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

This Wednesday you're doing a live speaking event, so do you want to talk a little bit more about that?

Well, I'm addressing the Libertarian Party in the Manningham Hotel in Doncaster, mainly about housing. We've got a real crisis in Australia and in Victoria in particular where government regulations, zoning, have forced up the price of housing and rents to a ridiculous extent. Young people can't afford to buy, and if they can, they get stuck with a mortgage that goes on for decades. It's ridiculous. Housing prices are double what they should be. So, I'm going to talk about that and how we're going to solve that issue and other things too, but that's the main one.

So, the Manningham Hotel, Wednesday 6:30. I think it's only $5, so they've just got to RSVP, so make sure they jump online and do that. Need the RSVP to attend the event, so hopefully if you want to meet Jim, get there as well.

Well, they could turn up, but they might not get in.

Cool, there's a few RSVPs, but we'll see what happens, but make sure if you want to come along, make sure you RSVP to that. The other thing I'll make people aware of that you might not be aware of, Jim, is we've got a new competition for clients and for customers. So every week, we're going to give $1,000 worth of Jim's Group vouchers to people who join the mailing list. So when you go and book an online job with Jim, there's a join our mailing list which has got tips and tricks and all that sort of stuff from our divisions. You join that, then each week there's going to be a $1,000 draw for Jim's Group services for that mailing list. So that's something to keep in mind as well. Alright, let's get into it. So who's got the first question for Jim? Microphone is there, just come up, it's a free-for-all. Ask him anything you like. First one's the hardest, so someone kick us off. You always go down in the good books for a prize as well. You don't have one? Who's got a question for Jim?

From the centre?

Yeah, just come up and go for it. Ask it, go.

Hi Jim, just two questions. As a franchise, how long would you recommend, like if you want to grow your business yourself, how long would you recommend until we like add another person on to our franchise? And with that question, what steps what steps would you recommend we have in place before we make that decision?

Well, the first stage is to get busy. You're Dog Wash, aren't you?

Yes.

That won't take too long. Dog Wash has got more unserviced leads than any other division, just about, proportionally speaking. So just as soon as you are flat out busy and you can see the opportunity to take more work, give it a try. The biggest problem is not actually usually work. It's finding somebody good to do the work. And in your case, what you'll need is a second trailer too, which is a different situation. But almost invariably, we've got people, we know at least 20 franchisees who are turning over more than $1 million a year, and there's probably many more we don't know about. But the biggest problem is always finding good staff, and that's your challenge. And you're going to make some mistakes, but just don't give up. Keep on trying. We really want you to grow. There's so much work around.

Yep. And what steps would you recommend we have in place before that? Decisions made?

Not really a step. You know your business, you're making good hourly rate yourself. See, for example, if you're only making $50 an hour, then you're not ready because you've got to be able to be earning at least $70. And I know a lot of dog coach people now are charging, you know, $100+ per hour in the way they're quoting. So you've got to be making a good living yourself, good income yourself, and you've got to have a good customer service record and so you know what to train somebody else to do. At that stage, it's simple. You get yourself a trailer and you start putting somebody on and see how they go. A lot of people have done it very successfully in every division.

[Speaker] There's a few franchisees we've interviewed over the years with multiple trailers and dog wash, and some might do that after a year, some might do it after 2 years, but it's a quite scalable one to do for sure. Nice question, thanks. That's as easy as it is. Just come up and ask a question, get a prize at the end. Simple as that. Who's got a question for Jim, guys? Feel free to come up and ask him anything you like. Cool, go for it.

This is the guy who said he was going to have some unusual questions for me. Yeah, I don't know if it's unusual. I got more of a historical question for you. What was the tipping point that made you realise you wanted to change into a franchise company rather than a mowing company? Like, what made you sort of make that crossover? Well, basically fear. I mean, because I had a business building up and selling lawn mowing rounds. I was doing okay and then VIP appeared in the state. They came from South Australia. These guys, they had everything I didn't have. They had logos and signs and everything. They were just, to me, they were a very impressive, frightening company. I actually rang up to try and work with them because I didn't think I could survive. Only when they said no did I actually decide to franchise in self-defence. I can't say it was anything in particular. Look, I didn't actually see how it could work. I couldn't understand at that stage how it would be beneficial for somebody to keep on paying fees after they were busy. And it took me a while to figure out that there were real benefits in that. When I saw the VIP system, I thought, hey, there's advantages to this. What if a person breaks their leg and they can't mow lawns? Well, then they'll lose their business unless they're in a franchise so they get support. So those kinds of things. So I saw the idea of it. So I decided to launch. But honestly, it wasn't anything big when I first started. Somebody asked me how many franchisees I might have one day and I said maybe 100. I really was surprised how successful it was.

There you go, good question. Wasn't that unusual, that one? That was a nice business one.

I just want to ask you, what research do you do Um, when you're going to say to go into fencing, or what prompts you to say that will be successful, or say dog wash, or— okay, we look at the, the business. Is it a recognized business? We, we— I don't want to sound altruistic in the extreme, but we don't take a very high percentage. We take on average about 6% of turnover. So it doesn't work when you've got 3 franchisees. You're not making money out of it. So you've got to look at at least 20 to make a thing viable because that's the volume to get it going. So we've got to look at a business that's got potential to put on quite a few franchisees, mass market thing. We are concerned about money. We want to see at least an average operator making at least $70 an hour, at least. I'm not talking about the high flyers, the best. I'm talking about the average person. So we've got to see good earnings potential. So those are the two things. It's gotta be something in our range of expertise. Like, we're interested in service businesses. We don't wanna do things like fixed retail businesses 'cause we don't understand that very well. We understand this where people come to us for service, we send somebody else. So that's the kind of thing we're good at. But the biggest thing of all is finding the right leader. And that is when you've got the right person in charge any division that can go really, really well. What division are you coming from? Mowing. Yeah.

Well, it's a pretty good one. It's a validated idea, Jim's mowing.

That's a validated idea. It's a very big industry and you can make very, very good money out of it. So that's typical. But yeah. Okay, thanks.

It's quite funny. We're getting a lot of TikToks now, Jim. People putting their ideas. Jim Mobile Barbers and you pretty much give a response, would it work or not, on a TikTok. So that's how a lot of division ideas are getting thrown up.

Yeah, that's a good question. Hi, Jim.

Actually, I'm from New Zealand, but I have one question.

Like, if in future I want to transfer from New Zealand to Australia, so can I bring my business from there to Australia, or I have to sell my one over there, then again have to buy it over here? You can transfer directly if you wish. All you've got to do is to get permission from the local franchisor. If it's the case of dog wash, you just come across with your trailer, we'll set you up. We have most of our franchises in dog wash are booked out months in advance, so it's very easy to find you work here. By all means. Look, New Zealand's a beautiful country, but I'll tell you what, the economy there is very tough. Yeah, that's why I was just asking for a future like this. The difference is quite striking. Most of our franchisees are busy, but we struggle harder in New Zealand than Australia. So we are very open to somebody deciding to come across. Good, thank you.

International transfer, Jim. We always hear state to state, but I haven't heard the international transfer one yet. So that's a new one, New Zealand to Australia.

Well, in your case, your charter is the same, so you just— What are you going to do?

Change the number.

Transport it across, change the number, registration. Yeah, why not?

Which state would you go to? Where would you look in Australia?

Sorry?

Where would you want to go to in Australia? Where?

Melbourne.

Melbourne? Everyone's fleeing Melbourne to Gold Coast and Queensland. It might be a bit nicer up there.

My in-laws are in Melbourne.

Ah, your in-laws are in Melbourne. Ah, there you are.

There we go. There we go. Perfect. Hi, Jim. I'm from Hobart, Tasmania. So my question is, I'm starting next week in Hobart, Tasmania, and what common mistakes that new franchisees actually make and how can we avoid that? Common mistakes. Franchisees basically make the same— when they make mistakes, it's because of not giving great customer service. That's the main thing. But probably more than that actually I would say would be not taking advantage of pay for work guarantee. Now I send a letter out to you after one month and you're gonna respond to me, aren't you? You will reply. Yeah. Okay, 'cause I'll be hurt and offended if you don't. Now most of the time people will tell me that they're doing well. That is the most common answer these days. But significant minority are not. 'And some of those are not doing Pay for Work Guarantee.' So in the letter I send, I will specifically mention Pay for Work Guarantee. 'Are you doing it?' In the initial letter that goes out. And then I would take that up. And then I get quite a few franchisees, and I'm talking about several a week, who are not fully claiming it for some reason. They haven't discussed it with their franchisor. So I go through it and I say, 'This is what you need to do. Approach your family, your friends. Look at these videos.' I recommend some videos for them. Start claiming now, let me know if you have any problems, I'll copy to the franchisor. That's probably looking at the most common issue I come across. People don't claim paperwork guarantee. You have an amount in your contract set up. It could be anything from $1,000 to $2,500 per week. What you have to do is to aim to make that your minimum. It's not the maximum, it's not a high amount, it's a lot less than you should be making within a few months. But you've got to aim to make that because if you aim for that and you hit it, your income will rise beyond it. But if you sit down and simply say, "It's not working for me, I'm not getting enough leads, boohoo, Jim's lying, this is not working, this is not—" That kind of problem is really bad and you've got to get out there and do it. It's not that easy. You might think everybody's going to want a free service. But they don't. You have to approach them in the right way. You have to approach your contacts, franchising from other divisions, social media. There's ways of doing it that you can get, and if you do that, you'll be successful. So yeah, it's a good question actually. That is the biggest single frustration I have. I have never known any franchisee give decent customer service, which is the vast majority, and do pay-for-work guarantee consistently to fail for lack of work. I've never seen it. But far too many franchises have failed because they don't do that. So an excellent question.

Yeah, and make sure you reply to that 30-day email or he'll remember you. Good question. If you've got a question for Jim, guys, feel free to come up and ask him anything you like.

Anything at all. Nobody's ever asked me that question before. Isn't that strange?

It sounds like it's one that's obvious that we would have had a few times.

It sounds like a common one, but it's not. It's a good question. Very good question.

Yes. Hi, kind of an observation followed by a question. So I noticed the system's really set up well for people with ADHD, myself being one of them. And I noticed there seems to be a fair bit of neurodivergency in our trainers and things. Do you track stats like that within the company and success amongst that group? I don't really know.

That's a very interesting question. Are we— do we attract the neurodivergent? My wife says I've got Asperger's because I'm so blind to social clues. Maybe the founder is like that, it's an indication of how it does. We do pretty well actually. I know one of the things, not so much in franchisees, one of the things some of our franchisees have got into, because the biggest struggle when you're growing your business is finding staff. Actually, people with severe autistic problems can be very good staff. They're not easy to get into the right position, but once they do, they can be excellent. What makes you think that a lot of our people are neurodivergent?

Sam mentioned about being ADHD.

Well, Sam is definitely ADHD.

Yeah, yeah, and I'm pretty good at noticing it in people as well, or particularly behavioural traits.

You know, it's funny, we've actually done a few interviews with some— I've interviewed a pool care franchisee, I remember it, and he did a big in-depth podcast where he hired someone who's neurodivergent and just raved about him as an employee and all that sort of stuff. But we don't have anything on our system where we mark anything or anything like that, but we do have a lot of franchisees who do employ from, like, people who need a bit of assistance or they might have, you know, challenges, whatever it is. We do have franchisees who go out of their way and do that in mowing, pool care. I've heard of, you know, cleaning, these sorts of divisions as well. So it all depends.

ADHD, look, it suits us in a way. I would say there's quite different— ADHD is a very different thing from versions of autism and so forth. But ADHD can make it very difficult, even if somebody's very smart, make it hard for them to cope with the standard, you know, the educational system, which is all based on concentration. What we actually do is we find we're a very good option for people who have problems who are smart and enterprising, but just don't have that ability to focus and to read a lot. We do extremely well. You know, people like Dan was probably one of them.

Dan spoke today.

Yeah, Dan. He's an incredibly bright, amazing young man, but he was hopeless at school. Absolutely hopeless at school. He dropped out in Year 10 or something, didn't he?

Yeah, Year 10, 9, something like that.

Yeah, he was dropped as soon as he could. Just hopeless at it. But as a franchisee and as a franchisee, he was absolutely brilliant. So it's a good opportunity, particularly for that kind of person. I have to say a lot of young men these days have got that kind of issue and it's very frustrating because the whole of society says you've got to go through this particular thing, you've got to go pass your exams and get a good result, get a good ATAR, then you've got to go on and you've got to do a university course, this is the way to go. It doesn't suit everybody. But we have a way that somebody who can't make it in that standard way can actually do extraordinarily well.

Yeah, I find personally for myself and several ADHD people I know that mix of having structure and individuality to actually get your creative ideas across the line is amazing. So thank you for that.

What great people have had ADHD. You know, I read a history of the Coca-Cola Company and the one person who was responsible more than anybody else for getting that off the ground back in the, you know, 150 years ago was somebody who had really bad ADHD. ADHD, obviously just could not cope with normal education, really was considered quite stupid but was an absolutely brilliant leader. So I think it's important that we have ways for people to succeed that are beyond the standard. And I'm very proud of people like Dan because people look down on somebody who can't succeed educationally, they think they're somehow less, they're failures, but they're some of the best people in society, they've actually got that kind of handicap, and we've got a place for them. Great question. Never had that one before. We've had some very good questions today, I've got to say. Very original.

That was a very good one. If you've got a question for Jim, guys, feel free to come up and ask. We always get people online too, so ask anything you like.

Yeah, I've been told the dog people are really well prepared now. It's great. I'm Chris from Adelaide. When it comes to making decisions, whether it's business decisions, personal decisions, if your heart says one thing and your head says another, What do you choose? Well, that kind of depends on what your heart's telling you to do. What I've always found is that if there's a conflict between what's right and what's wrong, in other words, if your heart's telling you that something is wrong and your brain's telling you this is a smart idea, In that case, I'd definitely go with your heart because strangely enough, we find from experience that doing the right thing usually is the best business thing. Not necessarily short term, but certainly in the medium to long term. You see that a lot with— I was just reading a book about Enron, the energy company which completely exploded, killing billions of dollars worth of pensioners' funds and all kinds of things. It was just a disaster. And so much with people taking short-term decisions, thinking, okay, rationally speaking, I can do this, I can get away with it, but then they got into other things that really caused terrible problems. So when it comes to morality, I like the heart because sometimes our heart will give us a good— but then if our heart's telling us to run off with my neighbour's wife or something, then perhaps that's something the head should get involved and say, well, hang on a bit, not necessarily smart.

If I'd listened to my heart 5 years ago, I would have been standing here 5 years ago.

So, well, I think maybe your heart's right in that respect. Good question.

Thank you. Very good question. Another original one, Jim. We haven't had that.

I'll tell you what, we're getting some very different questions today. I'm very impressed. Very good. Versus head. Never been asked that before, but good question. Hi. Hi, Jim. What is the most satisfying memory you have since starting your business? And I've got another one too. The most satisfying memory? Does it have to be about business? Because the things like the birth of my children is probably pretty much up there. Yeah, yeah, I know. Yeah. I've never somebody—

That started you up, that made you say, okay, this is so good, I'm doing really, really well, and I'm happy and I'm satisfied with how things are going.

You know, honestly, the thing that gave me the most satisfaction was what happened during COVID That was a terrible time for us in Victoria. My franchisees were blocked from working for 2 months for no reason at all. There was no health advice. I'm still mad about it. It really was stupid, unnecessary. We had the worst lockdown of any state. We had the highest death rate from COVID of any state. It was insanely stupid and upsetting. But what was absolutely magnificent is the way my franchisees looked after each other. We had a girl who was in dog wash actually who was a student. She had no government funding. The government says to you, 'You cannot work. You cannot work. We've got no money for you. We're forbidding you to work.' She's faced with she can't pay her bills. Obviously we didn't charge her a franchise fee. Couldn't pay her rent, couldn't pay her bills. You know what? The other franchisees just rallied around and helped her. They used to give her things like meal vouchers and stuff. We said to her, if you get kicked out of your place, you come and stay at the conference centre, which was empty. The way people were supporting her was magnificent. I remember a test and tag guy ringing me up, and he's a guy with no work, and he said, look, I haven't got any work on, but I've got a good income. Is there anybody who needs help? That kind of thing. That moved me more than anything I could ever tell you. And I thought, this is really Jim's. This is the culture. This is not me doing it, this is my franchisees who are adopting these ideas and caring for each other. That was very uplifting. People often ask me, am I proud of 5,500 franchisees? I said I'm a lot more proud when I hear stories about people looking after each other. Franchisors who bust their gut to look after their franchisees, who care so much, who get so upset when they can't help. And franchisees who care for each other and support each other and mentor the new people. That's a wonderful question too. I just want to ask you one thing for my son because he remembers watching you on TV when you were just a wee lad and he goes, oh, Jim's an icon. He wanted me to ask you, how old are you? 73. I am 73 years old and I look every day but I do not feel it.

No, that's a main thing. Thank you very much.

Nice one. Very good questions. Got a few online too, guys, so please keep leaving them online as well. Go through some more.

Yes? Yes, you mentioned you had children.

Are they all involved in Jim's? No, out of my 10 children, there's actually one that's running Jim's Removals and doing an extremely good job. She's an absolute gun. Maybe she'll run Jim's Group one day. We don't know. But, you know, Sylvia's fantastic. Moment, only one. I've got some excellent prospects out there.

And I've got another question.

I'm taking perhaps you didn't think that Dan Andrews did a very good job of looking after Melbourne.

Don't give it away, you can save it for Wednesday, that's up to you.

Give the short version. If you're looking for the Dan, if you're trying to get donations for the Daniel Andrews fan club, you're probably not in the best place. Yeah, no, I'm from New Zealand, so we didn't have to live through it, but it did look like Melbourne had quite a tough time.

He's restraining himself right now. He's saving it for Wednesday. Wednesday they're going to hear about it.

Ah, that was so good. I was so pleased. They wouldn't give me service. Oh yes, after running Rush on over the state for so long. What a pathetic government. It's the highest— now look, you're starting to get wound up.

It's all right. Wednesday for Wednesday. Maybe towards the end, maybe we need to go for it.

You're getting me ranting about—

it's not always wise. Hi Jim, my name is Alex.

Just recently joined the Laundry franchise. Yeah, which I know is fairly new from the other services. Yes. So I, I am impressed by the wide range of services that Jim's offer. So my question is, do you still— or what plans do you have for other services in the near future? Oh, we're talking all the time actually. I would be What are we looking at right now? We know towing is just starting up, heating and cooling is just about to start, that's getting going again, which is something we wanted for a long time. What else are we looking at? I haven't heard who's come to you lately, but there's quite a few divisions. Are you looking at tutoring? Tutoring service? Tutoring, yeah, yeah, tutoring we do. Look, the hardest thing actually, there's a lot of business, we could probably think of 100 different things. We do stuff regularly on social media.

Every week people put a suggestion in the comments on TikTok and that's all we answer is Jim's Tutoring. I did about another 6 this morning. 6 this morning, yeah, we answered those.

I just answer them and actually most of them are feasible in some way. Sometimes they're a little bit like, what did they say, Jim's stand-up emergency or something, what did we have? We had a few.

Jim's Hitmen and stuff like that.

Jim's Hitmen, yeah, that's a popular one, that went off quite well. We actually had one done for a national conference and they actually had like windsheeters, white windsheeters with a little black gun on the vest. But there's a lot of good divisions. You know, the hardest thing is finding someone to run them. I'm talking right now to a couple of my franchisees who are interested in running current Jim's divisions. There's several that actually were interested in finding leadership for. And there are new ones all the time. Like last year, Lance, that's the party, one of our mowing guys came up with Jim's Driving School, which is a very obviously good one from our point of view. So yeah, we're open. Somebody here one day might be starting a new division. Or taking over a division, who knows.

What's the cost involved with the new division? Very, very little.

The cost of starting a new division is pretty similar to getting a franchise and that's mainly just the first few months in advance fees and things like the website and so forth, but quite small. We've got Jim's personal training ready to go. If we've got anybody who's interested in personal training, we've got a whole division set up ready to go, just the right person to drive it. and that could be a good one. There you go, absolutely.

Got a question for Jim, guys? Feel free to come up and ask. Anyone got a question for Jim? It's going to be a short show if we don't have any more questions. I've got a few online maybe. Got a few online here. So this guy's gone here, where is he? Hedy's gone, how to advertise effectively from Hedy online.

But mostly everything's online these days. It's much harder than it used to be. In the old days it was Yellow Pages and local papers and leaflets and stuff. That was so easy. Now you've got all these different things like you've got YouTube and Google AdWords and you've got to get your— obviously the best way to do it is to get a website that's properly SEO'd and then using things like we're very strong on Google My Business listings. Get them done. Get your ratings in there. Get information online so that people can— it makes your website sticky. This guy knows far more than I do actually.

I think asking, you know, social media can be very effective to generate work leads from home services. We've got franchisees who generate a lot via Instagram direct messages and Facebook direct messages stuff now.

We've got a lot of great stuff in the section, in the Jim's Online section, you'll see some, what is it? Jim's Internet, yeah. Jim's Internet. You'll see a whole stack of videos. There's hundreds of them on there about all kinds of different topics from different divisions. Different skills, paperwork, social media, all kinds of different things about how to do it, putting on workers, lots of stuff.

Absolutely. Guys, you got a question for Jim, feel free to come up and ask him. I've got a few online here as well. So Sam's gone, day 12 of asking. Yeah, just come up, go for it. I'll read this one real quickly, Jim. So this guy online, Sam's gone, when Jim started mowing back in the day, what toll did mowing take on your mental and physical health?

It was great for my mental and physical health. I loved it.

So it was good. All right, there we go.

It was great. It's positive. Who wouldn't love to make a living as a gardener? I think that's the best job there is. Sorry, people, but personally I'm biased. Guess what I was doing at the weekend? Want to guess? Gardening. I was out there digging potatoes and looking after my fruit trees. Absolutely love it. We just want a good mine contractor. Just like if you love dogs, dog wash is perfect. If you love cars, car cleaning. If you love electronics and stuff, then antennas, that kind of stuff. Yeah. I was just wondering, back in the day, like when you started Jim's Mowing, did you ever have like a, like a Plan B if Jim's Mowing like didn't work out? Well, Jim's Mowing was Plan C because I was looking at everything else and it didn't occur to me for a long time that actually was the best option. It was just the thing I used to do. I've been gardening since I was 8 years old and I used to do it as a student job. Then when I finished, I bummed out of my academic career. I intended to be an academic, failed at that, completely washout. I wanted to start a research foundation to continue the work that I'd done, which was going to cost millions of dollars a year. So at that stage in 1982, I needed to become rich, enough to do it. Honestly, I tried a stack of different things, all of which failed. And the one thing that kept going was the little mowing business, which has gradually, unexpectedly proved to be worthwhile. That's awesome. I also have another question. Just, so as a new franchisee, like, my main concern is like when I'm starting the business and I'm really into it and I'm pumping out like work 7 days, I'm concerned that would there be like an issue like You know, with my relationship with my partner that I'm not really spending as much time with like the family. Good you're thinking that way though. Do you have any advice? I like this one. This is a great question. I'm going to put that down as one of my favourites. I'd say the first thing, don't work 7 days. Do not work 7 days. Work 5, work 6 at the most. Don't work 7 days. I knew somebody who used to chop wood for a living. Timber, he's like firewood, alright, and he measured precisely how much he could do because you could weigh it, so he knew how productive he was. There were some weeks he worked 7 days and there were some weeks he worked 6 days and there was a 15% difference in the amount of timber that he cut, 15% between these 2, 6 and 7 days. You'd look at it mathematically and think, obviously he works 7 days, he makes 15% more than if he works 6 days. But no, other way around. When he worked 6 days, he actually got 15% more timber and made more money than 6 days. There is a reason why systems, religious systems, have a Sabbath, have a day of rest. You're better off with that. One of the most brilliant things about our business our service business is that you don't have to be a workaholic. You don't have to work crazy hours. One of the things we're going to teach you to do is to actually have a business that fulfils all your material needs without sacrificing your family. I can tell you I have many weaknesses as a human being. I've been divorced 3 times, which tells you all about how impossible I am to live with. I have never, ever, ever neglected my kids. In fact, one of the problems I had after my first marriage was that I was so devoted to my children when I saw them that I focused on them and let my wife be neglected a bit, which is a problem. But I have never, ever compromised on that. There's a saying that goes, "No other success can compensate for failure in the home." And the first story is about somebody who made that decision to actually take a franchise so he could spend time with his children. So don't do it. Nothing is worth it. Have you got family? Ah, no, no. Okay, well, planning to next year. Planning to, that's great. And start having children, and it's a great job for that because you've got flexibility. You can see your kids growing up. Never let anybody get beyond that. Let me tell you, people have this delusion, they have this idea that if you have more stuff If you have the best car and the biggest house and the most expensive holidays, you'll be happier. It's called a hedonic treadmill because when you get the thing that gives you this status and this rush, you get a short burst of dopamine— there's a physiology to it— and then you become accustomed to it and there's no satisfaction. Real satisfaction, real happiness is in family, is in friends, is in a sense of purpose and meaning, it's in good health, physical and mental. And you're not gonna get that if you work ridiculous hours. You don't need to and you shouldn't do it. Good question. Great question.

Very, very good question. Yeah.

In the new book. Give her a round of applause. I like that one. Give her a— It's a really good point. Definitely speaking of love there.

Anyone's getting a copy of the new book, aren't they? The No Other Success book, isn't it?

Yes, everybody who comes here gets a copy of the new book. Anybody else can order it. It's $3 plus postage or something.

That's right. It's cost price. So we've got a few orders for that one, which is great as well. Great question. You got a question for Jim, guys, feel free to come up. We've got a lot of time. So please feel free to anything on your mind at all for Jim. Silly, serious business, whatever you want to do, ask him a question, go for it. Yeah, good. Great, well done. Got a few online too, Jim, which I'll put you on in a minute too.

Kia ora, I'm here supporting my sister from Auckland. I apologize if this is a bit of a niche question, but my background is in genetics and I realized—

Oh, you're an uppie's ally. Yes, yes.

I didn't find out until today that you had written a book, Epigenetics And Character, which I also just realized is a free PDF on your website. So I'll be reading that, but I would love to hear more about it.

Basically, I think epigenetics is the greatest discovery of the last 50 years. Honestly, people are so focused on the genome, on genes, but actually, in fact, so much of our character and the way we think and everything is based on epigenetics. Epigenetics, for those who don't know, is the way that environment shapes the way our genes function. Genes basically work by spitting out proteins, but what each gene has is kind of a sleeve that covers it and that allows certain amount of proteins to come out and certain amounts to be stopped. So everything about people being hardworking, being spiritual, being happy, being good parents, being good partners, everything about that is based on the epigenetics. People are very, very different depending on the epigenetics. Epigenetics. And what my research has done is identify changes that are taking place in the character of the population as a whole. We're just having some really malign effects. These are epigenetic changes resulting from prosperity that are causing things like the collapsing birth rate. We're not even producing anything like enough children to replace ourselves. Decline of marriage and permanent relationship, decline of sense of meaning and decline of faith, decline of work ethic too. A lot of really— the rise in mental illness, deaths of despair, suicides going up, drug addiction, alcohol poisoning, all kinds of things getting worse and worse. We've become a lonely, miserable people. These are epigenetic changes which are really hurting us as individuals and its society. My mission is— we're doing it, we're spending something like $3 million a year currently, I hope to increase that next year, looking for ways to reverse this whole trend. It's a really powerful thing and it's only been possible over the past few years, this problem. It's the same thing that caused the decline of ancient empires like the ancient Romans. It's the same, it's the same psychological change, the same neural— it's in the neural— yeah, it's based on brain neuroscience. But we can reverse it. So it's exciting times we live in. It's very perilous times. There's a lot of things going wrong, but we can do incredible things to make the world a better place. Awesome. Great question. Cool. Thank you.

So you've downloaded the book, have you?

I have downloaded the book.

I think as a genetic— what was your Genetics back, you do genetics work?

I'm a geneticist.

Okay, well I think the book would be better than the PDF.

There's a new book coming out next year called Birthrate Crisis, which actually gives the background to all this. If you're interested, you email me, I'll let you have an advance copy and you can give me your thoughts on it.

I would really appreciate it, yeah, I'm very deeply interested.

Yeah, great question, really good one. If you've got a question, guys, for Jim, please feel free to come up and ask him. We've got a few more online too, Jim. So someone, Sam's gone, could Jim's elderly assistance be a franchise? Yeah, healthcare.

We're actually doing it. It was launched tentatively. It's been held off for a while. It's going to launch again later next year. But yes, we think it's a great franchise system. By the nature, it'll be something where you employ people because it doesn't really meet our $70 an hour guidelines, except for nurses. They can make very good money. Money. But yes, it's a good business and it's a growing one. Absolutely.

Got a question for Jim, guys, feel free to come up and ask him as well. I'll read another one online from Tapari's Gone. I have a question. I've always been interested in Jim's Mowing and looked at the available franchises for sale in my area and there's always a lot for sale and always wondered why. So whenever he's looked, he's seen a lot for sale in his area. Well, we never have enough franchises.

Yeah, probably a lot of unserviced. We never have enough, honestly. We have hundreds of thousands of unserviced leads every year, so we're always looking for more franchisees. Now the interesting thing about that is the more franchises we have in an area, the more work we have per franchisee and the more we need more franchisees. The hardest time to break in is when you go into a new area completely where the brand isn't known. By the time you've got 6 people running around the streets, there's enough work for 10. That's just kind of how it works. Strange, isn't it? You'd think there's a certain amount of work and once you've taken it, then there's no more. But in fact, the work grows to meet the number of people because the more trailers you have driving around, the more vans or whatever.

So what would you say to that gentleman there to enquire and do an observation and ask some questions?

I would say to anybody who thinks it's strange, actually get a list of our current franchisees, all of them, and ring them and ask them. Say, what's the situation? Are you short of work? 'What's the situation?' and the answer you'll get for those cases is, 'I'd love to have someone to help me if I could. I'm overloaded.' That is the standard response. Plenty of work around.

Absolutely. Got a question for Jim, guys? Feel free to come up to the mic. Got prizes for anyone who asks a question. Go for it. Yeah, yeah. Need your head on the TV so we get the—

Just what you just said then. I'm an electrician up in Ballarat. I'm looking to sign off on the contract. Discovered no one's in Melton, Geelong, the west of Victoria. Beer comes to mind and why, but why?

Yeah, why? Are you doing Jim's Electrical?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We just haven't got enough electricians. Look, electrical is a hard one and so are things like plumbing or mobile mechanics which require a trade skill. The difference is when you're talking about something like mowing, cleaning, dog wash, pest control, antennas, we can teach you. I can't teach you how to be an electrician in 6 weeks, can I? It takes 4 years apprenticeship. It's been 20 years. That's right. So that's the biggest challenge we have with any division that requires— that's why all of our biggest divisions are the ones that we can train for in a few days usually. That's kind of like the challenge. So that's the reason, we just don't have enough. You've got to find somebody who's got qualifications, but has also got the kind of nous to go and visit for themselves. A lot of people don't. A lot of people would actually work for a boss all their life and they could earn twice or three times as much working for themselves, but they don't have that kind of drive initiative to do it.

Have you seen the podcast with a few of the boys? I've watched them all. Matt Richardson. Yes, the way Matt talks about it, it depends how you look at it, but you're running your business as a sparky now. You work for someone else?

12 years on and off. I've done different projects, I've tried different things interstate and back to kind of square one at the moment.

Well, from Matt's interview, like just not having the headache of having to run your Google Ads and from a marketing cost, it's far, like if you listen to what Matt's saying anyway, it's a lot cheaper to do it as the gym's vehicle, plus you get the benefits in that. So depends how you look at it from a cost point of view. I think Cam's very selective as well. So that's why probably there's not people in there sometimes, if he doesn't have the right person whatever, so. Running your own business is different.

It requires certain kinds of skills and we, as I said to you this morning, we are fairly careful about such things. We don't like franchisees failing and we have a very good success rate, but partly because we look at who you are. I mean, your case is a very easy case. I was talking to people the other day who'd actually run multiple businesses. Who was that? They'd done several different businesses and been successful at all of them. 'Cause if you can make any kind of business work for yourself, then you'll tend to do really, really well with us 'cause it's so easy. Because we take, average about 6% of turnover, but there's a lot of businesses who actually charge and take a lot more than that just for their marketing budget. And yet we don't need it. Books? Recommendations, mentors that you've had over your time? I have a list called Best Books. If you look, it's on jimpenman.com.au. There's an actual list of my favourite books. Just go and download and have a look at it. There's about— there's a lot. Must be about 100 on there now. Yeah, there's 100 or something. But different subjects. There are some to do with happiness and personal and so forth. There's some to do there's some to do with science, there's some to do with, there's a small fictional section. So have a look at that and let me know. I'm always looking for interest. Somebody contacted me this morning on email and said, this is interesting, this book is interesting. It's something like the biology of belief. And so I said, oh, it looks interesting. So I just downloaded it. I've been listening to it today. So yeah, good. You're a bit of a reader, are you? I tell you what's really good is talking books because you have a lot of time. Audible, yeah. I'm driving or I'm gardening or anything, or exercising, even getting dressed after a shower, this kind of thing too. I've got talking books going. I've listened to a lot of books about Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett. Warren Buffett of Berkshire Hathaway, who are amazing people. I really, really admire them and what they've done and the ethics of it. And also books about people who've done it the wrong way, like the Enron thing, you know, what the mistakes they made. I like to know both sides. I want to know who's doing the right thing that's good long-term and who's doing the wrong thing and the mistakes. There's a wonderful book I've just actually read for the second time, Andrew Wilkinson I think Oh, Never Enough. Never Enough, yeah, and that's a brilliant book. It's about a guy who started off and built this billion-dollar business in Canada, mostly investing in tech companies, like a sort of a tech version of Berkshire Hathaway. But then he talks about the emptiness of the lives of a lot of the people that he knew, because he knew a lot of very rich people, and they're always competing for status and the bigger yacht and stuff, and how empty that was, and he eventually turned his back on it. Really great reading. There's so many good books around, like more every day. It's just great. But talking books is fantastic. I would obviously, I would listen to or read at least 2 books a week, I would say.

Yeah, if you sign up to Jim's newsletter, jimpenman.com.au, he does book recommendations every month and that's, there's always 3 or 4 you put in there, which is a good thing.

Yeah, just the ones that I like the best I'll put in there.

Guys, you got a question for Jim? Guys, feel free to come up and ask him. We've got some time for a couple more, I reckon, so feel free to ask him anything you like. I think dog wash has done plenty for the audience, so other divisions to come up and do some questions for Jim would be good. Or more dog wash.

I haven't heard from some of the dog wash people. That's great.

It's good to see red, so it's great.

We are seeing red, so that's a good sign. Hey, come on. Yes.

No, I don't think you had a question. We had someone online who asked about Jim's Monopoly. You can buy that from the Jim shop.

.net as well if you want to check it out online. Oh no, you just took a break.

Just get up and sit down. Anyone got another question for Jim? All good.

Yeah, I got a question, good man. Been here for a couple of nights hearing about this dog wash and like Jim's mowing. What about Jim's diggers? Jim's diggers. Jim's diggers. How are they? They're pretty good or? Yeah, I think that's great fun. I had a go at one of those Kanga things one time. I wasn't very good at it, but it's really fun. Uh-huh. From Brisbane, they're trying to take over like one of the jobs over there. Yeah. So just wondering how well it's gonna go, like. Well, you should ring the franchisees who are already in it, but from what I understand, most of them are doing quite well. Yeah, uh-huh. It's a different kind of person. They're people who like, you know, different divisions have different sorts of characters. Dog wash people tend to be very obviously quite emotional. They're just animal lovers and so forth. Very different. Mowing people tend to be very— native Australians, very, very practical. Car people tend to love cars. I mean, that's not surprising. Diggers tend to be very— they just love those machinery. They're just machinery guys. They just love the— That's why I'm trying to get in. You look like a dog wash person. No, no. You've got a dog wash in the brain.

You've seen so many dog washes. You look like—

what I'll say, you look like a diggers person. Very— yeah, I'm tough enough to be a digger's mate. I'm a digger person, yeah, yeah. You know, that's what they used to call Australian soldiers, diggers. Yeah, there you are, you see, that's in tradition. There's some wonderful books actually about Peter Fitzsimons. Have you ever read anything about him? He does a lot of books about Australia and so forth, and like The Rats of Tobruk and so forth. He's a great writer about Australian history. I never liked Australian history much. I read Peter Fitzsimons, but he talks about what Australians used to be like, you know, how we were just such aggressive, very fierce people, great soldiers. And you see, that to me is the kind of guy that you are, you know. Yeah, yeah, I want to get into it, eh?

Well, Diggers got 35 franchisees. We've got some good content online with the franchisees too, you check out. A lot of them like machinery and building their machine, you know, this stuff, you know. They like building a bit of a fleet. It is quite a thrill, actually.

I only tried it once, and I wasn't very good, but it's a really like a buzz, those machines. You know how you've been trying. Yeah, a few years there, spent plenty of time on it. So yeah, it takes a bit of practice, but it's, it's, it's like a fun job. Yeah, it's fun. Yeah, yeah. It's working outdoors too, which I like too. Yeah, yeah. If I wasn't a mine contractor, I reckon something like trees or diggers would probably suit me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Good.

No worries, thanks. We appreciate it. Got a question for Jim, guys? Feel free to come up and ask. We've got some time for some more. Anyone got a question for Jim? Have a think of it. I'll get to one online real quickly. Sam Kendrick's gone. What advice would you give a 14-year-old kid? So when the social media ban comes in, he won't be able to ask that, so you better tell him so he can, um, yeah.

What advice would I give a 14-year-old kid? Start your own business, kid. Start your own business. Start your own business. Work out what you're going to do. It doesn't matter what it is, it could be lawn mowing, I don't care if you're competition, but you borrow your dad's mower or do some gardening or walk the dog or do some babysitting or set up a lemonade stand and stuff. I'd say it's never too young to start to be an entrepreneur. I've been gardening since I was 8, honestly. I had a neighbour across the road, on the back fence, Mr Tapley, I used to do his place. He'd give me 2 shillings, which doesn't sound very much, that's 20 cents, but in those days you could buy yourself a a block of Cadbury chocolate for that, so that's pretty good money. So I've been doing it basically virtually all my life. So 65 years of it. So start. Start now.

Yeah, why not? That's a good one there, Sam. We appreciate that one too. He won't be able to see it though maybe in the end of the year because he's over 16. He's under 16, so he won't be able to answer that one, so make sure you clip that one up. Guys, if you've got a question for Jim, feel free to come up and ask. We've got a couple more minutes for it. Anyone got another question for Jim or? One more? Cool, go for it.

Good on you. We've had such a lot of good questions today. A lot of original ones, which has been good.

I actually have an extension of one of the earlier really good questions, asking about common issues or common mistakes that new franchisees had made. I would love to know if there have been any really unusual, uncommon mistakes that have been made by new franchisees.

Uncommon mistakes? Now you've really got me stumped on that one. They mostly seem to be the same kinds of things. Honestly, I can't think of anything particularly bizarre. You have people with family issues, which is sometimes a problem, but that's not a mistake. But basically speaking, look, the core is pretty simple, how you succeed. First of all, you've got to be passionate about customers. You can't take a slipshod attitude. People who who don't do that tend to do badly. Not doing pay-for-work guarantee— major, major problem. Another problem we have is not listening to advice. Somebody who thinks they know what to do when their franchisor, and even when I am advising them to do something different, and they say, 'No, you're wrong. I should do this, so I'm failing.' That kind of attitude. Those are the kinds of things we see all the time. I'd have to say most mistakes are pretty much along those lines. I've never heard of anything that was outside of that.

Well, that's good. You've got well-established counters for everything then.

Well, I do too. I've even got almost template letters that I send back. If somebody asks me about pay for work currency, it's a very common thing and I would do it more than once a week and there's a whole series of things I would send them lists of, I'd send them things like unserviced leads from other divisions, I'd put them onto the videos and I'd show them where the link is, I'd talk about the friends and the family and this kind of thing, send them a list of franchisees from other divisions, all kinds of things. So there's a sort of a process that I go through with these things. I'm very happy to do it actually, it's good, I'm glad that they respond. I think the one-month letter thing is it's been a great initiative. Now they pick up a lot of problems. We had cases before I did that where people would just be dying when they weren't doing basic things like pay for work guarantee and the franchisor wasn't pushing them. And the franchisor should push them. It's really disgraceful if they don't.

Do you find that the kind of people who want to start up sort of their own business and buy into a franchise tend to be the the same kind of people that really struggle to ask for help?

No. That's good. The actual, the best people are those that don't mind asking for help. The ones that are a problem are those who think that they know everything and they don't ask. Honestly, I think one of the things, it's an interesting point, but one of the best virtues you can have in business is humility. A sense that you are not, you don't know everything and that somebody else might know more. Look, I have been in this business for quite a long time and I'm quite successful but let me tell you, I learn things all the time from people, some of them very new franchisees who come up with an issue, with an idea and I say, "That is a great idea." I'll often use that and I'll spread it and tell other people too. It's just like some of the stuff that we hear, sometimes some of the talks that we give, like people come up with fantastic stuff. We learn a lot from franchisees and that's one of my big things about why I want franchisees to contact me. It's not just for their sake, though it can help, but it's for my sake to learn what's going on and sometimes some people are absolutely brilliant. And you wouldn't necessarily think so, but they just come up with an idea and we think, wow. Jimbo, our new program. Now this has been developed for a long period of time but we are constantly getting feedback from franchisees. I like this or this doesn't work well. That's a tremendously powerful process because we work directly with the end users. What do you want? What works for you? Where are you having problems? Why is you not understanding this? How can we redesign our product? So that kind of feedback is is fantastic. Yeah, you're very good answering questions.

Ah, yeah, well, when you want to start up Jim's Genetics, you can meet me.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this thing. You'll find it very radical, but I will send you— I'm very radical as well. It's not available to the public yet. It'll be a few months, but I'm looking for smart reviewers, so give me some— you know my email address, jim@jims.net. You contact me.

Hey Jim, Marnie McCrindle from Northern Victoria. My question's around people part-time. When I'm networking, chatting with people around Jim's franchises, do you still welcome people to try part-time given that they're too scared with the fee to go all in? Like, what's your advice to those guys who are a bit scared to go all in?

Well, it's actually quite feasible to start a franchise part-time. Part-time because honestly the fees aren't that astronomical. So you can actually start, we do have that occasionally happen, we have people who start part-time and go for it, go the weekends and so forth, why not? Thank you. Yeah.

To encourage people to join. What division are you looking at? Which one are you going to do?

So I'll be doing bookkeeping and taxation, just chatting to some other people. Yeah.

People have been a bit nervous to go all in.

Yeah. Figure out can they balance it. Yeah. Like in our area there's not a great deal in gym services. Yeah, yeah.

You might be able to do it in a way that you don't need pay for work guarantee so you get a lower cost if you've already got a job, for example. Because a lot of the reasons for pay for work guarantee is that people put up— they need to support their family. So they pay some money, that money is then used to push the advertising and also to pay for them to do free services. Now if you're in a situation where you've got a job already and you want to do it part-time, you might be able to negotiate with— who would be your franchisee? Would that be Lloyd or someone? Bookkeeping Lloyd, yeah. Then you might be able to negotiate with them a deal where you don't take paperwork and pay less to get in and start on a part-time basis. That's how I started mowing. It would have been very difficult if I was in 1982 when I started working full-time if I hadn't spent the last 12 years actually running a gardening and mowing business, so I knew what I was doing part-time. So when I went full-time, I knew what I was about. 'Cause I didn't have any franchise system to teach me or anybody. I just knew from experience. So it's certainly worth thinking about. You might even be, I know in some situations you might even be able to get part-time fees. But you'd have to negotiate that with Lloyd.

Very good question. Good question. Real quick one online, Jim. Sev Khan's gone, in the next 5 years, will you consider consider having zero monthly franchise fees? That's what he's asked. I'm reading out what he's asked.

Well, when you can work out a way of running a business where you don't charge clients and still make a living out of it, that would be very interesting to try that one.

I'd like to hear the thinking behind that one.

We think everybody's worth being paid. I do get complaints about that, but honestly, our franchise fees, typical average about 6% of turnover. That's not how it's calculated, obviously. Obviously. But, you know, a franchisor is worthy of being paid too. It's not a lot of money for what people get. I think a big problem people have is when they focus so much on that kind of cost. In actual fact, to drop off 6% of your expenses would make little difference. But if we can show you how to make 20% more money, which we easily can in so many different ways. You're busy. Put your prices up for heaven's sake. You can make more just in one go like that than you're paying us in fees.

Now real quickly, Jim, we're towards the end, but I just want to ask because we cut it short because I thought we covered time. We've got a little bit of time. The lady was asking about Daniel Andrews and just in general, and you started going, I sort of cut you short. We've got a little bit of time.

You really want to talk about Daniel Andrews?

Yeah, we've got a little bit of time. You don't want to?

I'm going to stay out of the politics. Look, I think we can make a lot of things for the better. I do, I am engaged politically. I think that there's decent people on all sides of politics. I don't think this idea that there's some people who are evil and some good. I mean, perhaps Daniel Andrews, maybe I will give an exception to that, but on the whole, I think there's decent people on all sides of politics. I think the Labor government in Victoria has done one very good thing lately, as they are starting to relax zoning to some extent. Now, not nearly enough, but at least they got the right principle. It's not really a left versus right issue. I think everybody should be in favour of this. If you're interested in social justice, for example, helping people who are poor, there's nothing more powerful that we can do than make housing and rents affordable. You've got people who are in the streets who can't afford— they're there. And it's a very dangerous place to be and they're there because they can't afford to rent because government policies are forcing up the rents. It's obvious. It's increasing the gap between rich and poor. Some people can't afford to buy a house and they're stuck as renters forever, others have got multiple properties which are actually increasing in value. This place here I bought for $2.6 million 23 years ago, $22 million ago, now worth about $8 million. That's just obscene. Doesn't do me any good anyway, I can borrow a bit more, but still, what did I do to make that growth? So you have a growth, it's bad for the environment. If you have lower, if you unlock zoning, you have people building densely in the inner suburbs so you can have walkable, liveable cities with good public transport, you don't need less use of cars, if you're in favour of the environment, you should favour this. San Francisco, which is the worst city in the world for this kind of thing, you've got people driving 2 hours to get to work and 2 hours to get home because they're teachers or police or anything who can't afford to live in San Francisco, destroying their personal lives and putting billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide into the air. San Francisco is built and ruled by greenies. Why is green about forcing people to drive 4 hours a day in their cars? There are so many issues with the problems and I would see our reference, our response from the community is that the majority of people are not in favour of the current system where property becomes more and more affordable and a small minority become richer and richer for doing nothing, whereas the majority miss out. I think that's a really hot-button issue. We've never seen a more one-sided response than to the business of housing, something like 96% in support. Now if anybody knows how controversial I am, you will know that's extreme. There is a movement in Australia and I think in particular in Victoria to say housing is for living in, it should be affordable. I bought a house when I was a student in the 1970s, partly, mainly with my lawn mowing gardening part-time business, $30,000 house. You could not even dream of that these days. Used to be you could buy a house for 3 years average income, average house. Now it's like 8. The price of housing is obscene and it's basically government regulations. And people think it's immigration. It is not. It is not. I love an immigration system. We have done so well in the US. We have so many magnificent franchisees from all over the world. I've got to say I'm biased, but I know these people, I know how good they are. Immigration is not the issue, the issue is we're letting 500,000 people a year into the country and we are using the iron hand of government to forbid people from building enough houses to put them in. That is what the problem is and that's what needs to change. And it's got to happen, people. It really does, it's just wrong what's going on and it's one issue that could be a breakthrough, that could be a real change. We could be a leader in terms of affordable housing. I don't like the growing gap between rich and poor. There are too many people who are just amassing wealth. It's not a healthy thing. There are too many people who are struggling. There are too many people who are— there's too many elites that are doing things that are so damaging. If I'm getting off the topic a bit, we talk about this business about net zero. What people don't realise is that the cost of this is being borne by average people. Our electricity bills, we used to have the cheapest electricity in the developed world, we've now got the dearest. Just in terms of power bills alone, power bills have gone from an average of $1,000 a month to $2,000 a month. Now if you add everything else, because power comes in everything, it's probably costing the average family $3,000 a year. Who voted for that? Who voted for that? I didn't vote for it. Did anybody actually tell you we're gonna put your electricity bill up, we're gonna charge you $3,000? Everything. The cost of groceries is affected by zoning, it's affected by power costs. We pay more every time we go to the supermarket, every time we fill up our cars, every time we do, we pay money. There's got to be fairness in what we do and our society is becoming too unequal, too unfair and it needs to change and this area is one area we could potentially make changes for the better.

There you go, well said. Preview of Wednesday for those who come along to the Manningham Hotel from 6:30 PM or $5 online. Alright, cool. What we'll do, Jim, is so Jim always picks his 3 favourite questions but anyone who asks a question, come up to me at the end and you get a pick of the prize, but this is just so you pick them first. I will also say it's a really good time to get a photo with Jim now. If you want to hand me your phone, I'll take him here. The light's a lot brighter and there's a massive rush on Tuesday to do it.

Jim, is this the hardest one I've ever done? There were so many good questions. There was. A lot of original ones. So many good questions. The one about 7 days, that was fantastic. I loved that one. 7 days?

Which one was that?

Worth 7 days? No, but Deborah asked that one.

Well, is the gentleman here? Come up. Pick what you like. Anything you like. And next one.

The commonest What are the common problems that we have? Common problems of a new franchisee? Nobody's ever asked me. It's a great question.

Who asked that one? Which one was that one? Who asked that one? Common problems of new franchisees? Yes, gentleman over here. Come over here. Pick what you like. Yep, take anything you like except for the laptop.

I love the neurodivergent question. Who asked that one?

Yeah, really good question there. Nobody's ever asked that before.

Terrific question. Cool.

So anyone ask a question as well, guys, come up and see me at the end and you can take things.

And the one about heart versus head. I'm only supposed to give 3, but I mean, there's so many good questions. Heart versus head, who said that one? That was a great question.

Take anything you like. Yep, that one as well. Guys, thank you very much for your attention as well, especially Jim's dog wash asking all those questions. We appreciate anyone ask the question as well. Thank you for your time and have a good of your training experience. You want a photo of Jim? Come up over here and we can take one. Thank you.