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

He's been there for the last 5 years. We can't make it grow, we can't get anybody to take it on, but we still have to look after this guy, and we do. So there is, we just can't do it. Yeah, there's been another division too which was Site Solutions.

No, you just mentioned traffic control maybe.

No, the one about setting up houses for display.

Oh, display houses. Oh, interior design.

Interior design. Yeah, we had 4 franchisees in that. and that just didn't work out as a division.

But you had two franchisors who came out of that who were stars.

Yeah, so what we actually did with that division again is we actually got them all cleaning franchises and two of them have come to be two of our top franchisors. So that's Nicola's one, if anybody knows her. She's come out of that. So in a sense, no, we can't abandon franchisees, but what we can do sometimes is help them to move to a different division which is more lucrative.

Which division are you joining?

Pool care.

Oh, you got no worry about pool care. They've just hit 150 franchisees, so it's a pretty big one.

Doing very well. Thank you. Good leadership, Brett.

It's a great division. Yeah, great question. Go for it.

G'day. Curious on your book, and so a few questions in one.

How did you sort of discover an interest in that? I guess, are you planning on doing more writing or more study?

And I guess, where do you do you hope to take that, or do you see any, I guess, impact, or, you know, how will it affect the world? This is a project that's actually, in a sense, is the reason for Jim's group. I did a PhD back in the '70s, early '80s, trying to understand the reason for the rise and fall of civilisation, and came to the conclusion that it's a biological phenomenon. So since then, ever since then, I've been researching it, taking part-time whatever days I could snatch from the business writing. I funded a research institute. We're currently spending about $3 million a year and what we're doing is developing a treatment which will help people to recover from things like drug addiction and certain kinds of depression by mimicking the effect of food restriction which we're studying on rats, in rats. Among other things, it will be something that can turn the birth rate crisis around. So I'm actually in the process of finalising a book called Birth Rate Crisis which will be out early next year which will talk about a radical new way to understand why fertility is coming down all over the world and what to do about it. So it's still very live. This book here is available. I have to say it's a somewhat outdated version because the theory's moved on since this was done about 5 years ago. So there's a new version up but Birth Rate Crisis will be Not too long, and I hope and expect to make a big splash with it, 'cause it's a solution to a problem that people are starting to panic about, and there's a reason why it's happening. It's to do with the way the dopamine system works. We've been testing it on rats and deciding things and developing treatments and stuff. We think there's a real solution to that. A lot of other problems too. The rise in loneliness, for example, rise in drug addiction, the deaths of despair, the loss of community, all these kinds of things, they have a common cause and we know what that is. We've got animal models for it and we think we can fix it. So— Can I just piggyback on something you said then? Yes.

You said, you mentioned the food restriction.

So how does that work with fixing or curing some of these things? Okay. What actually happens— let's turn it the other way around. If you'd got something like cocaine or a drug of addiction, or alcohol works the same way, what that actually does is give your brain a burst of dopamine. And the brain doesn't like to be imbalanced. So if you keep on shoving dopamine into your brain in these surges, and a lot of things can do that— drugs, alcohol, even social media, porn, a lot of other things like that— what the brain does is adjust to it by becoming less sensitive to dopamine. What that means is that ordinary things in life seem boring, uninteresting, you know, children, family, living in the countryside, whatever. Now what we want to do is the opposite. When you restrict food or you restrict those kinds of activities, the brain becomes more sensitive to dopamine. And that's what— and therefore you find things like children, your partner, work more interesting, more rewarding. Not boring anymore. So that's kind of like the neuroscience behind it. So what we're doing actually, one of the things we do is we take, we've been testing about 1,000 different drugs. We put them into little compartments with human brain cells and we look at the epigenetic effects on the brain cells. So we looked at the effects of food restriction and we just started testing some of these in a in animals to see if they have some effect. So it's a very— that's a very brief talk, but we think it has tremendous potential. Things like drugs become a lot less interesting and attractive if your dopamine system becomes more reactive because you'll find ordinary life more interesting. Sorry?

Life becomes your dopamine then.

Yeah, well, ordinary life, like work, for example. Like, if you do a routine job, it's not boring, it's interesting, you put your heart and your soul into it. If you've got a more reactive dopamine system, you're better at work because you get more interested in your work. If your dopamine system is very unreactive, you tend to find that boring. I want to be out socialising or gambling or drinking or—

All the fun stuff.

All the stuff that makes you feel good in the short term but worse in the long term. See, one of the things I'm very interested in is the science of happiness. Why people are happy. Now people think that you're going to be happy if you have more money and you've got more stuff and you have more excitement and you have more thrills and more alcohol and all this stuff that makes you feel good short term. The trouble with all these things is they deactivate your dopamine system and it makes you less happy overall. So the things that make you happy are things like exercise, family, friends, sense of purpose, sense of meaning, meaningful work, all those kinds of things. Being outside, contact with nature, all these things are proven to make— faith communities, being part of a church, those kind of things. They're all the things that are, in a sense, you have to discipline yourself to do the things that you don't want to, but overall you're happier if you do. Very interesting. Thank you.

Yeah, it is. So we've got a thing called Conversations with Jim Penman as a separate podcast and a YouTube channel where this all All this stuff's on there, so he goes into it on there if it's something. Actually, if you're interested in it as well, buyerhistory.org is the website too as well. There's some stuff and some videos on there too, so it's worth checking out. Cool, who's got a question for Jim? Go for it. Okay, so you've built this amazing Australian business from the ground up, right?

Don't know how many years, 40 years? It's 36 years since we franchised, yes, but I was actually, Jim's Mowing is older than that 'cause Jim's Mowing was originally Jim Mowing. Me with my beard and the hat and putting out leaflets in letterboxes. That's how it started back in 1982. So my question is, at what point through your journey did what you created become your vision? No one point. So it just evolved? It's just very gradual. It wasn't one breakthrough, it was thousands of little tiny decisions about what you do, how you do a job better, how you put people on better. Franchising was a big step, largely in self-defense, but When I started off franchising, somebody asked me how many franchisees I might have one day and I said, maybe if it works well, 100. So, we've got 5,600 plus now. I don't even know the number. It's just growing. It's just astonishing how well it's done. But I didn't have, in a sense, I didn't have the vision. I think if you look at vision, the one vision I had from the beginning as a franchisor is that I was going to do everything I could to make my franchisees into raving fans. That was kind of the idea. I said, what would, what could you do, what system could you devise that would be maximally good for franchisees? And that's the vision. I think you've achieved that. I think we're achieving it, we're moving there. If anybody asks me what my goals are, I wouldn't say having a certain number of franchisees. If I had the ultimate absolute goal, I would say that every single one of my franchisees would be totally happy. With their business in every way. That would be my goal. I don't expect to achieve it, but that's the goal. It's like you go out and it's like you look at the Southern Cross, okay? That's the way to south. You don't expect to reach the Southern Cross because we haven't got space travel at that level yet, but it guides you where to go. Yeah, and it's also like reach for the stars. You won't quite get there, but where you do get to will be exactly where you should be. Yeah, and I think that's an important point about any business too. The people who run great businesses are not the ones who say, yeah, I give great customer service and I do everything really well. It's the ones that say, "How can I be better? Yeah, I give great customer service. I'm 4.9 on the scale. How could I be 5.0? How could I do even better? How could I get even more referrals, more raving fans? How can I charge more money? Make more money per hour?" Always wanting to improve. That's the nature of the thing. Thanks, Jim.

Good question. Good comment. Got a question, guys? Feel free to come up and ask Jim anything you like. Go for it. Hazmat. Growing division.

Very lucrative division too. It is too, yes, absolutely. Very good money.

Okay, lighthearted one for you, Jim.

Go ahead.

If aliens landed and demanded a Jim's Division on their planet, which service would you pitch them first?

Well, it really depends.

That is a good one.

Write that one down. Nobody would ever really ask me. Look, I'd have to say the first thing I would do is work out what the aliens wanted.

It would be a very logical answer.

Because, for example, if they have very lush gardens and they enjoy gardening, well, Jim's mowing. On the other hand, if they kept little pets and that was their biggest thing, I'd say dog wash would be a great one. If they need electronic stuff, I'd say— so I'd look to the needs of the individuals, the people concerned. So, what are aliens like? You tell me and I'll tell you. They're more niche. They probably have a problem with hazardous waste too, so I'd definitely put you guys in.

Very good original one, we love that.

That's a very good question. Nobody's ever asked that one.

They definitely haven't. You got a question for Jim, guys? Feel free to come to the microphone.

I did ask for the curly questions. This lady definitely delivered that one.

Very well thought out. Got a few online too which we'll get to in a minute too. It's not an alien one but what's the hardest truth you had to tell yourself to grow?

I make terrible mistakes. I've made so many stupid, stupid mistakes and to recognize that and make you a bit of a blunder is very difficult. Particularly going into things I don't really understand or know very well. Things like trade exchange, like factory to make fibreglass trailers, like a psychology teaching institute, like all kinds of things that I've gone into. The hardest thing is just to recognise you're dumb, all right? And sometimes I'm really, really, really thick, and if you don't believe me, ask my wife, she'll tell you. Somebody asked me once, do I ever have any danger of being, you know, getting swolven-headed from so much success? And I say, not married to Lee, no, not possible. Too easy.

I've got another one here, if my phone unlocks. Just for, in terms of our own crews here, like we're all starting out now. What do you think the best way is to turn a one-off customer into a repeat long-term client?

I just make them raving fans. You see, if you're going to a job, what's your division?

Pressure washing, window cleaning in Sydney.

You just got to do a job that they can't think they could get done. It's like when I would do lawn mowing jobs and people would say, "I never knew my lawn could look that good," and I would just do all kinds of things that people wouldn't even dream about. I'd get the grass from the cracks in the driveway with a brush cutter and blow them off. I'd cut back the overgrown edge from the nature strip. They didn't even know there was an edge there and I cut it back because I knew there was one under there. I'd do things of that nature. If I did gardening, I dug it over. I know it's not ecological, but it's what people wanted. You dug it over, you showed brown earth. I had a way of doing it really quickly. So I could go and make a person's job really immaculate. They'd look at it and say, wow. I used to turn one-offs into regulars all the time. 'Cause they just couldn't get the same result. I could do it better than they could do it. Much better than they could do it. The brush cutter, using how to use that properly. So whatever you're— if you can figure out how to make things sparkle. You know, we had a lady cleaning our house once. Now I'm a man, Billy, I don't see dirt. Is that correct? We don't see dirt, do we guys? I like things tidy but I don't see dirt. We had a lady, Maria, a Filipina, she was just wonderful, Jim's cleaning person doing our house. And I tell you what, this lady was amazing. She just, you could just tell it was the best clean job ever. She even had this stuff that smelled good and she'd move the chairs and ah, she was just so good. Every time she had an opening, about 10 people would leap in and say, "Come and do it for me." Now the only problem Maria had, which like every time I used to come to her place I said, "Maria, have you put your prices up?" This used to frustrate me. She could charge double what she charged and she could still get away with it. But if you can make your clients so happy and amazing, people will line up to use your services even at a very good price. That is the key to it. People had— we have this idea from retail it's all about price. It's the worst mistake you can make. The real benefit, the real place to be is not the cheapest chips market, it's the people who want great service. We don't need the cheapest chips. People come to me and say I want something done, I want the cheapest service, and I say try Hypages. I'm not even going to ask them to put it through for Jim because I don't want it to go to my people. If you want cheap, go to Hypages, go to Aircastle, go to something else which is cheap, nasty, well I'm not saying that, that's being pretty demeaning. But cheap, alright? That's not our market, is it? Our market is to be incredibly good and people will be charging astonishing hourly rates. We talk about $70 an hour, but if you hear people who are doing really, really well, they're talking like $120 an hour and I'm talking about things like cleaning and mowing and so forth. They're charging much, much higher because they're so good at what they do that people really want them. It's like dog wash as an example. You know, you're going washing somebody's dog. Now you might be charging $100 to do a half-hour job. Someone else might do it for $40. But if the dog likes you, you're not in danger from anybody because that's really important.

Yeah, fair enough. You got Jacob in your division, right? Yes, that's my franchisor. He's a good one. Yeah, so you got a really good one. So good franchisor who does really well. So he's, um, ask him all the questions. He's really good. He told us to be prepared with questions when we came. Oh, did he? Yeah, good. Now he's the man, Jacob. Now he's come on the podcast twice. He's doing really successful. Former plumber, so he's a good guy.

We love stories, actually. Anybody who's got a good story. I get feedback from franchisees who have just started off when I send my 1-month letter, and some are just doing so well. So I always keep them through. This guy, I said, let's do a talk.

It's been good.

Sometimes people just have an amazing start. They're just making, you know, $5,000 a week from their first week. This kind of stuff, which is just not expected. After a year or so, maybe, but immediately you get some astonishing stories.

We do. A question, guys, for Jim? Feel free to come up and ask him. Anyone got a question? Yep, go for it.

Cool.

I'll try this one. Um, you fund, as you just earlier said, epigenetic and dietary research into civilizations' collapse out of your own pocket. Which historical civilizations do you think we're most closely repeating right now? We are most closely repeating right now, and what personal habits do you follow because of that research?

Very good question. I like that one.

Yeah, that was always going to be a good one. Very good.

Yes, okay. The greatest historical analogy for us is the decline, collapse of the Roman Empire. And it shows the same process, the same thing that was happening in late Roman Republic and the Empire is happening now. You have a wealthy, highly commercial civilization you get an initial period of great creative ferment, like in the Golden Age, which is in the 1st century BC, which is creative, amazing, like our common culture. But then after that you get a decline in the work ethic. People moved from the countryside into the cities, replaced by these vast estates owned by slaves. The birth rate went down, particularly in the cities, particularly amongst the wealthy people, went down. You get a flight away from family. You've got a retreat from the virtues of honesty and the republic to one-man rule because you get more personal loyalties. The economy starts to slide and you go back to— and then the whole thing disintegrates. The same process is happening right now for the same exact reasons. What you've got to do personally about this is to live a life, which is what I was talking about before, which is fairly disciplined. In other words, disciplined work, staying away from— what do you call it— sexual adventurism, just with your partner, alright? Sex in marriage only, that's a very powerful principle. Spending time with your family, with your kids, getting involved in a faith community of some kind. I'm a Christian, but it doesn't matter what, as long as it's a community that's very strong in terms of their values. Having a sense of purpose in your life. Having good discipline, habits of discipline, all those kind of things. I also believe in things like cold showers and I do 16/8 fasting so sometimes I'm quite hungry. Those kinds of self-discipline which is actually a way of creating happiness. These are all things that are happiness-promoting. That's the kind of thing I do to have the right effect. We need to do that as a civilisation but it's not possible because the because the forces of wealth are so powerful. And they're actually a lot, lot worse today than they were in the times of the late Roman Republic because we're so much wealthier. We've got things like cocaine and we've got drugs and freely available alcohol and junk food and all these things which actually make these problems so much worse. So if we don't turn this around, we're in big trouble.

And just to follow on that, when you had the slide up today, when you introduced yourself this morning and the big slide was on the screen and there was obviously a photo of yourself in the early days when you just started. And there was also the front of that book, the COVID of the book was on there. And so it was you on the slide and then you in person and then the book. Is that Julius Caesar on the COVID or is it you? Because it just looked the same. It actually does look too— yeah, that's a pretty good observation.

That's Livvy.

Sorry?

That's Livvy.

Oh, Livvy, okay. But it could be Jim. Because I thought it might be you.

I'm pretty sure it's Livvy. I've forgotten who it is, but it's Livvy. No, he doesn't have a beard. Looks very severe, doesn't he?

Yeah, well, you look like that as well. Thanks, Jim. Well, good observation, that one.

Thank you.

I like that one. That's a good one.

I think he's rather better looking than me, but anyway. So are most people.

If you've got a question for Jim, guys, feel free to come up. I just want to read a few comments online left on the chat, which is really mad, which is cool for some confidence. Kevin's gone, he says, I've got a mowing franchise in Adelaide Hills. I was in that room only 6 months ago. One question I get asked often is, have you met Jim Penman? I said yes, had dinner with him. And I always hear the last guy was cheaper, but you're still calling me about regarding pricing. And Jason Anthony's gone, I was in that room 1 year ago. It was the best move I ever made, which is great to hear as well. So if you've got a question for Jim, guys, feel free to come up and ask him anything you like. Anything on your mind, go for it. We've got plenty of time.

So you must get a lot of offers being so big and being so approachable, but have you ever thought of sponsoring a sports team, a supercar team, and what's your favourite football team? The answer is no. Because fundamentally we spend your advertising money in the most cost-effective way possible. For businesses like ours, the way you advertise has to be where people are looking for your service. Whatever it is—lawn mowing, cleaning, dog wash, hazardous waste, whatever. So cost-effective advertising. I would never spend money on sponsorship. When I could spend it better somewhere else. Franchisors are actually able to sponsor local teams, but we do need the vote, the franchisees in the division have to vote in favour of it. Let me give you one example. We had one particular franchisor who sponsored two teams. One was a women's basketball team and the other was to do with boys, to do with lifesaving. It just happened that two of his children were in those teams. So there's a severe conflict of interest in— that's why he brought that rule in, by the way, that says you must get approval. Now, as far as I'm concerned, sorry, I have absolutely no interest in those kinds of things at all. I have a very— I'm a very nerdy bookish sort of person. I'm not a sporty person. I love reading, I love listening to talking books, I'm interested in politics, current affairs, science, everything.

Squash is your only sport really, isn't it?

Yeah, yeah, and I'm about to stop playing because last time we played you just exhausted me, this guy. We played last week.

I'd hope so, yeah, he's not too bad, he's really good actually.

I get him on the shots but he wore me out by the third game.

Yeah, no, Jim's very wild, he's very, very slippery on the court. Thank you. You know, but that's a good— but in the past we've had Mowing, Mowing sponsored Richmond, so you know the Swinburne Centre now, that used to be the Jim's Mowing Oval, so you'll see that that photo a lot with goes with Jim with all the trailers and stuff like that, that was at Punt Road. So that was Jim's mowing, and I sponsored the ball one year because that was what the division decided. And you got Jim's Test and Tag sponsorship.

Wasn't my decision. Wasn't his decision. Everybody assumed I was a man. Richmond fan.

Yeah, they kept going, see, you go for Richmond.

Yeah, you do it. I would not make a decision based on what I wanted. They actually give you invites to the president's lunch, and you can go up to this very special place, they have all this food and stuff. I just they didn't even use it.

And that Test and Tag Division one, you sponsor the EJ Witten Legends game and stuff like that, but that's something that the franchisees and the franchisors voted on. So if the division, like if you've got a division with maybe 100 franchisees and they all want to get behind it, a thing, and they all vote on it, then that's okay, but it's not generally the use. A lot of franchisees at a local level, they sponsor their sport. Yeah, we've got a guy who sponsors a sprint car in South Australia. I've seen it, it's really cool, and they sponsor events and their teams locally and stuff.

I make a lot less decisions than you probably think. Most advertising is decided mostly by franchisees, by franchisors in particular, and by different divisions. We have an advisory committee which is elected division represented by franchisors. They actually tend to make policy for the company. We've got a meeting coming up on— Tomorrow.

Is it tomorrow or Friday? Tomorrow morning.

Tomorrow morning, yeah. So we have a committee that actually decides a lot of things of policy. The core things to do with franchisee service and customer service, that's me. And I get occasional requests to water something down. Like there's a request coming up in advisory tomorrow, if it is tomorrow. It's right tonight, yeah. Yeah, which basically is saying they want to make paperwork guarantee a little bit more tough. To claim, I'm going to be very sceptical about that. We want to get rid of fraud, but I want to make it as easy as possible to claim. So those are the kind of things where I will step in personally when it relates to the welfare of my franchisees or customer service. But most other decisions tend to be made much more broadly. And franchisees, you have a fair say on things like the ability to veto changes to your own manual. As far as I know, it's the only company in the world that does that. We just think that the best decisions are made by the people closest to the ground. So maybe you can make so much money from gyms that you'll sponsor your own sporting team. How about that?

Alright, sounds good. A lot of franchisees do. Darren and Sunbury sponsor the footy club. There's a lot of signs around local footy grounds in Australia and things like that. Yeah, depending on the division. Pool care, mowing guys. So it all depends on what you want to do. It's up to them. Absolutely. Guys, you got a question for Jim, feel free to come up and ask him on the mic. There's a couple online, Jim, which I'll ask whilst people are thinking of their questions. Another person, Marty's gone. Oh yeah, come up, go for it. I'll just read this one out real quickly. Hi Jim, have you thought about offering mobile crane services within your franchises? It'd be difficult. Yeah.

But if somebody came, if the right person came up, I'd look at it. I get offered a new division probably about once a week.

I think Mick Gatto's got crane services covered, so I don't know if we'd be able to do that.

Somebody's approached me about Jim's scaffolding just last week.

Yeah, that'd be a good one. Go for it. Cool. I've got some faith-based questions, being a Christian yourself. Do you think that business has helped your journey in faith or with a relationship with God?

Well, that's an interesting way to put it around. I'd say— I like that one. I think when you make a decision which is the right decision, and you do it for moral reasons and then it turns out to be a great business decision, that's very faith-promoting. It's like tithing, for example, which is a biblical principle which I strongly believe in. I just have found from practical experience that if you really are under the most extreme pressure and even you're having trouble paying other bills, if you pay your tithing first, somehow things come out good. So my experience of business is very powerful that if you do the right thing then God will look after you. There's a story that's in the book actually but I did want to mention in this regard. It's when I first started my full-time business in 1992 and I was really flat broke, absolutely flat broke and desperate. I was deeply in debt, about $30,000 something in debt. No assets, no nothing, newly married, very, very bad situation to be in. I had a mower and brush cutter which were on their last legs and they broke down. It was just before Christmas 1982, so I went to the only place anywhere near that was open because I had to have equipment or my business is dead. And I went in, the guy was very busy, he gave me the price on the mower and the brush cutter, he added them up, I took that to the cashier, I paid the amount, and as I walked out of the store I recognized that he's rung he calculated it wrongly, he added up, it was $100 too cheap, which was a lot more in those days than now, this is 1982. And I thought, okay, I need this money so badly, I need this money so badly, that's it, just my good luck. Drove all the way to the next stop, which is quite some way away, got my mower out, put it on the nature strip ready to start, and I thought, God does not mean me to do this. This is not right. Put it back in the thing, drove all the way back to the place, it was up in Greensborough, walked in, found the bloke and said, listen, you added the thing up wrong. This is how much it is. Here's $100. And he was very appreciative. He said, if I hadn't done that, you'd come out of my wages, because it was more than the margin on the thing. Walked out and I thought, okay, all right. Was that a good decision or not? That very afternoon, that very afternoon, I was talking to a guy who was was doing things with office machines like photocopies and stuff. Now I mentioned that I was doing leaflets but I didn't mention anything about the fact that I was pretty desperate financially or anything like that. Out of the blue, this guy said to me, "Okay, look, I wanna do some leaflets for you." Now I don't know why he asked that. Maybe it was whatever his motivation, maybe he thought of future business or what, I don't know. He said, "I'll do business for you." Not only did he offer to do it out of the blue but he actually told me how much He would do for me. And the value of those leaflets were $100. Now, I don't know if you can comprehend that. It was not even the $100 that mattered. It was the fact that, my goodness, somebody's there, somebody's looking after me. If I follow Him, if I'm faithful to Him, then somehow this thing will work out. And at that time, you've got to think, it was really a desperate situation. I was broke, deeply in debt. $35,000, you could buy a house in those days. I was really badly in debt. Supporting a wife who was a student, desperate situation, and I knew that if I did what God asked me to do, then somehow He would look after me. How incredibly unlikely it would seem. And I've had other experiences like that where somehow there's a blessing that comes. There's things that you know about you couldn't know about. And business is a great time because sometimes you're tested and there is a temptation to do the wrong thing and there always will be. We all face it. But you look. So yes, great question. Can I ask one more, please? Go ahead.

Is there any action, or to follow up that question, and you probably mentioned it, but any action any business owner or any of us could do to help honor God in business?

Oh, lots of actions. What's your name? Toby. Lots of actions, Toby. Work hard on your calling. That's a very strong biblical principle. The parable of the talents, where we use the abilities that God's given us. Money and everything, all our abilities are held in trust. We use it for His purposes. So you work in your calling, you honor what you do. This is what Paul says actually, work hard in your calling. And he was a tentmaker, so he was all into that. So you do your job, you do it honorably, you do it well, you pay honest taxes. I know there's a tendency We get a lot of cash money in the business, and that's a temptation, it really is, especially now with GST and everything else. It's so easy just to take the cash and not. God asks us to live an honourable life in every sense of what we do. We give good service to people. That's the nature. It doesn't mean we have to charge cheap. We can charge a lot, that's my view of it, but we give very, very good value in terms of everything we do. We're completely honest. With every level, with our taxes and every other way. Yeah. That's— because it's our decision, you see, because we're in business for ourselves, we've got so much more opportunity to live to make good decisions rather than bad ones. Thank you so much, I really appreciate it.

Just to be clear, Jim, all cash is reported to the ATO by franchisees, isn't it?

Yeah. 100%. I would never be in a situation of telling anybody they should have a cash income. I know where it happens. We can't do anything about it, but we would always say pay your tax honestly. To be pretty blunt about it, when you're self-employed, working in your own business, you have so many opportunities to quite legally minimise tax. So, for example, you can split your income if your wife's making less money than you, or your husband for that matter, you can split your income with them. You can charge, you can, most of it's for your vehicle, part of your rent or your mortgage, part of your power bill, for example. All kinds of things that you can actually deduct being in business for yourself. You don't need to be dishonest about tax. Yeah, go for it.

What's the business obstacle you really struggled to overcome and how did you overcome it? What's the— Business struggle, yeah? Business struggle you overcome.

I'm pretty lazy by nature. It's true. I know that sounds bizarre for somebody in my position and people often accuse me of being a workaholic. If you try emailing me, I will email you back pretty quick, you'll find out, you try that. I do what I need to do but I can't say I'm a natural hard worker. I'm just not the sort of person who sits down and just works all the time. I have to sort of kick myself at times and say, "Get out of your lazy sod and do some work." This book, for example, this Birthright, you know how I did it? It was really difficult. I was just finding it so difficult to do anything. And then I made a commitment to my life group, which is the group that will meet here on Wednesday night from church. And I said, "Will you hold me accountable? I want to be doing something of this book every single day. Every day." That's the commitment I made to, and I got them to hold me to account. 'cause I knew if I came to our meeting, which is held once a fortnight, and I hadn't done it, well, I can't. So I wrote this whole book just during the time I was doing other books, and I'd finish all my emails and everything else and the talks, and then I'd sit down and I'd work on the book. And if I said it must be at least 5 minutes, I'd usually spend at least half an hour, an hour doing it. So I wrote this entire book, and then I went through it again and rewrote it, and I do all these other things too. I'm not a natural workaholic, I really am not, even though I have a reputation for it. For it. I just know that God's given me a job to do and I have to do it and I have to push myself. And sometimes I beat myself up and say, "You rotten, lazy, stupid sod, get off your fat backside and do something useful with your life." That might not sound like good psychology, but that's what I do to myself. I just push myself hard. So in the end, I get quite a lot done, but it's not easy. Yep, that's fair. Cheers. What are your struggles? Tell me. What are my struggles?

Yeah. I think it's quite similar with holding yourself accountable to something and being consistent at it. I think consistency is quite an issue. To consistently get up and do the exact same thing each day, do the same effort.

Yeah, good on you. There's some wonderful books about that, things like Atomic Habits and Tiny Habits and those kind of things. I'd really recommend them. If anybody wants to, if you go on jimpenman.com.au, you'll see a book list. There's a whole lot of books in there about these kinds of things. And I listen to talking books a lot and read a lot, so I'm always hearing things that are trying to drill these ideas into my head. It's not easy. Life is a struggle. You know, my favourite song is the song from Pilgrim's Progress, "Let he who would valiant be." It's about struggle. Life is a struggle against doing things that are difficult. That's what I believe in. Life isn't— as Malcolm Fraser, Prime Minister, ex-Prime Minister, used to say— I'm not saying he was a great Prime Minister, but I love what he said: life wasn't meant to be easy. And it's not, because if we try and make our life too easy, it's not a good life. And everything that's worth doing in life is a matter of struggling and doing things that are difficult and coming up against your own nature and saying, no, I will not give up, and I will do this, and I will do that. Exercising is one big thing. Controlling your diet is another big thing. Just working on projects that matter, working on the things that are important. See, there's a whole lot of things, you know, the idea— everything you have to do can be divided into things that are important and urgent. Now, for example, the problem we have is that we tend to do the things that are urgent, but the real place we have to look at is the things that are not urgent but important. Things like my book. Those kinds of things you don't have to do it, but it's really worthwhile doing. Easy to do the things that are urgent, they just come up and you just do them. But it's the urgent— it's the non-urgent important things that make the difference. The things you don't have to do but you choose to do because that's the kind of person that I am. Yeah, great question.

Well, we do have a Day in the Life of Jim on YouTube, it's pretty good actually, 45 minutes, good watch.

There's so many good questions today, I don't know how I'm going to choose these ones.

They all get a prize if you say it. Go for it. First of all, just want to say thanks for the opportunity, Jim. I've got a pretty young family, and I've got a 1.5-year-old and whatever, but I don't really want to neglect her at all. So it's just like, do you have any advice on starting a business from scratch and just navigating still being there for your child?

I'd say you've made one of the best decisions that you ever could make doing what you're doing now. Yeah. In fact, the book, the new book that just came out that you've all got a copy of, starts with an anecdote about exactly exactly that kind of situation where a guy who's working as a retail manager, actually he was a supermarket manager, working incredibly long hours and he quit because he wanted to spend time with his son who was growing up, who was 4 at the time. And it's made all the difference in the world. I do not believe— there's a saying that goes, "No other success can compensate for failure in the home." The book is actually called No Other Success, which is based on that particular statement. I don't think People overestimate the value of material success. I don't think it's important enough. You should ever neglect your family, ever neglect your partner, ever neglect your children, ever neglect what's important to life. You can make a very good living without ever compromising on that. We'll show you how to do it. We don't expect you to work 100 hours a week. We don't want you to work 100 hours a week. We want you to have time for the things that really matter in life. And it is possible. Now I have never neglected my children. Sometimes I actually too much. What happens is I got divorced, wasn't my decision really, and I was incredibly devoted to my children. So when I see them one day a week, my wives that I had subsequently found it very difficult because I was so focused on my kids. So that's my kind of blindness. But the fact of the matter is, no, I have never— I I never neglected my kids. I just didn't even think that's a decision that I could ever make. Kids are just more important than anything. Family is more important than anything. Definitely. People have this idea that you keep on making more and more money and you make, you've got more expensive stuff and toys and a better house and the bed and you say it's for the sake of your children, but honestly they don't require, they need you more than anything else. Have you got kids?

Yeah, I've got a 1.5-year-old. Yeah. I currently work from home. Which is great. So it's like stepping away from home is like, how do I find that balance now? Where my daughter gets so much of me now, where do I find it when I'm now not going to be at home?

But you're going to be at home a lot. Yeah. You don't need to work ridiculous hours, nor should you with a little kid. Yeah. You can be very flexible. You can work perhaps when your partner is home, for example. My daughter and my son-in-law have got an arrangement whereby he works 4 days a week, she works 2, 3 days a week, and so most of the time the little girl is beautiful little girl, Cassie, she's just gorgeous, she's just turning 1. Somebody's with her almost all the time and they've got a little bit of help otherwise for now. But they've made that decision and they don't live rich lives, they live very simple lives but they have plenty of time for their kids. Sarah says it's the happiest year she's ever spent in her whole life being with this beautiful little girl. Hands down. Who is really so good-natured, I must say. I keep on saying to her, And this next one is going to be absolutely horrific. It's got to be by comparison because little Cassie is so good. But it's wonderful to be a parent. There's no way anything that you make, any money that you can make, can make up for not being with your little girl as she grows up. It's the greatest blessing and joy of your life. It's meaning too. And in another 20 years' time when she's grown up and you've seen what a beautiful human being you've created, what greater purpose can there be than that? There isn't. So you're in a good situation. The man who works from home looks after— I love that. What division?

Ah, pool. Pool care. Pool care, yeah.

You don't have to work crazy hours. You work a good 40-hour week. You're working from home. You don't have to travel an hour to get to work and back. You've got plenty of time for your kid. Yeah. And you can be part-time if you wish to. It's not difficult. You can make very good money. The main thing is, my belief is, you keep your material desires under control. That's the main thing. Don't think that you make more money, your daughter will be better off. No, your daughter leaves you. She doesn't need stuff. In fact, one of the things with my kids is that I'm very— put it this way, they know in some theoretical sense that we're quite well off, but they see no sign of it. No sign. We had somebody who actually came to the house the other day and they didn't know who I was. I don't know how that happened exactly. And then she's looking at this thing and she said, "Could that be the real Jim?" And then my wife said something about, "Don't forget to put the washing on the line." She said, "Ah, that's not Jim. That couldn't possibly be. Jim would never do such things." So yeah, I really try and live a very ordinary— and that's one of the best things you can do for your daughter too. If you have too much money, you can make life too easy for her. She's got to learn to help. She's got to learn to be cleaning, doing the washing up. That's good for her character. Having too much money is bad for her. She needs you and she needs responsibility. And no matter how much money you make, and I hope you make a pretty good living, you probably will. Yeah. But it doesn't have to be too much. Money should never be your top aim in life. Yeah. You've got the right start there. Good on you. Thanks, mate. Are you gonna have more? Yeah, we'll have another one maybe next year. Ah, good man. All right, keep going. He's going home now. You know one of the nicest things— Dan Cahill, is Dan speaking this week? I don't know.

He does the mowing one now, but yeah.

He does the mowing, you'll meet Dan Cahill, he's the head of the mowing division. He's a lovely bloke. You know one of the nicest things he ever told me is they've had two boys, twin boys, and partly under my influence, because I am a big talker of such things, their middle names are David and James, which is my legal first and second name. So that's— isn't that wonderful?

Well, I think the wife didn't want it, but he said Jim had told me to do it, so they did it, and twin boys come out. Yeah, that's what happened. And he's doing pretty well, Dan. He's got 4.

Well, he's in his early 30s and he's a multi-millionaire, so he hasn't done too bad out of the Jim Penman name.

Yeah, he's done alright. It's a good little tribute.

But I think actually the achievement of his children— he's got 4 children now, and he's a great husband too, and he's Wife is wonderful. I think that's actually—

But in pool care, there's a good story because Brett, have you seen Brett's podcast on YouTube? I've watched them all. Yeah, great. So Brett built that division. So he was an IT guy, stressed, and he took that division over at 12 franchisees when he had 3 young girls. So he built that division whilst having 3 young girls. And I've met one of his girls, Skyler, lovely family. So he had the lifestyle, he had the flexibility, even though he was building a serious business, but he worked it around that and made a lot better—

You know what the nice thing is about, I'm really waiting for your question too. No, that's all right. But you know, one of the nice things about our kind of business too, they don't, people don't expect you to be too flashy. There's a book called The Millionaire Next Door which is about typical American millionaires and they're actually much more like us than they are about your tech bros and so forth. People who are often tradies and who've done well out of it. The great thing about it is we don't have to dress up, we don't need the expensive suits, we don't need the impressive cars and the houses to impress everybody else at how successful we are because all people care about is that we're We don't expect it to be too flashy, are we? Nobody wants to see somebody turn up to do your gardening in a three-piece suit. It'd be a bit silly, all right? Or in a very flashy car. They'll just think you're overcharging them. So we don't expect that. I think that's one of the great things about what we do is that we can earn pretty good money but without the expectations that we've got to waste the money on things that are not necessary. So we've got more to spend on our children and our families.

I've got two questions. Firstly, I just want to say hello to Jacob because I know he's checking up on us, making sure we're attending. Who's watching this now. You'll prove you're there, so you don't have to do the right way. So just quickly, with new franchisee owners, what's one thing clients value the most that we often may overlook?

Well, clients just want great service. I don't think most of my franchisees overlooked it. If you've heard me talking this morning for what you probably think is far too long about customer service. I think most Jim's franchisees are pretty indoctrinated. We have a different attitude. The thing that I'm most proud of about Jim's is not having nearly 6,000 franchisees, it's the fact that most franchisees and franchisors share my peculiar values, which is very obsessional about customer service and very obsessional about service to franchisees. So I think most franchisees actually do understand that. 'Cause I know that when we have this business system where we sell surplus leads, all the profits from that go into what we call the branding fund, which helps to fund things like the social media and everything else. It all goes back to our franchisees. But when we, we have great trouble in getting independents to act in the way that our people do. Because their levels of customer service are significantly worse. Like at a scale of— we record it, there's an office down there that I go into every day and their average star rating for Jim's franchisees is about 4.8, 4.7, something like that. The average rating for the independents is about 4.1, which means that, you know, 4 out of the 5 clients are happy, but their failure rate is vastly worse than our franchisees. So I do believe our franchisees, because we select, because we train, because we coach ongoing, I think most franchisees are pretty good on these sorts of things in comparison with the general public. And I know that when I get feedback. If I give a recommendation to anybody, family or anybody else, typical reaction is, yeah, they're great. And most of you are, most of you will be very good by the standards of business. You will be very good. And I think partly because of the selection process and partly because of the indoctrination and the coaching and the complaint system and the surveys and everything else. Most of you do give very good service. And I think most franchisees do understand that.

Okay. And a little off topic here, but are you ever thinking of bringing the beard back?

If I brought my beard back, I'd look like Santa Claus.

It'd be white. You've still got it on the shirt. I reckon bring it back one year. You tried for a bit. I don't know how it went. It'd be wispy up here and that was it.

Yeah, well, I think it'd probably grow, but it'd be white. Yeah, it'd take a while. But listen, you know what, you want to know the story of the beard? No, I see you've got a fine beard there, which is great. Keep it. Thank you. We tried, we actually did at one stage consider making it compulsory for all of our franchisees to have beards. But I tell you what, the women were really fussy about that, so we didn't go ahead with it. I grew a beard back in 1982 basically because my first wife, who was Francette at the time, liked beards. Okay? In the year 2000, it was starting to go grey. I was single, not my own choice. I needed to get married again. I did not need to look any older than I was, so I shaved it off. So it's completely to do with women. Isn't that right? No business ideas at all. Keep the women happy. There you go, good question.

Thanks, son. Yeah, go for it, come up. Good evening.

Good evening. It's great to be here. One of my brothers from Nigeria. Yes. Yes, we were talking before. I like your faith. I'm really inspired by your Christian belief. My question is, Do you think that your faith, your faith in Christ, has been a blessing to your business? Oh yes, it's the absolute core. Look, I look at myself and I see monumental failures and weaknesses. I'm not a naturally hardworking person. I have very poor personal skills. I offend people a lot. I've been divorced 3 times. You've got to tell you something about a person who's been Not my choice, okay? And my third, very happily married 24 years too, but Lee is a saint and even then she finds it hard to put up with me. I've got many failures, many weaknesses. I do believe that the attitude that's built from my Christian faith, the idea of service, particularly to my franchisees, has been the absolute core of my success. I absolutely believe that and that's straight out of the Bible. The parable of the talents, that God's asking us to do things using the talents we've got. Servant leadership, Jesus washing disciples' feet, these are the core values to Jim's Group. And I don't— look, I have enormous respect for people of faith. Some of the best people in Jim's are actually practicing Muslims and so forth, and they're wonderful people, I revere that. But my own Christian faith has been absolutely core as to what we've achieved. It's unimaginable that Jim's would have been the company it is out that. It's a different attitude. And I see people compromising and they cut corners all the time. You can't do that if you're a faithful servant. You can't. You can't compromise. Well, sometimes we do, but we shouldn't. That's it. That's the way. I think you'll find it very comfortable to be in this environment. I know that most franchisees aren't Christians, but it's a higher proportion than the general community. I think we attract that kind of people. I often find that. People have the same values, the values of service and so forth. We don't worship wealth. We worship family, worship community, caring for each other. I heard so many great stories during COVID That was a terrible time for us. In Victoria, we couldn't work for 8 weeks. And that was very, very traumatic. And it was the worst time you could possibly imagine. But in some ways, it was the best time. And you know what was so good about it? Is that franchisees looked after each other. Franchisors weren't charging fees, which of course you couldn't, but they were still daily talking to their franchisees and counselling them and helping them and supporting them. We had a girl who was in dog wash who was a student. She had no government support. The government said you cannot work, you're forbidden to work. She had a good business, forbidden to work. And there's no government money coming in. Now she was faced by being evicted from her home, didn't have money to buy food because the government had shut her down. Stupid, stupid policies, I'm going to go on about that. Anyway, the point was that other people looked after her and there were other franchisees who were giving her meal vouchers and all kinds of things. We helped her a little bit, we said if you get kicked out you can come and stay at the conference centre which was empty. But that kind of care, you know, somebody would ring me up I remember one test and tag guy rang me up and he said, "Jim, is there anybody who needs help? 'Cause I haven't got any work either, but I'm in a good financial situation. Can I help anybody else?" That kind of— it was the worst of times, it was the best of times for that reason, because people really cared about each other. Now that's— most people who did that weren't Christian, I'm not saying that, but I think the values of the company do reflect the kind of people that we attract. And the kind of way we treat each other. And when you go to meetings, which I hope you'll attend really regularly, you will, won't you? We do. I want you to get to know other franchisees and they'll help you. I can absolutely guarantee that. People will take you under their wing and they'll advise you and they'll talk to you after hours and they'll really work with you. And then as time goes by, you'll do the same thing for them too. That's the culture that we have, which is very distinctive. There was a guy called Brian Duckett who came to one of our conferences many years ago. And this bloke had been involved, he was from the UK, he'd been involved in dozens of different franchise systems. And he was quite shocked. He said, "I've never seen anything like your culture ever in all my experience. Your franchisors really care about franchisees." I have arguments with them at times. They're being too soft. Come on guys, take a tougher line. Oh no. It's one of our problems. Thank you so much. Good question.

Real quick one online, Jim, from Michael. What happens to a franchisee that gets terminated but still continues to pose as a franchisee? I think Michael's in car detailing in Adelaide. Good franchisee as well.

Well, if you tell us about it, we'll take legal action.

Yeah, so legal action.

We've got in-house lawyers. We'll send them a— it's the one thing we will not tolerate. Okay, that's it.

Email compliance, Michael. Go for it. Hi Jim, Michael from Sydney.

Look, I've seen your logo and I know your logo from Sydney and I really didn't know much about you, but the more and more I'm learning about you, the more and more I'm like inspired and I'm really thankful to have someone like you that's successful, that's also a great role model for all of us. So just want to say thank you for for that. Now, my question— You might not appreciate me quite so much when it gets to things like customer service complaints and things. I can be very tough at the same time. But anyway, go on.

I wanted to ask, now that you've done the gyms and you're pretty much like, you know, you're at the top of the game.

Oh no, I'm not at the top. We've got a long way to go. You're going to see changes in the next year that are going to make really— we're going to see particularly with Jimbo, we are going to see better customer service, better income. There's a whole stack of things we're going to be able to do that would be like ability to sell regular clients. That's going to be a real game changer. Put customers on the market, sell off your outlying customers to a new franchisee coming in. Franchise or pay for, get more in your territory, travel less, pay less fees, you know, have jobs booked into your diary so you can get a higher conversion rate, happier customers. You're going to see so many changes take place. We're spending millions of dollars a year on software development so we can improve and improve and improve. So sorry, top of the game? Not even close. Long way to go. But go ahead.

My point is that I could see, you know, like you've got so much more talent that the whole country can actually benefit off you.

Like, you know, say, like, in comparison to America, like, you know, they've got the Donald Trump. Like, you know, maybe you could be the Donald Trump of Australia and make Australia great again, because this country's going backwards. I've got to say, nobody's ever described that to me as an ambition for my life. Donald Trump of Australia. Well, you like politics. Do you ever predict politics and that? Have you ever thought of stepping out into that? I'm no politician. I say what I think. Goodness gracious, in politics you've got to be so guarded, unless you're Donald Trump and he says anything, but generally speaking, I'm no politician. There's been a suggestion I stand for Parliament, State Parliament. I'm sort of tempted in a way, but I don't think I'd do a good job of it.

You do a lot of stuff on housing though, online, on that housing stuff you do.

Yes, I'm very passionate about housing. Zoning is doubling rents, doubling the cost of housing. It's an evil thing and I'm really pushing hard on that. I'm getting involved in politics but actually becoming a member of parliament, I just don't think I could do the job honourably. Well, there was a part 2. If you had your chance to actually be the Prime Minister of Australia, what changes would you do? Okay, well, we don't have enough time but we'll try and try and get it quick. The biggest change I would make, which is achievable, is that we should get rid of these stupid zoning policies. The Grattan Institute has a good policy about how you do that, just allowing 2 and 3 storey developments, little things like that. If we had housing zoning similar to somewhere like Houston in the US, our house prices would be half what they are now. That would save— you can imagine a person buying a house, we're paying an extra $500,000 to buy a house to put to put a roof over your head. That is insane. It is pushing profits into the hands of people who've got property, multiple properties, and they're seeing their properties go up and up and up and up in value all the time, and they're getting richer, and the poor sods who are trying to rent or trying to buy houses are really shafted. So that's the first thing I would do is relax zoning, allow people to build, bring property prices down, bring rents down. We are paying vastly too much for those things. That is the first thing that I would do, and it's actually achievable, because I don't think most people want to have ultra-expensive houses, high rents, people dying in the street homeless because they can't afford to rent. So that would be something. That's actually though, it's a state matter rather than a national issue. What else? Alright, let's be more controversial. Net zero is insane. I'm glad the Liberals are changing their minds. Even Bill Gates has changed his mind, even The Economist. People are— this is insane, this is stupid, it's costing ordinary Australians thousands of dollars a year. Not just the fact that our power bills have doubled, but everything else is expensive. You've got inflation, you've got expensive food, energies and everything. We will be— the average Australian family will be several thousand dollars a year better off if we didn't have this stupid going for net zero. Of course we should do batteries and solar panels, we do that too, That's just commercial, it's good sense. It will come. We don't need to impoverish ourselves in this stupid goal. What else I would do? Government bureaucracy is ridiculous. It's so inefficient, it's so bloated. We spend so much money on politicians that all they do is make us impoverished. The red tape we go through is insane. In franchising, for example, it gets worse. Worse, every month we have this long disclosure document. Has anybody here ever read the disclosure document? Have you read it? One person, good on you, you must be a real scholar. That is so unusual. You have this huge thing, it just takes a lawyer just about to understand it. Even a lot of lawyers can't understand it. More and more regulations and red tape. There's a very simple way to do something about franchising. All you have to do is to do what we what we do about our franchisors and our fran— you survey every franchisee every year in every division and post that on a public website. That one, which will cost the government nothing because it'll be paid for by the franchisor, would do 1,000 times more to get rid of dodgy franchisors who love the present system because you have a disclosure document which is so dense and legalistic you can bury anything you like in that because nobody reads it. Except for one individual over here, which I really congratulate you on. That is the thing. We need to get rid of government red tape. If we could cut bureaucracies in half, at the very least, because they're so fat and bloated and inefficient, they're doing so many things they don't need to do. If you do that, you could reduce taxes, you could put tens of thousands of dollars more into people's bank account. You wouldn't need to be borrowing madly to do stupid things. So basically that's the kind of things I would go on if I was Prime Minister, but they'd never elect me. Well, that's what I'm saying, like, you know, we need someone that actually has run business, is successful, and knows what to do, whereas these guys, they've never had a job and this country's going backwards, but if you put your hand up, I'm behind you. You are completely dead right about that, particularly on the Labour side of politics. Virtually nobody has ever ever run a business. What makes me really livid is that when the government sets its policy and it says, "You've got to allow people to work from home because we know that'll be better for you." So somebody who's never in their life run a business or even worked for a business that makes money ever, they've been purely— can go to people in business and say, "This is what you should do because we know better than you." What arrogant stupidity is that? Now we let people work from home, but that's our decision because we know what they need. It's not up to them to tell us what to do. So Liberal Party is better, they've got a lot more people in business. On the other hand, they also have— Well, they've got rid of their businesses. They're worse on zoning than Labor, quite frankly. They're worse because they've got too many people, fat cats, who are propping up the party with donations, who want to see prices of housing keep on going up and up and up forever, which is brutally unfair to ordinary people. Just enriches the rich. It's Robin Hood in reverse. We don't steal from the rich and give to the poor. We steal from the ordinary battlers and we give to the rich. And there's so many government policies that do exactly that. It makes me really mad. But going into politics, I think I'd be terrible at it. I really am. Thank you, Jim.

Thank you. Rebecca, we'll make this one the last one.

You go for it. I got scared after that one. It's fine. Look, unless you're going to argue in favour of the zoning system, I think you're safe. No, mine's a little bit different. Neurodiversity. If you knew someone had neurodiversity, would you recommend that they come into gyms, and what sort of support do you think they could get? You're talking about people being like autistic and this kind of thing? Yep. What we found is that some— They struggle, they struggle. Yes, yes, exactly right. Look, there's challenges to such people, but what quite a few of our franchisees have found is that if you can work with them, they make very good workers. They just have to be shown and cared for more. The biggest problem in growing a business in gyms is not usually clients. Most divisions have far more work than they can handle. It's finding good people. And I think we need to look at this area. It's a very good question. Look at people with these kinds of handicaps, possibly, you know, a little bit mental health problems and so forth, or I don't know, intelligence. They're honest. Yeah. They'll do exactly what you ask them to do.

Yeah. We've got a lot of franchisees. I've interviewed a guy in pool care. His best worker, longest worker was someone with neurodivergent. We've got a few franchisees who hire deliberately from neurodivergent backgrounds.

If you ask Joel, he'll send you some links to these people who are doing this kind of stuff too. It's a really great thing. It's a way of doing good at a wider scale. I think it's important to recognize that So much of what we do as business people is really positive and helpful. It helps our clients, it helps workers, especially people who struggle to find work. We can give them jobs in a very personal sort of way. We can help them to improve. We can lift people up, people through giving them jobs and training them and bring them forward. We can do a lot of good in the community.

A lot of franchisees do it, yeah. Oh, good.

Yeah, so they're more the employee rather than the holder.

Yeah, well, the franchise holder, we had a lady mention this last week from Darwin. Dogwash. So we've got some franchisees who I know struggle with ADHD and things like that who are franchise owners. So I know Sammy, who you met today. Yeah, he's an Energizer Bunny, Sammy. So, but yeah, someone like Sammy, for example, he's ultra successful, and we have a lot of other franchisees like that.

So a lot of people actually do well in us who would do very badly at school, like Dan Cowles, an example. He dropped out at year 10 or when he was— as soon as he could. But he's phenomenally good at what he is. He's just not good at— very good at studying. A lot of young men are like that these days. Schools don't suit a lot of people. No, it doesn't. They've got a good character, they've got energy, they've got ability, they've got drive, but it just doesn't show up through the education system. I think one of the mistakes we make is we try and channel people along into this little narrow thing that you've got to be good at school and go to university and get a BA and this is the way you're supposed to go. It doesn't suit a lot of people. We can provide alternatives. Some of the best people actually, those who don't, who really struggle at school. The pastor of my former church actually is a great guy. He dropped out when he was like 16 and got an apprenticeship and he's now the head of a, he's this quite big organisation which has got a church, a school, all kinds of social welfare, so it's brilliant stuff. He's an amazing guy but he just wasn't good at school. Awesome, thank you. That's a good question.

Thank you for your questions tonight guys. So Jim, what we're going to do is you pick your 3 favourite which you which means they get their first pick of the loot. Everyone else who asked a question, you can come up at the end and pick anything you like as well. Boy, that's really hard.

There's so many great questions today. I was just writing them down. The guy that— what about struggling? Who said that? What do you struggle with? That was a great question. You?

Yeah, come for it. If you like, go for it. Anything you can get at the front, go for it. Anything here.

That question about faith is good. Nobody's ever asked me that. How does business affect your faith? I love that question.

Is that Toby? What was this gentleman's name? Toby? Yeah, Toby, come up. And what was the last one you liked, Jim? Can I give you my favourite? I've never heard— the Donald Trump of Australia, surely.

Surely. The Donald Trump of Australia.

Surely. That's the one. Go for anything you like. Oh, right. Yeah, there we go. Come up, but everyone gets a prize anyway.

I love the questions about the civilisation, the aliens, the blowing tool. Everyone can come up. Dopamine. So many great questions all come up and go. Thank you very much for your attention tonight as well.

Appreciate you hanging around.

If you want a photo, come grab on with Jim.