#ASKJIM episode 85 with Jim's Group founder, Jim Penman and Joel Kleber

Foreign.

And welcome to another Ask Jim, episode number 85. And as you can see tonight, as promised last week, Jim has the let Victoria work again and the cap as well. And I said to him it looked very stylish. I reckon you look 10 to 15 years younger. You fit into a music concert with those. Twist that on and. And people. And we need. We need to sell them. So make sure you go. Is it read democracy.com with the.

Yeah, that's right. Reignite democracy. Don't just look it up. Reignite democracy. And you can order it online.

They're very cheap as well. It's very, very cheap. I was supposed to have mining coming in time. It's a very cheap price. So make sure you get.

It's done by the new division gyms, signs and uniforms. And they. Very good job, very fast, Very good price, really good price, really impressive people.

And Dave McDonald's saying on here, g', day. Jim's in breech, he's not in uniform. Well, there is some. If you want to lift up your shirt a little bit, there is a little bit of a logo on there, isn't there?

There is two. Yeah, you can see. There you are.

There you go. There is a Jim's logo on there.

Dave, this is. Hang on a bit. David, who defines what a uniform is? I'm the national franchisor. I can decide. You can wear bathing trunks and feather boas and it's uniform. I mean, who does anybody have to tell me what uniform is?

I think it's giving you the permission to wear the straw hat as per last week, David. So the Jim straw hat. So national franchise all can do what he wants. But make sure on the Facebook page, on Jim's Facebook page, there is a poster with the shirt in bold. You can have the link to purchase that there as well. And what about something exciting tomorrow morning as well, Jim? Hopefully everyone gets up early enough Today.

Show what they reckon about 7:10. 7:10? Yeah. So I'll see if they let me wear the shirt. That one too. That might get a bit publicity.

I hope they do. Yeah. So that's with Carl in the morning. They gave you five minutes last time, which is fantastic on a national show. So.

Well, it's got some interest, I must say. Mostly positive responses, partly because I'm making it clear that it's only for contractors, not for myself, not for anybody who's already well off, but just for people who are really the battlers, who we think have been unfairly treated. Yeah.

And it's gone off today online I was saying, Jim, before we post 300 shares on Facebook and there's on Twitter and things like this, and it's just gone.

There's a whole stack of franchisees going in. If anybody's an independent contractor, we'd like you to join too. Probably a bit more of a percentage than our guys do, of course, but it's still a very, very good deal. I'm quite amazed they could do it for so little. We're only paying 10% independence, actually. Any amounts over $50,000. And also for psychiatric illnesses and so forth, that's 15%. But still, when you look at these class actions, they typically take, you know, 30, 40, even 60, 70% of the actual money. But in this case, the vast majority will go to the people. That's why I agreed to do it. My original reaction is, no, I won't do it. But, you know, and they must be confident because it's going to take a lot of money to run this thing and they reckon they're going to get. Be able to get the full amount of money back from each. From each franchisee.

Absolutely. It's like carbon lawyers. And they must be confident to take it on because it's another.

They've done a lot of this stuff too. They're quite experienced in these areas and they reckon it's a real slam dunk. Well, I hope they're right.

112 people watching, which is fantastic. So make sure you leave a comment and question and fill them up. We'll get to them as much as we can. We're saying Galea tuning, which is great. And then we got Dominic Bush was gone. Are there any Jim's Hats in the pipeline that state make Victoria great again.

Well, let Victoria work. If we could work, we would be great.

So you can get that hat from online there, Dominic.

I don't know about channeling Donald Trump, though.

I don't know. I don't think that would go too well if we do that.

But I think let Victoria work is a good slogan, especially when the work does not affect infection. As I say all the time, what they've done is lunatic. They actually allow council workers to work in groups. They allow people with dog wash salons to work in groups where the risk of infection is high. But people working alone cannot work. That is a lunatic. What they should have done is said, work by yourself, you're fine. Work in groups. Try not to. You don't need five council gardeners to do a flower bed. One will do. And I should know. I used to be A gardener, so.

And then Katie reading string from Jim's Dog Wash. So the dog wash. Let's just go on about that. Again, the hypocrisy.

I don't know if anybody knows the reason for this. Basically, the Premier needed to get his, his legislation to give him six months of dictatorial power, arbitrary power, through the upper house. He needed three people. The Greens, of course, were on side the reason party or something like that, you know, basic lefty outfits. And they got Andy Medic, who runs the animal something party, who represents the salons. So they basically obviously made a deal with him to say, if you support us and allow this dictatorial power to go through salons will be all right. Jim Dog wash on the. I can't do it. So it's politics over health every time. And that's what the whole nature of this thing. We do not object to reasonable restrictions. We have never objected. We've been very supportive of the government. He said, wear masks, personal distance is fine. You know, be Covid safe, download the app, do everything we can to support this thing. And that Premier goes off and says, let's cut down the kinds of businesses that have no effect on health at all, where there's no danger, infection, let's put them out. Because that just makes me feel good and macho. So that's why I started this whole thing.

That's the whole point. That's the whole point.

We don't object to reasonable restrictions, but what they've done is horrifying and the effects in terms of financial and mental suffering is just extraordinary.

Absolutely. And that's the whole point, isn't it, Jim? Everyone keeps. I'm seeing the tide turning online now. People are starting to read the actual articles and actually understand the basis for it, whereas just going off.

And everybody out there can help. You can get these things. It's only. They only cost a few bucks each and you can just wear them around in hats and get your friends to wear them and just, just do it. We're not making any money out there.

Needless to say, yeah, there's no profit out of that at all. It's completely profit at all.

Just, just, just pass them around. Get these things out there and pass the message around that we people should be allowed to work when they're no danger to health. There are many, many, many things that are going on that are far more dangerous to health than a loan operator doing a job like washing a dog.

Absolutely. And hopefully the dog wash and grooming franchise is doing well out there. So we've got more than 100 people tuning which is great. Leave comments and questions. So Heyday's tuning saying looking good gents. I reckon Heydar do well in one of those shirts as well Jim. Cause I know the cleaning groups.

Yeah, you're gonna buy. I'll send him one across to you, Heydar. How about that?

You look good on it.

We've got the extra big size too.

He's in the gym a bit now. Haydar. He's in there every night at his home.

Well, I hope so. He did a good reducing job. But Haydar likes his food. I remember sitting down with Haydar for lunch one time and he had a whole medium style pizza. I didn't even know I could eat a small one. He had a whole medium sized one.

He's on a healthy pizza. I hope he's working hard on the gin every night. He is, I reckon.

We love you Haydar but we don't want any more of you than necessary.

Rob's gone. He send a shirt to Dan.

You look like this bloke too. So that's not good.

Yeah, yeah. I've lost a lot. I've lost a lot. I haven't had to been able to go. I hope so. I've done nothing. Next time. Yeah, I know. Well, next time in person you might be surprised. You might be able to do it on anyway.

So I'll say who's this? Who's this? Who's this Slim Jim guy?

And then Rob, Rob's gone. If you Good suggestion. We could do this, Jim. He's going to send a shirt to Dan Andrews and Brett Sutton. I guess you could post one to them.

Well, what good would that do?

Just as a bit of a. Bit of a laugh.

They probably would. They probably would, yes. I think it had some poison in it or something.

Yeah. Probably say it's a bomber.

No, I don't think so. The last thing Daniel Andrews wants to do is let Victoria work. He'd like to have them all on. Everybody on the dole or working for the government.

We'll touch on the budget in a quick bit but we'll just keep going from questions and comments and stuff. So David, Donald's gone. He did a job at a customer's house. They were showing me photos of people that came into the their shop with funny masks. One had a G string over their nose and mouth. Another had a full blown gas mask like our World War II. What's the funniest and best mask you've seen, Jim?

I don't think I've seen anything really strange. I'm not out that much these days. I think masks are kind of. You have a. Have a woman wearing a mask. It looks kind of cute sometime. My wife looks good in the mask. Not that I don't think she's gorgeous all over, but it's just that. Just a sort of acute look.

Zach Jenkins. Ghani. I'll be watching tomorrow morning, the Today Show. Look forward to seeing you speaking. And I have noticed that lawn mowing has been advertising on Channel 9 during the Today show over the past week. As you've previously not been in favor of this form of advertising, I wondered what might have changed your mind. Jim.

It didn't. Jim's is far more of a democracy than people think. What actually happens is that you have the franchisors in the area that's relevant get together and they decide. And it's basically voting by households and paying by households. And I have a region in Victoria which is Gippsland Southwest, which is quite a good region. So I was kind of outvoted. People think that you. I have, I have total power. I don't actually. In fact, we've set up the system in ways that as franchisees will know that are very unusual. Like we give franchisees the right to change regions. We had a franchise, he changed region. Today he's not getting on with his franchisor, so he changed in a different region. I just did that about two hours ago. We had a region. A franchisor who actually was voted out by his franchisees has to sell his region. And of course any changes to the manual have to be voted by the franchisees. So it's. It's sort of crazily democratic in a sense by comparison with most. But it works alright.

Well, the. Vic Mullings always wanted to do that, Eric. So it was an exercise by them and they got it very cheap as because of the time at the moment. Then Paul's always going to hide Jim and Joel, kick Dan out, put Jim in. Yeah, we get that a lot. Every week there's something like that. And we've got Mark saying he. Can anyone join in the class action from Mark online?

If you're basically, it's for. It's for independent tradies.

So how do they do that? What's the best way?

Just go to Carboni lawyers, just C A, R B O N E lawyers and which is in the paper too. And just, just email them and say I'd like to join in the class action. I'm, you know, A gardener. I'm a fence, or whatever you are, and just say you'd like to join in. I think everybody should do it. I reckon you're crazy not to, because there's no risk. I have to warn you, the. The actual. The actual document looks. It puts all these charges on and it's not. There isn't any charge. It makes it sound like you might have to pay something, but you absolutely do not. In fact, I'll guarantee any Dumas franchisee personally guarantee you won't pay. In other words, if you do happen to get a bill, send it to me and of course I'll fight them to the end of the day. But that's not going to happen because I've got it in writing. Being assured there is no payment Apart from this 10 or 15% coming out, no risk. All you've got to do is to. You sign this document, send it back. They'll give you a questionnaire, you fill it in. This is what I've lost. Send that back, leave it up to them. That's all you've got to do. And I believe you will get your money back, as you should. It's completely unfair, what's being done to you.

So hit up Carboni lawyers for that one. And then Pawan's gone. How long does it take for a class action to happen from Pavan?

A while, probably 18 months or so. So it's not going to happen overnight. We're trying to work through the other one. We're just working how to appeal to. We've got some people who put the application in for me, based on the Public Health and Wellbeing Act 2008, we've put an application in. We've got the first rejection now, so now we're going to work out how to put that through vcap.

So that'll be grounds that they rejected. On what grounds?

Oh, just. Just pages of gobbledygook. I mean, what does it matter? Of course they were going to pay. They have to admit then that the whole. The whole thing's been a farce and the Premier's not going to allow that to happen.

And then Shelley's gone to collateral damages far and wide. Absolutely. Then Lucas has gone. I've lost 90% of business because of Dan. It's unbelievable. Couldn't even support the family. But thanks to your persistency, it's back. Thank you. From Lucas, which is really nice. And then here Steve Walken goes. Hi, guys. Did we get any answers to the questions about Jim's online from last Week that was the hot topic. Are we closer to any closer to franchisees and franchise or is being able to find contact details of all other franchisees in the area from Steve?

I think they're just working on it now.

They are. You emailed allow it live on air to live to get it sorted.

So, yeah, programming takes a while actually. We've got this massive list and every time we shorten it, it sort of add more on the end. So it gets bigger. It's just never ending.

So the answer is, Steve, not yet. But it is being worked on because you made it then they're going to get that done soon.

And then Paul says we spend several million dollars a year on software development. You wouldn't believe how much there is to do. And it does get better. It makes improvements, but it just. It just. The list never gets smaller. It just keeps on adding extra things on the end.

Well, I'll post online when it's ready, Steve. So you just have to follow the Facebook page and I'll post online then. Paul's always going, here, can I have a hat and top as well? Well, Paul is always. They're really cheap. We're giving them away. If you just buy it from Reignite Democr Democracy with the merchandise on Jim's page, Polizoid. They're not much. How much are they? 16 bucks including.

I tell you what, I tell you what, if we get a really good question tonight, the best one will get a free. In fact, there's a hat, there's the shirt and there's a couple of bumper stickers. We've also got corflute signs too. I should have booked mine to show you.

So there you go.

The hat and the bumper stickers too. We'll send it the best questions tonight.

All right, fantastic.

There you go.

So leave your question there. Polozoi. Then Andrew's saying, good on you, Jim Ettore. A lot of people saying, well done, Jim, which is fantastic. Now we've got Dave McDonald says, Jim, all men should take, aka coffee for their women. It says so on the Bible. Hebrews. I don't know what that is in reference to.

You should take what?

So all men should. Is it take coffee for their women? It says so on the Bible.

Hebrews take coffee for their women.

Yeah, I know. David, can you provide some more context?

Coffee isn't mentioned in the Bible. It's not there as far as I know.

You have to mention that one there, David. Eric Juergens has gone here, so I've had a great chat with Christie, after you gave me my phone number out last week, Jim, she came out on a trial day with me. Yes, I heard. Absolutely loved it.

She's really interested in now looking at finance, which is great. Really good.

And. Yeah, so he's saying. Received a phone call last night. Very pleased to hear that. She wants to go ahead now. This is a great division. It's going to double in size and all will now, if you help Eric.

That's exciting actually, too, because it's a division that at the beginning looked very, very dicey. Eric was really struggling and then since he's actually worked out the way to do it and making very good money, we reckon there should be hundreds of these across Australia. It's a fantastic system. It's a great. The truck is great, the food is good, the coffee is good. I wouldn't know because I don't drink it, but the chocolate is good coffee.

I've had it. It's good coffee.

But. And it's just. It's. And we've got. And Eric's got a good. He's kind of going to be like the trainer for the division. So he's. It's. It's really fantastic. We think we're going to get a lot of people on this.

And Gary is. So that. He's her wife. Sorry, his wife is Gary. His husband is Gary. Her dog is a mine franchisee and they're both out in the Western Melbourne, so you can have that. Western Melbourne. Two mobile coffee vans will be fantastic. Now, here we go, we've got one from Valenos who's gone. What motivated you to bring the court action as opposed to other options from Valenos?

Basically, it's the price, because I was approached about court actions, but the class actions. But what I've always heard about them is they're really, really rotten. What they do is they get these litigation funders and they put up the money and they get these massive profits out and most of the money actually goes to litigation funders and the lawyers and the people only get a fraction. So when I talked to Carboni and they originally came back to me and said, we can do it 15%, I said, all right, now you're talking, but I want 10% for my guys. So that's where it came from. It's just simply. And look, it's quite a big thing if you've got to get a thousand people together and do all the administrative paperwork. It's a big, expensive operation. Now, to my mind, if there's $20 million is paid out in this claim, they're only making $2 million, but that's not a lot for the work they've got to do, so they must be confident it's going, otherwise they wouldn't take it on. And they have experience in this area too, so they say, this is definitely something that we're going to be able to get through.

And then Angelina's going, well done, Jim, for standing up for us. That's great. Now we've got one here from Wendy Hodgkin. Hi, Jim and Joel. Whatever happened to basic logic and common sense? Dan Andrews. Never had any. I've worked as a nurse for years and was exposed to infectious diseases and basic hand hygiene and common sense. Never saw us health workers at risk or infected.

No. It's lunatic what they've done. It really is a sensible system. Would have done so much better. It would have no effect on infection, but it would have saved so much loss and so much suffering. And I think actually people talk about the financial effects. I personally think the mental health effects are probably the worst ones. I know even in our own house, I've got a daughter who's 17 years old and it's just cut off from her friends in a crucial time of her life. It's very hard for her. It's really, really difficult. And we're better than most because we've got a big house, our family's together. One of my daughters has come back from university, staying with us. I'm still working, but even so, it's difficult. But people are really suffering from this and I think they're ignoring the mental health aspects, as people often do.

Absolutely. And they provide little funding and they just say more support services. But end of the day, it's very hard for people to access those in a normal environment and then online now especially, and plus the people. But as I say, always with mental health, anyone who watches this, the people around, the person with the issue as well, which is the ones that never get any consideration. Kevin Lacy's gone. Hi, Jim. What losses has the brand as a whole had due to closures? Kevin Lacy, good question.

I don't think the brand's been hurt at all. I've myself probably lost about a half million, best estimate. But, you know, it's not so much I'm not making money, I'm just not making as much money as usual. To be blunt about it, the brand has probably been helped because the publicity of this thing has been overwhelmingly good. I would be quite confident that, in fact, I've had people say to me, this is the best PR thing that's ever happened to you. Now I wish it had never happened. Speaking the amount of exposure we've got, the amount of media we've got, and overwhelmingly positive people come up to me in the street and they congratulate me. And I received like in the mail today, I think four people wrote me actual letters, snail mail, saying congratulations and thank you and stuff. Some of them with multiple people. I got one for the University of Adelaide. It's all over the place, really.

University of Adelaide?

Yeah.

Right.

It was just, it was quite. I got you from Rochebank.

Fantastic.

Yeah, that's one, that's one here. That one came in today. That was just sort of a congratulations and thank you. That's from a member of Parliament. What else was there? This one here, that was another one. So all these things are coming, pouring in all the time. So, yeah, a lot of. A lot of support. So it's.

I think it'll be your fifth or your sixth prime time morning TV slot tomorrow as well. I think it'll be your fifth or sixth appearance. Appearance on Today and Sunrise together tomorrow.

Yeah. Well, who is speaking up for small businesses like ours? Nobody else is in that situation to do it. The fact that we're a nationwide franchise change means that, like, I can have a voice and I can speak for them. And, you know, I mean, a lot of support from franchisees, but most of it comes from outsiders. Just saying, well done. Thanks for sticking up for, you know, the small guy. You know, I'm thinking about the. I think I mentioned it last week, the Eureka Stockade. And it's just, it's so. It's so similar. You have basically a rather dictatorial and unresponsive, unlistening government doing things which were really, really offensive to the small diggers, the entrepreneurs of the gold fields. And to a large extent, they were doing it because they wanted to force them out of the goldfields and go back to work for the squatters who were losing their labor. So they wanted to get bigger because the goldfields were too lucrative. So very much the same thing. You know, it's the big end of town against the small. But in the end, the diggers won because after the Eureka Stockade was crushed and, you know, many of them were killed, all the people who were put on trial were let off and supported by cheering crowds. And then after that they changed the law. They started giving land to the small people and they got rid of the licenses, the goldfield licenses, and they started moving towards democracy in Victoria. So it was a great movement, and I think there's a lot of similarities in what's been going on in the past few months, to my mind.

And we've got Paul Schaub's going. I'm not with Jim's mowing, but I admire what he's doing. I enjoy watching the both of you and your interactions with me. Tov fix that you cover. That's nice, Paul, and thanks for taking the time to write that then. Hey, Dar's gone. You guys are funny. I've lost heaps of weight recently. I'm fit as ever.

I haven't seen you. It might be true, but how would I know?

I'll have to show you a photo.

You have to show me a photo. Do one of the Speedos. It'll give me nightmares, but at least it'll prove your point.

We might have to do a gym selfie with the shirt on. So when he gets the shirt out, we have to put one on there and do it then. David McDonald's gone. My customer today owns a franchise business. Not saying what we were comparing notes on franchises. They have to repay a territory fee every four years to keep their territory. However, the franchisor can sell another business similar to theirs next door under a different name. The only thing I could say is you signed the contract. That's unheard of.

Oh, no. It's not a right to give franchisees and franchisors real power. So even if I wanted to be arbitrary, I couldn't because I'm bound by my own contracts.

Absolutely. So we got audio on there. I think the screens dropped out. Then just getting on to Jake to fix it up there now. We'll keep going, though. So it's back up there now, which is fantastic. So Wendy Hodgkins gonna. Wearing masks creates more health issues. We are all re breathing in carbon dioxide that we blow out and it causes headaches and fatigue and makes our bodies more acidic. That's from Wendy Hodgkin.

Yeah.

All right.

Sorry. I don't really agree. I think they've done a lot of studies on masks. What they find is that the major benefit is not so much that it stops you getting infected, but it means if you are infected, you're not so likely to infect others because it stops the air coming out so fast. I mean, the evidence is. I don't mind it because it's. It's. It doesn't cost jobs, it doesn't cost lives. So it's a good thing to do then.

Chris has gone in how much money should franchises expect to lose by filing a lawsuit against the government by damaging your brand? That's from Chris Goronsky.

Well, in the sense of lose, they're going to get paid, hopefully by the government. But I don't think it's hurting the brand at all. I think it's had the opposite effect you've had. How many did you say you had? About 300 people comment and no negatives.

It's already had on your page. It's already had 300 shares organic, which is pretty, pretty good.

In actual fact, we know people actually write to us and say, we've never used teams before, we're going to use you in future. They're saying things like this, overwhelmingly what's happened. And certainly the people I've spoken to said, this has been really, really good for your brand.

And I think outside of Victoria, it's received really well. From what I know from Queensland and.

Sort of more outside Victoria than Victoria. Some reason Victorians seem a bit spineless. They sort of say, oh, the great Premier is looking after us, protecting us against the evil, nasty virus. So we trust him in the face of all reason.

I've seen some stupid comments online. I saw one when saying, oh, he's protected. You know, 800 people have lost their lives. It's like, well, suicide rates, a lot more.

Yeah, well, guess why they've lost their lives, Premier? Because you stuffed the quarantine, which, strangely enough, nobody's responsible for. You have a form of government where people do make major decisions and nobody's responsible for anything. I mean. I mean, what sort of competence is that?

Well, how much did that inquiry cost? Like a million dollars, whatever it cost. And they all said, no, no answers, right?

It wasn't me, it was somebody else's fault. But if you. If you set up a form of. If you set up a form of government so that nobody has responsibility for important decisions, then it's your fault.

And they got one here from Jim's Mine, Bay of Plenty Hawks from nz. Did they also have to pay monthly fees based on their turnover? Harder they work the morning, more they have to pay. So that might be from another suggestion to the franchise.

We don't like that. We don't think a person who makes more money, because my point of view, if you give somebody the same service and somebody is making $100,000 a year and somebody's making $2 million a year, and I'm not exaggerating, we have franchisees making that and more, we're giving them the Same service. Why should we charge one person 20 times as much? We haven't done anything different. If you've got the nous to go out there and take extra work and put employees on and invest in your business, why should we get any extra? It's your benefit.

Absolutely. Then Kane's going. Did you get Jobkeeper for any of your staff from Keane Spencer?

No, because our income hasn't gone down enough. Because basically we had about, out of something, just under 4,000 franchisees. We had about 7, 700 who were affected by this. So not enough. You have to. You have to be declined by 30%. And we were a bit below that.

Then Kwan's gone here. How is your mental health, Jim? So someone's asking about your mental health, Jim. You going all right?

Yeah, great, yeah. Look, it's been hard, but personally speaking, I'm all right in a way. The whole thing with the media is a bit of a buzz. But what the weight on me as my franchisees, it really hurts me. I just. I just can't, even for like an hour, I can't forget that I've got people who are not working. It just really is a burden. And that's the hardest thing about this. Myself. Look, I'm okay. I'm fit and healthy. My business is going well, apart from, you know, lockdown and stuff. You know, I miss my family. I miss church, but I'm well off. I just. I just. It's just a burden. I speak to people. I hear the stories. I know. I know two families where they've had people who've attempted suicide. It's not the franchisees, but their families. In their families. You hear this kind of stuff going on, which the Premier doesn't, and it's very hard to take.

Absolutely.

Myself, I'm fine.

Matthew wrote. It's gone. Good work, Jim. And we've got Dave McDonald says, Jim, enough. Covid, let's have a joke. I don't know if we might keep the joke to the end, maybe. I reckon there. How about we write that.

I don't know which jokes I've heard told before.

Told a few, but you keep surprising me. You haven't doubled up yet, so we might. We'll keep it to the end. David, you got to hang on to the end to see Jim's joke.

We'll.

We'll go to the end there. Okay, then here we got one as well. We've got Quan now. Quan again. So we read everything out in full, in full disclosure. He's gone. What do you have to Say to franchisees that have lost so many clients because of your stand with the government from Kwan?

I'd say you haven't. I'd say you haven't lost clients because of my standards, the government. In fact, the leads are up compared with what they used to be. You've actually gained your extrovert. So what would you say about that? Actually, right at the beginning, when we had a lot of negative input, of course, my first thing, when I was misinterpreted as saying that I was advising people to advise to defy the law, and that was basically the way the interview was cut. There was a lot of negativity at a couple of times the franchise all said to me, you're hurting the brand. I said, okay, I'm gonna make a deal with you. Okay, I'll make a bet with you for $10,000 that we get more leads in October this year than we got last year, the same year. I didn't think it would last that long, but I made that bet to several people, not one person. Take me up on it. The fact of the matter is, this has been an actually exceptionally good thing for the brand. Overwhelmingly, people are in favor. You might get somebody who says, I'll never use Jim's again because he doesn't love the premier as I do, but you'll get 10 people who say, oh, good on you, Jim. And that's the direction we're getting.

So, yes, it's definitely slowed down. You know, Twitter's probably the cesspool on social media the most, and so it's definitely died down in regards to that. Frank Roscom's got in. My customers have done their own places now, so now they don't need a gardener right now. Well, hopefully, Frank, they might need you again once things get going.

I would absolutely be confident that you'll be busier than you could ever be in your whole life. Once we get going, if we need to spend some, don't forget, too. We're talking about spring in the Southern, in Victoria. So the grass is going berserk. The biggest problem that I've heard of franchisees, they're just so behind.

Yeah, I see some crazy workers.

The biggest problem, they say, I've got so much work on, I've got to try and do it. And then when you go there, the grass is so long, people don't want to pay extra. That's the issue. I'm hearing, I don't know one franchisee in Mowing in Victoria who's anything but flat out not One if anybody'd like to let me know about them I'd love to hear about it but I don't know one person.

Dinak Jennings gone. I've ordered a new van today and she will get mine so that's great. So we definitely got the second franchise coming on a mobile cafe which is fantastic. Then Ben Lewis has gone. How do you think a mobile printing and photocopying van would go considering a lot of companies will continue with a working from home model after the pandemic is over?

Ben Lors probably not because printers are so cheap these days. Honestly I don't. I think a person's working on that's what they'll do.

We've got a printer here then Dane Lock was gone. Thanks for that but I. Thanks for that question Ben first time.

You upch I had a new just this week a new potential franchise system which is Jim's car buyers. Car buyers who's got a really good background in the industry and people when they want to buy cars they want some guidance to find themselves a really, really good car and he thinks there's a, a great business in there and if you actually have a look at car brokers or there's car broker industry.

Yeah, there is, yeah, yeah.

So this, this bloke has fantastic. His own major. Major had 200 people working for him at times. So really high powered business, business guy and he's interested in doing this. That's very exciting. Stay.

Okay well stay tuned for that one. That's exciting. Then we've got Dean Lockwood's gone. He do not accept any settlement offer until after discovery has been completed. That's some advice from Dean Lockwood. Do not accept.

It's not going to be up to me anymore. It's not going up to my franchisees because I'm not a party of this. I'm supporting it but I'm not making any claims for myself or for Jim's group in any way. This is purely for the contractors who've been hurt directly.

Then we've got Dave McDonald says Jim, is your research still going ahead or is it still sitting at the moment? Is it done in Vic Interstate or overseas? How involved are you in the technical side of the research or do you leave it to others?

From David it's going well. We've got some really interesting experiments going. We hope to have some very good results by the middle of next year. It's being run through La Trobe University in Melbourne in terms of the animal work, direct animal work but we're hopefully going to get a deal with UTS Sydney University of Technology Sydney on doing this is more for the epigenetic work over there and as far as my own involvement is concerned, look I'm not technical but every couple of weeks we have a zoom meeting of the team including myself and we go through the different projects. So I'm involved, I'm not doing it but I'm involved in everything. I know every experiment that goes on, I approve it and then I look at things like costs and so forth to try and keep the cost under control and we discuss what's got the priorities. So yeah, I'm involved.

I know you want to be the test subject once with the spray. What's going on with that?

Let me do it. They said it's too dangerous.

You want to be the first one for the human troll.

We will do it on. We will do it on reps first then.

Now there's another one from quiet Quan's asking the tough questions so we'll see if this is true or not but I'll read it out.

We don't find anything on this session.

That's it. He's gone. Had a number of franchisees telling me that they've been ripped off and that their franchises aren't worth the paper it's written on from Kwan. Well, like to know who Kwan.

Tell me, tell me who they are. I mean, I mean, look, look, can I say something? It's not as though a franchise is not a guarantee. What I can say is that and this is figures that you can check for yourself, you go online, you look at failure rates of gardening business and clean business, you'll find the value rate typically in the first year is between 90 and 95%. About 5 to 10% of these businesses last the first year. With ours it ranges but the actual failure rate is between about 10.5 and 11% on average. And I can give you these figures okay now out of that 10/2 11% some of them actually haven't failed. They've actually decided that offered a great job to go dig into. Some of them go independent which is possible for a smallish fee with us but some do fail. So some people actually do fail at gyms and one of the reasons in tomorrow morning I'm going to be going doing the franchisor training course and one of the things I'll be the first thing I'll do in the first course which goes for 9 o' clock until 10:30 my first session I'll talk about selection, selection, selection why we select, how we select, why it's so important not to take people on. Some people should not be in business. Even with a franchise, your chance of success, franchise like ours, is much greater. You can still fail, and so some people will fail. But what you've got to do, and this is important, if you're looking at a franchise, don't just read up the general media about what franchise like. You can get good stories and you get bad stories. What you do is you get a list of all the franchisees from the business you're looking at with contact numbers. If they don't give you that, they're in breach of the law. You shouldn't have to give a deposit, you shouldn't have to sign anything. They should just give you this list. That is the law. That's the franchising code. Get that list, ring up as many as you can, and then ask them what it's like. That is the way to check it out. Now, if they give a poor response, and that includes gyms, if they happen to get it, then you don't touch it, you don't buy it. If they overwhelmingly say it's a good response, you've got something which is likely to be a pretty good system. And I'm pretty confident that most of the time, if you try that with our divisions, you will get a good response. Now, that does not mean that you're going to succeed, but the reason that you don't succeed is going to be 99% to do with the way you approach the business, on your attitude and so forth. For example, franchisee complaining about how bad the system was. Now, one of the things he wouldn't tell you, and I've seen this, I was looking at this today, he gets complaint after complaint after complaint. Poor work, didn't turn up, didn't ring back, didn't give a quote again and again and again and again. Now, in the end, this guy fails, Quite likely he will fail and he will say the system is lousy. Is it really lousy? If you're in the bottom 1% of franchisees in terms of customer service, how likely do you think you will succeed? So do your research. Don't, don't, don't. And it depends who they are. Now, if you want to approach me about individual people, I'll give you some stories about what's going on.

That's a really. Thanks for leaving that comment, Quan. It's tough and we always do it in transparency. And one of the best things you can have imply it to yourself. Is if it's up to me, it's meant to. If it's up to me. Sorry. If it's meant to be, it's up to me.

I will say we have had failures that were not the fault of the franchisee. And I'll give you an example. There was the interior design system. It was a new division. It looked like a good business. We got four ladies to buy into this particular division and after a while it became. Obviously it wasn't working. They weren't able to make money, the economies were wrong. Okay. So what we basically did is we made a deal with the person who ran it and all the four were given cleaning franchises. Given cleaning franchises. They were all moved across the cleaning. One of them is now a highly successful franchisor, I might say. So they didn't lack ability. That's an example where we failed. Not every division works, but if you go into an established division like cleaning or mowing or dog wash or any of those ones there, the chance of failure are just very, very small if you follow the system properly, particularly in regard to things like customer service.

Absolutely. It's a great comment, though, Kwan. Thanks for leaving it there. And then we've got. Ivan's gone. Good on you, Jim. Then Tommy Kendall. Here's another one similar. I've heard the motivation before. The Let Victoria Work movement was more so avoiding having to waive franchise fees and pay out guarantees and less about the franchisees. Well, billing from Tommy Kendall. I don't know where you heard that, Tommy, but yeah, well, we're not.

We're not paying anything out. What happens is any franchisee who is not unable to work is actually all the fees are immediately suspended. Every single fee. There's no income coming to us in any way. And I might say too, not only do we suspend the fees, but if they were able to legally go out and do anything like ndis, we didn't charge them fees. So we didn't actually stop them working. We just simply said, we're not going to charge you any fees. I might say too. And this is a real credit to the franchisors. Most of the franchisors have been in regular contact with their franchisees every regularly, every week. Just seeing how they're going and talking. Even though they're not getting paid. A sin.

Probably more so. Probably more so in contact, haven't they? More so in contact from speaking some franchises.

And I'm proud of them. I really am proud of the franchisors. They've done a brilliant job they really care about their guys. Even though they've got no income themselves, obviously most of them got good businesses, so they're not too bad. They're not living on the bread line anyway. But they still spent the time and effort to keep their franchisees look after them and particularly with concern for mental health. And maybe, maybe you think I pushed that too much, but it's a big, big concern. It was always. It's been a big concern of us for years and even more so now with what's gone on the last couple of months.

There's a good pat on the back for the franchisors. They tend to get whipped a bit.

That's a good pat on the back. If any of them watching. You deserve thanks and you deserve congratulations. You're a great bunch of people. I'm so proud of you.

Thanks for that question there, Tommy. And you heard it from. Straight from Jim's mouth. So I don't know where you heard it from, but you've heard it from Jim direct. The farm's gone here. Apart from staff working from home more regularly, what else will be different in the national office after Covid from a farm?

That's the biggest change, I guess. It's funny, we found that people work very well from home. I was just having a chat to the compliance documents team and Bev and stuff on Zoom and they like it. Maybe come in once a week when you have the staff lunch. So it's going to be a lot quieter around the office from now on.

I reckon I'll be back in. I hate working from home.

I miss it too. I love coming just walking down the office and just wandering around chatting. As you know, I do that at least once a day. I just like that interaction and sometimes you can have a more of a casual conversation and things come up that you wouldn't always talk about. But on the whole it works surprisingly well.

I probably took it for granted a bit in the office because we, you know, every day for half an hour or 40 minutes and plus all the videos and stuff, so. But hopefully we can look, get back into it then. Angela's got. Angelina's gone. Hey, Jim Yesterday took over Jim's mowing franchise and we're so thrilled that we have joined an organization that sticks up for the common worker. Before this, due to Covid, my husband was out of work for five months. Let's hope Dan sees reason and lets Victoria start moving forward.

I think that's one thing maybe come out of this is that people have this concept that you Know, being in employment is all secure and lock solid. You know, you're working for Qantas or you're working for whatever, that's basically a job for life. Whereas if you go into business, it's a bit dicey. But in fact it's pretty much the other way around, isn't it? Our businesses are very, very robust. They really are tough. Apart from this lockdown, we've done extremely well during the whole thing, whereas so many people lost their jobs. I think it's going to help us. Actually, it's a bit hard to tell because there's so many suspended, but we probably already either hit or very close to 4,000 people.

Yeah. Be a big milestone for us. It'd be fantastic.

We won't even know when we've done it because we don't count suspended franchisees. The figure last thing I looked at today was 3720 or something like that. But I think there's probably more than 300 suspended because of COVID let's say.

Well, let's hope it's 4,000 posts and we'll keep you on. Update on that. The Martin Ryan's going. Another tough question. So there's a couple of smart Alex here. That's all right. Martin Ryan's gone here. Are you okay, Jim? You're sounding like Jerry Harvey before senility took its toll. Personality.

Well, I'm glad I didn't spin off to you. You better not make. Make me laugh too much. I gotta ask you. I might choke.

That one there. Martin. We read everything out.

I don't know. I'm having fun, Martin, that's all. I enjoy my life. I haven't seen the creeping senility yet. Perhaps other people can see examples of.

It, but Kevin Lacy's gone. He. Hygiene. What new business opportunities have you seen throughout this time that you believe could benefit the whole. The population as a whole? From Kevin Lacy? That's a good question.

Kevin, Business opportunities. Look, I just think the service industry in the hold is wide open. People don't. People are so blind. They're so fixed with the idea. You go to university and you get some tech job in front of a computer and so forth. And, and there's this disdain about white, you know, blue collar jobs that actually involve working with your hands. But my goodness, you know, the median salary in Australia is only about 60,000 a year. I mean, my franchisees wouldn't get out of bed for that kind of money. I don't. Seriously, I'm not talking about the minority becoming millionaires, but there's quite a few of those. I'm talking about the average franchisee who couldn't make well over the median wage. And you're not talking about something that's, you know, working 100 hours a week. You work reasonable hours, you work office hours to work you. You can be flexible, the hours you want to work, you want to work weekends, you can. If you don't want to, you don't have to, effectively. Virtually no commuting. It's a brilliant opportunity and there's so many. There's so many opportunities. There's people like this guy with the car buying service too. I mean, what could come of that? And you look at people who, you know, who had nothing, like Sharon Connell or Haydar, who's just come from pretty ordinary business backgrounds and just done so well. It's extraordinary.

You know, one of the things that.

Happened lately is that when people come into my office, there's a big danger of coming to work in the gym's office. You tend to end up buying regional franchises because it's such a good deal. They see it and they see the money. I was talking to Matt Dua, Matt about that today. He wants to buy a regional franchise. He just can't find any at a good price.

He's trying to put a big conglomerate together, investors.

And because people see the end of it, I mean, you look at who's in the office, Rocky's got one, people are buying these things. I know that Jeannie's looking at, looking at buying a regional franchise too, because they're such brilliant businesses.

Absolutely. Derek Jones going, I'm asking this question in an attempt to win the best question of the night, Jim, do you think tomorrow on the Today show might be an ideal opportunity to mention Jim's mobile Cafe and what would a greater and what a great opportunity would be? And to mention all of the charitable work that mobile cafe has done by helping first responders and calling in and giving them coffees at the checkpoints for free.

I think you've done some great work, Eric, but I don't think it's going to get on today's show. I don't have much time, you know, I don't know if anybody call me on. What's the name? Paul, last week, Paul Murray. Yeah, Murray, yeah. They told me in advance, you've not got much time. Get angry fast. So I just let it blast. I knew, I knew I had a minute or two.

Yeah, I saw the comment online, someone saying, jim's going off on Paul Murray Live and I had a look at it and then I asked you. You told me the next day you were told, get angry real quick. So that made a bit of sense.

Yeah. Well, you have to. I mean. I mean, the reason that I get we got good media is not just the fact that it's a good story, but that you've got to be vocal, you've got to be. You got to be quick, you've got to be punchy, you got to be colorful.

You gotta have an opinion. Strong opinion.

Strong opinion. They want the strong opinion. Apparently I do. Good media. The media like me because of that sort of thing. So you're playing to the media because what we want is publicity. We want this kind of thing. We want this to happen. We want people to know about us and listen to us. So we've got to get onto the media. We've got good contacts, too. I've got this guy Anthony from News Corp, who's fantastic. He did the article this morning, went out in the Herald sun and so forth.

Awesome.

And so I've got a regular. We bring each other about every day, so we just. Talking about different things. And I'll give them. Give him a bit of advance.

You know, it's fantastic from that. All the connections we've sort of made, we've made during this period. It's been fantastic.

As soon as we get. Actually, as soon as we lockdown, we're going to get to go and have some lunch. He sounds like a great guy and he's done some good, really good work.

Fantastic. And then Helen's gone. Here. Sorry we came on a bit late. Just to clarify, the Gyms franchisees need to register with Carbone lawyers or are they automatically included in the class?

You have to rent it if you get it from the. I mean, you can. If you haven't got it, just. Just let me know, Jim, at Jims.net and I'll send it to you.

But.

But there's a. I sent you a document. You just got to sign it and send it back. Just be aware, there's a lot of stuff in there about costs and stuff, which does not apply. It's there for legal reasons. You absolutely will not pay. As a franchisee, I personally guarantee you you will not pay a cent. And if they try and bid, you send it to me and I will take it up. But they won't happen because they've told me in writing several times over there'll be no charge. Except for this. 10% at the end or 15%.

Do that one. Helen please get out.

Once you get that, you sign it, you send it to them, they'll come back with a questionnaire. Then you've got to fill in your details about how much money you've lost and so forth.

Now Ben Kerr's gone. Now Ben Kerr, another controversial comment. He's going suing the taxpayers to fill his own pocket. Shame on you, Jim. From Ben Kerr.

Well, yeah, I guess so. And that does occur to me too. I've actually personally. It's actually the aim of this thing is to personally go at the premier and the health minister and the senior bureaucrats who did this. So we're going to try and get money out of them personally. But the other thing I'd ask you is this. The government is dishing out money right, left and center. I mean, Daniel Andrews is giving out $3 billion, but all to his favorite people, the people who are in larger organizations and so forth with stuff all for the smaller tradies who actually in my mind deserve it more than these big firms. Is it really wrong to say, well let's give everybody a share, not just look at the top end of town and the people are already well off, but let's look at the small guys who've been hurt the most because they got the least. Why don't they deserve some protection from the government? The government spending billions, they reckon a trillion dollars or more to prop up businesses. Is it not reasonable for the people who are most vulnerable, who most hurt, get their fair share of what the government's coming out with because it will help to build the economy? Don't forget to. The money comes through people, they go out and spend it and they. And they buy the things they need to keep going to overcome the problems, to pay off the debts that they've incurred during this time. That also helps the economy to get going too.

Dave McDonald's gone. They were amazed at the fact I could buy from whoever I wanted. This in relation to the other franchisee. I buy antennas cheaper from Middies and Horsham, prefer them as preferred suppliers. The Zors don't like it because they there is less of a rebate, but it's more than 20% cheaper and we could vote out ours or, or change our territories. They thought it was strange. Yet they only have 500 stores. You nearly have 4,000.

Yes, exactly right. It's pennywise pound foolish, that kind of stuff. I think it's one of the most fundamental principles of ours is that we do not make money out of suppliers. We pass the best deal. The Only thing we will insist on is that you use quality stuff, but if you can show that the supply you want produces the same quality, like. We had a question with antennas years ago. I don't know if it was before your time, David, but the then franchisors, they had a supply arrangement and franchisees wanted to buy from independent at a cheaper price. Now, there were two things. First of all, there was some cheap Chinese stuff which was definitely not as good. And we said, no, you don't use those because Jim's is responsible for the warranty. But they actually had some antennas they were selling which were from the same factory as the ones that. The official ones, but cheaper. And I said to them, how can you stock them the same unit from the same factory? And they said, oh, ours has got red stickers. They're red there. And I said, that's not good enough. It's the same stuff. They can buy it from them. They don't have to buy it from you.

Then Keane's going, what happened to the original green Volvo station wagon? The first Jim's trailer? What happened to the first Jim's trailer? I've ever had that question before.

No. No idea.

What'd you do with it? How long did you have?

It probably rusted to bits. I don't know. I used to. I wear everything out, including clothes, cars, everything. I've literally never sell a car. I either take it from the tip or I give it to somebody. I keep one, my sister and get one. I want my daughter. They're studying medicine, so I just give them away. I can't remember ever selling a car.

Then Tommy Kendall's going in. Protecting franchisees against overbearing franchisors. Perfect. Well, most of our franchises aren't overbearing as well, though, Tommy. And we've got Kevin. And we've got Kevin Lacey saying, yet the taxpayer is also a franchise business owner. That's a good point there, Kevin Lacey. And then here we go. We've got David Styles has gone. Sorry, okay. David Stiles has gone human in Melbourne. Are capable to do their garden work themselves during lockdown. Stop trying to steal our heart. Earning money during a pandemic with suing. This is so pointless, in my opinion. You just got to go and go. Going to earn it on yourself. So maybe David's a bit angry there, saying, yes, that's what you mean.

The whole point is that people aren't allowed to work for themselves. They wanted to know them, wanted to take money from the government. They were saying things like, we don't want to be paid by the government. We want to go out and do our work. But once again, you got to look at it. The government is putting out a trillion dollars and it's going. But it's particularly people who employ others. In other words, the major companies, there's much, much less for little guy. Why is it so unfair for the people who have got the least resources and who've been hurt the most? Why shouldn't they get some sort of benefit as well? If you're going to give government money to get the economy moving, why not? And again, I point I made earlier too. This is only for the franchisees and the contractors. I am not collecting. I'm not going to get a cent out of this, nor are my franchise laws. We're not claiming. We're only. We're only going. We think the money should be directed only at the people who need it most and who've been most unfairly contacted. Now, I don't know, some people say that the government shouldn't give you any money, but that's not the general opinion in this community. It's really a question is there's money around, who's most worthy of getting it? The fat cats? The people who've got major businesses or the load operators? You asking me? You may say to fat cats, I don't know. That's your opinion, it's not mine.

And from the photos online, David, many people aren't capable of doing their own garden work. I can tell that right now. How they let some of their gardens go. Then Denise Taylor's going, hi, from the Sunshine Coast. We love that you're the voice of small business, Jim. Keep it up. You have 100% our support. Then Paul Sanders gone was only an inquiry gym which was too easy for the police to simply not answer. They can't be held accountable. Great news regarding the class action. They won't be able to dodge and weave in court. Can't wait for that to start from, Paul.

You're right, I can't wait to. I would love to see criminal charges laid, I really would. It's industrial manslaughter. Hundreds of people have died because of stupid failures in government and I have been taken to court myself. One of my workers, I had a factory was injured. I had nothing to do with hiring that guy. I didn't supervise him. I wasn't there. I didn't know what they were doing. But the company was all responsible and I'm the owner because I appointed the manager. Well, Daniel Andrews is responsible for what happened to Victoria.

And we've got Quan and David here saying we're not reading out their questions or we did Quan and David, we've read them out so make sure you watch the whole thing. And we have around a 10 minute delay because there's so many questions and comments coming on. We do answer.

You'll be able to go back through the feed, you'll be able to see them all. They were there before. There were some curly ones on there. Give us the details of who. If you want to contact me direct jim@jimps.net you tell me who it is and I'll tell you what happened. But you might find it interesting because I can look up the notes and tell you.

Absolutely. Then Paul Sandals has gone here. Sorry your FS this in relation from Paul Sandals to David regarding the ACCC stuff. So your FSOs can't enforce any supply agreements. It's against the code. I think we can enforce this public liability for Jim's insurance as that has been approved by the accc. Well done for you. To you for shopping around on the antenna supply and working on your costs which is fantastic. And then we've got a few here as well. We've got Greg McPherson. Thank you Jim for your support and our talks over the last three weeks. So from Greg, you must have been in contact with you, Greg McPherson, if the name rings a bell. I know you've been probably taking a lot of people via email.

Somebody asked me how I was, how I was feeling being out of work and I said never worked out.

Honestly, it's been very draining, hasn't. It's been very. You've had to do a lot of stuff.

Sometimes you like the media but sometimes it's very draining. I've got to get up early tomorrow morning. The Today show coming at 6:30. So it's. It's an interesting one.

Absolutely. The Nathan's gone. I'm part of the James car detailing group and my biggest problem now is telling my clients I'm still locked down. I probably have at least two weeks worth of work when I'm allowed. Super frustrating. Absolutely. Car detailing one's a really frustrating one, isn't it?

It's stupid too. You're an outside worker. Why. Why should you be not allowed to work? You are no risk to the public anyway, it's. It's lunatic. It really is so unfair. There are so many things going on that. You know, McDonald's store for example. I mean is fast food an essential to life? Yet you see a whole these Teenage workers working together, people massing around and stuff. You have to be a thousand times more likely to get infection from someplace like that than you would be watching somebody's car alone in the yard. It's so unfair. It's so wrong. It just frustrates me.

It's very frustrating. Nathan hopefully it's not much longer mate and you can get back out there then Head Keat has got any. Thank you Jims, which is fantastic. Dave McDonald I did a job for an accountant in a small town, less than 100. Also a farmer, but full time accounting. She said 50% of all new businesses she deals with fail in the first year and 75% in the first three years. That's in a new business in general in the country town.

If you're talking about retail stores and so forth, that's more likely a true figure. But what you find is service businesses have a high failure because they're very little capital involved. But if you're actually buying a shop on setting it up, obviously you're more likely to go because you're better capitalized from the start. And there's more, there's more cost in walking away.

You've got Gabrielle Frank saying back to business. So Gabrielle might be back in business saying, nice to see our beloved leader. Jim is very focused as ever. Inspiring. Absolutely. And then Dave McDonald says, Jim, this may have been asked before, but do you play a musical instrument or have you tried and what.