#ASKJIM Facebook Live Replay with Jim's Group CEO, Jim Penman and Joel Kleber

So hi everyone, welcome to another Ask Jim. This is, I don't know, I think like 165 of these we've been doing. So every three weeks in training we do this with our great training group which are all here listening up, which is fantastic Jim. So let's get straight into it. So what we're going to do is we're going to read out your name and you can come up to the microphone and ask Jim a question. But by all means, at any time please come up and ask Jim anything you like and you get a pick of these prizes at the end as well. So let's start off first with Bilal from painting. It's Bilal here from painting New Zealand.

Painting New Zealand.

Come up mate, ask your question. I don't get the microphone. We've got it here and we've got to get. Yeah, there's a microphone there. Yeah, okay, go for it. So as I know like the painting in Auckland is like a bit new I think as I knew the, from the robot over there who operate that. It's like I haven't been started yet, will be starting soon. So like my question is like what kind of thought you got about this new business you developing is there? What kind of, kind of preparation you have done so far?

Well, painting's already going quite successfully in Australia I have to say being the first in New Zealand is going to be challenged because the brand isn't known yet. So you're going to be the person who's going to pioneer it. But hopefully you'll do very well. I mean you can't make a lot of money out of painting, no doubt about it.

But the brand is known. In regards to mowing the brand is very well known.

We've got 350 odd franchisees in New Zealand which is not too far short of Australia. Laying population but paintings new.

But it does link in well with Jim's handyman he's got like is it 20 franchisees there?

So handyman's growing very well. Fencing's growing pretty well. Dog wash test and tag mowing, they're all growing. So it's, it's a good market for.

Us, you know, that's how I know like this is all established company this is that My gut feeling is even though this company open anything new it.

Will go, you know very well.

So I haven't seen any like advertise like even though you Google it, like not much advertising like oh we going to open up like a painting with.

There's no point in Starting it when you're not there. Otherwise we just waste it. Once you start, we'll put a campaign out. It'll be like Google AdWords. It'll be like Facebook. We'll give you a Google my business page and we'll boost you once you begin. At the moment, it'd just be a waste. People just get frustrated. Hey, you're advertising painting but you can't do it right. So we have to wait till you are on board and then we'll give you a good push.

That's great. Thank you. There you go. Good man. Thanks for the question, Bilal. And we've got one here now from Dogwash. Is it from. Is it Avro or debt? Sorry, my pronunciation is a little better than that. From Dogwash. About Star Wars. Who asked that one for Jim about. I'll ready Matt, real quickly. If you've got a question, they come up and ask for Jim, go for it.

Go ahead. Hey, Jim. My husband and I are very much a young couple and we wanted some advice on how you balance family life and work life so that you both have a healthy business and a healthy family life as well. You know, one of the best ways to balance family life and work life is to buy a franchise because in fact, that's one of the major motivations people have. You get a lot of people. We get a lot of people who are like, especially from corporate backgrounds. They work very long hours, they commute hours a day, don't see their kids. They come across the gyms. They make usually similar money, sometimes better. But they see their children grow up. The great thing about it is you can be flexible. You can pick up your kids from school, for example. Like, I work very long hours. If you email me at 9 o' clock at night, I'll probably respond to you within the next half hour or so. But I pick up my son from school today and I usually take him to school too. So that's the great thing about a franchise. You don't have to. I would say it's not worth it. There's a saying that goes, no other success can compensate for failing the home you don't need. You shouldn't spend so much time on your business that you neglect your family. It's just not worth it. And in the businesses that we do, every single one of them, you can actually make a good living without letting your children suffer. So it's a great place to be. Thank you.

Thank you very much.

The title of my next book actually is Going to be no Other Success because I think it's so important, that particular point.

So you obviously started in mowing and then now you've expanded into other divisions. Yeah. What goes into you deciding? You're obviously the one that decides what new divisions you open. What goes into that decision. And, like, where are you looking to go from here? Are we going to see Jim's massage.

Or Jim's shoe polishing in the future? Jim's beauty? Jim's bachage gym tutoring gyms. There's a whole lot of ones we're just looking at right now.

Scaffolding ones before coming.

Scaffolding, yeah. Look, there's various things. First of all, if somebody comes to us for the new division, we want to know, can you make at least 60 bucks an hour, average person? If you can't do that, we're not interested. That's the minimum we think that a franchisee should make. Then we look at the industry. Is it big enough? Has it got enough people? We don't want a business that you've only got 10 people in the whole of Australia, because ours is based on numbers. You want at least 30, 40, 50 for a decent division, ideally at least 100. So you need some potential for that. But when you've got those two things settled out, the really important thing is the person driving it. Are you the right person? Have you got the right skills? Have you got the right character? If you're a franchisee, which is usually where people come from, what's your income? What are you turning over? What's your customer service rating? Are you a trainer? Are you helping others? Are you advising them? Are you that kind of person? And honestly, the person driving it is what decides it. 99%. And it's not universal. I would say probably of the new divisions we start, maybe one in three would fail. So it's quite a high.

Opened and closed divisions.

Absolutely. There's a whole stack we've opened and we've closed. What's the recent one?

A recent one that.

Oh, we had garage doors that went for a while and then closed. We started it again just now. We had Site Solutions, which is not doing very well. That's. It's only got one person that's really not doing very well.

Solar went, stopped and then reopened. His energy. That was the one before.

Yeah. Solid. Solid die. Sometimes we quite often resurrect them, but if you've got the right person behind it. But honestly, it's the person behind it, because we provide the background in terms of training and customer service and the IT systems and how to be effective franchisor and social media and PR and marketing. We can provide help with all those things, but it's the person driving it that really counts. Okay, you've got the right person. It's fantastic. Like laundry started two and a half years ago. It's got like 80. Yeah, 80 franchisees, which is tremendous. Why? Great leader.

Yeah. It's his wife's idea though. So.

It's his wife's idea.

It was his wife's idea. Yeah. So she, she got a nice present out of him for that. But yeah. I've also got a. Another question which is on the list. I'll ask it now so I don't come back. What's your favorite scented candle?

What? What's your favorite scented candle?

That's a. That's a first. That one.

That is a first.

I thought I'd go outside. Outside. That is a really good ridge.

I do not have any.

I wanted to stump you. I was expecting grass clippings maybe.

If there was such a one, it probably would be up there. I think the spell of fresh grass would be pretty. Pretty nice candle. So that's a good idea.

Thanks, mate. Well, good question. Good man. Go for it. Hi, Jim, quick question.

I think a lot of us here.

Are buying franchise for the first time and stuff. And what is your advice on people buying multiple franchise or what's the roadmap? Or buying multiple franchisees in different divisions? Let's say I'm a car detailing and I want to get new scratch and dent repair. So having multiple options and stuff.

The only way it's worthwhile if you do that is if you got. You're employing a lot of people as an individual. You will find that you've got far more car detail than you can possibly handle. So there's no point in having two sets of fees. Most franchisees are flat out within a few months. Quite a few in the first. In the first month. So you'd never buy it to keep yourself personally busy because you're just paying extra fees for nothing. Now if you're employing three or four people and you want to start a new division, that's the time when you should have got a new. So you've got someone like Bill Cobanoglu who's actually. He's got cleaning and he's also got laundry, but he's got a team of people and he's got franchisees and even franchisors who work with him. So at the upper level. Yes. For a one man band. Absolutely not. We would Actually advise you against it. Okay.

All right, thank you. Thanks for that question. Good one. We've got some more here as well. Where's Craig from Cleaning? Craig from Cleaning had a few they wrote down. Where's Craig? The one about mental health services and stuff? Is he here? No, I'll read them out. When you started your own business, where did you think it was going to end up?

Well, when I started full time in 1989, I thought it was going to be something temporary to do until something better came along. Honestly, I did not see the potential. It took me many years. Even after the franchise started, I didn't have any idea how successful it would be. I just wanted to do the job well. I wanted to get good customers. I wanted my franchisees happy. I thought when I started, I might have 100 one day. So it just surprised me.

The second question is, did you really start gyms to fund your research? Can you go into this more?

Yeah, I did. I did. I did a PhD in my 20s. Came across it as a very radical understanding of what history is, which actually had biological implications. And I think it's something that could make a great deal of difference to the world. But at that time, my PhD was in history. All the implications were in biology. I knew I had to get a research foundation going, so I had to become rich. And that's literally the first time I ever thought about it. I now spend something like $3 million a year on this, on this research project, and one day it may change the world.

I'll leave it up to people that ask you how, but I won't. Why are you going to do it?

There's a couple of books here if anybody wants them, but there's only two. If you go to biohistory.org, you'll see some videos in there.

And there's another one here as well from him. Could we offer a mental health service to our customers through Jim's?

You have to be a psychologist, I think.

Yeah. A bit of liability stuff there.

Yeah. Nothing wrong with Jim's mental health talent. It's something I'm passionate about. But we actually tend, rather than counselling, we tend to believe in community. That's community of franchisees. We support Men's Sheds very strongly because we think it's a great cause. People need to get together. There's too much individual separation. I mean, deaths of despair are terrible. We had a franchisor commit suicide just a week ago, and it's just awful. This is somebody we know and this happens as I said in training on Monday morning. The number one threat to our franchisees is not accidents, it's not car accidents. We've only had one person ever die on the job, it's suicide. So it's a very big concern to us. We do a lot of stuff about that too. All of our franchisors have mental health training, including myself. We have a paid for psychologist. Any franchisee can approach for online help, for phone help without any cost and we don't even know who's applying. We have volunteer mentors amongst franchisees. Every state has franchisees who volunteered to help people with it. We have send out cards, preach magnets with all the. We are really committed to mental health but the best thing we can do actually is to get people to come and be take part of us, come to meetings, talk to your franchisor, talk to your fellow franchisees. I think it's one of the major benefits that we offer and what a.

Lot of people don't know is our franchisees for, let's say a lot of the older generation might be the only person they see for the week or two. It's almost like a little welfare check in a way as well. So that's something a lot of people don't know, but a lot of our franchisees do do on their day.

When I talk to franchise, I ring franchisees on their big anniversary like 10, 20 years and I asked them about the situation and it's actually very striking that most of them mention that the relationships, the franchisor, the group that they're with as being so important to them. Not always just about money, it's about people.

Guys, if you've got another question, please come to the mic anytime and ask. Jim, we've got another one here from. Is it from Craig from cleaning? Where's Craig from cleaning? Is Craig here? No, I'll read it out for him. Jim, who does your weeding at your yard or your yard care? Yeah, grass is looking a bit shabby at national here. So what about your house?

It's pretty bad actually. There's a Milo who does the grounds around. He's going to come across and look at our place on Friday. There's some weeds in the front garden which is about that high. I've been noticing them.

Yeah, go for it.

Yep. I like gardening, but more at my farm, like potatoes and stuff like that, vegetables. I think we can be all very thankful for what you've built and that gives us the opportunity to be here.

Today, but just spent years and years building it.

And a lot of what you showing.

Us today is about the vision you.

Had and putting it together with your leadership.

But just wondering what's next?

Basically what is a plan when Jim.

Will not be the CEO anymore of James. When we go in a business, we.

Need almost a strategy to exit and basically there are any risk identified when you're going to be doing that move and any timeline about it and course.

Of action identified and just.

Well, the timeline is this. If you go on Google and you can actually look at your lifespan, ever done that? How long are you going to live for? And they ask you questions about your health, your weight, smoking, drinking, are you married? All these kinds of things too. I actually, on every measure possible, I have the longest possible lifespan. So I'll probably live another 20 odd years, which is probably, I'm afraid to say, more than most people here. We'd love to see you all last 20 plus years, but I'll most likely. I do not think it's conceivable that I could or would ever retire. I have great people doing a lot of things now. I have great managers, I have people like Joel, I have Rocky, I have John in finance. I have terrific people and I can tend to keep on having a role in gyms as long as I'm alive. After I am dead, there's a family trust structure set up. Basically my children and their married partners will direct it and it'll be run for the sake of my foundation, which is the epigenetics, and also for the sake of them in terms of helping them with housing and stuff like that. But I've got 10 children so the money's not going to get spent too much. I am quite determined the gyms will never go public. To me, the worst disaster would be to have some horrible, greedy corporate types come in and go for the strongest, the next quarter's earnings. If you do that, the spirit of gyms will die.

Well, Channel nine's coming in. You'd interview you about that tomorrow actually. Channel 9 news.

Yeah, look, yeah, one of the things is there's a. They're reviewing the franchising code and every time they do it, I've gone in public and I've said to them very openly, this is ludicrous. The code itself does nothing to protect franchisees. The disclosure document is so dense that virtually nobody ever reads it. It is meaningless. You're supposed to get advice from a lawyer. Lawyers know nothing about franchising. And why should you go to some domestic suburban lawyer who knows nothing? What advice they're going to give you. And even if they gave you advice, how do they know how the business runs? So what I've said to them, I said to them every time I'm going to make a really big fuss this time I'm going to speak to Channel nine about it. We want a system where the franchisor goes to an approved franchising lawyer and gets a summary of what there's like, paid for by the franchisor, shown to every franchisee, an expert, no cost to the franchisee. We want every franchisee to be surveyed every year. As far as possible. We do this ourselves, we get 95%, we know it's possible, it's not that expensive. At their franchise expense. Every franchisee in the country gets polled and you put the whole thing on an open website so everybody can see how often is the franchise or ring. How do you rate your income? Good, Satisfactory, poor? How quickly do they respond? Those kinds of basic simple questions and let everybody do that. If you did simple things like that franchise or cost, the level of service to franchising would go up dramatically. And these greedy money sucking, they are horrible people out there in the franchising world. There's good ones too. I'm not blackening everybody, but we know the really bad ones. I don't know if you heard about Retail Food Group. This was a company that bought a whole lot of brands like Brumby's and they destroyed them. They ripped off the franchisees blind. They make them change their, they change the manual. So you've got to do a whole new revamp. The system comes to an end and they take the business back for them. No goodwill, no payment, no nothing. They treat people like dirt. They make themselves pizzas for below the cost of the ingredients. I mean there's dreadful things that go on in the franchising world. The government does nothing to protect them, Nothing. I think it's infuriating. And we are the biggest franchising chain in the country. Franchisors need to be held accountable and if we don't measure up, then so be it. If somebody's better than us and they deserve to do better than us and then we need to pick up our socks and do better ourselves. That's what we need to do. People gotta start thinking about ordinary people, not the interests of these blood sucking lawyers and financial advisors who give nothing.

Save it for tomorrow. It'll be good for tomorrow. But there's another part to the question which I think is a good one to get as well about that. CEO? When are you going to transition out from CEO? What time will you have a party for it?

No, no, I'll have a ceremony and I'll be a guest of honour in a box.

There we go. So that's the answer. We've got question, guys, feel free.

I cannot conceive. I'm at the time of my life. I love my job. I find enormous meaning in it. I enjoy it. I love training. This is fun, it really is. I love meeting you guys and chatting to you and seeing you and seeing everybody so excited and happy. I love hearing from you after one month, how well you're going. Most of you are going well. I love Talking to my 10 year veterans. It's exciting. I love talking every day about the different things we can do to improve it. We're growing, we're changing, we're getting better all the time. It's the job of the century. It's the best job in the world.

Just to be honest with people. You've got more energy now than probably when I first met you 12 years ago. So you got a lot more energy now. So it's amazing.

I go for a 5k run every morning and lift weights and I work on my farm and I'm full of energy.

Absolutely.

I often just run for the sake of it. I'm 71. I look it, but I do not feel it.

Guys, you got a question? Please feel free to come up to the mic. I know I've got him here, but come up to the mic anytime as well. Cool. Hello? Yeah. What did it take to build an empire?

You've just got to look every day at what you could and how to do it better. That's the one simple thing. Never be satisfied. No level of customer service is good enough. No level of service to my franchisees is good enough. Always, every day. Ask yourself the question you how can I do it better? The ones that fail are the ones that say, everything that's going wrong is somebody else's fault. It's the clients by franchisor. It's Jims. It's the economy, it's the government. The good ones say, what can I do? I can't control all that stuff, but I control what I do. And they're the ones that succeed. That's the one thing.

And do you know whose dad's a franchisor in pool care as well? Oh, really? His dad's name, Sorry? Gino. Gino Basado.

Oh, Gino. Right, okay.

All right.

In the family business, I wish my kids were a bit More entrepreneurial. They're not. They're all bloody professionals like it. And doctors and lawyers and stuff.

Got a question, guys? Philly's still ready to come up and ask. Cool. Hi, Jim. Do you ever regret not having a beard anymore?

Listen, if I had a beard, I looked like Santa Claus. I wouldn't look like you. I shaved it off 23 years ago because I was single and it was starting to go gray. And when you're in your late 40s, wanted to get married, you do not need to look any older than you are. If I was single now, which, God forbid, I would never be because I love my wife, but I think I'd be a bit of a problem. Hey, who wants to be out with a geriatric?

We've done a bunch of videos with Jim with the beard on as well, so you can head to the channel and see the gym land stuff as well. So the one here, I had some Dog Wash. Is it Arrow or Debt from Dog Wash? Are they here? Aaron? How's it Aaron? Yeah. Oh, he's not here. Okay, well, let's read his questions anyway. Star wars pre. He goes, star wars prequels or Disney question?

Star wars prequels or Disney?

That's the question.

Or Disney.

Yeah, that's literally the question.

They're on Disney.

That's these, bro. Well, that's me, right?

I remember his question. His question was, what was your favorite, like, Star wars movies?

Was the first three the second three.

Or what new ones on Disney? No, I like the prequels. The prequels I like. I'm a great fan of Emperor Palpatine. Yeah, yeah. You know, because I think that was the next question.

Who was your favorite character from Star Wars?

Palpatine.

Palpatine.

Now, this is a heroic figure who manages to bring peace and order to the galaxy. I mean, who wouldn't Love Palpatine? Yeah, 100%.

100%.

I love the picture about how he starts up as this senator and he's. You see this picture of him sort of in his sunshine and his hair blowing in the wind, and he's this good guy and, you know, it's become the evil galactic emperor. I mean, who couldn't love a guy like that? I love villains. I'm a big fan of villains. You love the villains? When I was actually at school, I used to. I was the villain in a school play. Munro Murgatroyd. Yeah, yeah. That kind of stuff. Gotta love villains. Monty Burns, too. I love Monty Burns. Green Goblin in Spider man too. You've got to admire the bad Guys.

Where do they go wrong then? Jim, where do they go wrong?

Where did he go wrong? Well, it's because what a person is smart enough to become Galactic Emperor, you've got to be reasonably clever to do that. And then in Return of the Jedi, he gets. He tells his main subordinate, his chief supporter, Darth Vader, to kill his only son. Now how stupid can you be? How could you possibly believe somebody smart enough to become Galactic Emperor would be dumb enough to do something like that? Seriously, I think it's just a myth. I think he got it completely wrong.

Now, Jack, come back. You had some more questions as well for Jim.

I had one of my own questions actually.

Go for it. You asked your questions, mate.

I don't exactly remember what I put down there, but I'm pretty sure my.

Question was, how did you get started?

Like why?

More so, why did you start gyms?

What motivated you? Well, I started gyms because I was hungry. Because otherwise I spent several years getting myself a PhD in history and I had nothing to do. I had no job and I wanted to fund my research. That's basically what it was. So I need to become rich. So I started gyms to do that. Good on you. But it used to be my part time student job.

Really.

That's right. I've actually been gardening since I was 8 years old.

Yeah.

So it's kind of like last for me. I was gardening ever since I was 10.

Dad was never around.

Mum always got my own lawns.

Now it's like, what do I do?

Mow lawns? What do I know? My father was very disappointed when I went. First of all, he was an engineer. He wanted me to become an engineer or a doctor. So doing an arts degree In a history PhD was not very good. And then when I finished that and became a gardener, you can just imagine what my father thought about that. But towards the end of his career, when I had about a thousand his life and I had about a thousand franchisees, I actually said to him once, you know, dad, it wasn't such a bad decision, was it? And he said, nah, I guess not. No, that's great. Thank you.

Good luck.

Cheers.

Cool. Go for it. I was going to ask who your.

Favorite Jedi was, but clearly that's the wrong side of the team to be asking you. Dark side, definitely. Dark side.

All the way. Dark side.

I love the prequels, actually. I reckon it's really fun. I love the way that Palpatine becomes the Galactic Emperor. I think that's great. And also the way that Skywater Goes Anakin goes to the dark side of the Force and why he does that. And he does it through love. Actually. I always thought being a Jedi was pretty stupid. I mean, I got 10 kids. I wouldn't want to not have any sex or love with anybody. That's a terrible idea. I enjoy that kind of stuff. Yep. I would never be a Jedi. Never. And a follow up question that sort of pertains to that.

How did you find that the mapping of the human genome influenced your research? Obviously you started studying. It's big.

It's big. When I did my PhD, we knew there was an effect of the environment somehow, but we didn't know what was causing it. When they mapped the genome and we started to realise it's epigenetic, suddenly it's totally different. I am very optimistic about what can happen to society. I think the changes you'll see as a result of epigenetics changing your character. Problems of drug addiction, problems of alcoholism, problem of poverty, even crime, all these things are, to my mind, epigenetic in origin. If you understand the epigenome, then you can change these things. There's amazing changes in technology taking place. So what do you think is going to be the next biggest step in.

Terms of genetic discovery?

I think epigenetics is the big thing, I really do. There's more focus these days on genetics. But you know, the statistics, they got like crispr. You know what CRISPR is, where they actually go in and they target a certain area and they change a certain gene, they cut it, they inspire, they do that kind of things too. You can also use CRISPR to change the epigenetics, because epigenetics is basically, if you understand what genes are, they're basically. Or DNA is, it's basically a whole series of little taps. The genes send out a protein. That's how they work, like a messenger rna, something like that. What epigenetics does is that changes the taps. It turns it on, turns it off. So if you could understand that process and target that, you could change anything that you wanted to. Human beings are very, very similar. Genetically, we are much, much more similar, say than chimpanzees. In the whole human race. There's less genetic variance than there is in a few kilometers square kilometers of African rainforest. So the differences are epigenetic. If we understand that, we can change that, we could solve everything.

Fascinating topic.

Love to talk to you about it.

For much, much longer. Great questions.

Grab a book if you like, at the end of it.

Great questions. There you go. Cool. Got one from Darren from Mowing. Where's Darren from Mowing? Is Darren here? Yes. You've already answered the question.

It was your preference towards prequels versus.

The original versus the other one. But yeah, thank you.

You've already answered it. What's your preference? What do you like the original three?

Saw the first Star wars in 77 and.

Oh, I love that one too. I can remember seeing that.

The first three.

That Space battle and Obi Wan Kenobi.

Yes.

Oh, great film that was. But I still prefer the sequels. The prequel prequels. The latest stuff is rubbish. I can't read anything past. But Turn of the Jedi, they're no good. Sorry. You're right. We've got Greg from.

Where's Greg from Mowing. Greg. Had a free question, Sid. Yep. I. I heard you're into gaming. I was just wondering what sort of gaming you like.

I love basically fighting games. Okay. Things like diplomacy, apocalypse, those kinds of games where you invade somebody. To me that's, that's the interest of the game. Throwing cars down. Yeah, but I don't mind 500 and stuff like that.

How do you handle all this and.

All those kids and all the things you do? Well, kids love fighting. I mean especially when they're mainly boys. Oh yeah. I'm actually just. Today I'm arranging to take my son down to do my 14 year old son to do fencing.

Yeah, right.

I did at uni, which is really fun, you know, with the swords and stuff. That's really like fighting. It's really fun. Imagine trying to stab somebody. That is just joyful. Legally. Legally.

And I heard you do a Mr. Burns impression.

Excellent.

You can search for Jim in gifts and we do have gifts with that as well. So gifs and whatever else.

He's a wonderful character, Monty Burns. He is my hero. Do you ever see the word about the trillion dollar banknote? They've gone to Cuba and they've lost the bank note to Fidel Castro. So the communist regime survive. So they're on a boat, a raft, going back to the US and he says, if it's a crime to love your country, then I'm guilty. And if it's a crime to steal a trillion dollars and give it to your country's enemies, I'm guilty of that as well. And if it's a crime to bribe a jury to acquit me, I'll shortly be guilty of that as well. Love Monty Burns. I've got little Bobby Bubbles on my desk. Monty Booms.

Yeah, Someone gave you the little funk pop of that as well? Yeah, put that on there. Cool. Next one here. Where's is it Ashok? From pest control. From pest control. And guys, if you do have a question, just come up and ask as well. Please interrupt. Hi Zim, just a question. You have lots of videos on YouTube.

Do you ever watch YouTube?

And if you watch what sort of.

Stuff you watch on YouTube? Not a lot actually. Strange enough, I don't really watch social media a lot. I like books.

Yeah, I have second question there as well. Do you have any book recommendations?

Oh, there's so many great books around I would recommend. I can't even begin to say how many there are. Atomic Habits. Great book about learning to have good habits which is the key to anything in success. 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey is a wonderful one. Recent books, Case Against Education. I just finished reading that again. Which shows why most education is rubbish past school and helpful. Just gives you a competitive advantage but doesn't teach you anything. Which coming from the background of what we do, it makes a lot of sense. Expectation effect, which is about how what we expect affects what we do. There are just so many brilliant books around. There's more and more all the time. I love evolutionary psychology too. I just finished reading David Buss on evolutionary psychology. Not everybody's taste, but I love books. I really, really love books.

That's awesome. I got two new ones.

Thank you.

Yeah, he's got a personal newsletter which he does every month as well.

Yeah, read my newsletter. Just subscribe to it. And I put book recommendations all the time.

Jimpeman.com so we do monthly newsletter with Jim with all these books and stuff as well. Yeah, for sure. Good questions as well.

Cool.

Chantelle from Cleaning here. Where's Chantelle? Still here. I'll read this out for Chantelle. She's asked who is your favorite child? It's a bit hard. Cheeky.

You can't answer that question.

All of them. All of them is the answer.

They're all my favorite. Love all my kids.

Like asking your favourite division as well. Isn't it your favorite Jim's division? We used to get that one a bit.

Yeah. I'd have to say though if you ask me that though, Maureen, because I sort of bleed green. That's my. That's my background. But I love all my divisions. I love everybody. My franchises. They're all my kids.

Next one we have here is from Gavin from Cleaning. Is Gavin from Cleaning here Gavin? No. I'll ask you for him, guys, if you want to come up and ask a Question, please feel free to do as well.

Yeah, go ahead.

Just in, in regards to that, the divisions there, there's obviously majority mowing here.

Do you ever see it getting to.

A point where the training is specific.

For mowing and then specific for cleaning.

And then specific for dog wash?

Because there's a lot of questions, there's.

A lot of details in today where.

Or the last few days where it'd be nice to get it specific for.

Mowing because that's the division that I'm buying in. But the, the teachers often use another example to make it fair for everyone. El got a lot more questions based off just my division. So do you ever see it getting to a point where the amount of franchisees that come in, it's specifically for.

Mowing and then the dog wash guys.

Come in and it's specifically for dog.

Wash. Look, it's an interesting idea, but the principles are very similar. Yeah, it's just the examples that you give, like in my talk that I gave yesterday morning, you know, I, I try and spread it around. One of the things, I'm trying to be careful not to give too many mowing cords talks. But the principles are the same. Yeah, I know. If you're upselling now, whether you're upselling rubbish removal or clearing ovens or, or, or different for pest control, the principle is exactly the same. The way you ask the question is the same. So I don't think so because I.

Noticed, I noticed that a lot of.

The guys that did the talking to over the last two days were mowing guys, but they were trying to use examples that weren't mowing to make it fair for everyone else. But I feel like that took away.

From the experience just a little bit.

Okay, look, I take your point. We'll have a think about it. But at the moment we see a benefit. The other thing too, we like to encourage people from different divisions to get to know each other. So it's kind of cross divisional is a big thing with us because there's a lot of potential. I mean your fellow mowing people can help you, but if you get to know people in other divisions, they can actually help each other a lot more because you can spread work and referrals back and forth.

It's a good point though because we do get that.

Look, it is a good point actually. I appreciate you saying that.

And we do have the division specific training, obviously mowing, which we'll have, then cleaning, then dog wash afterwards. But yeah, we do try and we're real conscious. You're right. We are conscious of including other divisions because we get in trouble when we don't, you know, so we try and. Yeah, yeah, it's definitely a conscious effort on all the presenters.

We do put a lot of pressure on people at times too. You do have to be careful about your examples and it's not always obvious to do it, but. No, it's a very good thought.

Hello again. With over 30 divisions already, what influences.

You to develop new divisions? Oh, just somebody comes to us with an idea and if they're the right person with the right, we'll start it.

Supply and demand.

Well, it's the right person more than anything else. If we're impressed with the person, it looks like a good division, then, yeah, we do it. I mean, look, the great thing about gyms is this. Every time a gym's laundry drives down the road, you're not just promoting Jim's laundry, you're also promoting Jim's mowing, cleaning, dog wash, pest control, building inspections. It. We all support each other. So every division. So you have another division with another 50 vans or whatever they are, or cars or whatever. Every other division benefits. So there's really no upper limit. We've got probably 40 something divisions now. We could have 140 and we'd be all the better for it. And there's more opportunities for cross divisional. See, one of the things I do, if somebody is short of work, can't get cross divisional, can't get enough work for their division, say in the beginning, I will send them a list of all the franchisees from other divisions in their service area. And then you've got email. You can actually go and email 150 people. You wouldn't want to. Once you get flooded and say, can I come and clean your house? Or can I come and you've got a pool that I can clean or can I wash your dog for free? And what that does is that creates a relationship between divisions. So it's actually a tremendous power for us to have this system where you have specialized divisions that understand what they do, but you have the generic system where we all work together under the single brand. It works very well. And the more divisions we have, the more each division sends to benefit.

Good question. You got one?

Yep.

You mentioned earlier history major. Just wondering whether you have any particular favorite areas of history that you're interested in.

I love ancient history, actually, particularly ancient Greece. That's my favorite. I read the Peloponnesian wars when I was 14 and I got hooked on it.

Yeah. Have you been To Greece?

No, no, I'm. No travel. I hate travel. Even going to Sydney is too far for me. But I read about it a lot. If I went anywhere, it'd be to Greece. Yeah. What about you? What's your favorite?

I mean, I like. I love ancient history as well, but I'm also very interested in like the World War I, World War II, that kind of thing. I've done a fair bit of travel myself and I love all that kind of, you know, going somewhere where something ancient happened. It's awesome.

I tell you what, get into biohistory, that's www.Biohistory.org, and you'll see a reason for the First World War, which is nothing like you've ever seen before. It's to do with the same thing that causes lemmings to migrate. Okay, read that section.

Thank you. Will do. Cheers. Very well dressed for tonight as well, I might say. That's great. Good clothes. Everyone wants to come up. Please, please do as well. We've got some time left. We've got some questions online. Jim as well. So I'm going to run through the ones online because people do leave him. So Craig Rope's gone. What other divisions are available as unfortunately it seems removals is unavailable. So I think Craig wants to do removals but it's not available. What other divisions are around that people could do?

There's so many. Look it up. There's new divisions starting all the time. We've got, we've got. We're looking at a new division. More than once a week we have somebody talking about a new division. There's probably going to be at least half dozen launched by the end of the year. The way things are going right now, there's just so many. Keep an eye on the website and have a look. I think one of the most exciting ones that we're looking forward to is Jim's vending machines. Because it's the one that people can use when they, you know, like they've been mowing for getting a bit lowered in the tooth. And here's the vision. You can use your business skills to do something a bit less physically demanding.

It's a big thing in America, the vending machines where people might have multiple and go around. It hasn't caught on here yet.

It's a great business and the way they present it, people are doing it are fantastic. There's a lot of really brilliant ideas. Most of the visions we do, actually I never even heard of before we started. I didn't even know you could do test and tag. I thought Sparky's did it and somebody came to us. I've got a business doing test and. Really? You can do that now? One of our. About our third biggest division.

Yeah. 230 franchisees.

Yeah. Great division.

How can people start a division though? If everyone here wants. When they start, what can I do?

If you want to start a division, Jim Steiner, email me and talk about it. I'll ask you a few hard questions about what your division is, about what you want to do, does it conflict, what's your background, that kind of thing. If it all goes well, set up a zoom meeting with myself and Rocky, COO of the company. We'll talk further, ask them more questions, invite answers, put you through a process, ring the divisionals, come to training franchise or training franchise training. Come to a divisional conference which is coming slightly. Just learn about us and then just, if you feel right, move in that way.

Another one online as well. So from Kay has gone. Are you looking. Are you only looking at the service industry for new divisions or are you open to take on other types of industries like retail?

No, I'm not open. We are very good at what we do. In all due modesty in the service industry, you cannot beat us. If you start looking at retail, that's a very different area and we're not good at it. The only thing we ever tried with a site was to do with health clubs and that was a disaster. We didn't understand what we were doing and quite sadly people lost their shirts out of was not good experience.

Guys, if you've got a question, please feel free come up and ask. We've got some more spots. Got Gavin from cleaning. Where's Gavin? Gavin here. Gavin asked you what is your favorite type of music genre and what do you listen to?

Christian music. Sorry, I don't listen to a lot of music because I mostly listen to talking books. But the music I listen to is mostly Christian music. Like we're going to church in the car. Just kind of thing I like. Yeah, simple as that.

There you go. We've got one here from Osama. Is Osama from cleaning here? Osama, you're gone now. Osama's basically goes, would you do it all over again?

Oh, yes, but I do it a lot better.

How would you do it better?

There's so many mistakes that I made. Unbelievable number of mistakes. For example, keeping more control of the call centers from the beginning, different contracts. We've got much better contracts these days. I'd invest much more in it up Front wouldn't worry so much about the legal side of things. I think contracts are less important. I would do far, far more with it. I've made so many mistakes with it. I redeveloped the system in more modern software. I just can't keep on going. There are people that I shouldn't have taken on. There are divisions we shouldn't have started. We've learned a lot about how to do that better. We've wasted millions of dollars doing mistakes. I can tell you, if you read the book, actually, that we all gave you, you'll see it's full of mistakes. But that's the thing, you see, if you're not making mistakes, you're not trying stuff. But I often wish I could go back 10 years. I change so much.

And your book is also an audible as well, so they can listen to it as well if they want to.

Yes.

We've got a couple of comments online from Adam's gone. Adam from Jim's IT Penrith again, saying, I'm really happy where I am right now. Things are slowly getting better the more I go out and meet people, not just sit there waiting for leads. So he's in our IT division, where he's getting out there a bit more.

Amongst was a bit of an issue, actually. We had a time when close to half of the franchisees in the division were reporting poor income, and that was really a crisis. Now they've actually done a lot of extra work now, and now it's down to a fraction of that. So it's a big improvement. But we've got a lot to learn about how to do certain things, too. Sometimes we need to do a lot better. Social media is one thing we should have gone to a lot earlier. I mean, Joel's done a fantastic job and it's really changed the business in so many ways. We should have started that much more heavily a long time ago. It's been a huge success for us.

We're nine, 10 years behind. We should have started in 2010. Would have been the time it would have started.

One of the things we would have done a long way back. It takes you so long to learn how to do anything, and most of it is just learning, making mistakes, working how to do stuff better. I would go back in time 14 years, but never beyond that. You know, there's a film called About Time. Have you ever seen that one? They have this stigma because this has something to do with the family. They can go into a closet or somewhere, close their eyes, clench their fist and go back to a Specific time they think about, they can change the past. I love that film. I love that idea. But in the end, what happens actually is his sister gets into a very abusive relationship and he goes back to stop her from getting into that. But by doing so, he loses his daughter who was born afterwards. So he has to go back and undo it and let his sister go through that because he wouldn't give up his children. So I often daydream about going back in time, but never before any of my children were conceived.

Got a question, guys? Feel free to come up and ask him as well. Got a couple more online. Tanya Selleck's gone. How did you keep motivated to being successful and not give up when you felt like you were failing?

I can't give up because of my research. I just couldn't give up. It's not in my nature to give up. I just. I feel a moral imperative. I feel a moral obligation to my research. I feel a moral obligation to my franchisees. You cannot give up. It's just not something that's in my mental makeup. I'm a fairly tough individual. Doesn't matter what happens. I will keep going. But you've got to have a sense of purpose in life. I don't believe that making money and piling up possessions and stuff is worthwhile. I mean, what's it for? You got to be doing your work for something. And I don't live particularly rich, actually. Until recently, my car was worth 10 grand. I got my first ever new car November last year. That's because I want an electric car, and it's also safer. But I do not spend. You know, these boots are from Kmart. I do not spend money. I don't enjoy it. I don't think it's a good way to do just to spend on. But spending on something worthwhile, spending on expanding my business, spending on my research, those are worthwhile. And if you've got a good motivation in life, you've got a sense of purpose, you've got a reason for getting up in the morning. I think you're less likely to want to give up. Money alone is a terrible motivator. It really is. There's a brother of a close friend of mine who committed suicide some years back. This guy was very rich, richer than me, but screwed up family life and killed himself. What's the point of the money? And actually, the science shows you that money is actually, people think you've got more money, you're going to make a better life, like a bigger house or better car or More expensive holidays. I'll be happy. It doesn't work that way. There's a wonderful saying that goes. Social comparison is the thief of joy. If what you're doing is getting more money so you can be more prestigious than somebody else, that's a zero sum game, like likes on Facebook. It's a really bad way to live your life. You got to have something that means something to you. Your family, your friends, your cause, your purpose, your job. Something has got to have meaning in my sense. My church for example. Of course.

Yeah. Come up to the question, go on over there. Yeah. Who is the biggest franchisee owner in terms of revenue and then evaluation and.

Then what do you think they did differently than any other owners? Who's the biggest franchisee in terms of turnover? I wouldn't even know.

We don't know because we don't ask the exact figures. So we only know when they tell us. Right.

We do know that the top earners are in multiple millions, but they don't usually tell us that. So I mean, I mean Dan was pretty good. He was 800,000 plus turnover at his before he left. But he was by any means not the biggest earner in Jim's group. I know one guy had like 2 1/2 million dollars a year or something turnover.

I met a couple, I met one lady Frieda's 18 employees in cleaning. So that'd be a fairly substantial revenue business. That's 18 full time employees.

We don't tend to ask such things actually. But they make a lot of money. People are surprised by that. You tend to think that the biggest earners in gyms are the franchisors. But actual fact, there's a lot of franchisees make more money than the vast majority of franchisors. In fact, I would think the top earners in Jim's group are probably franchisees, not franchisors. But we don't really know.

If you do make a lot of money, tell us and we'll do a video about it and we'll promote it online.

Yeah, we love good news stories. Actually I went over here for a fact. I'll talk to them. I get a good story. I'll pass it to Joel. They do a video. We've got these accor vouchers.

Yeah. 600 bucks worth.

Yeah. Which is just free accommodation and discounted meals and all kinds of great stuff. We just give them out to anybody who does an interview. We've got some brilliant stories.

Millions probably. What I've heard I haven't heard overly too Much. But people employing 18 staff and stuff is going to be a fairly substantial business. So people don't want to promote how much they really I guess earn online. Too much so. But you know, you can figure it out when they tell you they've got 18 staff or 25 staff or something like that.

We do not condone tax evasion in any way, shape or form. We would never advise. We make good money as a group, franchisees good money. You should pay completely honest tax on all your income, cash and otherwise. However, we are aware this doesn't always happen. All right, can I put it that way? We don't condone it, we just know it happens.

Got a couple of questions online real quickly. Jim as well. Ognan's gone. Asked him what is the next line of franchises will be. So what are some newer divisions that are going to be starting soon?

Well, lots of ones. I mentioned a few.

You said Jim's massage is definitely going.

Massage, beauty tutoring, maybe hairdressing. We just talked about today. What's the one about the hydraulic six?

Oh yeah, I know the one in the. Yeah, I don't know what it's called but the Hydraulic Spy.

Yeah, yeah. There's just so many. We're talking about some one to do with coaching, life coaching. She's preparing some. We know what's going to go ahead but there are so many. We probably at least once a week we're talking to somebody about a potential new division but it's often up to them. You say they've got to have go through the process and really, really want it. We don't push people to start a new division. They have to be very hungry.

Sure, go for it.

Two questions.

Back to the future fan or not a fan?

Oh, that's fantastic. I love Back to the Future. I must have seen about four times. All of them brilliant.

And your epigenetics book, is there going to be another epigenetics follow up book?

Yes, we're actually starting work on a book called Lemming Cycle which is to do with a chapter in that we've made some very big advances in understanding how those work lemming cycles are to do with things like. Well, you know what lemmings do, they have these population booms when they migrate like mad. They don't commit suicide, they migrate. But a lot of animals do that, like voles, muskrats, especially in northern areas. What people don't realize is that humans have lemming cycles too. And when they get to the migration phase is when you get wars taking Place like the first World War because both Germany and Russia hit their lemming cycle peak migration phase at the same time about 1915, and that's why that war took place. So, yeah, the new book coming out, I don't know when. Next couple of years probably.

Good, good question. Got another one online real quickly. Jim from Wayne Grundy says. Hey, Jim, have you ever thought about doing a Jim's group Christmas party?

Well, we'd love to. Who'd come?

Yeah, that's right. I think he believes at the franchisee level.

So, yeah, we shouldn't do it actually. You know, we're looking. We sort of have them in trade days in a way because you have a lot of free food and stuff. I wouldn't mind, but not everybody could come here, though.

That's the problem. You couldn't do one in every state as a. No, it's a bit too hard. Yeah, we do one here, but not everywhere else.

You don't tend to get franchisees. They tend to. Franchisees tend to identify with their own region, their own area more than they do a lot of regions.

Do some good ones. Absolutely.

Yeah, they do. That's generally what we wait. We encourage in meetings. You have meals, you have a Christmas lunch of some kind. We do that kind of stuff, if any.

French is always thinking. They can take the lawn lager as well from the office for their Christmas parties. There's a lot of them to get around. So, yeah, they can do a deal with that.

We love. We'd love it to happen, actually.

For sure. Guys, if you've got no more questions or if you've got another question, please ask Jim. If not, we're going to award the prizes. Jim, so what were your three questions that stood out to you? And I get to have. First up here. What was the number? What was the first one?

I love what. Sorry, what was your name?

Chris.

Chris. I love your idea, Chris. I think the fact that you came up with a new idea that nobody's ever said before made me think about. I think it's great. I love that.

So come up and pick anything you like, Chris. You can take anything.

It's hard to ask a question that nobody's ever asked.

Poor man.

I love what somebody said about life's. About balance of life between. Between work and family. Who said that?

Yes. Second. Yep.

I think you've really hit the nub of what's important and grab something.

Yeah. Come up and take anything you like.

Yeah, I thought.

Good get, good get. That's a good one. What about the third one.

I like the question about my favorite Star wars. Who said the prequels. Is that you?

Yeah, yeah. Come up and pick anything you like, mate. And if you did ask a question as well, please come and see me at the end and take it.

Anybody else who wants to come forward, who's asked a question at the microphone, come forward.

Want to take the shirt? You can take the shirt if you want. You want the book or the shirt? The shirt's a good shirt. Very good shirt.

Cool.

Good man, Cool. If you asked a question, guys, as well, please come see me at the end. You can have a prize as well if you want a photo as well. With Jim now, it's a really good time because there's a massive rush on Wednesday. There'll be nine news here and stuff will be chaos. So get one now as well. We do this every three to four weeks, so if you did ask a question tonight, you'll see us yourself on social media. And big thank you to Jim as well for your time and for your great questions, and we hope you enjoy the rest of the fun experience.