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

Yep, cool.

Ready to go? All good. So welcome to Ask Jim, guys. Back in tonight, January already. It's early, January 12th, 2026. Back into training. So 2026, let's hopefully we can make it the best year yet. Great to see so many people in training so early as well. In this time. And also, just to make everyone aware, we are running a customer competition at the moment, so anyone is eligible to enter. Anyone who inquires for a Jim's job and you sign up to our newsletter list, you go into the weekly draw for a $1,000 Jim's Group voucher. So it's fantastic. That's been going on for around 8 weeks now, so we've given away $8,000 worth of free Jim's services. So just continue with that and away we go. So Jim's prepared everyone tonight, so we have the microphone over there, so we're gonna throw it open to you guys as well and anyone online. So who wants to go first and ask Jim a question? Anyone, first is the hardest. Yeah, always gets good marks in my books, that one. I like the first question. Good man. Hey Jimbo, how you going? If you could remove one thing from the world, what would it be? Have we had that one before?

AI.

I'm gonna teach you about that tomorrow, but yeah, that's all right.

No, it's a very good question. Because I've just finished a book, If We Make This Everyone Will Die. All right, who was that by? And it's about the dangers of— I forget the Jeffrey Hinton or something, something like that. Yeah, just shows the extreme dangers if you ever— if we ever created an intelligence that was superhuman that could improve itself, that would be the end of the human race. It's the most frightening book I've ever read. There you go. That was a great book to read over the holidays. It scared the pants off me.

So you'll learn about it tomorrow, and I think it's good. So you'll see how you go tomorrow. It'll help you a lot as a franchisee. That's a great question. I don't know if you've ever had that one before.

Never had that one before.

Very original. Well done.

Yes. Cool.

He's got a question for Jim, guys. It's easy as that. Ask away. Microphone's there for you guys. Feel free to come up and ask him anything you like.

All right.

I want to get that name of that book from here as well. I want to hear about it.

I don't even want to tell people about it. It's so frightening. It really is. Just scared the pants off me. I tried to tell my daughter too.

Well, there's other people who are really optimistic, which obviously the people are making a lot of money from it.

It describes how it could be done. It describes an actual scenario about how this AI gets control, spreads itself out, protects itself, sort of blackmails or bribes people to help it and just gets things done, and then just sends out these tailored diseases which actually give people cancer and stuff like that, and offers cures which make them worse, and just casually wipes out the human race because it's no longer necessary, or at least makes so much heat the oceans boil. It's a really, really scary book.

All hypothetical though. All hypothetical.

Hi Jim, Rachel from Jim's Dog Wash Hump Dee Doo. So just a little bit different for you. As Jim's, you've got quite a few divisions in your franchises. Has there been a particular division that hasn't succeeded that's been the hardest for you to let go?

Good question.

I think we've had that one. I've never had that one before.

Good question.

Look, any division that doesn't work is painful. It really is. We had two divisions, massage and beauty. Both failed quite recently after some— but I think in a way, probably it was our mistake. I think either of them could work. It was because the people in charge of it kind of recognized you need to put a lot of advertising money into it. You need to pump the advertising in. These days I'd say you need $50 grand. You need to push and push and push to get it off the ground. And I know that when we were running IT, it didn't work. And I basically had 8 franchisees and I handed it over to cleaning. It's what they did, the cleaning guys. They just pumped a huge amount of money. It's now got over 50 and it's doing really well and the people are busy. But sometimes you have to push it. Look, every division that fails hurts. It just really, really hurts. We had some divisions that were just wrong for us. There was one, Interior Design, which is about, it's about setting up houses for sale. I like the idea, but the practicality is you needed to have, um, big warehouse, big truck staging, trucks and all kinds of things, which really wasn't suitable. Fortunately, all the 4 franchises have all got into cleaning. One of them are now one of our top franchisors.

2 of them are.

2 of them are.

Yeah, 2 of them becoming top franchises.

So they were great people, just that division didn't work. But things like beauty and stuff just really, really disappointed me. I'd like to do it again someday but with more capital behind it. Yeah, but they all hurt. They really do.

They had a good release, the old beauty. You're on the Today Show in a pink t-shirt with Karl Stefanovic talking about it. So it went probably the best launch of any we've ever had.

It did. I feel bad about that one. I think we learned from the mistake. And I know that the cleaning people are good at that kind of stuff. They do things like— I talk into car cleaning franchisors, how did you do so well, why have you grown so much? You just pour the advertising and flood franchises with work. Fortunately, with beauty, we didn't sell franchises and that really made it better. And we did offer them other franchises, mostly the cleaning, if they wanted them, but it was still very painful. I hate failing. I hate it.

That's a good question though. Thanks for that one. I hope you've had that before as well. So got a question for Jim, guys, feel free to come up to the mic. Open for you. Yeah, feel free to ask him back and forth as well.

Matt from Jim's Dog Wash in Guildford, Western Australia. If you had to rebrand the entire company without using your name this time, what would it be called? Crumbs, what a question. Without using my name? I think it's a great name, actually. To put it mildly, it guarantees me a job, doesn't it? I mean, you can't fire Jim, can you? So, and it personalizes the whole thing. Now, after I'm gone, it could be different, but I don't know, what would be a better name? You see, you got names like VIP and Fox and so forth, and they're all good, you know, Speedy Home Services, all this kind of stuff too. But it's so generic. What does it mean? See, McDonald's is a person. I like that kind of brand. What's a really good name? Like Apple, for example, with an apple with a bite out of it. I mean, that's a great brand. So, you know, Microsoft. Well, that's just microcomputers and software, so it's kind of, it's what it does. But the thing about what we do, of course, is that when I started out, I only was thinking of mowing. I had no idea of doing anything else like cleaning or dog wash. And it was lucky to choose something that wasn't like, you've got in New Zealand, you've got Green Acres, which is their major rival over there. It's not as, they're smaller than us now. But that Green Acres is very much of a mowing brand, so even though they're going into cleaning, it's a little bit difficult. So, that's a great question.

Has stumped you, that one?

It really has stumped me as to what I would use apart from my own name. Now initially, the other thing is if you hadn't, Well, in a sense, my real legal name is David, David James, so we could call it Dave's Mowing, but you said don't use my name and that sort of is my name. Or we can make up a name, Fred's Mowing, and then change my name to Fred. I mean, I could do that. Yeah, people got horrified about that. They said, "I've discovered the truth. Jim hasn't even got a beard and his name's not really Jim anyway. I mean, what a fraud this guy is." Some people get really worked up about it.

Some people online get really worked up about it. It's quite funny actually.

They do too.

They get very emotional.

Very good question.

Calling us a fraud.

You have stumped me, which is not common. People do that.

Very good one.

I like the name. I really do. I think it's good. You know, but what's strange about it, you know, is the fact that you guys, you ladies are wearing it. You know, this is a guy with the beard and the hat, which is initially why we thought it was— The logo is the same. The logo is the same. You would think, why on earth would women go out with a guy with a beard and a hat who obviously looks like a gardener? I mean, really, I do, don't I? That's what I used to look like mowing lawns, with a beard and a hat. Because I wear the hat because I've got fair skin and stuff. So, but there it is.

Great question. Next question, guys. Feel free to come up to the mic and ask anything you like.

Sorry, we'll stick with the dog wash theme. I'm Stacy from, uh, Jim's Dog Wash in Guildford, WA. My question is not going to stump you, so I've got that one down. It's all, it's all okay. But I noticed from the book that we received this morning that you have a lot of children. How do you balance work-life, children, family, and make sure that you can have dedicated time in all areas whilst maintaining obviously, you know, business growth and entrepreneurship?

It helps having your own business and working from home, essentially. I was talking to somebody today who was— who was at dinner time about being a father, single father looking after their kids. Who was that? At lunchtime. Anyway, but that's the benefit of being flexible, that you can do the things that you, you need to when those kids aren't around. You can do other things. Um, I, I've never neglected my family. I've been divorced 3 times, so I'm obviously a terrible husband, but it's not for lack of time. It's, it's, it's— in fact, one of the problems I had with my second 2 marriages is that I had these 5 kids from my first marriage that I was incredibly devoted to, and when they came I was just focusing on them to the exclusion of anything else, anything and anyone. If I saw them like 24 hours a week, that was just it. I was 100% on them. I just love my kids. I love spending time with them. I've just been at the beach with my family, there's 22 of us now, children, grandchildren, partners, everything else. And I just love to play in the sand with my grandchildren. I just like kids. So I've never really, I've never struggled because I always thought that was more important than anything else. I'm not that ambitious and I'm not so ambitious that I would want to neglect My children.

It's funny because obviously you've done well. I'm not going to lie, we're here in your facilities here. Visibly it looks as though you've done well. So that not being ambitious aspect doesn't also marry with the outcome for you?

I am ambitious. I'm super, super ambitious. I'm ambitious to be a good father, to have great children. One of the greatest things, my kids are actually the ones who've got children, there's 3 of them so far, they're all great parents, really dedicated parents. My daughter, she's just spent a year at home with her little girl, who's the most gorgeous little girl you could imagine, and she said it's the best year of her life, she loved it so much. So I am ambitious, yeah, I'm ambitious to have great children, I'm ambitious to, with my research, this work here, this project, this research thing I'm running, Actually, most of the time I was working on my book rather than on the business. I was still doing emails and stuff, but I was working on my book. So I am ambitious, but I don't think that the ambition for monetary success should overcome the ambition for a great family life. This is the new book that I've actually given you, No Other Success. No other success can compensate for failure in the home. And I just believe in that. I just think that success is not just— and if I actually had a choice, If I was to have two kids, one of them was to have been very wealthy and successful but a lousy father or mother, or didn't have children at all, and the other was having a very, very average job, it could be, you know, dog walker franchisee, it could be anything, a decent job, a decent job but nothing, not multimillionaire status, but they were good parents, you know who I'd be most proud of? It's not the money, it's not the success, it's what you do with your life. And I just believe in that. I would never want to sacrifice for the sake of something less important.

Amazing, thank you.

Good question.

Great question.

Got a few online too which we're going to get to in a minute as well, but we'll keep going with everyone here. So who's next?

These are very good questions. I'll tell you what, this dogwash people, I was promised. Sharon said you were a great bunch, didn't you, Sharon? They are so good on the questions this morning. I've got this great list already.

Great branding, all the shirts on as well. We love seeing it.

Yeah, branding as well.

Who's got the next question for Jim? Come on, who's got the next one?

You all promised me you had great questions.

Who's got the next one for Jim?

I spoke to all of you at dinner time.

Just come up and ask.

Yeah, come on.

Yep, come through. Awesome. Anything on your mind, come up and ask him. Plenty of time. We've got a few online which I'll get to in a minute too.

So we all in this new journey We're gonna spend a lot of time, give our life to this new journey or this new franchise. And as a family man, and you, Jim, as a family man, what advice can you give us as people like us with our family and kids to get that work-life balance so that the franchise don't absorb us and we don't pay enough time with our family.

Well, the great thing about what we do is what we teach you is to make a good hourly rate, to work smart instead of ridiculous hours. In fact, it's often better to work moderately, take time off, have a proper break at the weekend, for example, spend time with your family, especially spend time with you, with your kids, with your partner, and come back to work refreshed. I, I don't think there's an opposition done properly It's not worth it even if you do. But we can show you how to make very, very good money. And you can be super ambitious and do really well. You take Dan Cahill, who's now the head of the mowing division, who's doing a phenomenal job, by the way. We've grown already 18 franchisees in the last 2 months he's been on. He's just doing a fantastic job. And this is a guy who's incredibly successful. He's a high school dropout, barely managed to scrape together to buy a mowing franchise. He now runs the whole of Australia for mowing. And he's doing really well, but he's also a dedicated family man. He's got two twins, he's got two kids, little kids, and you know what's lovely about those kids? Their middle names are David and James. Which I'm really—

Yeah, because you told him to have kids and he did and then he got twins, so he thought he might dedicate it to you, so that's what happened.

Not the first names, but the middle names. I mean, I'm pretty chuffed.

I think it's Cooper and something they're called, yeah.

And he said that's possible because of Jim's, because I can have the kind of business that allows me to have children, to afford children, and spend time with children. And I'd say that's possible for everyone, everyone. It's not worth it. You can do incredibly well. We have franchisees turning over, we've got at least 20 franchisees because we've got videos who are turning over $1 million plus a year, and there's probably a lot more we don't know about. I tell you what, the ones we know about are really looking after their family, and there's so many great stories too. I was talking to a young man last week, he's a Librarian, comes from Liberia. Do you know what he's doing with his money? He's supporting his home community. He's building a school and a clinic back home in Liberia, which is what he's done with his business. To me, that's a fantastic story. It's just as exciting a story as somebody making millions of dollars. I just think— look, I believe in work. I think work is fantastic. I enjoy it. I love working. I never ever intend to retire, as I told you this morning. And it's good, and it's good to feel you're doing something worthwhile with your life, and I have to feel that what I am doing is worthwhile. But at the same time, it's not everything, is it? And I think a whole life devoted just to amassing more and more money is a pretty stupid life. And if you've got someone like John Paul Getty as an example, now this is a guy who was at one stage about the richest person in the world, and he built this— what a pathetic failure. Pathetic. His family is useless. He really is. He didn't have time for his kids. All he's left behind is some ridiculously over-endowed art museum. And to me, that guy's a failure. He really is. Now you get someone like John D. Rockefeller, for example, who was a pretty good parent as well as being good at business. I'm not saying he wasn't unscrupulous. He was a pretty ruthless sort of guy. But he never neglected his obligations. He was always a tithe payer. He always looked after his kids. He didn't spoil them either. So for example, there's a story about when one of his daughters was wanting to, in a sorority at college, university, wanted to get a loan and the bank was pretty doubtful about the whole thing because they're just a bunch of, you know, college students. And he said, well, does any of you have a, you know, a father who could go guarantee? And this girl said, well, you know, my family is sort of in business. He said, "What's your father's name?" "John D. Rockefeller." And suddenly he granted it like that. She had no idea who her father was. And when the kids were playing with boats, toy boats, and one of the other boys said to his son, John Rockefeller's son, "Why don't you get your father to buy you one of those?" He said, "Who do you think we are, Vanderbilts?" So you can actually have a focus on wealth. And not neglect your family. And I think that's important at any level, but I think family comes first. If I had a choice, I'd say family first, community, meaning first, actually piling up wealth second. And I would give away more than 90% of my income to my research and so forth. It's not really a matter of amassing wealth, it's a matter of doing something useful with your life.

How old are your kids?

Oh, mine is still at school, year 12.

12? Hey, worker in the business. A lot of family businesses we have in gyms now. We have a lot of sons.

Yes, I was talking to someone tonight whose son was very worried.

Just remember, I'm an immigrant, so we don't have any other support. My family is my support.

South Africa?

Yes. So that's my support. So that's why I don't want to neglect them. And then just maybe from Jim's side, all these years, this 30, 40 years that you build up this business and not neglecting your family. But thanks.

But you see, the point of it is you should be able to make at least $70 an hour. If you're not doing it initially, find out. You can do it, at least $70 an hour. Now, the great thing about what you're doing too is that essentially you've got very little travel. Like if you're working 40 hours in the city and you travel an hour to work and an hour home, you're basically working 60 hours a week, aren't you? But if you're working 40 hours a week out of your own home, that's a 40-hour— so that's not a lot of time. And it's the time traveling and the long hours and stuff that really get in the way of family. That's great.

Which division are you doing? Which division?

I'm in Brisbane, pool cleaning.

Ah, pool care. You'll be, you'll be fine. It's a good, good division. Yeah, yeah, thank you. Yeah, pool care is a good division. Brett Blair up there, a lot of family businesses, so good hourly rate too.

Go for it. Kia ora, Jim.

I'm Raina, um, dog wash, Bayview, Auckland, New Zealand. Um, in reflection of last year, what is your biggest highlight and your biggest challenge?

There's a couple of things last year. I started working more with my wife, whom I love dearly. We've been married 24 years. I think it's the first year we've actually really worked together solidly, consistently, and she's helping me a lot, and it's made our relationship really close. I know that sounds strange, isn't it? I start talking about the personal, but really I love Lee dearly, and she's the emotional centre of my life, along with my kids. So that's a great highlight. I'm working on a book called "The Birthrate Crisis," which is challenging in the extreme, very difficult, trying to get across some very complex ideas about what's going wrong with the world, why the birthrate is dropping. That's been very difficult, very challenging. It's something I have to push myself to do because it's hard to get into it because it's so concentrated. I totally— if you see me on emails or playing— if you've got anything else, interrupt me. If you see me working on my book, please don't, 'cause it's so hard. But it's really valuable and really worthwhile. So I think those are the things that come out, which is funny, neither of them have to do with business, are they? Business is doing well, it really is, and it's growing, and the numbers are growing, and that's, it's good. But I don't have financial aims, I don't have money aims. If I had any aim for my franchise, for Jim's, it's that no franchisee would ever be unhappy with our system, which is an impossible goal. But that's kind of what I think about. I don't think— somebody asked me today what my net worth is. Who was that? I said, I really don't know because the way I've set it up with my family trust, I can't sell Jim's Group without the written consent of most franchisees, which makes it basically unsellable. So in a sense, my net worth has gone down like a stone as soon as I've done that. But I don't mind because it's not important, is it? What's important is my family, my extended family, you, my franchisees, my research work, making the world a better place. That's what matters to me, not financial goals. I think it's really bad to focus on success and competition for its own sake.

Good question. Thanks for that one as well. If you've got a question, guys, feel free to come up to the microphone and ask Jim anything you like.

Got some great questions today. I've been writing these down, all the great ones.

So, g'day Jim, Craig from Brisbane, life coaching. It's official this time. Um, on the path of legacy— legacy gets passed around like a buzzword, and you're a man of legacy. I've followed you for a long time and picked up on your values, on conviction. If you strip it all down to its rawest meaning, what is the deeper truth or misunderstanding or responsibility you believe that comes with leaving a lasting impact?

I don't know how to phrase it really, but I have a very concrete mind. And if you ask the essence of what I believe in, it's Jesus washing disciples' feet. That is the core idea behind Jim's Group and everything that I do. Our purpose, what God sends us to do, is to serve, to do something beyond ourselves. We are not there primarily to have a luxurious life or to make money or to be successful in any sense. Our goal is to serve. Somebody once asked Mother Teresa whether she didn't feel despair because of all the poverty in Calcutta that she really could hardly make a dent in. She said, "Don't you feel that you're not successful because there's so much going wrong?" She said, "God didn't call me to be successful, only faithful." That is the core idea Now whether there's a legacy or not doesn't really matter. What matters is what do I do with my life? The parable of the talents, again, the idea, the 3 people, you know the story, I think most of you do. You know, somebody goes on a journey and says to his servants, look after my resources. And one gets 5 talents and goes out and does good things with it and doubles the money. Here it is. And the second has 2 talents, obviously not as faithful, but he also doubles the money. And the third person only has 1 talent and they're not And they just said they just buried it in the ground. And Jesus is— the Master is very annoyed because they haven't used what God's given them. It doesn't matter how much ability they had, what matters is what you do with it. And to me, there's a lot of really wonderful people, and many of them amongst my franchise groups, who do incredible things, a lot of things you don't hear about. I just hear about a lot, the service, like that guy in Liberia I was telling you about, or another guy in South Australia who works with the homeless. He only works 3 days a week, makes a good living. Now that to me is a fantastic human being who's doing what— who's really pursuing a legacy. The fact that you've never heard of him doesn't make any difference. And I don't really care in a sense whether I'm remembered. What I care about is have what I done with my life mattered? Has it made a difference? And if I could be completely forgotten but the actual, the good effects could live on, that would be a great life.

The ancient Greeks termed it aeternum, which means in English, mark of the immortal. So you've left your mark to be immortalized in the sands of time to carry on service for the greater good and well-being.

People want to live for purpose. What people don't realize is that we have this, this really terribly false idea that what makes you happy is having more stuff, you know, a better car, better house, better clothes, more prestigious job, you know, more status, more prestige in the world, this kind of stuff too. There's a very limited relationship between wealth and happiness. And it doesn't really go that way in terms of— because there's always someone with them. You can be a multi-millionaire with a boat, you know, with a $100 million boat, and there's a yacht next door which is worth $200 million, and you like that, you just despair because they're richer than you. There's always some rich unless they're Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos or something, and I bet you they compete like hell anyway with each other. You know, they want to have a fight. Who was that? Was that Bezos?

Yeah, that was Zuckerberg and Musk.

Zuckerberg and Musk, was it? All right. So it's It's pathetic. What makes people happy is having a life that has some meaning. You do something worthwhile with your life. And that doesn't mean endlessly going for status. It means doing something that means something to you, that's valuable, that you're doing what God's given you to do, or whatever sense of purpose you may get out of life. That to me is what it's about. Not personal success. I know it sounds strange coming from somebody who is obviously quite successful, but it's not my aim. Seriously, if I wanted to make a lot more money, I could. There's a few simple things that I could do, could double my profitability from Jim's Group. I need to take my actual net profit from everything we do, the largest franchise chain in Australia, about 1% of turnover. That's about 1% of turnover. Now, if I made that 2% somehow, it would explode. And it could be done. But why would I? Because it would be expensive. People would use the money better than I could anyway.

Good questions.

Thank you, Jim. It's all about living something greater than yourself. Thank you.

Good question. Thanks, everyone. Appreciate it. Put a question for Jim, guys. Feel free to ask him anything you like.

Go for it.

G'day, Jim. I'm John from the Mowing Division in Sunbury. Today we got to hear on the app that there's reminders, your voice coming up.

Oh yes.

30 minutes. What messages—

Answer the phone!

What messages Did you want to say on there that didn't actually get onto the app?

Oh no. One thing you'll find about me, I have a famous dislike of bad language. If I have somebody swear at me, I will stop the conversation instantly until they calm down. I do not appreciate that language. Don't say it. I was actually rumored to fight somebody for swearing, which wasn't true, but still. No, no. I think yelling at you, answer the phone, is just good enough, thank you very much. But you just listen to me, all right?

Pay attention to it. Exactly right. Very good question. Go for it. Come up, ask for it. Got a couple more online.

Hello, I am Claire from Jim's Dog Wash, Auckland, New Zealand. What is your biggest regret with starting Jim's Mowing, and what advice would you give us as a result?

Biggest regret. Look, first of all, I would never regret anything that happened less than 16 years ago. Anybody guess that? It's when my youngest son was born. So I would never change the past in any way that would undo any of my children. But if I look back upon regrets, first of all, I had no idea what I was doing. I had no idea this thing would be so successful. It just didn't crossed my mind. I thought maybe I'd have 100 franchises. I told somebody at the time when I started. So if I'd known what I was doing now, what I would have done is I would have started working on IT. A lot more work on IT and a lot less concern about contracts. Contracts really don't matter very much. You just got to get the right sort of wording in place. You make a mistake, you change it, big deal. As long as you look after people well, contracts don't really matter that much. IT matters a huge amount. And when we got into IT and started using it successfully, we actually improved our service and cut our costs. Dramatically. The other big mistakes I've tended to make, now not so much in the last decade, but up until that time, is I get involved in other businesses that I don't understand that well. And that's one really big lesson. Whenever you do something that looks good, but you don't know the industry, it always looks great from the outside, and it's really, really difficult to run it. And I've been involved in so many other kinds of businesses, all of which lost money. Computer shop, a mower shop, factory making trailers, trade exchanges more than once. What else have I done? Oh, the psychology institute, teach psychology. I could just keep on going. They all lose money, they all fail. The thing I knew that I know well is the service industry, starting with mowing. Now the things like cleaning, dog wash, are very, very similar. So people come to me now about doing different kinds of enterprises, I just say no. If it's not a service franchise, we're not interested. We're not interested in site-based, we don't understand that. We are good at what we do. And it's not an uncommon thing too. You look at someone like, you know, two of my greatest heroes is Warren Buffett, Charlie Munger. Now they're hugely successful people, they're very wealthy. But I don't admire people who are wealthy for their own sake. But what they have is a very distinct philosophy, which is one which means holding, building great businesses long-term. Putting good managers in place, thinking long-term, not thinking, Not thinking short-term, but one of the things that Buffett says is he doesn't get into business he doesn't understand. Now this is a guy 100 times more brilliant than me and the most amazing investor. But he says, "I don't understand the business. I'm not going to get it." They do nothing with technology.

They've never invested in technology stocks or anything.

That's right. Even though people look at it and say, "Well, you've underperformed." But he just, "I don't understand them." So he doesn't do it. So I think we can learn a lot from that if we stick to what we know. See, one of the saddest things I find is this. I mean, I talked about attrition this morning, and the fact of the matter is that our attrition is much, much higher than it should be, and I think it's a big mistake because what happens is people who succeed in something are those who go into it and work and work and work and work to develop and develop and develop it. And the problem you get, you get to a certain stage where you say, "Okay, I'll try something different." You go like that. So much of what you've learned, some of it's applicable, but some of it's lost. You're right down there again. Now, one of the reasons I've been successful is I've done the same thing been basically full-time since 1982, which is actually what, 46, 44, 45 years now. And I've done the same thing, which is the business that I understood, mowing lawns, which I'd already done that previous 7 years anyway. I mowed lawns for 7 years, and I kept on doing it and kept on improving what I do. And I think that's a good lesson to anybody. And I know I'm being biased because you're here now, but the fact of the matter is, if you go into almost anything, anything that's got any reasonable chance of success, and you just say improve, improve every day, just a little bit. Idea, how can I improve? It's amazing what you can achieve. I would encourage anybody to work with what they're doing. I know a lot of franchisees in gyms do all kinds of different things. Some of them buy multiple franchises in multiple divisions. That's a big thing these days. Some of them put on a lot of workers. Some of them become franchisors. Some of them start new divisions. But if you work with what you know, what you're good at, you tend to be very successful. We have very good success in actually— the best success in getting people from within our ranks to come up. Most people who are leaders in Jim's group started in much more humble jobs and they just learned their role. Like Dan, started as a franchisee mowing, then became a franchisor, now it's a divisional franchisor. I mean, he's big. Every stage he's learned lessons and shown himself. So that's my mistake. And it's a common idea, you look at it from the outside, "Oh, you know, running a café looks so good and fun and interesting, you're around nice food and it's all cheerful and lights," and then you get into it and you realise it's really hard. We went to a restaurant last night actually, we went to our favourite Indian restaurant and they were full, and they were often full, so we went next door and there's this restaurant with about 6 people in it. We had a try, probably won't go back, but the point of it is, it's so difficult. You look at that and you think, why are these people doing so well, these people so badly? Or you go to a shopping centre and you see restaurants and one of them is actually chockers and the next 4 alongside them haven't got as many people as that one put together. What are they doing? It's really difficult. You have to know what you're doing. It's the learning that matters, not how much money you've got, not how smart you are, not how much education you've got. It's just going in learning business, saying, how can I improve?

Got a couple online I want to get to real quickly, Jim. So Luke Scogny, what's the minimum turnover in the first year with a mowing franchise?

Minimum?

Yeah, minimum turnover.

Well, the minimum can be nothing if you fail.

Exactly right. That's true. So $0 is the answer to that.

I'd hate to know how little some people make because they really, really, really do badly. I mean, sometimes you make terrible mistakes in who you pick. Not quite zero, I'm sure, but sometimes people just cannot do it.

But there's a pay-for-work guarantee in place, so if you do come on.

Yeah, but even so, you don't have to make that.

True.

And that's frustrating too. You might have a $2,000 pay-for-work guarantee, but if you sit back and go, oh, it's not working, not enough leads coming through, no, I don't want to do pay-for-work guarantee because I asked a couple of people and they said no, so it's not working, it's a terrible system, you're not going to make so much money, are you?

No, you're not. So the answer is zero there.

The answer is zero or pretty close to.

And the next one real quickly from Zali has gone, is it possible—

If you ask me for a superpower, I said this before, you ask me for a superpower, my son asked me this, you know, he's a 16-year-old, so superpowers are very big. He said, what do you want, Dad? What would you like? Would you like to be able to fly like Superman or see through walls or run like the Flash? I said, no, I'd like to look at people and know whether they're going to succeed or not. Just like that.

And one real quickly from Zali has gone, is it possible to move from one division to another?

Absolutely it is, and it's very common these days actually. People don't like one division, they go to another division. It's actually not— it's unlike doing a totally different thing because your skills are transferable. That actually happens a lot these days. People go from one division to another. You know, you've got somebody who's doing something like mowing, which is a bit physical. What can I do that's not quite as arduous physically? So we look at different jobs. Test and tag is a good example, actually. Got good people skills.

But, um, that's quite common, actually. I've seen a lot of— a few of the mowing guys go from that and then go to test and tag when they get a bit 50-plus sort of age, and they jump into that. And yeah, why they go.

Yeah, it's good, it's good. And you can keep working indefinitely. Mind you, we've got a lot of people who are mowing lawns in their 70s. What about one just had his 80th birthday last year?

So that was Jeff Campbell. Yeah, 80, he'd be 81 now, nearly 81. Yeah, yeah, he's still going.

Yeah, well, it's pretty, it's pretty fun though. I mean, I'll tell you what, you know what I did the weekend? You know what I was doing this last weekend? Gardening.

Close, close.

I was out there gardening. I was slashing. I got this brush cutter and I'm slashing, electric brush cutter and I'm slashing, you know, fruit trees and I'm, not the fruit trees themselves, the grass between them and getting rid of bracken fern and stuff. It's just great fun, I love it. Planting tomatoes, just a real buzz. So being physically active is fine, but some people just can't take it past a certain age and then if we can find some way to keep them within the system. We're always looking for divisions that have got that aspect. Somebody who's got the brains for it and the Customer service, but if I need too hard to do something like mowing or fencing, here's something you can do. Driving school's another example.

Yeah, yeah, that's another good one, guys. We've got a question, but Jim, feel free to come to the mic. We've got some time here as well.

Dog wash, you've been stars today, I've got to say.

It's been great, they're driving everything, it's good.

Go for it. Uh, hi, my name is Pajal, I'm from the cleaning division, and I had a question about if you could only train me deeply in one skill before I start which would make the biggest difference in my first year, what would it be? The skill to listen, the skill to listen and learn. It doesn't matter how bad you are when you start. I have done so many pathetically stupid things in my life, really I have. If you looked at mistakes that I've made, they are beyond belief. I look back at myself and I think, my goodness, what kind of a blithering idiot are you to do such things? But I learn. And I said the same thing too, listen and learn. Talk to your franchisor, talk to your fellow franchisees, read up on all the brilliant— watch all the brilliant podcasts that Joel's put together, read books and stuff, listen to talking books, listen to— just keep on learning and learning and listening and drown yourself in good advice, good people. And in the end, and you just learned a tiny bit from each one, and you keep on doing it. I read probably on average a couple of books a week, or listen to, as well as reading a lot of things like Economist and all kinds of things, Atlantic. I read, I listen obsessively. And I'm always learning, always coming up with ideas, ways of thinking, or reinforcing good ways of thinking. So the more you do. So I'd say that's the biggest thing. It doesn't matter where you start from. People think that you have to be brilliant. I think intelligence is grossly overrated. I know some people who are highly intelligent, top 1 or 2% of the population, who are completely useless, absolutely. And I won't say who, but I know their IQs.

They're intelligent enough, they'll work it out, but that's all right.

It's really not— brains is way, way overrated. Character, determination, ability to learn, willingness to learn, that matters hugely. It's far more. They reckon intelligence only makes about 4% of your success in life. The rest, the other 96% is other things. Partly background experience, but also character. Mainly character. That's what I'm concerned with is character. How do you get people good character? And one of the things we want to teach you is how to build a good character, because that's just something you're born with. Your family helps. Having good parents certainly helps a lot. But some people have lousy parenting and still turn out to be amazingly good because they develop character. You develop good work habits, things like books. There's so many good books. If you actually go to jimpenman.com.au, you will see a lot of book recommendations. There's some books in there like Atomic Habits, Tiny Habits, a lot of other books like that talking about how you can make yourself a better person, how you can learn good habits of life and work and so forth, and good habits for thinking. Surround yourself But listening is the one thing I would suggest. Thank you so much for that.

Great question. Thanks for that one. Cleaning is a good one. I see a lot of successful cleaning franchisees ask.

Yes.

That's Jim.

Mark from Window and Pressure Cleaning in Brisbane.

I'm not sure how old you are, but you look quite fit.

73. And I look every day.

I should have got you to guess. I should have got you to guess.

But I don't feel like it.

What's your tips? What do you do differently? Have you always been like that?

Well, I haven't always been old and haggard, thank you very much. I exercise pretty carefully. Every morning I do running on a treadmill about half an hour, on a slight run. I do weightlifting as well, just this thing, I've got 8 kilo weights and lift them above my head, this kind of stuff too. I walk quite a bit. I probably walk on top of that on average about 4,000 or 5,000 paces a day, just back and forth from here around the place, just over like that. So I do a lot of exercise. I'm pretty strong on diet. I'm mainly vegetarian, and I practice 16/8 fasting. So I only eat 16 hours, I only eat my meals between a gap of 8 hours. So this morning, for example, I couldn't eat anything until lunch. And I was quite hungry at times. But I find that's a very good exercise. It actually is good for your body. It helps your cells to regenerate and keeps them healthy. A lot of vegetables, a lot of fruit. The two things I don't stint in spending money on are fruit and books. Okay, so lots and lots of good food. That's the physical side of it. But there's also a mental side of it too. Like having a good social life. I've got an amazing wife. Look, I won the lottery, let's face it. If you look at my life, that's the one thing I could never have predicted or deserved, having an amazing person like Lee that I met, must be close to 25 years now. She's just incredible. I mean, we fight like cats and dogs at times, it's not as calm as you might think. But she's amazing and I've got great kids, which I take a little bit of credit for, mostly my wife. And I've got a great business that I enjoy and a meaningful sense of life and I've got a great church community. That I'm part of too. So psychological help matters too. And being grateful. I'm very, very appreciative of God's blessing towards me. Every day I'm aware of how well off I am and how appreciative for everything that's been given. So there's a lot of it. There's physical and there's emotional and there's spiritual kind of things all coming together. All right. Thanks for that.

Good question.

Yeah, good question.

You'll be Skagen up there in Queensland? That's it. Young fella Skagen, yeah? Scaggin's, the 23-year-old franchisor up in Queensland, does very well. Yeah, yeah, he's got around 8 staff, I think, under his team at 23.

Wow. Yeah, you know, the thing that's surprising to me, I never expected— I always had— you have a very dull view of old age. I remember when I was 35 thinking, hey, my life's halfway over, I've achieved nothing. So now, by that sense, I'm already over my life expectancy and I'm only just getting started.

How old would you have guessed Jim was if we didn't say his age? I would have said 65. Okay.

Yeah. If you took away the white hair and the wrinkles and stuff and looked at the way I speak, you'd probably guess I was 30 or something like that. My wife actually says I'm very rude because when I'm in a supermarket, I'm actually so impatient with everybody else that I can reach past somebody and They're so slow, everybody else. They're all these juvenile geriatrics. I get frustrated going up an escalator. "What are you standing for? Why don't you walk up the escalator, you nonce?" So I'm very impatient. But it's very strange, very interesting. Old age is nothing like what it was supposed to be. And my mind is still fertile. I've had more great ideas in the last— You're going to decline, you're going to slow down, you're going to become slow and you're going to become sad. Rubbish. It's how you live that matters. I've got a lot to do in the next 20 years. I've got really, really a lot to do, and I intend to live every minute for that the best I can. And then when God takes me, well, that's the end of it. But all the same, I intend to keep on till the end.

But Jim, the thing, the thing that as well, your, your routine's ultra consistent. Like, you don't miss a day. I don't really miss a day.

So Except when I'm gardening. If I'm gardening for 6 hours, then I can be on my phone and I'll do that instead. But generally speaking, no, I don't. I don't chase.

That's the key, consistency.

Mind you, this guy's starting to get to me now. We play squash and, uh, yeah, he gets to wear me out. I'm getting a bit old, aren't I?

You do. Yeah, you are. You are pretty good now. He's pretty good.

Like last time, last time he actually beat me 2-1 on the—

you know, it was the first time in a while. Yeah, that's— but Jim is really good. He's actually a pretty good player. Guys, we've got, um Sometimes you go for it, ask anything you like.

Hey Jim, another question from me. You've mentioned spirituality and you mentioned our Lord and Savior God. I just had a question, a curious question. What was your— what's your favorite scripture and why?

Uh, the two I mentioned actually, the, the Jesus washing disciples' feet, which is really the core idea behind Jim's group. And I'd say that with all due respect to people about the faiths, some of the best people in Jim's group, the absolute best, are practicing Muslims. Particularly in the cleaning division and laundry and so forth, people like Bill and Kobunoglu and Haydar Hussein and Ali, they're incredible people. But Jesus washing disciples' feet is the core idea behind what Jim's group means. And the other one, as I said, is the parable of the talents. No matter what ability I've got, it's not up to me to be the best, it's up to me to make the best out of what I've got. What's your favorite scripture?

I've just started reading the Bible, so I know it's fairly new to me. Um, I didn't grow up religious at all, so I'm just curious to learn. Um, but the scripture around how Jesus gives us a sound— we're sound of mind.

Yeah, yeah, good stuff. Great walk. First thing I did when I came a Christian, age of 28, was to read the Bible through cover to cover. Very interesting. It's hard to go through all the bigots and the laws and everything else. There's a lot in the Old Testament Hey again, Jim.

Um, my name is Tupuna. I'm from Bunbury, WA, part of the Laundry Division. I was just wanting to ask, um, what inspired you, or what was your inspiration behind, um, starting Jim's group?

Well, starting mowing full-time was the need to pay my rent and make a living and pay off my considerable debts. Not anything very spiritual. It's my part-time student job. That was really what it was. I was gardening since 1970. I was gardening and then I bought a lawnmower. It was my student job all through my undergraduate and my PhD years. And I ended up doing— and it just went from there. I didn't in the beginning think that it was anything special. Even when I launched the franchise, I didn't expect to be that successful. It was kind of surprising. But one lesson for life I found is nothing, nothing works out the way you expect. Most things don't work out nearly as well as you expect. Some things work out much better than you expect, but never ever what you expect. Fantastic.

One more thing.

What was the book you were reading about AI? It's something like, If We Build This, Everyone Will Die.

Right. I'll have to look it up. I'll look it up.

Look it up.

It was good.

Thank you. But look, I tell you what, I was going to put it in my newsletter and I thought, what is the point of this thing? Because it's so depressing.

But it's good to know.

Scariest thing I've ever written. It really is. That description of how— yeah, you'd—

Kowski and Nate Soras. This one here, I'll show you real quickly. That one there, what's it called?

If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies. And it's a good argument that we will. Thank you.

Good questions, appreciate it. Got a couple online real quickly, Jim. Cameron's from a dog wash franchise actually asked, he goes, Jim's always talking about his potato patch, just wondering how many potatoes you might eat in a week. That's an original question, never had that one. How many spuds does Jim see?

A few. My wife's a very good cook. Yeah, leaves are great.

So you eat a few potatoes?

Yeah, eat a few, but mostly, mostly you don't want too much starch. So things like potatoes and rice and stuff, that's too starchy. Mostly what I try and use, vegetables and fruit.

Are you still weighing yourself every day? Is it every week now?

Uh, pretty regularly. I've weighed the same. I've weighed 66, 67 kilos for the past several decades, so I don't really change much.

But if you get above that, you will—

I would too. But also, this belt thing is good too. It's on that notch there and it's kind of got a bit of a— you can see there's a bit of a— if that started to feel tight, I'd know something was going wrong. But I just don't tend to put on weight very much with the way I eat and live and stuff. Look, I love things like chocolate and stuff, I just try not to eat too much. That's why, actually, when they do a thing at Christmas with the— what do they call it when you—

Kris Kringle.

Kris Kringle, yeah. And one thing I put down on my Kris Kringle's No chocolates, please. Something you've made, an activity, an event, anything like that, but no chocolates because I have a weakness. They used to buy jars of Nutella and I would find them no matter where they were hidden and I would just— yeah, you're right too. For me it's like crack cocaine, Nutella. I gave a talk once to a group of addicts and they were all sort of heroin and this sort of thing and I said, you know, my terrible addiction is Nutella. They'd peck themselves laughing.

Got any more questions for Jim, guys? We've got a little bit of time left, just a couple more. So if you've got any questions on your mind, please feel free to come up and ask him. Everyone gets a prize at the end for who does.

Hi, Jim. Name's Stephen from Planning Division, WA. Now we've talked a fair bit about work-life balance, and you also mentioned a few areas that you sort of started but misunderstood and got in and out of. I was actually wondering what would be the, um, top 3 things in a business that you would focus on to enable us to have work-life balance? And also, what were some of the things that you tried that didn't work? Sorry, what do you mean the top 3 things? In what sense? Um, that would give us, um, say, scalability and reduce our amount of time in the business. You mean what divisions or what kinds of practices? Practices. Look, it's pretty simple. What I told you this morning, the very simple idea is this: give incredibly great service, doing as cost-efficiently, time-efficiently as you possibly can, and then raise your prices. That's kind of like the fundamental idea behind everything. You've got to give brilliant service because there's not a lot of money down at the bottom. If you want to give lousy service, that's a very hard area to be in because it's so pricey. Because what you got to offer, and you have to keep on getting new clients and stuff, it's really hard. If you give great service, you tend to get a lot of work, and you'll find people who do want you because they want great service, and they'll keep you going and they'll refer you and so forth. And then you've got to have the guts to say, okay, my time is worth more. And it's probably— if I was to say there's anything my franchisees do badly, it's that third one, because most of my franchisees give pretty good service. I mean, they're too scared not to, not with me sitting here saying, "Complaint, complaint." But when I see franchisees who are week after week, month after month, asking for territory, or even worse, zero, I say, "Why don't you take some more work? Go to your existing clients, put them up." Like, you're dog wash people, you're going to be busy, busy, busy, busy for too long. It's always the case, there's always going to be, and you'll be booked out 3 months ahead. Well, why do you do that? Why not just charge 20% more for every client, try the new ones, and crank your prices up? That's more than a 20% increase because all your costs are the same. So suddenly you're making an extra, you know, $30,000 a year. That's not difficult to do. And so many of my franchisees could do that. I know that sounds like screwing the customer, but you know, since I said this morning, my actual loyalty, my concern is my own people, my franchisees. We can give great service to customers, but in the end, they're useful to us because they pay us well. So those are the things we'd focus on. Are there any things that you've done in the past that failed dismally when you were trying to grow? Lots of things. Lots of things fail. I think the one division I regret the most is we tried to launch a fitness franchise. Now that was a mistake, particularly painful because my wife, who we were newly married, put a lot of her money that she had into that. She came from China, she saved up this nest egg from China, which is quite wealthy, you could have bought a house. She said, "You put it into this fitness business with some friends." And we didn't know what we were doing. We relied on the other people who were doing it. We didn't understand it and it just wasn't very well run and we ended up losing it all. But she's more than got her money back since then, many times over. Painful because, well, she was hurt and her friends were hurt and a lot of other people were hurt too. It was, it was some of my franchisors went into it as well, so it was a bad thing. Most of the time, the reason the division fails is not because of the division, it's because the people running it. And that's one of the hardest things of all to do. You've got to find the right person with the right skills. When you get people like Haida and Ali and Bill and Brett Blair and Sharon Connell, and you get these heroic people who are just so good at what they do, then they'll make something work. They have a spirit and energy, a passion. Dan Coward, people like that. When you have them in— but then when you put the wrong person into a job, especially a divisional job, it can really be bad. So yes, a lot of regrets. I, I I wish, yeah, I wish a lot of things didn't happen. I honestly do. It's very painful. I find the hardest thing is for somebody to fail, and having a whole division fail is very, very challenging. I find that very upsetting. If I get two pieces of news, one of those is that I've got a million-dollar unexpected tax bill, and the other is one of my franchises failed, I can tell you which upsets me the most. The tax is just money. But having somebody fail is, I never get used to it. Never get accustomed to it, never take it easy. And that's painful, because these are people I know. See, this, gyms is my world. I don't actually know wealthy people. I have hardly any contacts outside of my family, my church, and gyms. I hardly know anybody. I don't meet with other successful people, so-called. I only know my own people. So I have contact with franchisees every day. And when I get an email, I got an email just today, this afternoon, from a franchisee who's a new guy who's struggling. And that's a big concern, and I was doing this long email going back about, you know, unsolicited from other divisions, and he had to go to the website to pick up these videos and stuff, and you need to do this and this and this and go through it and copy the franchisor. That's kind of urgent, urgent stuff. And I would be very upset if that person fails. What I do is everything we can do to make sure they don't.

Good question. Thanks for that one. Good question, guys. Feel free to come up and ask Jim as well, anything that you want. Yep, go for it.

Yeah, go for it.

Um, Rainer and I used the pool yesterday. We went for a swim, and I'd like to know what were your reasons for covering the pool and not heating it?

Cold is good for you.

Yeah, it was lovely.

It just would have been nice with a bit of sun beaming down on us as well. I was just going to say, us Darwin people didn't go anywhere near it.

It was refreshing. We missed the sun. Look, I tell you what, I wouldn't have done it if I'd have understood how much it was going to cost. It cost a lot more than I thought. Part of the idea behind that was that we're trying to, we want to do something for staff and so forth and franchisees, trainees to exercise with. But the other thing is we're looking at doing a sort of health retreat place here. We're working on that with my wife. And if we do have people who are coming for a health retreat, honestly, we would heat the pool. At the moment, I don't think there's the, come on, 'cause I don't think many people would use it and it's very expensive. So that's the idea. When we do have health retreats going, will heat it, otherwise the cost is just astronomical.

Just a bit of clear light on the room.

Just for next time.

It'd be hard to do now. It'd be hard to retrofit it.

Oh yeah, that's not coming here. Listen, cold is good for you. I have a cold shower every day, a minute under the cold water, even in the middle of winter, and I count to make sure I— it's something from my childhood. My father used to have to go under cold water and wait for 20 count up to 20. So I had about a 1-minute cold shower every day. It's good for you. That's all I can say. So actually, the reason we didn't hit it, because we know it's better for you to be subject to a bit of cold, looking after your health.

I'm just watching a lot of the videos online. A lot of the feedback that I see is that, you know, a lot of— there's a lot of franchisees that get in and then they always talk about how their mental health has improved. And you've got a lot of background in research and stuff. Have you ever thought about doing any research to see like what is it about the franchisees and the link and how that impacts on people's mental health?

We do a lot of things that are actually very relevant to mental health, okay? Happiness and mental health is one of my main interests. A lot of the core of my work that I'm doing, my research work, is about that subject. And there's certain things that really relate to it. One of the major things is flexibility. People who have a rigid lifestyle, who can't change, can't change anything, are a lot happier than those who have the ability to adjust. If you wanna sort of spend time, go to a kid's football match, or pick them up from school, or stay home with a sick child, anything like that, do something that's important to you, play golf in the afternoon, whatever, you've got the flexibility to do things in different ways, that's a big thing. Physical activity. Now, people these days are very impressed by the idea of sitting in front of a computer for a career. That is my career, like that, all day and all night, that's my ideal life. I've got to go to university, I've got to get a white-collar job, prestigious job, I don't know if it only pays $60,000 a year, I've got to do something white-collar with a tie and whatever. That's a very foolish idea because in fact one of the best things you can do for your health and wellbeing is to move around. And if you're doing something like washing dogs or mowing lawns or cleaning or anything, these are all physically active jobs, which society tends to look down on, but they actually pay pretty well. And you've got the ability of physical exercise. And when they actually look at people, at professions, and say, "Who's the happiest?" Now you would think that the lawyers and the bankers and the finance people are going to be the happiest, but in fact they're not. People who actually work physically tend to rate higher in terms of happiness than those who don't work physically. Bankers, actually lawyers, come very low in that.

Gardeners and florists are number one.

Gardeners and florists are number one. Depends on what you look at exactly. So I think physical exercise, and the other thing I have to say too, another thing you know is associated with happiness, working outside. So if you spend a lot of time outside, like especially if you're doing something like fencing or gardening or anything like that, that's a tremendously positive sort of thing. And then having social interaction is a very important part of it. If you've got a job that actually involves meeting different people, like different clients or working with a coworker, those kind of things, just having control of your life. There's a lot of things that we do that really strongly boost mental health. At the same time, there's challenges too, because you don't have a steady paycheck, and that can be distressing. And then Jim sends you a nasty complaint, and you get— people complain, I lose sleep over these things too. So there are some stresses involved, and, and, but overall, I think it's a fantastic—

but you get job satisfaction multiple times a day as well. So if you're doing 8 or 10 lawns in a day or whatever, or if you're doing 8 or 10 dogs, you actually to see what your work is doing. And that's what all the corporates say.

There's an interesting thing about dopamine actually. A lot of it has to do with dopamine. People think that what makes you happy is to do things that make you really excited, like excitement and stuff like sex and gambling and stuff like that, and all these things that— what they do is they give you a big surge of dopamine. But the trouble with that is that these surge things, they— and drugs are the worst, but even junk food and gambling, whatever, all these things basically give you a surge of dopamine, which feels immediately very good. Video games, social media, they're all designed to give you a little spurt of dopamine. The trouble with that is that it makes your brain less sensitive to dopamine, so therefore the ordinary things of life become boring and meaningless. Now, what you actually do when you do something like exercise or work, what you do is you don't have a big surge, you get just a little micro, and if you achieve something, you get a good lawn mower and flower bed picked up, or you you know, a dog is nicely washed, you get a little boost of dopamine, not enough to set off these defences, but enough to make you feel good. And if you do that and it reinforces it, you just feel good. So working, doing the kinds of jobs that we do, especially the kinds of physical jobs where you get this little reward. I think dopamine is like a river. A river is like a flow of water, a beautiful flow of water that just irrigates and is glorious. If you don't have it, if you don't have any dopamine at all, you might be very sick and depressed and not motivated. You've got to have some. But if you get a surge, it washes over the bank and it floods everybody. So what you've got to do is the steady flow, the activities that actually produce real happiness. And things like work does that, meaningful work does that, and walking in nature and spending time with your family and with your kids and going to church or mosque or synagogue, whatever you go to, all these kinds of steady, working in your community, friendships, those sorts of things, they produce this steady flow of dopamine which makes you happy and fulfilled. And avoid the surge stuff, the excitement things, the porn, the social media, the garbage that goes on in the world today. That is the secret of it. And it's very satisfying. Interesting, during the lockdown which we had here for 8 weeks, we weren't allowed to work. And I spoke to Franciscans all through that time, and it was very distressing to many of them. They weren't suffering from lack of income, the government gave them money, but they lost a sense of purpose in their lives. They just felt very empty. They were doing something worthwhile and now they couldn't, they were forbidden by this stupid state government. So yeah.

Cheers. Thanks, I appreciate it. So Jim, we've just gone over time tonight, so what we'll do is we'll give you to pick your 3 favourite questions. Now if you ask the question tonight on the microphone, come and see me at the end and anything that's left over after the 3 prizes you can take home. You can take from here, so everything you can take from there, except from the laptop. But go for it, go for it. Some people have tried to take it before and walked off, that's no joke. All right, who was the free favourite?

One last thing, so Jim, we were told that you had 10 children or whatever, so part of that thing, can we take you? Can we be adopted into your family?

You are adopted into my family. Listen, if anybody else outside my family wants to ring me on Christmas Day, I will bite their head off. My children, my extended family, you're allowed to. All right, there you are.

So Jim, what were your 3 favorite questions?

There's so many, there's so many good ones, really good ones. The question about what I would get rid of, nobody's ever asked me that before. Who said that thing I answered with AI?

First one, that was a good question. Come up and take anything you like, pick anything you like. Um, yeah, you can take whatever you like up there.

They asked a question about failure. Somebody asked about failure.

Come up, pick anything you like. You can take anything.

The book? Yep, you can.

Go for it.

Yes.

And what would you like? Yes, good choice.

There we go.

And what was your next one there, Jim Penman?

Yes, the question about the legacy.

And the legacy question.

Who asked the legacy question?

Was that you, Craig?

Good question.

Cool. So what we'll do is Everyone else who asked a question, come up here. The rest is available for you to take as well. And if you want a photo with Jim, you can hand me your phone under here and I can take it for you. Thank you for your attention tonight. We really do appreciate it.

Thank you.