#ASKJIM Jim's Group founder, Jim Penman and Joel Kleber - www.jims.net - 131 546

Already?

Cool. Alright, so welcome to Ask Jim, everyone. So we're back in for another training, the last training of the year, Jim. So it's been a massive year with new franchisees in there, so ending the year off right. So hopefully get to a few questions tonight. And guys, just before we get into the questions, so we've got a few people waiting, which is great. We do have a promotion at the moment, which is a $1,000, um, Jim's Group voucher every week. And all people need to do is book a gym by the call center online and opt into the customer newsletter. We've already given away $4,000. So make sure you do that if you do need to book a Jim service. So let's throw it away to you on the mic. Where we go, first question for Jim.

Hey Jim. I've been down. Now you're here. When you first started in '89, what were you driving then compared to where you're parked in the garage at home now? What was I driving in '89? Was it a white Volvo? I think it was a Volvo. I used to have a series of really crappy old Volvos. People ask me, I say I drive a luxury European car. I didn't tell you it was 20 years old. And what's in the garage now? It's an electric Volvo. Oh, it's actually the first new car I ever bought in my life when I was 70 years old because I wanted an electric car. I love electric because I can power it by sunlight because I've got solar panels on my roof, comes down during the day, I charge it during the day. I love driving a car powered by sunlight and it's great to drive and stuff. Big fan of electric cars. I've just lost $20. I didn't pick Volvo. What'd you say?

What'd you think?

No, no, I don't know. What did you pick? What do you think I drive? Lamborghini? No, no, I thought a Mercedes or something.

Mercedes? Yeah, Mercedes.

There's one thing about me, I do not like anything that reeks of status. I tell you what. No, no, that's all right. So these shoes, for example, $20 from Kmart. Trousers, similar. Underwear, I won't show you, but very similar. Okay, I'm a real scungy so-and-so. I like Volvo because it's Safe, and I like it because that's the electric, and I love, I love the electric stuff. But anything that's to do with status and prestige and stuff, I do not like. Yeah, there you go.

Good question. Next one.

Hey Jim, what made you get into the mowing industry? Aha, well, that's interesting. I was just having a conversation at dinner with some people, and I said— that's right over there— and I said, okay guys, What do you think my favorite hobby is? The thing I spend like about 10 hours a week doing that I really enjoy more than any hobby. And they were asking about fishing and, and, and games and, and golf and everything else. What was the answer? Gardening. Gardening is my hobby. That's what I like to do. So that's why I got into it. Do you still do it now? Yeah, I would spend probably 10 hours a week, 10, 12 hours a week actually gardening. I love— I've been planting all sorts of trees, fruit trees. Nut trees, potatoes, all kinds of things. There's zucchini, pumpkin. I love gardening. I just enjoy it. Awesome. So that's why I got into it, because it's a great thing to do. Isn't it a great job? If you love gardening, it's great. Just like if you love dogs, dog washes are great. If you love cars, car cleaning. If you love electronics, you do what you love and it's, it's great. Awesome. Thank you.

Good question. Yeah, I've got some videos of Jim gardening on the YouTube channel, how to mow a lawn, all that sort of stuff, weeding, heaps of stuff.

Come through. Yeah, I've got 2 questions for you. He's one of the ones who was guessing, had all sorts of guesses about what I was doing. A lot of weird guesses. I got 2 questions. Took you 10 minutes to get the answer, didn't it? And I still didn't get it. So the first question is, with all your life experience, if you could go back and you had to tell 20-year-old Jim one thing, what would it be? A lot of money in grass. It took me decades to figure out that lawn mowing, gardening was a great business. I just never ever thought it— I always thought it was something that was just to do until something more prestigious come along. But you know what, it's kind of— I'm not trying to be gracious, but the best jobs are the boring ones. I don't get excited by high tech and that kind of stuff. And, you know, multiple market, all those kind of things, they're all very YouTube influencer, they're all very prestigious, but the things that people need done every day. If you like doing that, if you love washing dogs, I take that 'cause there's a lot of dog washers in the front row over there. If you love what you do and it's sort of an everyday job, it's kind of recession-proof. So yeah, I just, I had no idea. Even when I launched the franchise in '89, somebody asked me how many franchises I might have one day and I said, maybe if it goes well, 100. I had no idea. We'll probably hit 6,000 next year. Jim Penman. Yeah, we're over 5,600. But I had no idea. I just couldn't see the vision. But yeah, that's what I would say. Go back and think about lawn mowing, gardening. And I'll tell you what, a lot of mistakes I've made. The biggest mistakes I've made is that I try to do other things. I get into like tourist ventures and psychology institutes and factories making fiberglass and holidays and trade exchanges and mower shops and computers. I've done so many other things, they all lost money. But the one thing that kept me going, I just kept on building, was this basic little gardening lawn mowing business that I started off. And my last question was, you told me I can ask you anything. You can, and you can get more than one of these after, if you like. All right. And a lot of boys told me not to ask this, but how many wives have you had? At one time, only one, thank you very much. Oh, okay. Or in total? Uh, four.

All right, fair enough.

Which actually is interesting because, you know, if you ever want advice on marriage and being happily married, come to me, I'll tell you all the things to do wrong, all right? I've had three women who couldn't stand being with me, but fortunately the last one's 24 years and she's wonderful and she puts up with me and I adore her, so. Good to hear. At least 24 years. We're just gonna hit 25 early next year. Love of my life. Appreciate it. But I'm not an easy person to live with, obviously. No, I appreciate it. Thank you.

Check out the TikTok though, because we have a TikTok account with Jim and we answer questions. That was a nice one actually, compared to some of the stuff we answer online. So we do a lot of stuff on TikTok with him, so don't be afraid to ask anything you like. Don't be afraid to ask him anything you like.

Yeah, come on, come on. All right. Jim, if you could go back, would you do anything differently and why? Oh, lots different. Lots and lots and lots. Because I told you, I go into all these stupid ventures that look— they all look so good, but you don't know what you're doing. You stick to what you know and get better at that, especially when you're in a good industry already. That's the big thing. I've made so many dumb mistakes. I honestly have. If I knew now If I knew what I knew now when I started Jim's in 1989, it would take me half the time to get back here. I just did so many dumb things. I didn't even realize the value of meetings. I didn't understand how to support franchisees. I didn't understand, there's just so much I did wrong. It's taken me a long, long time. And look, I look back now and even the things I was doing a year ago and I think, you idiot, what on earth were you playing at? You know, the funny thing is, I look back a year ago to now and I look back at now, December '25, Gosh, what were you dreaming? What were you smoking, Jim? What did you do that stupid stuff for back in December '25? It's always the way. I make more mistakes than anybody I've ever heard of. I reckon I make more mistakes than a normal 5-person in their entire lifetime. But there I am. All right, I've got one more question, and that's what should I do to set myself up for long-term success? And yeah, two things: look after your customers really well, have a passion for your customers, always be trying to look after customers better. And secondly, look at your business every day and say, "How can I improve?" That is the one thing that distinguishes, not your education, not your experience, not even your IQ for heaven's sake. I mean, some people are incredibly smart and amazingly stupid. It's just that critical attitude that looks at what I do every day and says, "How can I improve it?" And I gotta say, that's one thing I do every day. There is not a day goes by, not weekdays, not weekends, not holidays, not Christmas Day, not any day of the year when I'm not asking myself the question, what can I do better? That's the one thing. Cheers to that. Good on you.

There you go. Good one. Next one, go for it.

Hi Jim, my question's sort of in two parts. There's many divisions in the Jim's Group. Is there ever been a division that surprised you in the way it evolved and developed and progressed? And the second part is, what's the craziest pitch that you've ever had for a division? Well, some divisions just work out better than you think. Laundry is a good example. It's a good division that Bill Covenaghle came up with. And we have an idea for a new division. We have a requirement to reach 30 franchises within 3 years, or at least to get in there. That's part of the contract. In 3 years, he had 120 franchisees. Now, it's a good idea for a division, but Bill is just an amazing guy. So many divisions. I mean, test and tag. I didn't even know there was such a thing as test and tag. I thought sparkies did it, or that it was government. I didn't know anything about it. This guy came to me and said, this is business. I said, "How many people like that could you have in Australia?" And he said, "Well, I'm working Albury-Wodonga and I'm pretty busy." And I said, "Well, in that case, maybe 50 in the whole country." We've now got well over 200 and there's 5 in Albury-Wodonga. And we're not even close to saturation. So some divisions just work out amazingly well and others that you think are going to be great, like beauty for example, just, we just didn't get anywhere with it. But so much of it, it's the leadership. You've got divisions like, you know, Dog Wash, which has got Sharon, who's a different person. I mean, she's really herself. Is Sharon here? I'm being rude about it. I can be as rude as I like now. She's not around, okay? Or you get divisions like Cleaning, where you've got Ali and Haydar, who are just amazing leaders, or Bill or Paul Comerford in Building Inspections. And you've just got some brilliant people. It's mostly the person that counts rather than the division. If you've got a— like a long time we used to worry about why mowing was the only one that seemed to be successful. Cleaning was just this little side thing, and then Haydar gets involved and he leads it, and it'll probably overtake mowing one day, next year or two, which he's eagerly going for. But still, is there a crazy one that has been pitched to you where you've just gone, no, that's not happening? Well, most of them are crazy, to be fully honest. We— I got asked last week about about Jim's babysitting and they just said, well, how can you make $70 an hour looking after babies or children? You just can't. So it's just no interest at all. I constantly get asked about retail, about food retail, which we won't touch. Honestly, I probably get pitched on a new division at least once a week. Only a very few of those go somewhere, but you know, I mean, people, people like, they love things like Jim's Assassins and stuff like that. I mean, that's just boilerplate stuff, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Got any— which, which is kind of an analogy which should go together, I think, with, with, um, Jim's Debt Collection. You know, if debt collection doesn't work, then you just call in Jim's, Jim's Hitmen, and then that'll, that'll really get the money flowing back from the difficult clients who don't want to pay you. I mean, so there's always potential for that kind of thing. Thanks very much. Cheers. You guys are good lining up to speak. That's a great audience.

It makes their life a lot easier. Thank you. My question is, what is your favorite underwear to wear? Favorite underwear? That's a first. That one, that's original.

Well, the last time I bought it was from Kmart, so I don't know. You want to have a look at the label in here?

We'll just say it's a generic home brand or something like that.

It's all right. It's a generic home brand.

I don't think you've got a particular color preference, dude. It's whatever's going around.

No, just ordinary cheap underwear. I am a real miserly cheap— I'm gonna put that down. Nobody has ever asked me what underwear. I gotta admit, in all the years we've asked, nobody has ever asked that question. Good fella, good on you.

Thank you very much, Jim.

I can't even answer it, but it's just generic home brand Kmart brand, whatever that might be. That's why we play games, Jim.

There you go, nice one.

I'm notorious with my family, I always buy the cheapest stuff in the supermarkets. Some people are surprised. I'm in the supermarket the other day and somebody says, "You're Jim, what are you buying? What are you in the supermarket for?

Why doesn't your butler do it for you?" I feel like next time you need to really keep an eye out.

But when I go there, I'm always looking, I like to look on the bottom shelf because that's the shop brand stuff. When you're buying Soymilk, for example, we go on the long life stuff. I check the amounts and, you know, one's $2 for a little thing and one's $1.90. I'll go for the $1.90 and I'll go and shop there because I want the $1.90. But they've actually got a discount now, you can buy it for $1.75. It's getting really good. That's it, you are the pigeons on that. You gotta watch your costs. I hate wasting money. Never been asked about my underwear before, good man. Thank you very much. Go for it.

Hi, Jim. Just wondering, what do you think about women taking divisions that are mostly dominated by men. So I'm just applying for mowing, and everyone kind of said, oh, women mowing, wow.

Okay, I love it, I love it. And you know why? If you go into a division which is male-oriented, it's because you've got a passion for gardening. And what you'll find, usually find that situation, is that you become incredibly good at what you do because you really love gardening. You're not going in it because it's just a thing that men do, which is a lot of what we think about it. If you go in the garden because you love it, it's the same thing with my daughter Sylvia, who is, if you've seen pictures of her, she's very pretty and like her mother of course, who's absolutely gorgeous. Anyway, and she's not very big, she's in Jim's Removals. So she's out there and there's pictures of her picking, she's quite strong actually, picking up fridges and stuff like that, she's really, It's counter, but people love it actually. They really love Sylvia, the clients do. They just, it's amazing. She doesn't look like she'd be a removalist. So I think gardening is fantastic. Mowing is a great option for you. The women we've had doing it, you might, relatively few, they tend to be very, very loved by the clients. The only thing you've gotta do is make sure that you charge enough. Sometimes they're not businesslike enough. So when clients start loving you, realize that you can charge very, very well. You love gardening. Are you an expert in gardening? Yes, yes, yes.

I'm an engineer, so I was working with corporate, environmental engineer. Can't stand corporate anymore and I want to work for myself. So yeah, I have a good friend that's doing very well with the mowing business and he got me into it, kind of. So yeah, very excited.

You might actually find that you go into things like more of the specialist stuff and the landscaping and those kinds of areas. That would be fairly typical if somebody's got a real passion for the topic. Well, you can actually call yourself Jim's Landscaping if you wish. It's a recognized brand. It's still legally mowing, but you can, as you get busy enough, you can just take the landscaping jobs.

Yeah, yeah, that's the plan.

Yeah, good idea.

Cool, thank you.

Go for it. Hi Jim, Anton from Jim's Dog Wash. I can tell you got the red on. Repping the brand. If you had to launch one new Jim's division that sounds absolutely ridiculous, but would definitely work in Australia, what's the name and why? I don't know if I'd start one that's ridiculous. The one I really want to do is Jim's Personal Training. It's very disappointing we haven't done that because we've got actually, we even got the logos now being prepared, the websites and everything is ready, we just haven't had the right person to drive it. I don't know if you count that ridiculous, but I have a big passion for health. As you can, you know, I'm a freaky health nut in some ways. I love running and cold showers and gardening and all this kind of stuff too. So I really, really believe in health. We're about to launch Jim's Healthy too, actually, which is interesting. So anything to do with health and wellness is really, really interesting to me. So I'd love to do that. Is there anybody listening to this who's keen on personal training? I'd love to have a talk to you. I think it'd be a great division. We've got life coaching, which is a great division. It's a new one that's going really well. But personal training would be fantastic. Cool. Awesome.

There you go.

Good one.

Thank you. Thank you. Go for it, next question.

Hey Jim, David from Brisbane, the new sporting capital of Australia. If, 'cause we're winning everything. How come you've never had an Olympics? Answer me that.

They're going to have one.

Melbourne's have one. It's coming. It's coming up. Sydney's had one.

2032.

Hopefully. 2032.

Is it 2032?

Yeah. Is it really?

Yeah.

You guys Olympics in 2032?

Brisbane's having Olympics, yeah. It will in 2032.

Yeah. Really? Yeah.

Not yet though, but you're right though, not yet.

Okay. All right. Well, having said that aside, you'll overcome the disgrace by actually hosting Olympics. That's a good thing to hear. And why would anybody who likes sport go to— Brisbane is so hot and muggy. There's nothing wrong with Queensland that wouldn't be solved by moving it 1,000 km closer to the South Pole. That's my opinion. I'm sticking to it. It's freezing here today. If somebody made a movie about you, what would the movie be called and who would play you? What would it be called? I don't know. About your life. Bearded Freako. But actually, I would like to be played by Daniel Day-Lewis. Daniel Craig. Now the great— he looks nothing like me, he's a lot better looking than me, but my wife has a thing about Daniel Craig. She actually, in her moments of extreme passion, she says, "You look like Daniel Craig." That just shows you how incredibly biased she is, alright? But to be fair, she made it quite clear that if Daniel Craig walked through the door and he was available to be Goodbye Jim, so I think that'd be a good person to play me. I would have thought that being a guy from The Hangover would suit you in the early years. Which one? That bearded guy in The Hangover, George.

Yeah, I know. Yeah, Genach or whatever. Yeah, I know you're talking about exactly.

Who would play Joel? Listen, I'm ugly enough in, in real life, I'd rather have somebody good-looking playing me in a film. Thank you very much.

We've never had the title of the movie, so that's a good one. I'm going to think about that now. I'm going to have some fun with that one.

The title of the movie?

What should it be called?

The title?

Have a think about it.

Jim's Movie.

Jim's Movie. Yeah, Jim's Movie. There we go. Jim's Movie. That's not a bad one. Jim's biopic.

I don't know, I could become just possibly rather well known in the next year or two because I'm writing a book called Birthrate Crisis, which is about a real solution to plunging fertility across the world. Very radical idea, and we're going to be promoting that overseas. I've just been back working on it today, in fact, working on the book. We're still working through it. So that could be the thing that makes me pretty well known even outside Australia. So who knows? I don't know.

I like this one. That's a good question. I'm going to think about it.

There was, there was that one about— what was the one they did about, um, what's his name, the guy who had the motor neuron disease?

Stephen Hawking.

Stephen Hawking. Yeah, I like that kind of, that kind of film too, that, that sort of thing. If, if I was well enough known, I don't think anybody want to make a film about me now. I'm not, not Notorious enough, but still.

I have to think about that one, the title of the movie.

Yeah, who reckon, what's a good title for a movie about me? Come on, Jim's movie, good old Jimmy, Jim's Part 2, Jim's Grass, The Grass Man, Mowing Man. Jim's Lunatic Asylum.

I don't know, I'll have to think about it.

Ah, g'day Jim, my name's Rob, and funny you should mention cold showers because there's a rumor going around that you have a very large family. So how do you do it? How many children do you have, and how do you find the time, or how did you find the time to have such a large family? And also to develop this franchise. I don't know if people understand the facts of life, but actually reading a large family only takes about 10 minutes per child. Well, half an hour if you really want to have fun at it. So it's not a big activity. Um, I just like kids. It's a matter of what's important. I mean, I drive my son to school. He's finished school for the year, but I drive him to school and, and pick him up. So during the day I spent, he's 16 years old, he's my youngest, and I spend a few hours chatting with him. He's a great kid and we just have a good time and he's got really good ideas and you maintain a bond. I just always give my family priority. I never thought money was the most important thing. Money's good to achieving things, but I never put it first. So yeah, I've got 10 kids. I've got 10 kids actually. I'd like to have had more. If you ask, my perfect life would be have a kid every couple of years, forever. That would be— How about your wife? Well, she did her best. She certainly never said no. Lee is very, very giving. She— when I first met her, which was back in, what was it, April 2021, and we sat across the table. I was introduced by a friend. We sat across the table at the Chadstone Shopping Centre. And so I was— what she said sounded like a job interview. I said, "Do you like children?" She said, "What's this guy? He's on a date, he's asking me questions about myself." And she said, "Oh yeah, I like kids." And which was, you know, that meant there was going to be a second date. Well, we were engaged 13 days later, so I didn't really take my time on that one. But the point was that what she didn't ask me is how much do I like kids? And she hadn't quite realized. She thought she had a daughter already, and then she thought maybe one. She didn't realize she ended up having four. So that was, uh, that was interesting for her. But she's wonderful. She actually puts up with me. She's been married to me for 24, nearly 25 years. So despite all that, I love her dearly. But I think one of the greatest gifts that a woman can give a man is children, honestly, because it's a lot of work for them. We have it easy, you know, 10 minutes, maybe half an hour. It's a lot more, isn't that right? Are you objecting to my time I'm spending on those things? I can see Sharon giggling up in the back row.

I think someone said, "Not my husband over there," so that's why I got a laugh.

You say you want to be Sharon Connell. Yeah, thanks very much, Jim. Okay, all right, thanks for that.

Go for it.

Hi Jim, you mentioned today that you're still hands-on with customers from time to time when there's complaints and stuff.

Yes, I am.

How much have you seen customers' expectations change since you started?

I don't know, I get the impression that there's a lot more rip-off merchants than there used to be. We honestly have some really, really bad customers. I remember once you mentioned one that we had just come up in the last week for removals, which is my daughter's company, and they're incredible on customer service. and this lady complained that they'd ripped a carpet coming down the stairs. Now that's impossible, they couldn't because they weren't dragging him down the stairs. But to keep her happy they arranged to have it fixed. But she took that as being, "Hey, now you've admitted responsibility," which they didn't. And it couldn't have been them, they were just trying to be nice about it. And so then she made up some story about not hooking up the washing machine, which was completely bogus. So it's a woman trying to get You seem to get more of that kind of stuff. I had an exchange of emails with her and I told her basically that we're blacklisting her. She wasn't going to do any more service for Jim because of the way she'd acted. It was clearly she was trying to rip people off. I think there's more of that going on, I honestly do. Having said that, the great majority of clients are very good. We only blacklist a very small minority, but we do if somebody's difficult. One of the things we want to do down the track a bit is we want to rate clients. We're going to do that through Jimbo, and that's planned for the next year, hopefully early next year. So when we've got difficult clients, we can actually at least give— not give them— give them higher priority to other customers, put it that way.

Yeah, but franchisees as well, Jim, can ring up the call center and do a red flag as well.

Yeah, they do. We call it that. Yeah, it's called a red list actually, and it goes to the top of the thing. So if there's a client who's who's really difficult, they're abusive, they're racist, they don't pay, those kind of things too, we can put a red list, learn from this so we don't give them to anybody else. There's a few bad ones around. That's one of the things people don't understand too. We are fanatical about customer service. If we've done something wrong, we will fix it no matter what it costs. But the statement, the customer is always right, is complete garbage. Some customers are completely crooked, they really are. Tiny minority, but there's some real scumbags out there and we don't like them.

Thank you.

I've got 2 questions. What is something about the business that has only become funnier after you've survived it?

What's funnier about after you've survived it? Yeah, look, after I've survived it, it's a new one, we've never had that. Well, no, not really. I look back upon all the dumb things that I've done in my career. I wouldn't say they're funny, but they're— yeah, I really can't think of anything that's funny. You really have stumped me on that one. I don't tend to— there's a wonderful saying by Theodore Roosevelt, actually, who's a guy I really like. He's got some great quotes. He said, if you want give a kick in the pants to the man who's caused you most trouble in your life, he said you wouldn't sit down for a week.

Okay, my second question then is, if Jim's had a swear jar, what word would make it the richest?

From me?

From Jim's, yeah.

You don't swear that often at all.

I don't swear.

You've called me a wanker once, I reckon, and that's it. That's like in 15 years. You said it once on this when we were doing this and that.

I must have been swearing.

Nothing else.

Even to call somebody a wanker, I must have been. I am notoriously bad. There's a rumor going around that I fired somebody for swearing, which isn't true. But I tell you what, if I get onto the phone with a franchisee and he starts swearing at me, I will stop the conversation right there and say, I will not tolerate that language. I really, really dislike swearing. It's the Baptist in me, maybe. I don't know. I just don't like it. I think it's terrible. And the way people use that F word all the time, it really— I find it offensive. Do not like bad language. First, second date I had with Lee, she's Chinese, so she has a poor— and she said that shit, and I said, you can't say that. I told her off.

I love how you've got your morals right there, you know.

That's amazing.

He doesn't swear. It's something— would be really, really wrong if he dropped the swear word. Like, it'd be I don't know, it'd be pretty significant.

So for you to have it, you must have done something pretty bad.

Yeah, no, people around me, they might swear about me, but they don't swear in my presence usually because they know my attitude to such things. It's pretty hard-nosed.

Okay, thank you.

Good question, couple of good stumper ones there.

Yeah, you've got some good questions. I like that one.

Go for it.

My question is, if Jim's group were a person at a barbecue, what would they be like?

That's an original one as well. That's a new one.

Well, look, can I just say they'd be like me, which is passionate, socially gross, awkward, always offending people, not worrying too much about the way you come across in public. But look, to a large extent, Jim does reflect my values to an extreme degree. And that's one of the most things people often ask me, are you proud of having like 5,500 franchisees? Biggest— this kind of thing. Not really. The thing that makes me most proud is that the great majority of my franchisors and franchisees share my values. And you get things like, um, during COVID when my franchisors weren't getting paid for 2 months in Victoria because we couldn't work. It was pathetic. It really was bad. But I'll tell you what, they never worked harder in those 2 months when they didn't have any income at all. Looking after their franchisees, talking to them, coaching them. I had so many stories about people helping each other. That's kind of, you know, that idealism, that genuine care for other people, which I certainly have in myself. Like I said, I'm very difficult to get on with. I'm very prickly, I'm very passionate, I argue with people, I get annoyed. Very extreme in that sense, but I really care about people I deal with. And I think generally speaking, that's If I was to say what characterises humans and what makes us different, it's that. It's that attitude that says we care about each other. And to me, when I get up in the morning, I have a purpose. I have a function to do with my family and my research, but also my franchisees. That's why I don't mind taking calls and emails at all times of the night and holidays and stuff. I don't mind because it's important to me that people do well, emotionally speaking. If I get two emails, one of them from a franchisee who's doing really badly, maybe failing, and another from my accountant saying I owe an extra million dollars tax. I get more upset about the franchisee than I do about the tax. It's only money. So yeah, good, very good question. Thank you.

Very good one.

I love some of these questions.

You're very original.

Very original. Yes. What's the most common mistake that you see new franchisees make? Don't listen. They don't listen. It really is frustrating when you've got somebody who's not doing well and they've been told what to do and they don't listen. I get a franchisee and I get this fairly often. They come to me and they say, "I'm not making money." And I say, "Okay, these are the things that you need to do. You need to, here's some cross-divisional work. What about doing it? It's not difficult to do this service. You're already a cleaner, you could do, say, car cleaning or windows or whatever. Here's how you do pay-for-work guarantee, okay? This is the way to do it. This is the friends from other divisions." This is how to do it. Here's the videos that you can watch. This is the principle, use social media. So I go through all these things and they write back to me and say, oh no, no, I don't want any of that. I want to know how you can give me more leads. Now, I can talk to the franchisor about upping their advertising, but the fact of the matter is they're not listening to what I'm telling them. And that is really, really frustrating because I know what's going to happen. I know if they do what I say, they will succeed. And I know too, if they just won't listen, They say, "No, no, I don't have to do anything different. You have to change. You have to find me more work. I bought this system on the basis that you will provide me with infinite leads," which we don't say. It's very, very upsetting and annoying. And when I look at that, I think, did we make a mistake in choosing this person? Because they're not listening, and they're likely to fail if they don't listen. That's unfortunately, it doesn't happen a lot. Most people will listen, and I think the great majority of franchisees are either naturally good at business, which we call them gold, the top ones, or will listen and learn and be coachable. But there is a minority who won't listen, and that's really hard to take.

Good question.

Good question. That's it.

Absolutely. Go for it.

Hi, I'm Jenny. Um, my question is, do you have either a mentor or another business or business owner that you really admire within Australia? And if so, why?

Okay, I've said this before, but, um, there's not an individual person, not within Australia. If I looked at a mentor, somebody who guides my life and my business career and my ethics and stuff, it'll be Jesus of Nazareth, the Jesus of the Gospels. If you honestly look at the way that Jim's is run and the principles behind it. Servant leadership, Jesus washing his disciples' feet, the idea of the parable of the talents that God asks us to use our abilities to the best we can. We're not responsible for how clever we are or how capable or anything else. We're responsible for doing what we have with what God's given us. And the very idea that Jesus said it's harder for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven than a camel to go through the eye of a needle, the dangers of wealth. I'm very aware those kinds of principles are very deeply ingrained. That's actually far more real to me and more than any individual. Now, I admire certain people. I admire people like Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett— Charlie's dead now, of course— as great ethical businessmen with a really good attitude towards business and people. I admire a lot of leaders like that. I admire technologists like Elon Musk. I mean, he's a complete flake in so many ways, but incredibly brilliant man. He really is in terms of what he's done with SpaceX in particular. You know, he's cut the cost of getting to space by 90%. And as somebody who's loved science fiction when I was a teenager and stuff, it's incredible to see that happening. I admire people like James Dyson, the technologist. There's a lot of people I do admire. I admire Bill Gates. Bill Gates is probably to me almost the most admirable person in the world today, not so much because of Microsoft, but because he's actually launched this Giving Pledge. Where he's giving his money, not only giving his money but also encouraging others like Warren Buffett and many others to make the same pledge to give back. So there's a lot of people I do admire. I read a lot. I'm always on biographies and stuff, trying to find out the good things. Sometimes people have bad sides of it, but you just got to admire and see what's good about somebody's doing. And there are wonderful books too, like Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey. That's a fantastic book, and it's all about character. It's about doing the right thing in the end, which is the best thing for business too. So yeah, there's a lot of people around, but I read a lot. I'm always listening to talking books. I'm always reading. I always know what people have been doing, what they have done. But the greatest— my greatest guru is Jesus.

Okay, thank you.

Thanks for the question. Good one.

Yeah. Yes.

Go for it.

G'day, my name's Will. I had a double-barreled question, but the lady's already sort of gotten a really good answer out of you. It was going to be, are you a Christian and why?

But no, she didn't ask why. She didn't ask why. So I will do that. I was a fairly militant atheist for a long time. From the age of 14 to 28, I would actually— I went to a Billy Graham crusade in 1968, and I cannot believe I did this, but I actually went with a friend, and I was making fun of people going down to the front. I thought it was all silly, and I just couldn't— I look at it now, I look at Billy Graham speaking, I look at— what was wrong with me? I just can't even comprehend my frame of mind in those days. And, but the interesting thing was that I thought Christian values about chastity, all this kind of stuff, were rubbish. I mean, I've never been promiscuous or anything, but I just thought that it was all old-fashioned. When I was doing my research, which I was at a university trying to understand the reason for the rise and fall of civilizations, and I recognized that the values that are taught by Christianity and other religions, faiths too, like Judaism and Islam and so forth, have real point to them. They ask us to behave in a certain way, which is actually very, very good for character. So I was sort of coming around to thinking this religion thing maybe have a lot more sense than I thought. Um, and then I, I actually, in, when I was 28 years old, I was walking through the Union building in Latrobe University where I was at the time, and I got talking to a bunch of people on the Christian Union stand, and I got to like them, and they invited me on a retreat, and I became a Christian where I felt God called to me there. But to a large extent, it was through these people. I could see something in them and their lives, and it was just an amazingly explosively joyful experience. It was just incredible. It's like you've lived all your life in the desert and suddenly you come into the, into the promised land and there's this water and there's beautiful— I can't even describe how amazing it was. It was just incredibly ecstatically great experience. And I still get that. I'm in church and I feel joyful and a sense of purpose and a sense of meaning. And people who are regular in their faith communities tend to be significantly happier, and there's reasons for that. We have this sense of God's presence in our lives, and it makes a difference. And I've had some amazing answers to prayer too, you know, like kneeling down in total despair when something's going shockingly wrong and just kneeling and Crying out to God, help me, help me, help me. And an answer comes like that, like that, within no time at all. I've just seen things happen. I've seen things, miracles in my own life that are so powerful. So your why question is a very good one. Thank you.

And so then the next bit was going to be, besides thou shalt not steal and thou shalt not lie, What Bible teachings or ethics have you woven into Jim's?

Well, as I said before, the parable of the talents, using our abilities. See, I don't compare myself to people like Bill Gates or Elon Musk. I know that in many ways they're a lot smarter and better at business than I am, but God has given me certain abilities that I have a responsibility to use. Money is a gift from God. It's a loan. It's not there for our purpose, it's made to be useful in our lives. So that kind of whole principle and riches not being the end— riches are incredibly corrupting. They bring pride, they bring people thinking they're superior to someone else because I'm rich, which is a really stupid idea. Some of the best people I know got no money at all. Their best friends are actually missionaries, they've got no money at all. I always pay for the for their meals because they're perpetually broke. So, but they're wonderful, wonderful people. So, um, I've gone off the point. What am I talking about?

Um, about the, uh, your friends, the missionaries. Are you paying for them because they're not?

Well, yes, yes. They had interesting experience too, these guys. They bought— managed to buy themselves a unit, and they very foolishly forgot to— neglected to get Jim's building inspection to check the unit out. Oh, Eric, okay. Eric, Eric's got a boat. And it turned out there was a really bad problem with the units and it cost them tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees and 5 years of angst to get it done. I said, "If you only spent $300 on Jim's Building Inspections, you would have avoided all that." So, I'm really off topic, aren't I?

I think he was asking about your faith and how you applied it to the Jim's business or your business philosophy.

Yeah, those kind of principles too. I mean, look, it's just a good guide to life, it really is. And that's something that when you're an arrogant young man as I used to be, you just toss everything over and you don't understand that there is so much purpose behind things. There are certain frames of life. If you do what faith, God asks us to do, and it doesn't necessarily just apply to Christianity, it applies just as well to Judaism and other faiths too. Then you will do things like you won't be selfish, you'll be part of a community and you're supposed to be giving to other people and so forth, instead of focusing on yourself, and you don't puff yourself up with pride, at least if it's a good faith, and then you bond with other people and so forth, and you act with restraint in your personal life, you don't go out chasing after, you know, bad experiences and this kind of thing too. If you look at, they're all things, if you look at the way that psychologists and social scientists of— they're all the things that create happiness. People think that you're happy because you, because you get what you want. You know, you take the, the cocaine— not literally, but all the other things too— the boosts, the gambling, the, the social media likes, all the sort of garbage that gives us that intense feeling of, of joy in the short term but is, is, is deadly long term, just like drugs are. It's the same kind of principle. It's all to do with the way the dopamine system works. It wrecks our brains. And if we follow the passion of faith, the pattern of faith, then we do what God asks us to do, follow the Ten Commandments, follow the teachings of Jesus or whatever faith we're part of. We're happier people and we're more effective people and we're closer and we have friendships and we have community and we have purpose in our lives. That is what it's about. But God is real too.

Yes, thank you.

You, you're, you too, what, you're Christian?

Yes, yes.

What church you go to?

Uh, um, so I'm just in between churches at the moment, um, but so I'm, uh, investigating becoming a Catholic. So that's where I'm at.

Yeah, Catholic is great too. I've got my, um, my daughter Jasmine is about to become engaged to a young guy from a Catholic community, and I said just go to Mass. Jasmine, just, just start going regularly. Yeah, she's a Christian, but she needs to be more active and more involved. As, as my pastor said the other day, I said, what's in common? Jesus is Lord. That's how— that's our common Christian faith. And I don't think it matters a lot exactly which denomination you belong to, but that's the fundamental.

And, and so what sparked it all when you said, um, this morning, uh, where basically you've got people and they need to keep meeting together. And that reminded me in the New Testament, you know, do not give up meeting with one another.

Yes.

And so you sort of keep one another hot, whereas when you're by yourself, when you're a business owner, you're sort of like on the top of the mountain and it's very lonely and cold up there. So when you come back together, you sort of stoke one another's fire and outlast, you know, blue feelings and that kind of a thing.

So no, you're quite right. One of the things my— the pastor, senior pastor of my church says is no Christian flourishes in isolation. Just even believing in God isn't— doesn't mean much if you don't do anything about it. Becoming part of a faith community and staying there, finding where you belong. And we have different kinds of things. The service I go to is very, um, it's a Baptist church but it's called Baptist because it's very enthusiastic. People are sort of jumping up and down and waving loonies sometimes, honestly. But it's that sense of joyful worship that really— and we clap our hands and say amen very loudly. It's not to everybody's taste, but we love it. It's very engaging, it's very moving, it's that sense of being close to God. But I think something in the traditional Catholic practices too, there's a great power in that as well. I went to a— again, it's not Christian— but I went to a Jewish service late last year. Just a few months ago, and it was just very inspiring, very wonderful. They're feeling very embattled right now after that terrible thing that happened in Bondi. That's just awful.

Yeah, evil.

Yeah, and I know quite a few Jewish people. I know how it's hurting them. It's awful what they're doing. But it was wonderful, the guy who— the hero who stopped that guy who— you saw the thing, they tackled him. He's called Al-Aziz or something like that. He's got it, he's got something.

Ahmed Omar, Ahmed or something like that.

I'm actually hoping that he's a Muslim. Yeah, because that is wonderful, that is really great to see that, because I see this prejudice and I see if somebody is a Muslim, that's really good news that he was the one that tackled him at the risk of his own life. I think that's fantastic. I know such a lot of good, great— I'm getting a bit cross-denominational here too, but some of the best people in gyms are actually very strong practicing Muslims, and I really admired them. We're talking today at lunch about Ramadan, which is in February this year. So that's really hard because they can't eat or drink at all during daylight hours, and February daylight is very, very long. Yes. So it's quite challenging, and we were talking about how difficult that is. We Christians have it easy. The one thing we do is Lent, which is really simple. You just don't have meat apart from which I don't eat anyway apart from fish, and don't eat sweet things for about 40 days. That's easy. They have it much harder. Thanks, Jim. Thank you. Cool.

Next one. Next question.

Hi, Jim. My name's Rob. I'm from Perth. Um, thanks for touching on your cultural beliefs and, and sharing that with us. My question for you is Do you think there are any specific biological discoveries that can help preserve Western culture and Western civilization? That is a very, very good question. The answer is yes, and that's exactly what my research program is going for. The biggest problem we've got— Rob, is it? Yeah. The biggest problem we've got, Rob, is that what our civilization is doing is much like a cocaine habit. What happens if you take cocaine? You get this rush of dopamine into your brain. Your brain doesn't like that. It reacts to it. And what it does is it dulls down your response to dopamine. So you need more and more and more dope, cocaine, to feel as good. And ordinary life, the normal things of life that you might find enjoyable become boring, dull. That's the typical reaction. Our whole society is doing that, and it's junk food, and it's gambling, and it's sex and porn, and it's social media stuff. It's all giving us these dopamine spikes. Video games, all these things are spiking us, and that's dampening down our dopamine reaction. What really makes people happy is not these spikes, not these floods of dopamine, but a gentle flow. —things like family, children, friendship, church, faith, community, walking in nature, prayer, meditation—all these things, they feel good, but they produce a gentle flow of dopamine which doesn't set off this reaction in your brain. So you enjoy them, but it doesn't decrease the sensitivity. That's what we need to do. What we're trying to do with this, we're looking at food restriction in rats as a model. We're figuring out the response to that, which is hormonal, but it's also epigenetic. It changes the way our genes function. So we're studying this in rats, and what we're doing is we're trialling different substances to try and find one that has this effect of strengthening, in a sense, making our brain more sensitive to dopamine so that we find the really good things in life, the flow things, the family, the friendship, the community, the faith. We find these engaging, even work, routine work, those kind of things too, all the things that make life really worthwhile. And if we find a treatment, it would actually, which we think we've got a good chance of finding, because we've been studying, we put 1,000 different drugs that we've been testing into human neuron cells and looking at the epigenetic changes and so forth. So we're testing, just starting to test them in animals. And if we can find a treatment that'll do this, it'll actually be an incredibly powerful way of treating things like drug dependence and alcoholism and gambling addictions and all those other kinds of nasty stuff. And it should also help people to be more outward focusing, more focusing on each other. We'll rebuild the sense of community, reduce the sense of isolation and depression, the deaths of despair, all the diseases, the psychological mental diseases that are really hurting us right now. That's what I'm after. Now, the interesting thing is some of these weight loss drugs, weight loss treatments like Wegovy, seem to have some of these effects. So they may need a lot of tweaking because weight loss is not what we're after, but we need to change the attitude. They do actually make people sort of less likely to be addicted to drugs and alcohol and smoking and stuff. So yes, that's exactly what we're after. And if we could do it, it would change the world. I agree. It's almost ironic that we're looking for something external to fix something that should come from our own minds. It should. The trouble is the appeal of our society is so vast. These short-term fixes are so difficult. The social media is just getting worse and worse. The gambling and things like crypto and all those other things, the get-rich-quick things, all this social stimulation, the quick boosts of prestige, the video games, the porn, all this kind of stuff is having a really, really, really— and we should turn our back on it, but it's so hard because we're human and we're weak, and it's so easy to do the things that feel good in the short term even though we must know that they're terrible in the long term. Like drug addicts, they know quite well this thing is making them miserable, it's killing them, but they can't stop because the appeal of that short term. We're all like that in a way in this society. We're so hung up on this individualism, what's in it for me, this kind of thing. Get rich, get status, get wealth, get that short-term terrible attitude that tries to compare ourselves with other people. We need to get past that. It's so difficult. But I believe there is a solution. And next year I'm coming out with this book, Birthrate Crisis. We're going to publish it all over the world. We're going to try and get translations done in different countries like South Korea, Japan, in China, and really trying to say to people, listen, help us with this progress. We can do it ourselves, we can do it a lot faster, we have more money. I was spending a few million dollars a year, most of the profits from Jim's group going into this. But if we could produce this, it would change the world. And we need to do this because we're going in a very, very bad direction. And the collapsing birth rate is just the first sign of it. Rising depression, anxiety, drug addiction, deaths of despair, all these things, suicide rates, all these things are really, really serious problems. Now we're also going to get into economic problems too, the economies will start to stagnate and go backwards, it's a really big danger, it's got to be turned around. But for the first time in human history we have the potential to do just this, because it's the first time we've been able to understand what's going on, and therefore change. Thank you for your work. There you go, good question.

Got a couple online, Jim, I want to get to real quickly for you. Um, Kathy's gone, what's on your Christmas wish list this year?

Well, I don't like presents very much. We did this, we're doing, um, we're doing what do you call it, um, we said everybody getting presents apart from Aaron, who's sick 16, we're getting one present each. So I, I put a, I put a wish list, and in my wish list I said— I'm very difficult— I said, I don't want you to buy anything for me. I don't want any chocolate because I'm not— I don't need more chocolate, thank you very much. But if you can make something that's personal, um, or an experience of some kind, that, that, that would be my wish list for Christmas. Presents? No, I don't— I'm not crazy about that. But one of my daughters, Sylvia, I mentioned before, she and her partner, they got me a— I love Monty Burns from The Simpsons. I'm really— I love— ah, excellent. All right, big fan. So they actually downloaded me a whole lot of Monty Burns from The Simpsons.

There you go. Looks like him too, as well, sometimes. I do. Yeah, I do. Looks like him. I try. Yeah, you try.

I look more like Monty Burns every year that goes by. You just need the blue suit, the blue suit. Only my wife thinks I look like Daniel Craig, but everybody thinks I look like Monty Burns. Poor deluded woman. But then to me she looks like Miss Universe Plus, and she's just about— she's not far off 60, so I guess I'm a little bit biased myself, even though she is genuinely very good looking.

Do mine more online, Jim Penman?

People look at us together and they think, "Jeepers, you must be rich." This old geezer with his beautiful young-looking wife. Ah, come on.

Then, hey, Wilson's gone here. Do you test all the trailers that are supplied for franchisees? Do we test them all?

Not, not individually, but what we do is we test the model. We always fiddle with the models of things. We always try and find the best, the best kind of— well, dog wash always gets improved.

And you've got—

yeah, we're always looking at dog wash. Then we get a new brand down and we get dog wash to try it out and you see what do you like. Is it got good— can it stand up? Is it convenient? How do you like the lifting process for the— yeah, we check things out very carefully. One of the things I was very proud of actually is that when we launched Jim back in 1989, I had a trailer design that I'd been working on for years. And independents bought that design. Nobody ever bought the design from other companies for VIP because ours was the best, it was the most useful design. And as time went on, we did extra things to it. We had a cage put across the front, and then we had boxes for the brush cutters and stuff. So we, we're constantly modeling and fiddling with these things and saying, what's the most usable? Because we're very close to our users in gyms. We're always looking at what they want and how— what's best for them.

So we'll do, Jim. Lots of great questions. So thank you everyone tonight for asking us all the questions as you did. That was— that made my life a lot easier. It was great. Um, Jim, now what you do is you normally pick your 3 favorite questions for first pick at the prize, but anyone asked him a question, come see me at the end, you can take first pick of whatever you like as well. So all your 3 favorite questions, Jim, for the first pick.

There are so many good ones. We had about the best questions. A lot of original ones.

Yeah, it was really good.

Nobody's ever asked about my underwear. Underwear. All right, come up, pick whatever you like first.

You can take whatever you like first.

Come up here, take whatever you like. I never would have dreamt of that one. Thank you. No, never.

I don't— thanks for not making me check as well. It's all right. Just one. Yeah, anything you like.

Well, no, anything you like. Yeah, only one. What do you mean? 3 prizes, you only got— just wondering.

Next one, Jim. Here's the next one.

I like the swear comment. That was interesting.

The swear word.

Nobody's ever asked me what's going on with my swear jar. Yes, even though I couldn't give you much of an answer. But who asked that?

Lady, was you in the front? Yeah, come up and grab your lot. Or was the last one—

I think she's got— sorry. Can I buy the book at the store?

Which book at the store? Monopoly? This one? You should share this one for free.

This is a better version. That's the old version. The one you're giving is more up to date. Yeah, Monopoly is a good choice.

Yeah, yeah. And what about the last one there, Jim?

Well, I mean, I don't think we need the beer.

I've never tasted the beer. I don't drink. It's good. I kind of like the question. Look, there's so many good ones. I like the why question about— I like the title one. What's the name? But the question about the barbecue was interesting. Nobody's ever asked that before. What would Jim's group be like if they had a barbecue?

Come up and pick what you like.

Go for it. Oh, same family. I didn't even realize. Yeah, take whatever you like. Oh, Sharon, your dog, which people are coming up spayed today. You did a good job. I would probably do—

not the t-shirt, I want the black t-shirt. You put mine on.

This one? Yeah, go for it. Go for it.

All right, cool. So what we'll do, thank you for that.

So what we'll do, if you asked a question, come up and you can grab anything that's remaining here as well. So first come, first serve. Just one sec. Thank you very much for watching tonight as well, guys. It's on YouTube, it's on the podcast, etc. So if you want a photo of Jim too, we've got lights here. Hand me your phone, I can take a photo for you as well. So thanks for your attention and have a good night. Thank you.