Really?

Yeah.

I did better with the blackberries than a spaceship, silly.

By mile. I think you doing gardening stuff is the stuff that does well.

Okay.

All right, we'll do more of it.

Cool.

All right, so we've got first up question here from Wendy. Where is Wendy? Hi, Jim. This one's actually from our daughter when she found out we were coming down here. Why did you call Jim's Jims, apart from the obvious reason?

Well, because it was my name.

Yeah.

Actually, my name isn't Jim at all, it's David James. But I've always used my middle name since I was about 19. Yeah. When I was originally Jim's. Mine was because Jim was mowing Lawrence and I used to put my face on the leaflets. We used to put letterboxes and I found it got a bit of response for some reason. I don't know why anybody should want my face on it, but they just.

Liked it and just a shorter name.

So I just called it after myself because originally it was me. You got to understand, this whole thing never started out being what it is now. The idea of becoming a household name would have been incredible. Just wouldn't have even crossed my mind that such a thing would be possible. So it was just Jim's mind because Jim was mowing. That's it. Yeah.

Okay. All right, thank you. That's no question, Wendy. Now we've got. I just want to mention one thing real quickly as well, the trade day. So if anyone who's Jim's group in Melbourne or even want to come into state, come make sure you come to the Jim's Group Trade Day, which is going to be, I think it's the 29th of June, or is it the 2nd of July 29th of June, which is our head office here. Think of it like the Jim's Royal Show. It's going to have show bags, it's going to have all these supplies, giveaways, a lot of giveaways, like tens of thousands of dollars of prizes. So if you can't come, well over.

$100,000 worth of sponsorship. So we're actually going to be able to give some really good stuff. We're going to come with bulging show bags.

There's going to be amusement rides and all this sort of stuff here.

Nice food Everything. Yeah. Jumping castles and everything.

So if you want to come. So if you want to come to that, make sure you go to our. You can go to.

If you want to see, there's a video of me in a jumping castle going down the slide. Get your mum and dad to show you that one.

So if you want to come to that, make sure you. There's a form which you have to complete, which is on our events page on Facebook or the Jim's Myring Facebook page as well. But Jim's Group events looked up there. You can fill in the form and we hope to see you there as well. And Rocky also wanted me to mention as well about electric cars based on. He said we can get your electric car based on last. Last year. So he's got your Renault coming for two weeks as a trial and they.

Reckon Tesla's going to be here too, which will be fine.

Well, the Tesla marketing person has said they're going to have a stand here at trade day, so it's going to be quite interesting. So well done to Rocky on that one there.

Trying to persuade them to make me a brand ambassador to give me an electric car to use.

Jim's an influence.

I'm quite well off and I'm very, very stupid, stingy. So if somebody can use something used for no cost, I'll be very happy with that one.

And we'll get to a few questions online real quickly as well in a minute. Let's get to the next question here, which is from Greg. Where is Greg? It's a good question, Greg. We haven't had this one before. There are two Gregs also. There's one about Inquiry. Inquiry. G', day, Jim.

What's the longest period of time a.

Franchisee has waited before joining I. E. From Inquiry to sign up? Good question. We have never had that one before.

I don't know. Sometimes they take years to make up their mind. I can tell you people can inquire after a decade after they first looked at it and still come on board. And then they typically say, I wish I'd done this 10 years earlier, but can be quite a while.

Yeah, I've waited three years. Sorry about three years.

Three years, yeah. When I first inquired, wow, somebody here who was. Who was. I was having dinner with, actually his father's had a test and tag franchise for. Oh, there you are. Yeah. For 14 years, making incredible money, working like 20, 25 hours a week and making 140 grand a year, it has taken him. How did it take you so long to make the move. I was asking you at dinner time. Yeah.

I think you've had a couple initial.

Outline of the money, I guess.

Yeah, I've answered that question. We've never had that one before. I think we've seen 10 years before, 12 years before. They're always just sitting around the idea and then they come down and training.

So as long as you make the right move position in the end, that's what counts.

Absolutely. We've got a few people tuning online, which is fantastic. Real quickly, Gym one's gone. Darren Tilley, what is the biggest divisions of all the gyms? Franchises, franchising.

Actually as of today's figure, 1999 for mowing we just one off 2000. Rocky was kicking himself this morning.

Absolutely. We've got a few. Got a few social posts ready for that one as well.

Yes.

Another question here from the owners from. Is it Flavia? Flavia in the front row? Yep. Part of the cleaning group. Hi. Hello, James.

Can you buy Morton on territory or.

Can buy a new franchise in different division?

A new franchise in the ware in a different division?

Different division.

Okay, look, in some situations you can buy more territory, but very, very rarely does it happen. Usually because there's so much work that you don't need to. Most franchisees have all the work they can handle. One of the struggles we have, and I'll talk about this on Wednesday, is to try and persuade people just to even take their territory. A lot of them don't do that after a time. So it's possible. I can't say it's never happened, but it's very, very unlikely because it won't improve your income. And as far as buying a franchise in another division, unless you're employing multiple people, there'd be no sense because you'll have all the work that you can possibly handle in your own division if you want to put all the workers you can. So it's incredibly rare. For the same reason, you're much better off putting a second vehicle in your cleaning division because then your base fees are the same. So that's the answer to that one. It's just the peculiarity of our system, especially in recent years where we've got so much work that. But there's no need. Okay, thank you. Good question.

Are you Brazilian?

Yep.

Brazilian? Yep.

Cool.

Recognise the name?

Cool.

Got one here from Peter. Where's Peter? Regarding fencing, I think you'll like this. You'll like this one, Jim.

He never gives me advantage or anything. Jim, I'd like to thank Rachel for this question. But why will I succeed as a fencing franchisee? What's that? Sorry? Why will I succeed as a fencing franchisee? Well, one reason is because you've made an incredibly smart decision to join Gyms Fencing, which gets the odds very much in your favour. But it comes down to your personal qualities. Most people who buy franchises in gyms do do quite well. As I said this morning, about 90% will end up with good or satisfactory income and some will end up as multi millionaires. But it's a fairly basic thing. You've simply got to do the right thing by the customer and organize yourself and look at what you're doing and say, how can I do it better? If something goes wrong, you look internally and you don't look and try and blame somebody else. The great majority will succeed, we know that. But it comes down to character. There's very little to do with experience or the amount of money you put in, or even your overall strength or anything like that, or mental power or anything that really has much of an influence on whether you succeed. The overwhelming thing is character. And you look at the people who are best, they are not incredible geniuses, they're just decent people who want to do the right thing and are self critical enough to say how can I improve all the time? And people have come a long, long way just by doing that and by learning from others too, by being surrounded by positive people who can help you to do better, Come to meetings, talk to your franchise or regularly. It's been troubling. Yes, that's right. You will be successful if you do that.

Thanks for that one, Peter. Let's get to a couple of which came via during the week as well. So this one was from George Stavrokakis, which basically he said to you, Jim. I'm curious to know what's Jim's definition of leadership.

It's a strange question, isn't it?

Yeah, it came by online, so and.

So and so and so I tried to ring the customer back. To use the obvious example, a good leader will say yes, but did you text? Did you do the things you're supposed to do? Because if you had done that they wouldn't have ignored you and then you can do better. So the kind of person who's prepared to take a tough line and just say you need to change what you're prepared to do. Who cares enough about it. It's like a parent, you know, if you're a good parent, you don't just say to your kid, do whatever you want, do whatever you Feel like you're going to say, no, come on, this isn't good behavior.

This.

This is not going to help you to be a better person and have a better life. To me, that's leadership. Caring enough to be able to take a firm line and to be someone that people can imitate and want to follow.

That's a really good question there, George.

As to whether I'm a leader in that sense, I don't know. Not everybody likes me, that's for sure. I try.

What's your management philosophy for everyone internally, you call it when you go wandering around?

Yeah, I just wander around. I spend a lot of time wandering around the office actually. Megan was just. She told people she worked at gyms and she worked with gym and she couldn't believe the fact that I actually wander into the office most day and just say, how's it going? I just come and have a chat with people and just ask them. I find that a lot useful thinking about that. I find it's very good to talk to the front line. This is why I like to talk to franchisees. I like franchisees to contact me. I like individual staff to know they can approach me because I often hear things that are going on.

We had you take some customer calls as well on the call centre to me last week.

Yeah, I told them about that. That was an embarrassing experience. But I did manage to book a couple of jobs.

But you did too.

I tell you what, those girls do a fantastic job. They really do. They are heroes. They really are. They're so well trained, so professional, so dedicated. In fact, what we tend to do, which is horrible for the call centre, is we actually take the best ones from the call centre and we give them jobs in gyms and they do so well.

Absolutely. We've got a few comments here coming as well. Bonnie Lee Dean has gone. Jim, you are very wise and that was a fantastic answer for a few questions before the Eric Jurgen says. Hey guys, it's been a while since I've seen you. Can we get as franchisees notification on our pages of when training is on and when Jim's Live is going to be on? Well, there's an event card on the page if you subscribe to that. You get notified 15 minutes before the event there, Eric. And it can also go straight into your page as well if you want to as well. So we've got a few more questions here as well from the previous on the website, which I'm going to hold this one actually. This is a good one to do now. So Billy o' Connor came through and says hi Jim. I just want to ask Jim what is his thoughts on superannuation are and what is his advice for small business owners franchisees to contribute to their super fund and retirement? Also, do you suggest the franchisee has some sort of income protection? Thanks very much. Regards Billy o'. Connor. Very business like. Question.

Yeah, I'm not a huge fan of Super. We have a self managed super fund where we just own a flat in the city because they take ridiculous amounts of money. These people make billions in their management fees of superannuation. So I think if you can do self managed super, it's better. I'm a great believer in property. If you can get into the property market because property always seems to go up and you get tenants to pay things off. I had a friend at school who never in his whole life made more than the average income and he's now an independently wealthy multi millionaire investor just by buying property. So I'd suggest get property, get your house paid off, borrow against it, buy someone else and then get that paid off as quick as possible and then you just escalate your goods. As far as income as protection is concerned, it sort of depends on your financial situation. If you are living from hand to mouth and you need a salary, you should definitely have illness and accident policy which means that if you're sick or if you break your leg, you're covered if you can afford not to. If you've got reasonable reserves behind you, I'd say you're far better off using that same money to invest in something like property.

What about bitcoin, Jim? What about digital currencies? All the rage? No way.

Because Bitcoin isn't worth anything. Property has real value, but bitcoin is a pure speculation. You might as well go and put your money on a casino. It's a similar sort of thing and I don't think.