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

All good.

So welcome back to another, I think second training in January as well. So we're back for Ask Jim as well for a bit of a small audience tonight. I think the weather's too nice, Jim, people might have gone to the pub or have gone offsite here. So it's a good opportunity for people here to ask Jim as many questions as you like. And you've got a really good chance of getting hands on all these lutes here as well. You've got tape measures even tonight, all this other stuff too. So we'll get straight into it. So who's got the first question for Jim tonight at the microphone? This one's gonna be first, love the first one, thank you.

Cool.

Start with your name, which division you're doing, and then launch into it. My name's Dan. I'm not with a division. I work— I'm employed by Scott doing his social media, and I come up here at every opportunity once he gets a new franchisee. So it's great. I love the group. I love what it's all about. So my question would be, what do people perceive about you that just isn't true, Jim? Nice question. Oh, that's a good one.

Oh, that I'm really rich. I am, I am. They tried to get me to go down for the BRW Rich 250 or Rich 500. We've got sort of net assets about a quarter of a billion dollars, something like that. And I said, not even close. Jim is a very well-known company, but I'm a lot more famous than I'm rich, I assure you. Perfect. I'm still pretty well off, but still. Yep. That is the most common misconception.

Yeah. Perfect question. Thanks for that one. That's as easy as it is. I think we answer a couple of questions a week on TikTok about how much money you're making. You're very open with talking about it. So yeah, I don't know where people get that from. Guys, that's how easy it is. Ask him a question and come up and ask him anything you like. Who's next? Who's got a question?

Come up and go for it.

Ask him as much as you want. If you've got a question online, guys, leave them online.

So my name is Kaiwen. I'm from Tasmania. I got one question for Jim is, I suggest some information from your story that before your 30, you were doing academic study, research about history. And do you think, but after that you go to the mining, the stuff, like the things you've done before your 30s, do you think, especially the academic thing, do you think they can make contributions to do your business or anything after that?

Not the slightest scrap. The only thing my PhD did for me is that I had an opportunity as a part-time student job to mow lawns for a living. And that's how I started. And because I started part-time doing it as a student, by the time I came to 1982 and I had no prospect of an academic career, I was able to turn my part-time business into a full-time business, which I couldn't have done if I didn't know the business already. Now, the interesting thing about it is this, that the research that I did, my PhD was about a theory of society and history, and what I wanted to do was to develop that, and it had all sorts of implications to do with biology. So what I've now done is I've been writing books ever since, and I've also got a research foundation which is looking at the epigenetics of food restriction and looking at ways to create medications and things that can help people. And I'm currently writing a book called Birthrate Crisis about the collapsing birthrate around the world and the reasons for that in terms of dopamine and so forth. So even though my PhD had no help at all in terms of making me a living, in a sense the drive behind growing humans was always the idea that I would continue doing this research. Yeah. So it's very relevant. Yes.

Thank you.

Very good question. Thanks for that one.

Easy as that.

I'll grab that for me here.

We've got these books here. Um, I have to say they're a bit out of date. They're, they're much more, more, um, advanced versions coming up.

Yeah, but I think the, um, we've done some podcasts with you where you talk about that stuff in detail, Birth Rate Crisis. You can check it out. So yes, a lot of good information on that.

It's very interesting actually trying to work out because birth rate's dropping all over the world and people, they, they, they're trying to do things like subsidies, um, childcare bonuses and subsidized baby bonuses, subsidized childcare, all kinds of things. None of it works. So the reason, as far as I can see, that's causing the problem is there's a change of character. And it's got to do with the brain becoming insensitive to dopamine. So therefore, we're needing a bit like a low-level drug addiction. So people are less interested in things like children and family, which are less exciting, and also work. So we're looking at understanding what's happening in the world right now and also what we can do about it, how we can change things for the better. A lot of things that are going on like rising levels of deaths of despair, loneliness, drug addiction, those kinds of things too, you're going to understand in the same way. It's a way to do with our brain's function. So it's a very, it's a great field.

And that's probably a big push that you're working very hard on this sort of stuff and a lot of time goes into it.

About 90% of my actual income goes into the research, which is one reason I'm not a lot richer than I am. Because if I reinvested all my money into business, I could probably make a lot more, but it's not my aim.

And when do you reckon you're going to have the rejigged version?

Because I know you've had the test version, but we're just still working on it, and that'll be a little bit later this year sometime.

Awesome, cool. If you want to stay tuned to that, just Jim Penman social, and you'll see a lot of content about that as well. You've got a question for Jim, guys, feel free to come to the mic and ask him anything you like. Go for it.

Hi, I'm Marcus from the flooring—

Marcus from Jim's Flooring.

Cool.

Flooring division, I know, is new. I just want to know a bit more about it. Is it working in Melbourne? I know it's new to Sydney. What do you think?

Flooring? Lack of work is not a problem. It's as in every division we've got, it's always a lack of the right franchisees. I don't see any reason why it can't be taken off, particularly because skilled work of that nature, the demand is extraordinary. And we do particularly well in it because people— look, let's face it, if you get your house cleaned and it's a bit of a mess, we get good demand for cleaning. But if you do a bad job on cleaning, somebody comes in next week and does it better. If you get someone to do your floor and it doesn't turn out pretty well, that's a very big issue, isn't it? So, the issues of trust and so forth are very important. So, we actually find that divisions like roofing and floors and—

Bathrooms is a good example.

Fencing, bathrooms tend to do extremely well because of the fear factor. Because people know that we stand behind our work. And if something goes wrong with the floor that we do, then we'll come back and fix it even if it's 2 years down the track. Even if the franchise is gone, we will fix it through the warranty fund.

I mean, we think— you think the flooring will take off like lawn mowing?

Well, it might not be 2,000.

I don't think we'll have 2,000 franchisees, but the problem will be franchisees, not work. Quality, quality of franchisees, good quality franchisees, people who have that sort of ability to, to do hard manual work. And so look, it's a very lucrative division. They pay— it pays very, very well. But it's not easy to recruit people in that sort of area. It's much easier to recruit people to do things like lawn mowing and cleaning than it is to do floors. So I think it'll do well. We'll probably never have 2,000 franchisees, but I would hope one day we'll have 100.

Is that doing okay in Melbourne? Or still?

The work is fine. There's no lack of work.

Okay.

I don't think we've ever had a claim for pay for work guarantee for any of those divisions— floors, fencing, any of them, roofing. They all get plenty of demand. The problem is always franchisees, even more those divisions than most. What's your background? You, are you got a floor?

I, uh, I was franchisee for Decorag. I was business development manager for years for Carpet Court. I mean, I've been in the game for over 20 years and I stepped down, kind of taking a bit easy and I want to work for myself for a change.

Yeah. Well, you might actually find out that stepping down, it's just the first stage, but still stepping up, putting people to work for you. It's one of those divisions where it's easy to put employees on?

Possibly. I feel like I want to do it for myself for now because I've been doing the business development for years and I have that confidence.

At least you're in charge. True.

In charge of my income too. Yeah, I can generate my own kind.

That's right. And you can go to wherever you like. Look, there's a lot of franchisees. We know at least 20 franchisees turning over at least a million dollars a year, and that's just the ones we know about. We've done videos on them, and there's probably plenty more out there. So if you want to just be a one-man band, you can. But in that kind of division particularly, it's one that lends itself to a larger business if that's what interests you. It is.

You don't need a fixed site-based showroom, right? So with those other ones you mentioned, you obviously have to have a store and big overheads with that.

The last 2-3 years we heard about a few names, bare flooring and mobile ones.

Yeah, mobile ones.

I mean, it's taken over. That's why when I heard— I know the name. Yeah, very well. I thought, that's exactly what I need. I have my clientele, I have my network. Having a great name behind that will be—

the brand is, the brand is good. We did, we did a, a questionnaire some years ago in Adelaide asking about glazing companies, and we gave them 4 options. There was 2 well-established local glaziers, there was O'Brien's, which as you know is by far the biggest in the country, way bigger, and then there was Jim's Glass. And we asked people, if you had a choice of a glazier, who would you pick? And now, not surprisingly, the O'Briens did significantly better than the locals. But do you know what, by far the most popular one? Jim's Glass. And what was interesting about that, Jim's Glass didn't even exist. There was no such business. And it already had the biggest and best name in the industry. And that is the fantastic opportunity.

I think that's what more attracted me to the name. Very well positioned in the market. Everything so far you get involved in, somehow people trust it, and you can get a better price too.

Years ago, we had a guy doing garage doors for us. He had his own factory, and he would sell garage doors under his own brand for $900, so $850, and he'd sell the Jim's garage doors. So not garage doors, it's security doors.

Yeah.

For $1,000. Same door, exactly. He said for his own brand, he just could not get the same price. But by putting Jim's Garage doors on it, he can get an extra 20% for exactly the same product, with the same factory, simply because of the brand.

But carrying your name is a responsibility too, because the after-sales service, it has to do very—

that's right.

If you don't do it well, you'll hear from him.

That's right.

You'll hear from me personally if it's personal, well, he can switch his, his phone off, but not yours.

Well, I deal with complaints every day of the week. People come through to this, they want a delete request, or there's a problem with something not following. That comes to me, and I will follow up and say, okay, why didn't we do this? Let's look after this customer. No matter what happens, we look after the customer, and because of that, we can charge more. But lack of work is not going to be your issue. The real biggest problem you're likely to face is finding good workers.

There is in Sydney, there is plenty, but again, you need to search for them. They aren't— not where I'm located. I mean, if I want to get good labor, I need to always go to the western suburbs, because where I am, south to metro, it's not a lot of tradies.

Really?

I have to go out of Sydney metro, go west, further west to get tradies.

Yeah, we find the same problem in Melbourne, actually. In the inner suburb, a place like Toorak, with a lot of affluent people, a lot of clients, but not, not some people want to actually go out and do the manual work. Yeah, but you go out a bit further, western suburbs or down in Pakenham way, there's a lot more franchisees.

Will you be the first one in Sydney?

I, uh, based on, uh, Nick's information, I'll be second.

Second one?

Oh cool.

Yeah, yeah, I visited the first one already. Yeah, it's got nice showroom and, uh, yeah, nice.

Have you talked to the Melbourne guys about how they're going?

No, not yet. I'm, I'm right on with Nick on Wednesday. I'm spending the day with him. I get the phone numbers of everybody division and just ring them and ask them and what they, what they do. The one in Sydney, I spent a whole day with him, went through everything. I, I need to know, that's all.

Do your research. That's what I always say. People come to me and say, how do you make a decision? Do your research. You're going to pay a business, you know, whatever you're paying, 20, 30 grand. It's worth spending a few hours doing some research, ringing people up, ask how they're going. Is it good? You're getting good support? You're getting plenty of clients? Do they pay well? Ask the question.

That's why I'm asking you, because I ask everybody who's doing laundry for you, lawn mowing, they're happy. See, my division is not many around to ask, but when I ask my mates, he's doing lawn mowing for you, and they're very happy. That's why I'm here. Recommendation. He said it's a great system, great man to work for, and here I am.

Yeah, great, great icon, me. Thank you. Very funny being a, being a, um, you know, a nationally known meme.

Yeah, I know there's a few memes going around for sure. Yeah, I think the Liberal Party did one the other day with like Jacinta's not mowing or something, it's the colors, and I've done a whole thing with this. I'll show you afterwards, but yeah, it's definitely, there's definitely a few going around. We've got a few comments online as well, Jim, actually, which I'll get to before we get to the next question from someone. So have a think about your question, guys, before coming up. Andrew's gone here. Hey Jim, do you travel down to Tassie much to say hey to the team?

I hate travel. I really dislike travel and I really dislike planes. I've been to Tassie quite a few times actually. Who's up here from Tassie today? Weren't there somebody I spoke to? Yeah, I love Tasmania, I really do. If I had a choice of anywhere to live in Australia based on location, I reckon East Coast Tassie would be fantastic. Where are you guys from?

Hobart.

Yeah, beautiful, beautiful town, love it. So we used to go over there on the ferry because I don't have to fly, and then just drive down the coast and stuff. It's really beautiful, beautiful state. But yeah, My business is Melbourne, so I'm stuck here.

Yeah, awesome. You'll do a Zoom or anything, you'll Zoom in and do the Zoom stuff that won't travel there as well. So everyone should jump in. Got a question, guys, feel free to jump up on the mic there, please. That was a great one. Yeah, just come up, go for it. Plenty of prizes to give away tonight. So as many questions as we can would be great.

Yeah, Jim. Yeah, Jared. I'm starting a Melbourne division in Toowoomba. Probably a bit of a general one. I know you contact the new franchisees after the first month.

Is there like a general consensus that you go, oh gee, I wish I bought a bigger trailer, or I wish I bought a bigger van, or like, is there a general thing that you see?

It's a nice original question. Never had that.

That's, that's a, that's an original question. Um, well, no, you know, there's one, there's one wish that I get more than anything else by far. By far the one thing people say, I wish I'd done this years ago. I heard that so many times. I wish I'd done this 10 years ago. I wish I'd done this 20 years ago. I hear that so often. They've— some of these people are inquired, they might have come in a decade ago and didn't go here, but they did something else, and they come in and they're doing it and it's so fantastic and they're loving it. And I wish I'd done this. Yeah, that is the commonest thing of all. As far as new vehicle, nothing really. I very rarely get any Mistakes, um, you usually get pretty good guidance from your franchisor. Yeah. Who is your franchisor? Who's that? Oh, Dan Cale. Oh yeah, he's a, he's a great one. Yeah, you know, his story is fantastic. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Guy starts with nothing and he's now running the whole of mowing in, in Australia and also hopefully in New Zealand very shortly. Yeah, just an amazing guy. Yeah, just shows you, you know, high school dropout.

Yeah, no, that's great.

Thank you.

Yeah, nice question. Never had one before. Interviewed one of your 30-day people today, just a guy called Justin Fowle, was a sparky and he just quit that to be a Jim's Pool Care franchisee.

Yeah.

And he's very, very happy, which is good, 3 months in. So good to hear. So if you do get sent the 30-day emails, hopefully everyone replies to them and tells you how well they're doing.

Well, you're going to reply back to it after 1 month, aren't you? You tell me how you're going. I love those letters actually, I really do. It keeps me in post-it. I can look at you and see, I give a bit of boost when I— somebody says they're having a fantastic time and it's going well, which is usually the answer. And I'll write back and I'll congratulate you on the, you know, the great ratings and so forth. And occasionally somebody writes back and says, hey, not going so well. And then I start going into what can you do. Here's some cross-division goals from other divisions. This is some videos you should look at. Here's some pay-for-work guarantee stuff. Look at social media. I go through a whole lot of stuff to help people with that, and sometimes that can be really, really good. So I love those 1-month letters.

Awesome. Got a question, guys? I think so. Yeah, go for it. Ask anything you like. Got a few more online which we'll get to as well.

Hugh McGillivray from South Australia, Barossa, just purchased a Jim's Pool Care business. Probably not original, but it's, and it's probably something I could have done research for, but I'm just curious to know what sits between us or the structure of how it sits between us and you guys. So with obviously divisions and then franchisors and then down to franchisees. And I wasn't aware of this, but I think when you go sell your franchise business, funds are distributed back up the chain or a situation on that, which I wasn't aware of. It's not a criticism. Everyone's got to make money along the chain, but do you think you can fill in some more about that? And it's obviously come with growth and been able to service franchisees. I'm here, so I'd like to hear from you.

You have your franchisees, it's the core of the system. Franchisees are supported by a franchisor. That's the person you'll speak to regularly, who's going to ring you, hopefully weekly, at least monthly, run meetings, sells the franchises. It's the main person that you will know. Then you have a divisional structure. Where there's a divisional franchisee who looks after the entire division, like Dan looks after mowing. And then you have national office. So it depends on the actual role. If you're talking about something specific to do with the division, like the, the design of your, your logos and trailers, or the introductory information, or the training, that's all the divisional thing. Because fundamentally there's 50 different divisions, and I don't know much about most of them. But we as national are concerned with things like service and support, the kind of stuff I was talking about this morning. So, service to clients, service to franchisees by franchisors, and just the overall, mostly just the ethics of the system, you might say. And things like contracts and automation and those kinds of areas. So it's kind of a division of responsibility. But the most important person to you as a franchisor, if you sell your business or you do a split, which is even nicer because then you keep your business and get more money, most of the money will go to you. A certain portion will go to the franchisor, and then a small amount of that will come back to national and divisional. It's quite how it works.

Okay, and that's all in the contract in the very fine print that I probably missed somewhere, is it?

Well, that fine print, things in the book here, even seen these books, right? I know it's in the book that you got. It's in the franchising manual, is only about 15 pages long. It's a very— the generic manual, which I basically wrote, there used to be like 100 and something pages and nobody lived in it, so I know it's about 15 pages long. You can read it honestly, even if you're a normal reader, you can read it in half an hour. It's really simple and explains every step of the way. So I pick up the manual and have a look at it.

Sure.

It's actually a lot easier to understand than the so-called disclosure document, which is just a nightmare of government twaddle. Even lawyers struggle to understand that. But the manual itself is a really good guide as to what it— you can even read through the contract, it's not that hard to understand. If you have any questions about contracts, I'm a good person to speak to about it because I basically wrote them all anyway, so with the help of lawyers. So I can— I often give franchisees guidance. Like, I had a talk today about— with a franchisee, an email, who was, um, he's got a decent business but he's got another business that he wants to focus on and he wants to, uh, he wants to sell. So I was explaining how the whole works. And I say, if a prospective franchisee comes up anywhere near his area, the franchisor is obliged to tell him by contract about that. And that's how it works. And if he doesn't tell them and a sale is made by, say, a new sale instead, then, then you can contact me and I'll get the money for him. So that's the kind of example of the thing I can do. I'll show him what his legal rights are under the contract and system and what the manual makes people to do. So if he does want— so I suggested he was talking about possibly walking away, and I said, you really should try and— but I'll try and get your franchisor to drop your advertising fee down a bit, which we can do if he doesn't take leads.

And then when you, when you go to set up to marketplace, where you start selling, you know, 1 or 20 clients or something like that, I presume that will work on the same sort of structure as well where, you know, 20 people go that way for $40 grand or $20 grand, whatever, and then it would still tier that same direction? Or would that be more of a free-flowing open marketplace, do you think?

What we, what we want to do is to have a situation, which we will with, with, um, Jimbo fairly shortly, within the next month I think, where you can put clients on the market. So the idea is once you've developed a particular run like yours could be over half of Adelaide, and you might find that, for example, there's areas that are towards, say, Elizabeth or something like that where you don't particularly want to go there because you've got plenty of quotes close to home. So what you can do is put those on the market and say, here's some jobs, here's the price I want for them. Now, if a new franchisee comes into that area, the franchisor can then come and say, okay, I'd like to buy these clients off you to give the new guy a better start.

Yeah, sure.

And then he just pays you. Most, most of the proceeds. That's kind of how it's going to work, we hope.

Yeah, and Adelaide's more spread out. I'm sure it's going to, you know, Queensland and Sydney and stuff, it's going to be pretty big because movement shifts around as people get so busy, right?

But travel is a very big thing. If you can actually reduce your travel, if you can get multiple jobs in the same street, for example, or just around the corner, it's a lot better than traveling, you know, 15 minutes between jobs.

No, 100%. And I just spoke to the pool guys, and, you know, Paul, who's here, is a 3-kilometer radius, and I've got a 30-kilometer radius. So, yes, travel is a thing.

And when you start off, you need to travel a big area to get the jobs. Yeah. But the idea with time is you want to get closer and closer to home. Because I know I used to mow lawns where I did 3 lawns next door to each other. I had some jobs like that, and they were fantastic. Yeah. Because you just— you don't even stop the mower, it doesn't stop the brush cutter, just do the whole thing, 3 jobs. Hour and a half I'm out of there and that's very good money.

But somehow I've gotta get Jims to service everyone there and I think there's 12,000 homes getting built in my region at the same time.

So yeah.

It's a good area to have.

It's a good area to have.

Yeah. Thank you. Appreciate it. Barossa is very nice actually.

Beautiful area. Yeah.

And you can drive there.

I think the fee structure stuff, we could do an illustration or something with it maybe to make it a bit clearer. I have to think about that cuz it can be quite confusing to the outside sometimes. The, the fee structure and regional franchisors and divisionals and things like that. So you might have to work on that.

Yeah, it's mostly, mostly just talk to your franchisor. That's, that's what generally— there may be situations where, um, you need to get involved with national for various reasons to do with customer service complaints, those kinds of areas, or contractual issues and things. People often ask my advice. I often get asked for by franchisees about things, and I say, well, you know, It's not my area. It's your franchisors you've got to talk to about that.

And his franchisor, James, won the National Franchisor of the Year for his division, James Lannay, which is good.

Oh, really?

Very good guy, James. So you've got a good one there.

Cool.

Got a few comments and questions online, guys, but if you want to question and ask Jim, please do so. We've got heaps of prizes to give away here. You've got plenty of time. So if you've got a question for Jim, feel free to come up to the mic. Michael has gone online. I have my own cleaning business earning around $30K a month. If I went to Jim's, what would be the advantages?

He's got an independent cleaning business.

Yeah, that's what he said. Yep. $30K a month, he's saying, revenue.

Well, he's making $360,000 a year. If you're that capable as an independent, you could probably be making $1 million a year. That would be the, the major thing I would say, because somebody who does that as an independent is quite exceptional. But the mere fact of the matter is, this is, this is a commonplace thing too. You have, um By being in gyms, you can charge more. That's one of the key advantages. There was a forum once, there was some discussion going, and there was a guy who came from, he was going into a regional area where he was the first franchisee, he was a mowing guy. And he went onto the forum and he asked, how do I know what to charge? And a couple of the guys answered, and they had been in the same situation. And they said, you find out what the opposition is charging, the going rate, add 10%. That's the Jim's premium. So that's the great benefit from this guy's point of view, that if he's making $360,000, even if he can just increase his prices by 10%, that will way, way, way pay for more than the fees that he pays and we get extra leads as well.

Well, hopefully he inquires. That'd be good to have him on board if he wants to do that. He'd be very capable. It'd be a great story. Absolutely, it'd be an awesome story as well. Another guy on here, Joel Ryan, is going, "Hey Jim, thanks for the phone call last week for my 10 years in gyms." He said he appreciates it. So, you want to tell everyone about your anniversary calls here and what you're doing?

Yeah, every month I sit down and I ring my 10, 20, 30-year veterans and have some great talks actually. I ask them how they're going. They're all going pretty good, obviously they wouldn't be lasting that long if they weren't. But then I ask what they were doing in the past and what they thought about that. And very frequently I pass to these guys because You've got some fantastic stories. People just tell me things about how it's changed their life, and you know, they're so ahead financially, and they've seen their kids growing up, and it's just been amazing. Somebody gets some wonderful, wonderful stories from them, don't we?

We absolutely do. Yeah, it's good to meet him in the field as well and catch up with him and hear what's done for him too, which has been really good. We've actually got a 30-year— I think Stephen Dobbs, I think he's one of your third or fourth oldest franchisees we interviewed out in the field. We're gonna have to give him a new patch for 35 years soon, so 35 years.

Wow.

He missed your call though. He didn't take your call and didn't call it back. He was telling me after 30 years, but nice fella. Done pretty well for himself. Guys, if you've got a question for Jim, feel free to come up and ask him on the microphone as well. Anything you've got on your mind. Got a few more online.

Yeah.

We'd love to give priority here. Charles, can you hide that shopping? I can't see the comments. Hey guys.

Jackson from Jim Penman Diggers Rest.

I've got 3 little ones at home, the youngest being 9 weeks.

What's your best advice at staying present at home while building your business?

It's actually not that hard because, because you're, you're running a business where you're working from home with totally flexible hours. It's the best. I was speaking to some people at dinner time about the same sort of thing too. Somebody who just had a 2-year-old— who was that I was just talking to at dinner? I said it's the best thing you can possibly do because your kids will be able to understand what you're doing, and they'll grow up with that, and you'll be, you'll be a present dad in a way most people can't be. You should be able and look, I think it's great to make good money and it's wonderful when we hear stories about people becoming millionaires and stuff. We call ourselves a millionaire factory, probably created more millionaires than anyone else in the country. But the biggest single benefit of having a business like this is that you can make decent money while still have time for your family. And I personally believe no other success can compensate for failure in the home. In fact, that's the title of the book for that exact reason, that you can do both. You can be a great father, great husband, and still make a decent living because you can earn a good hourly rate without working ridiculous hours and without long commuting travel.

I think that's why we all probably do it. It's probably just the first like 6 months taking on as much work as you can at first and everything like that. As I said, 9-week-old, I'm like, how am I going to find time for everything?

But yeah. You're right though, that's the aim of it. But as you get better and as you get more skilled and as you compact your business and travel less and learn the tricks of the trade, your hourly rate can simply rise dramatically. So you might be able to make a really, really decent living working 40 hours a week, and down the track a bit, you might want to work 35 hours a week and make the same money. That's the great challenge. The key is to come to meetings, to come to meetings regularly and keep on learning and growing. Like I was talking about this morning, where you pick up little tricks of the trade from the people who are experienced. And you know, you're making $70 an hour, somebody else is making $90 an hour. How are they doing it? What are they doing different to you? Yeah, so then you can work less and be home with the family. Yeah, and once you get busy too, this is the biggest mistake that people often make, is they set up a sort of price in concrete and they don't change it. And in fact, what you should do is you should get yourself busy. In that case, you've got to charge whatever the market will bear at that stage. Then when you get busy, which you will be, pretty much everybody is after a few months, then you can look at it and say, okay, well now I'm making, as I said, $70 an hour, I want to make $80, so what do I do? So one of the most obvious things is you take jobs and put the price up. And then you go to existing customers, you go get customers and put those prices up. And then you charge more for extras and stuff. Gradually lift how much you charge. So you can, you can get to the stage where your income is steadily rising, or if you prefer, stays the same and your hours just go down and down. Then you can see your kids growing up. Yeah, perfect. So you got, you got 3 kids, you said? 3 kids, yeah.

Youngest being 9 weeks today, and a 3-year-old and a 6-year-old.

Good man. Yeah, I'm glad to see a fellow breeder. Yeah, not as many as you, but I'm catching, I'm catching you. You intend to have more?

What's that?

You reckon you have more? Ah, no, that's it. 3 is still pretty good actually for this day and age if you have more than 2. My oldest son's just had his 3rd and they're going for a 4th sometime later on this year. So, but that's pretty unusual this day and age. I congratulate you. Thank you.

There you go. Got a question, guys, before you come up to the microphone. Got one online here, Jim, which I'm going to read out from Cathy, who's a new franchisee in NZ. Cath's gone Been with Jim's Clean for 3 months here in NZ. As first-time business owners, we need support, especially with proper quoting. Other franchisees mentioned previous trainings. Can you please advise if there are ongoing trainings planned this year and the schedule for new franchisees? That's from Kath, an existing franchisee in NZ.

Ongoing training?

Yeah, yeah, for NZ.

We don't have anything specific for—

It would just be the regional meetings, wouldn't it?

Just the regional meetings. Yeah, that's the ongoing training. Look, we would love to get every franchisee back every year to go through thorough retraining, but and learn more skills and stuff, but in reality we just can't get you to come.

But for Kath, Kath should definitely reach out to the franchisor who is supporting her and ask her for more support in that and get on with the franchisees, I guess.

There's always ways to learn more.

Well, quoting's the main problem a lot of new franchisees will have is just knowing what to quote. And they have WhatsApp groups and all that sort of stuff and they'll communicate in that, so.

Yeah. Look, the secret of business success is constant improvement. You look at what you're doing all the time and saying, how can I do it better? It's not so much about how much money you start off with, how much education, even how good-looking you are or anything. It's a case of having that attitude that says, "I'm going to keep on improving." And that's what I did. You know, I started off as an impoverished, broke lawnmower with $30,000 in debt. Really bad situation. Knew nothing about business. I just knew how to cut a lawn pretty well from my part-time job. And I just asked myself the question all the time, "How can I improve? How can I do it better?" and you learn. I still read probably, or listen to a couple of books a week on average. I, I just always learning, always talking to people, always finding out stuff. And this is a great environment for learning. This video, there's amazing videos we've got. There are— you never could listen to all the videos we've done, could you? There'd be thousands of hours.

No, you couldn't, definitely not. But, um, I reckon, Kath, you should definitely check out the, um, the cleaning content as well, but also get in touch with franchisees because quoting is obviously a new thing when people start, they always have trouble with. So WhatsApp groups and stuff are really good.

Sometime in the past we've actually had sessions for people who want to build major businesses. I'm sure we can do another one this year if we could sometime. So you have people coming along to speak about how they've done it, how you put multiple workers on, that kind of thing too.

Yeah, it's online still, so it's a good one. But we got Michael, Michael McLeod's got any advice on franchisees then wanting to put an employee on board? Any advice about putting an employee on board?

Be persistent, right? That's the biggest thing I would say. People get very discouraged because they try somebody and they don't work out very well, and that's that's just normal. You do not expect to find a great person first time, but if you keep on trying, people you'll find good. And often, often look in an orthodox way. Some of the franchisees have had very good success with autistic, um, people, neurodivergent people. Yeah, neurodivergent people. Yeah, in that kind of thing too. Um, it's just different people. I know my daughter who runs, um, Jim's Removals and Storage, and they're having an issue. They're going through quite a few people trying to find— they do eventually find some good people. But I would talk about that the other day, and I said, well, you know, she said she approached by one guy who was too old, he was in his 50s. And I said, well, you know, don't be too quick to, to make judgments. There are people in that age who are very, very fit. Now I'm 73, and my fun job is gardening. That's why my hands are full of blisters and stuff because they've been doing gardening the whole weekend. Sometimes you can be older and a bit fit, so you just gotta not be predispositioned and just look at different people, different backgrounds.

I think Michael's in mowing, so ask other franchisees. They might have an excess of work or work with not enough work. So ask other franchisees what they do. That's generally easiest way to shortcut it as well. But we've got any question for Jim's guy, feel free to come up and ask him on the microphone. We've got heaps of prizes here as well. Anything you'd like to ask, we had a lot of questions online, which is great, so we'll get through some of them as well.

Hi, I want to ask what are the most common mistakes made by new franchisees?

Good question.

Yeah, it's a good question. Um, mostly it's got to do with, um, not doing paperwork guarantee properly. I, I get that in the questions that come back, the responses that come back from my, um from my one-month letter. And the very common response is, I not got enough work, you know, but my franchisor hasn't spoken to me about pay-for-work guarantee, because I mentioned it in the letter. And I said, the mistake that you made is you should have started from the first week. If you've got a $1,500 per week guarantee, you ought to have a task in your mind that I'm gonna make $1,500 every week. If I haven't got enough work, well, you've got 40 hours to spend on your business, so do something to get freebies. And there's lots of things you can do, and you can ask me and I'll help you franchise from other divisions. You know, there's personal contacts, there's social media, there's local Facebook, you can do this kind of stuff too. That's probably the single biggest mistake that I see, is people hesitating. 'Cause the trouble is, by the time they come to me at 4 weeks, they've already suffered a bit of financial problems. And the thing is that they start from the beginning with pay-for-work guarantee. That is the issue that I mostly come across. Pay-for-work guarantee, it's a very good system, but you've got to do it. Don't wait for your franchisor to start reminding you. They should, but you've got to get out there and do it. And there's some wonderful videos on it if you go into the video section. Sections, the video, and you look at— there's a, there's a section called PF, people with guarantee. Go in there and look at some of the videos and how it's done. Contact me directly. You can talk to Joel. I mean, we will help you. Everybody will help you to do that. That's the thing that frustrates me the most. I've had franchisees who failed for lack of work because they didn't do this. And I would say to anybody, for heaven's sake, if you have that kind of attitude, don't buy a franchise. Because you need to do it. It's not that difficult if you do it the right way. And once you start offering freebies, the, the cash flow will come. It builds quite fast. But if you sit there and say, oh, it's not working, not enough leads— no, pay for work guarantee. Take, take your initiative, do it yourself. And I get people who do this and they start from the beginning and they, they're doing it and they're offering freebies and then they're getting referrals and upsells from them and they're And, and after 4 weeks they say, like, I don't really need it anymore. And I say, fantastic, well done. So, so what you will do that— what division are you in? Uh, I'm in Cairns, Queensland. In, in division? What division?

Which franchise?

Which, which division?

Which service? Cleaning. Cleaning.

Yeah, it's a good one for that.

I think we need a lot more people up in North—

anybody from any other division in that area, offer them a free clean. 'Cause you can do that for Pay for Work Guarantee. Now, who doesn't want their house cleaned for nothing? I mean, come on. But the great thing about it is you make contact with all the local franchisees. You can go to the meetings and stuff. I'm sure they won't mind you coming into a meeting and talk to them and offer your services and get to know. And then you start pushing jobs back and forth. We have 50 divisions, that's really opportunity to do that. Pay for Work Guarantee is a wonderful system. You want, you will succeed. You give decent customer service and you do pay-for-work guarantee properly, you will succeed. You will not fail for lack of work, for sure. Great, great question. Thank you.

There's a franchisee called Umesh. I think he's got 25 staff, 25 people on his staff. There's a cleaning franchisee up there, Jim. So there's a lot of good franchisee businesses up there as well to sort of leverage off and learn from.

One of the things we really want to do actually more of this year is to try and organize cross-divisional meetings. We want to offer a, um, even we'll even pay for a meal, kind of like $20 for everybody who attends to go to a meeting. So places like Cairns is a perfect example of that. It shouldn't just—

$20 is a bit low, you need inflation, you need to up it a bit. $35, $40, it's a bit low, $20 for a meal.

Now you get a pretty decent pizza for that.

No, no, no, you need to up it a bit. You have to have a bit more for that. That'd be like $30 or something. Whatever, don't worry.

We are, we are encouraging that to happen. We would like people to get together to get some people from other divisions. We've actually had a system, there's some software around that you can have a local group of people from different divisions who meet together. And the trouble is they never, never last. And you know why? Because once they start to talk to each other and make, they give each other so many leads and so much work that they quickly don't need the group anymore. We have one just around here, we used to meet in Moorbark at the McDonald's.

Did not last.

They all got so busy. So having so many divisions is a big, big plus. You get to know your other people, particularly in regional areas, but also anywhere at all.

Well, I think the Queensland Hazmat guys organized a get-together for all the other Jims up there, like the mowing guys and cleaning stuff. They got through a big barbecue and networked at that. So yeah, it happens a little bit sometimes.

Yeah. Bookkeepers. Who's the bookkeeper I was speaking to at lunch— at dinner time? Yeah, that's something definitely you should do. We will fund you, we'll help you, we'll provide some funding. You organize a local— whereabouts are you based? I'm in Sydney. In Sydney, which part? Strathfield. Strathfield, okay. You organize a local meeting for all the franchisees. We will put some— he reckons $25 might be necessary.

It's a little bit more.

I'll have a look at that. We will even pay for a meal and you get people together and you build a network and you be the conda. And that's good for divisions like for bookkeeping, IT to some extent, also life coaching, those kinds of issues that deal with other franchisees. They're really good for that.

So there are franchisees I know as well have Facebook groups together, and when someone else mentions they need another service, they'll refer them and they'll put it into like a chat and stuff, and that's very effective too.

So referring each other is good because you can help people find work and they help you to find work. That's why I have only tell you all of my clients, you know, Good on you. Absolutely.

Good, good stuff. You've got a question, guys, feel free to come up and ask Jim. Keep surprising. We want to give away. All you need to do is ask a question. Got a heap online too, Jim, which is really good. Next one, go for it. I'll get to this one online in a minute though. There's a lot coming through, which is great. Brad, South Australia just started the test and tag side of it. Um, what was the mindset change or the drive that took you from how many lawns can I mow on this street to becoming a household name in Australia?

There was no one thing. It was just asking myself the question every day, how can I do it better? It's not one big decision, it's thousands of little decisions. When I was mowing a lawn, I was thinking of things like how can I empty my grass catcher Easiest way, if I can save myself one pace in emptying the catcher, if I can save myself 5 seconds mowing around a tree, if I can save myself time traveling between jobs. And then when you've got that, you know, get other workers to— how do you employ people better? How do you find people better? How do you look after them better? And then you just go from piece to piece. It's never like that. It's always just that, that, that, that, that very slight. Even when I started the franchise, it was I didn't expect it to be so successful. I thought somebody asked me at the beginning, and I said, maybe they asked, how many would you think you might have one day? And I said, maybe if it goes well, I could have as many as 100. I did not expect it, but at every stage you simply focus, as I do today. And we never have number aims. I mean, we'll probably hit 6,000 sometime late this year or next year, and that'd be great, but it's not really that. I would actually more focus on, on things like, um, attrition rates and proportion of franchises reporting good income, that kind of stuff too, and customer service indications and those sorts of things. So it's always just every day, and I still do that every day, I'm thinking, how can we improve? So just continuous refinement, pretty much. Yeah, it's like the Japanese kaizen. And if you go into business like that, it's just striking. You know, you're making $60 an hour and then you're making $70 an hour, then you're making $120 an hour, then you're making $500 an hour and you don't really, you just look back on your career and you think, well, what did I change? Not really, just the same attitude all the way through. And people do that and it's just quite astonishing. You look at a guy like Dan Cahill and what he did and it wasn't one thing, it was a whole stack of them. Great thing about Dan is he was a successful franchisee. But he was not only making good money, he was turning over close to $1 million a year. But the thing is, he had a 5.0 rating. When I looked at that, and then he put up his hand and said, I'd like to buy into Brisbane, which he didn't have enough money for, we actually had to sort of help him in. I thought, great operator, he's got that kind of mindset. Now he's running the whole division and doing an amazing job. Cleaning's been catching up to mowing actually, but he's determined to maintain the lead. And so far he's doing a good job.

Thanks for that question, appreciate it. If you've got a question for Jim, guys, feel free to come up and ask. I've got one here online, Jim, which I think is really relevant to everyone here. Ruben's gone, a lot of my friends and family are doubting this path and telling me I should go out and get a real job instead. What's your best advice for staying confident and tuned out from that noise while I'm building my business?

I reckon being in business for yourself is the best thing ever. It's just So many advantages. There are flexibility, total power and freedom. Now in gyms you have to look after customers properly, but why wouldn't you? You're running a business, why would you not look after your customers pretty well? But you've got total flexibility, no upper limit whatsoever. You know, my father wasn't impressed with me, you know that? How many people have been a disappointment to their father? Okay, I was a very big— my father was an engineer. As far as he was concerned, our job was to go out and become an engineer, a doctor, or a lawyer. And then I went and became a— did an arts degree in history, and my father was not impressed at all. He said, okay, well, at least you can be an academic and go to Oxford and get this sort of degrees. And then I quit actually being an academic, and I went out and started pushing a lawnmower in a lawn mowing business. Now you can imagine what my father thought. Here's his son He goes from sort of heading off to be a doctor or an engineer or lawyer, and then he goes to being an arts degree, and now he's a lawnmowing contractor. Towards the end of his life, when I had about 1,000 franchisees, I actually said to him once, Dad, it wasn't such a bad career choice, was it? And he said, guess not.

Did anyone have a detractor trying to talk him out of doing the business or anything? Or anyone here? Now, quite often when I do the interviews, you're— it's always the accountant. Well, it's always someone who have no idea about the system. They go, they lump us in with, you know, take 30% or this and that. So it's always someone sometimes who tries to—

there isn't— there is an amazing prejudice in this country against manual work, and that is really striking, and it's stupid. You know, we put a job in for an entry-level sort of bookkeeping job in an office paying like 50, 60 grand a year You get 100 applicants, half of them with degrees. Absolutely insane, the demand for white-collar jobs is this. You can go out and you can do cleaning or gardening and you make yourself equivalent of a 6-figure income. This is not being exceptional, just being normal with no limit to the growth, total flexibility. To me, it's a stupid prejudice, this thing about to have a good job you gotta be sitting in front of a computer. A lot of our franchisees come from really good corporate backgrounds. You'd be quite amazed. We've got one guy who was a doctor, we've had several lawyers, we've had all kinds of people, high-level corporate positions, and they come out and they do this. And typically they make at least as good money in this kind of job as they did in the past, with a much better lifestyle. That's the normal story. So it's just a stupid prejudice people have against doing things with your hands, that somehow because you work manually you're less. I, I think one of the most fortunate things about my whole life is that I enjoy gardening so much. That's why I still do it. And I just love doing it as a student job. It was a great job. It was great mentally for me. And because I— you go into a business where there's not a lot of competition. You want to become an AI expert or something, that's tremendously difficult to do because everybody is doing it. If you go into services, a lot of your competitors aren't that good. And particularly if you come in a system like ours, which teaches you how to do things well, it's not difficult to shine and become Incredible. Absolutely.

Got a question for Jim, guys? Feel free to come and ask him. We've got some time for some more. Yep, come up and ask him. Go for it. Don't put your hand up, guys. Just come up and ask him anything you like. I want to get rid of these prizes. You got a few more online, so which we'll try and get to in a minute.

Hi, uh, good evening, Jim and my friends. Um, my name is Shane, and it is, uh, recently coined by my franchiser to pronounce it easily for English people. I'm from Brisbane and I am into lawn mowing— sorry, laundry franchise. Yeah, just I would like to know, I mean, it is a new, newly, I mean, came up franchise.

Yeah. Do you know more about the Jim's Laundry division? Jim's Laundry? Yeah.

Yeah.

So what about Jim's Laundry, Jim?

What are you about laundry? Successful. It's growing very fast. It's the fastest-growing division we've ever had since mowing, right back in 1989. We had 120 franchises within 3 years, so it's done very well. Um, it's, um, mostly domestic. Yeah, if you want commercial work, you're going to have to hunt for it. You have to knock on a few doors. That's one particular area you shouldn't have to for domestic, but if you want commercial work, which often involves supplying the, the, the sheep or whatever part of the deal. That's often how they work. You do actually have to appear to actually do a bit of marketing yourself. You can use Facebook— sorry, LinkedIn— to try and find people who are decision makers in that kind of thing. But generally speaking, look, it's a good division. Most people who do it make decent money. Takes a little bit of effort to build a good client base. It suits people who've got flexible hours. Couples working from home, for example, the wife may be at home with kids and stuff, and she can do the washing and help with those kinds of things too. So yeah, it's a good division. Thank you.

Was that your question? Was that— I sort of interrupted you. Was that your question? Uh, yeah, yeah, it was about laundry. So Bill, Bill's a good team. They've got a lot of—

Bill is a great guy. Bill is one of the most capable people in Jim's group. He's really terrific.

He's the one who's the franchise. Oh, you're with Ming?

You're Ming? Yeah, that's right. She's right.

There are two 2 franchisors in Brisbane, or only one?

So Ming, I think Ming's in Brisbane. And yeah, Bill's the divisional franchisor, so Bill runs the division, and Ming's obviously the regional up in Queensland.

Laundry was Bill's idea. He's a cleaning franchisor, in fact one of the biggest cleaning franchises. So he came up with the whole notion of laundry. Okay, so he spread it. But, but Ming is the local franchisor. She's—

yeah, she's a good lady.

I have got mistaken. I think I'm—

I think he's watching now too.

All right, sorry, Ming.

You'll be fine. No worries. You got a question for Jim, guys? Feel free to come and ask him. We got some little bit of time here. Anyone got a question for Jim? Go for the microphone just so I can hear you.

When I did, because I have a friend have very similar situation, I really want to share that too.

Their parents try to talk them out of it, are they?

Yeah, kind of like just say like you need to apply a job and like you shouldn't focus on this, this doesn't help. Just like only job is safe, anything else is dangerous.

The other way around now with AI, so the job's probably the worst place to be in the office.

Like now the job market is not really friendly for entry-level people, like when we just graduate or like, oh, by the way, what's your suggestion for young people just graduate?

Good question.

I would think look at trades, look at service industry. I, to me, it's just incredibly fortunate. I look at people that I've known who've gone through the thing, like my best friend at school became a teacher. And he actually became very, very successful, he became a principal quite young, about in his 40s, and then became a sort of a bureaucrat within the education department. But fundamentally he's worked his whole life within this system and he's now retired, because nobody's going to— he's like my age, he's 73, so he's out of it. What I've got is a fantastically better situation. And this is a very smart man, very enterprising and everything else, but because he worked within that organization, there's a limit to what he could do. There's no limit to what I can do. And I'm just getting started, really, honestly. We're still trying new ideas and new divisions and new technology and stuff. So to me, having your own business, and where you start isn't so much important, it's what you do with where you start. We had one of my first franchisees, a guy called Andrew McIntosh. He was actually, he bought a lawnmower from what I was telling them and then when he became, I'd launched a franchise, I invited him to come in, offered him a franchise and he became our first trainer. Now he left us after a few years, he did a few things, he started the fencing division, became a franchisor. He's now a multimillionaire property developer. He owns several nurseries. He's made a really brilliant business for himself. He started out pushing a lawnmower around but had the sense to build on that. Now you've got the same opportunity. There's no upper limit. You're going to work for somebody else. Someone is going to tell you, you can go so far and no further. If you're in business for yourself, nobody can tell you that. Now, where you might end up, you're a young guy, where you end up in 20 years, I have no idea.

I agree, thank you.

But there's totally, there's no limit to what you can do, is there? There's no upper limit. There's nobody going to tell you, you can only get so big. You can only make so much income. Nobody's going to tell you. I find the idea of being employed absolutely terrifying. And I see films about people who are stuck and they've got some corporate job and they're so dependent on their boss. You know this kind of film? That it probably doesn't affect you the same way, but it absolutely freaks me out and I think, my goodness, I would hate to be trying to impress somebody that I'm good enough to get promoted. And then I'd be in fear of being laid off. There's a bit of a recession or something is going wrong and the company's restructured and I am let go. How frightening is that? You can't let me go. I own the company. Okay, that's a much better position to be in, isn't it? Don't you reckon? Yes, I have absolute job security. There's nobody can fire me apart from myself, and I don't intend to fire myself. Okay, so to me, that is, that is streets ahead. I love being in business. My wife's the same, actually. We're fanatics. We always talk business all the time, but she loves it. She loves the entrepreneur. It's the most exciting, thrilling thing there is. It's just so interesting. The hardest thing I find is taking time off. I find it really hard during Christmas and New Year because I can't work because there's nothing going on.

Are your kids also doing business?

Let me have a think. My daughter does stims removals. She's like 22 years old. She's a really dynamic entrepreneur type. She's doing very well. She started with her partner. I've got another daughter who is, she's sort of a consultant in social media stuff. So she's got her own business in a sense. She was involved with the film festival, she was running that and stuff. She's just got these, she's suddenly employed people in her own business doing that way. So two of my kids are very entrepreneurial. The other's doing okay. I've got a psychiatrist and one's a programmer who works for Google, but those are the two entrepreneurs.

Uh, do you— when they start their business, do you try to support them in which way, or they just do anything by themselves?

Um, Jasmine, she does it by herself. My daughter Sylvia, I actually went into partnership with them because I believe it's going to make a lot of money. So, okay, I'm a partner in their business. That's more like a— but I got confident they'll make a fortune, so I did invest a bit and put a bit of time and effort into it. But, uh, you know, who knows? But I would hope one of my kids would be running Jim's group one day. That's, that's a— but I've got 10 kids, so there's a reasonable chance. Yeah, 6 grandchildren maybe, who knows?

Yeah, okay.

But having your own business is fun. I really reckon there's nothing like it. I, I look at people who work for somebody else and it's just— to me it's depressing because no matter what you do, you're so insecure. You can be let go at the drop of a hat like that. You've got no control. Happens all the time. You've got what you think is a great job, and then your job is taken over by AI, or companies bought out. You can lose everything so quickly, and there's nothing you can do, especially nowadays. Yeah, it's very insecure. You know what I reckon is the number one job that's most secure in Australia? It's what we do. It's services. Because most white-collar jobs are really under threat in all kinds of ways: accountants, lawyers, all kinds of things. They're really becoming very, very problematic. But to do the kind of thing that we do, unless you get a complete robot that's equivalent to a human being, it's unimaginable that the kind of things we do would be out of date. There's always going to be plumbers, electricians, gardeners. You just can't do without it.

What about Jason's poolkeeper?

Well, you automate things better and better, don't you? But you've still got to deal with the person concerned, and that's the point too. This is the thing about— you've got your own business now, you've got somebody who wants some bookkeeping done, they can get a program to do it, but if they want somebody to help them with it, you still go— you know, you can use the software, you can teach them how to do it, but you've got to be the liaison, the support person. If that's the hardest thing to automate Doing a job that's basically based on a computer or whatever, you can get AI to do it, you can get something to do it, but actually it's the connection with people. Like, you can get robot lawn mowers, there are things that you can say— we had one running on the grounds here and it goes and charges itself and it goes and runs around and stuff, but somebody's got to put it there, somebody's got to maintain it, they've got to change the blades, they've got to do the edges, they go do the gardening. You've got to connect with the client. The robot can't do that. It's just a little dumb machine that tunnels around cutting grass.

Pool robots did the same thing. Pool robots for the pool care guys.

Yeah, that's right.

Made them more work, more money.

Yeah, like what you said before, he can host the event, but robot cannot host the event.

Yeah. We actually find that the more mechanization, the better the systems come along, the better off we are. You know, you get things like electrical gadgets now. They're fantastic. They actually expand what we can do because you can go to places where you can't normally because it's too noisy. You get rid of vibration problems. It cuts down the maintenance and stuff. They're fantastic.

So yeah.

Yeah, alright.

It's an exciting career. You tell them, you're an entrepreneur. You're Chinese, are you?

I am.

Yeah, so is my wife. And you know what? The two daughters that I've got that are the entrepreneurial ones, they're both her daughters. Chinese mother. So Chinese, you got the, you got the right blood for it.

Thank you.

Good question. So Jim, thank you for your questions tonight, guys, and the ones online. We couldn't get to all of them, but what were your 3 favorite questions for the prize? And if you did ask him a question as well, you can come and pick anything you like as well.

Well, I like that question there about, about the what people think. That's a, that's a very relevant one. It's a great question.

I'll grab something. Which one would you like?

Me?

Yeah, you were the first one who asked the one they didn't ask. You have to pick what you like, but I think you as well, young man, come up here. Yep, pick anything you like first.

Yep.

And what was your last one there, Jim?

The common mistake one.

Common mistakes.

Yep. Cool.

Come up, grab it. Take anything you like. You can grab anything you like. First pick. You can take that.

Go for it. Thank you. Thank you very much.

And if you ask him a question, guys, feel free to come up and grab the rest of the stuff here. It's all for taking as well. All good, Charles?

Yep.

Cool. Thanks for your time tonight, guys. We appreciate it. If you want a photo with Jim or anything—