#ASKJIM Live Q & A replay with Jim's Group founder, Jim Penman and Joel Kleber

So welcome to another #AskJim. So Jim, big training group. I think it's pretty much full.

116, I reckon we got.

Something like that. Probably need some more seats as well. So it's great to see a lot of people into training. So what we're gonna do guys, for everyone who doesn't know, we've got the microphone over there. People are just gonna ask a question. If you're online as well, you can please feel free to ask a question. Anyone who asks Jim a question at the end will get one of these prizes here. So who's got the first question for Jim? Microphone's just there.

All right.

Awesome. Thank you, Angela.

Thank you.

Hello, Angela from Jim's Dog Wash Cronulla. This is my second franchise. I was previous, and I still have Jim's Bookkeeping in Sylvania. So I would love to ask you, who has had the biggest influence on the way you lead?

Jesus. I'm a Christian. So the principles of the gospel, of what Jesus taught, is the core of the way I think about Leadership. Jesus washing his disciples' feet, an extraordinary example of humility. When we lead, we serve. And so our whole concept I was talking about this morning is first priority is franchisee. We live to serve franchisees. That is the core of what Jim's is about. So there's no other greater influence in my life.

Thank you.

I've never heard of a bookkeeping and dog wash franchise couple, so you'll be the first one, I reckon, in Jim's. You're probably the first one, Angela, so hopefully it all goes well. We appreciate it.

Yeah, great question.

That's it, guys, just ask Jim a question on the microphone and that's it. Who's got the next one?

Yeah.

Feel free to come up and ask.

Dog Wash is doing well tonight.

That's it, he's doing well. Hi, Jim, Joel, Harry from Jim's Dog Wash at Cronulla. Just wanted to ask, what are the key signs that it's the right time to expand? And would you recommend adding one trailer at a time or multiple?

Well, the right time to expand is, first of all, you've got to have enough, more than enough work, which in your division isn't that difficult.

Yeah.

But really, apart from that, the hardest thing is going to be finding workers. In general, most franchisees in Jim's group who want to build a major business don't have a problem with getting leads. You get to build it, doesn't happen straight away. You get yourself busy. If you're good at what you do, you get regular clients, especially a division like yours. Most dog wash franchises are booked out months in advance once they get established. People don't like to change a dog wash person. So then the opportunity is— the biggest problem that you've got is to get off a trailer. So if you can get a second trailer, you put somebody on that. That's worked very successfully. There's no limit. We've had people with 6 to 8 different trailers and it works fine.

Fantastic.

And you can find people who love dogs. It's probably one of the easier ones. You find somebody who loves dogs. And you train them and you show them and you keep an eye on them, make sure they turn up on time and so forth, and you can just build without any sort of limits.

Fantastic, thank you.

Good question, thanks for that one. That's it, guys. If you've got a question for Jim, please feel free to come up and ask him anything you like on the microphone. Yep, go for it. Yep, as many as you want. If you want to line up, go for it as well, guys.

Hi, Jim. I'm Geoff from Jim's Cleaning in Hunter Valley in New South Wales. I'm about to embark on a big lifestyle change, so thanks for the opportunity. I listened to you very intently this morning. I've worked in the corporate space for a very long time, and I've seen a lot of motivated and passionate people, and I've seen a lot of people lose their motivation and passion. So I wonder if you'd be kind enough to share your personal and professional goals. You've obviously achieved a great deal. What's driving you now? What gets you out of bed now? I understand your answer about supporting franchisees, and that's great.

Thank you.

But on a personal and professional level, what's there?

Well, I have a very strong emotional connection to my franchisees. That's why I was talking about this morning, this thing where I've actually made it impossible to sell the controlling share of Jim's Group after I'm no longer around to protect you without the written consent of a majority of franchisees. So that is— which dramatically drops the value of my business. But that's a very, very strong motivation. I talk to franchisees every day of the week. often multiple times in different sort of situations. That's a very strong motivation. Apart from that, what I do is I'm running a research program. I see really big problems with what's happening in society right now with the collapsing birth rate and a lot of other things too, a lot of other— rise of mental illness and depression and anxiety and all kinds of things, rising deaths of despair, drug addiction, all kinds of terrible things. I've got a research program that I researched in my PhD back in the 1970s and early '80s which gives a potential answer to that. I'm about to start a book called— launch a book called Birthrate Crisis which is coming out in October which we're gonna push in a big way across the world. We've got a solution based on understanding neuroscience. I've got a research foundation too and spending virtually all the profits from Jim's goes into that. So that's been my motivation from the beginning. That's my whole motivation to become wealthy enough to be able to fund my own research institute.

Well, thank you for sharing. Very great.

That's my goal.

Great question.

Thank you. Great question.

Got a question for Jim, guys, before you come up to the microphone and ask him anything you like. I'm sure there's heaps of things on your mind and I'm sure you've written some questions down. It's an easy way to get the loot in Monopoly up here.

That book, by the way, is an earlier version that somebody can take if they wish, but it's hard reading. You'll find Birthrate Crisis a lot easier when it comes out.

Hi, I'm Bec from Adelaide. here with Mario to look at starting a new division. I have a question for you. I'm a big fan of learning through life, and you mentioned today that you were reading Richard Branson's book as well.

Yes.

Who I know is also a big person who focuses on failure as a way to propel themselves forward. For me, FAIL is a first attempt in learning. It's a great acronym as we move forward, as we I haven't heard that.

First attempt in learning. Haven't heard that one.

Good one.

First attempt in learning is to fail, and we should encourage it. So I'm really interested to know from you, what are some of the failures that have really caused you to have lessons in your life that you've gleaned some really great valuable knowledge from that you've been able to impart on the rest of your community at Jim's?

My typical failure is jumping into an area I don't completely understand. and losing money out of it. And that's one thing I've learned is to stick to what I know, which is service franchising. I know that very, very well. But other things I've done like trade exchange, like holiday resort, like factory to build fibreglass trailer, like what else can you think of?

Probably a few things in the book. Lots of other things.

They're all in the book.

Computer shop, they're all in the book. So I've tried many, many different things. I've learned to stick to what I do. And I've also learned even within that scenario, for example, in the last couple of years we've made the effort to actually unload Most of the divisions and regions we were personally running at national because what we figured out is you people do a better job than we do at running that. So we focus on the things that we do best and we really double down on things like technology and principles of customer service, principles of franchisee service and how to improve and improve. So we focus really hard on the things that we do best. Tell us about your new division though. People might be interested in hearing that one. What are you coming to— what are you going to start?

Well, we're hoping to start as soon as we are able to. It's all about drug and alcohol testing, screening on site. Really, the foundation of it is keeping a healthy and safe workplace. Mario talks about it's the safety risk that's walking in through the door every day, but it's what happens for me from a leadership perspective as an executive is ultimately I'm responsible for the safety and well-being of all of my staff on site. And if you've got policies and procedures in place, you have to have a compliance programme that makes sure that you are keeping all of your people safe at work. And so trying to, you know, instil that ethos of safety and providing a mechanism that enables people to subscribe into that and also protect people and help them if they have a problem, which I think the behavioural part of it is the most critical part. It's that shift and that cultural change around drugs and alcohol, and also gambling and other addictions, that if we can play a part to help people have a healthier and safe life, then that's something that's really meaningful. And we get, you know, we can feel that you've really contributed to society and culture as a whole. So that's where we're— that's what we're pushing for right now with this new division.

Yeah, we're very excited to have you, actually. It's one of a number of divisions that deal with businesses, and we hope you can work together. Like, I think James, Jim's HR is doing their training this week. Yeah, so HR's another one. We've also got divisions like bookkeeping, for example, IT, test and tag, which does— it's also safety-oriented, fire safety and electrical safety, those kind of things too. We're hoping to see new divisions be able to work together and produce an overall service for businesses. So it's quite exciting. It's amazing to have 2 new divisions actually represented this month. It's really—

That's great.

Fantastic.

It's a real honour to be invited and be here, so we're very grateful for that.

I can see the logo doing pretty well online. I reckon it's going to go viral when we do that one. I've got a few ideas for that, don't worry about that. We've got some beers here for a reason, right? So we can do a few things.

That's a great division. I didn't even know that these things existed until you guys came to see me, but we love it.

So it's mobile alcohol and drug testing for companies. They can engage to test their staff so they're not doing the wrong thing, right?

And just say, so how long ago did you actually first approach me and what happened? I wonder if you'd share that. That'd be really good. Yeah, show them what happened.

Thank you, Jim. Murray McDonald, folks, Screening Onsite and STAR Group, which is Support, Testing, Awareness, and Help. That's the ethos. I think about a month ago, I met Bec through a network group that we're involved in and heard about the incredible processes her husband went through becoming a building inspector. As a trainer assessor myself and one of the first scholarships of embedding sustainability in adult education, I stood back listening and was super impressed at the ethos, the values, ethics, and morals behind how you deliver everything and look after your people, which are the principles behind the whole business model and stopping what I call the DAGS— drugs, alcohol, gambling, and suicide.

Mm-hmm.

when I said to Bec, I'm thinking of franchising, I have for years. COVID put a handbrake on that. And Bec's helped put the proposal. We spoke with the divisional leader for the building inspectors and said, would you mind passing this on? He had one look, I think, believe he got it on a Saturday and emailed me on a Monday and we had a meeting on the Friday. So that's— It's fantastic to meet the criteria, show we've got a scalable model.

Yeah, and what I looked and saw is a business that's already working well, effectively, has a good marketing system, has everything in place. So that together with the Jim's franchising expertise and the brand is powerful. It's very exciting.

100%.

It's amazing how it's just getting an email out of the blue and suddenly you've got a new division.

Yeah, I'm very excited to be on board and work together, meet everyone. Share what we do, share the ethos behind it and help perpetuate that into the future and help everyone else grow as well. I think it's a valuable thing. I do have a question around the research and so on. You've got a doctorate as I understand it.

Yeah, that's right.

So would you sponsor other doctorates and so on, especially around suicide prevention and so on?

No.

No. Okay. That's interesting. Research towards any of that stuff?

My research is in a very particular area. I have— most of my disposable income goes to one thing, which is understanding the reason for this particular change in society, which has got to do with the way our systems, our brains react to dopamine. They're basically dopamine flooded.

Yeah.

It's making them less sensitive. That's causing all sorts of problems with morale, with everything else, with the collapsing birth rate, collapsing marriage rate, all the rest of it. So it's one area of expertise I've been working on for the last Half century. So, I'm very focused. The only thing that I spend on apart from that is I tithe. That's a religious obligation.

Yeah, yeah, fair enough.

So, no, there's a lot of wonderful causes in the world, but I believe in the Bill Gates principle, which is you work out where your money can do the most good and you focus really hard on that. I don't have his level of money, of course. If I did, we'd make a lot more progress. But that's That's what you've got to do. And I think that's the same for any— it sounds great.

I'll share some research and that might actually assist in some of the avenues there because I believe the tentacles and the holistic issues that are happening need to be looked at and addressed holistically instead of in silos.

If we can develop the treatments that we're talking about, they will have a dramatic impact on mental health because there's a problem in the world today with people becoming more and more isolated and lonely. Losing purpose in their lives, thinking very short-term. These are all signs of this same change. So what we believe we can do is actually have tremendous benefit in terms of the kind of things you're talking about. We believe in mental health, we're just going to focus it through this particular way of doing things.

Fantastic. Well, I'll look to discussing stuff more.

Yeah, good idea.

I'll leave one final question. When can we have a game of chess?

Yeah, sure, anytime.

Love to, thank you.

I'd love to. Do you play 960?

Oh, you can teach me.

That's just where you semi-randomly— I play with the IT guys every day. They beat me today actually, so that was not a good day, but 960 on a chess clock with 10 minutes of time, it's a really fun game.

That sounds like good fun.

Yeah, well, catch up with me during the week.

Thank you very much.

Yeah, well, you're around till the end of the week, aren't you?

Friday, correct.

Yeah, okay, so good.

Thank you. There you go. I think the gentleman at the back there.

Yes, go for it.

Next one.

Thank you, Joel, and thank you, Jim. Sam from Jim's Mowing Mundaring over in Western Australia. Carrying on the theme of mental health and wellbeing, and previously working in pastoral care and the education system, it's a passion of mine. I'm intrigued by what might have been conversations within Jim's group around supporting franchisees, franchisors, etc. in this space, and obviously having network meetings is one important aspect, but more broadly we talk systems, policies, and procedures. But just trying to get an understanding of what conversations might have been had at Jim's group around that support.

Mental health issues, yeah, yeah, it's a very, very big theme with us. And in fact, if you look at everything that we support in terms of things like Beyond Blue and Men's Sheds, they're always to do with mental health.

TX is the one we want to shout out.

Yeah, so to specifically go on about what we do, one of the things we do is provide a free counselling service through a group called TX. So if any franchisee who wishes to can ring completely confidentially, we don't even know who they talk to, we don't have any idea, they don't tell us anything, but they can talk to a trained psychologist completely without obligation. Now on top of that Every franchisor goes through mental health training. Everybody doing this will go through mental health. These guys are not exactly going to need it probably because they probably know more than we do, but they'll still go through the process. So every franchisor is taught to deal with mental health issues. We also have volunteer franchisees who volunteer without any charge, without any payment at all, to act as unpaid mentors. And these are listed on the website, internal website. That if you've got an issue that you don't want to talk to your franchisor or anybody, even the TX, is that there's a franchisee who's volunteered to— that you can talk to as well. We also provide a list of contact numbers. On top of that, we have the mainstream support, which is the meetings, the proactive calls, and every franchisor is trained to look for mental health issues. So we have a whole series of different things that we do. And look, I'd love us to do more. It's a terrible, terrible issue. I often ask people, what do you think is the major danger to our franchisees? Bear in mind we work at heights, we work at machinery, high-powered machinery, we work with electric, we work with all kinds of dangerous things. You know what the biggest single danger our people face? Suicide.

Mm.

It's by far the worst thing that our franchisees face in terms of chance of death. We've only had 2 franchisees ever died on the job. And we've had, I cannot tell you how many have committed suicide, but it's just, it's wrenching and you never get over it.

Yeah.

So.

2 too many, absolutely. It's a massive issue within society. I do have a second question and complete change of tack, if I may.

Yes.

Brand is a massive thing and obviously for me it was, One day, just in the midst of trying to work out what I was going to do next, I saw the Jim's trailer go past and went, great, let's, let's go down that line. But I also work in a number of spaces where, as a volunteer, I know Jim's is a well-known brand, but have there ever been considerations for territories to look at taking their brand, so wherever it may be, Mundaring for example, to support local initiatives with support from the franchisor or Jim's Group?

Yes, that is common. That is an issue that is a decision for the local franchisees and franchisors in an area, but I do know that we do a lot. Franchisees make very good money. All kinds of things go on. I know one franchisee who works with the homeless, for example. That's his particular— he actually works part-time because he can make enough money on his mowing business to work several days a week with the homeless. We've got other people who— there's a guy I was speaking to, one of my 10-year veterans just recently, who comes from Liberia in West Africa and what he's doing is looking after a— he's building a clinic and a school back in his hometown based on his mowing franchise again. So that's very much something that we encourage and we have a number of We have many, many wonderful franchisees who work and who invest in the local community, but that is a local thing. That's what they do. I have my own particular cause, which is, you know, 90% of my net income goes into that. That's something that I do, but each franchisee and franchisor has the option. I think it's a great idea to be able to support your local community.

Absolutely. Thank you for your time.

Good initiative, hopefully, and we can see it I know a lot of franchisees do this sort of stuff as well locally. So by all means, please do it if you've got something to do. Sue.

Bit of self-promotion here. Jim's Life Coaching. That's what we do. We really help with mental health. And, you know, we work with a lot of people who've gone through some horrific stuff in their lifetime and we really help elevate them up and do some fantastic things. We've got lots of interviews on those. But Jim, what's the best story you've heard of Jim's Life Coaching? Yeah, inside the Jim's group because we work with a lot of people inside.

He's getting a testimonial from Jim as well. It's pretty snazzy.

Yeah.

Well, I happen to know there's this guy called Mitch in Outback New South Wales, in regional New South Wales, who you guys worked with for a while. He, as a result of this, he came to me. He wanted to take on a region, and because of the caliber of the guy he is, I offered to help him into that region. He is now a phenomenally successful regional franchisor. who's actually enormously— about 50% increase in his region since he took over. Incredible guy, looking at Tokyo from another region too. So that's directly a result of Jim's life coaching. I'll tell you what, if we get every franchisee to do it, we'd be really, really happy.

Yay!

Go Jim! Well, yeah, because Mitch was going to leave. He was actually thinking of leaving his mowing and becoming a police officer.

Is anybody from Mitch's region here? No? Okay. But he's been very successful. He's doing gangbusters. Yes, he was. He was thinking of— he was on the verge of leaving and going back to it, though you guys showed him how.

But he realized he could do what he wanted to do there here and stay in mowing, but then help others become better at what they do and help train. And he's doing really well.

Yeah.

He's had a phenomenal impact. I do know a number of franchisees who've been using you guys have seen their income like double. It's really quite extraordinary. It's not just a matter— I don't know if people understand what life coaching is. It's a process where you actually Talk to someone, you find out what their goals are, what they want to achieve, and then you do a program to help them. And there's a particular system that they go through.

We have a system.

We—

it's called the New Era in Goal Achieving because we don't help people just set goals, we help them achieve them. So we get them to think of something enormous that would really scare and excite them at exactly the same time. And we teach them how to think, how to change their thinking that's holding them back and step forward into that. There's a lot involved and it's a set system. It really makes a difference.

Sue developed this system herself actually. She was part of another thing based in America.

Canada actually.

Canada, is it? With Bob Fox. Yeah, that's right. But very, very expensive. So when we first talked about it, I said you can't use them. It's too much. That's going to be out of it. So she sat down and took you quite a long time to develop a dedicated system based on her own experience as a counsellor and we've been applying that. We've now got how many franchisees?

We've got another one here at training now. We've got a few more and we've got some fantastic stuff happening in October, which I will tell you tomorrow. Some great opportunities where we're going to get such an influx of leads, which is give business to the franchisees.

It's quite astonishing what you guys have achieved. I've got to say, it's very exciting.

There's 5 of us now, coming on 6.

Not one of the fastest growing divisions, is it? You know, after 3 years.

Well, we've got to be a little bit more careful.

That laundry had like 100, which is difficult to achieve, but you've got to be very careful who you put on. So it's a very different kind of vision, but we're delighted in what's happened. It's been fantastic.

Fantastic, thank you.

There you go. Go Jim's life coaching.

Good plug there. If you've got a question for Jim, guys, feel free to come up and ask him as well. Who's got the next question for Jim?

Anyone?

Here's—

Yep, go for it. Ask him anything you like.

And here's our trainee life coach. You're up the back.

We'll go for this gentleman first. You come first.

Come through.

Go after the jacket first.

All right, no, if you like.

It's all right. The other guy.

Yeah, thanks. We want to hear from you too.

Yeah, it's all good.

Jim, I've read your work No Other Way, and I've been thinking, if you were a life coach, what would be your number one suggestion for someone who was at a crossroads or at a pivot in their life? What would be the no other way?

Unique question.

No other success. No other success, yeah. That'll depend on what they want to achieve in life. And that is a very individual sort of thing. Now we have certain people in Jim's who have a tremendous ambition to become financially successful. We have at least 20 videos of people who are making, turning over more than a million bucks a year. And there's some that are doing multiple millions. So it's quite possible to make enormous amount of money. You can start off with nothing and build anything. So if that's your goal, we would look at how you achieve that and there's ways of doing that. But more common goal is actually, how can I make a good living and support my family but also have enough time to be with my family? And that is, to my mind, that's even— that's an even greater goal. 'Cause I would say a person who becomes immensely wealthy but has a crap family life has probably taken a bit of a wrong thing. That's why it's called No Other Success, the book, 'cause no other success can compensate for failure in the home. So I would look at what a person wants to achieve. But I do think one of the things that I would try and help people to do as a life coach would be to find a sense of meaning in their life. And I don't think having a lot of money so that you can present as being better than somebody else is particularly good. It doesn't produce happiness, it doesn't produce social value either. So I would hope that people would be encouraged and helped to live the best version of the life that they can, but one that is dedicated. Because I do find that money isn't— the relationship between money and happiness is pretty ambiguous. Up to a certain stage, you need it. If you're not making a decent amount of living, then you really can't do much. And that's our aim, to make sure every franchisee is above that level of income that's comfortable. You know, basically $100 grand a year plus net income is not too bad. But beyond that, extra money doesn't make a lot of difference in terms of happiness. And so, but being involved with a cause that you believe in and working towards that is actually a tremendous source of happiness and meaning in your life. I did a bit of this stuff with my church actually. We did some training to be, to be, do life coaching, to help people. So I know what it's about. It's a great system.

Find your purpose, find your life.

Yes, that's right. What drew you to life coaching?

I spent many years looking after sales teams in the automotive industry. And one of the things that I found looking after franchises was There's an old saying, the fish rots from the head first. And when someone was having a rough patch, it's almost like a customer can smell, can smell the doubt, can smell the problems. And it's a little bit like if you're a franchisee operating a business, if the belief isn't there, other things automatically don't follow. So I see it as a great opportunity for me to help people discover the beliefs that are important to their purpose in achieving their goal, and that's good for everyone.

That's great. It's a wonderful mission. I can't think of a more noble cause than something like that. You can help people to achieve what's meaningful in their own lives. And people do have terribly wrong ideas about what produces happiness and wellbeing, particularly in this chase for money.

Yeah.

There you go. Good man.

Thanks for the original question.

Great to see you with us.

Thanks, Jim.

Who was the gentleman that sat down before?

Yes. Go for it. I'm through here.

Got a question for Jim, guys? Feel free, you've got plenty of time.

Hi, Jim. Just wanted to— actually was here today. And maybe you've answered this question, but it's just trying to understand how from moving, from Jim's moving to this incredible, all the other divisions, and some of them we are just discovering now, that life coaching and some of the other things which have come up. So I'm just trying to understand in, in my head, how did you— expand into such an incredible, you know, like all these different divisions? And like, what do you look at basically and what excites you that, okay, this is one division we can start? And it's just been like, what, 37 years and you've got like 60 divisions.

So, um, yes, well, probably about 50. Yes, that's right. Um, look, you've just heard tonight how it comes about. Somebody approaches me out of the blue only a few weeks back and says, I've got this idea. Now, I didn't even know there was such a business as testing. I had no idea. But let me tell you what I saw. First of all, I see somebody who knows that business very well and is running it successfully, has a good track record. That's great. I looked at it and I said, what's your hourly rate? Well, the hourly rate is very good. If I can't see an average operator making at least $70 an hour, I'm not interested. And there are divisions like that we just won't do, we won't touch. I wouldn't do babysitting, for example, for that kind of thing. It just doesn't pay well enough. So you've got to find something that's got the hourly rate in it. And we also like to see something that's got potential for scale because we don't make a lot of money per franchisee. So to have a lucrative enough business to make it worthwhile, you've really got to have a look of at least 20, 30 franchisees in a certain area. If we can't see that, we wouldn't do it. If it's too much of a niche because it's not a— we don't take— some people think we take 40% of somebody's income. Well, I wish, okay? I'd be a billionaire. But it's more like 6% and our actual margin is about 1%. So it's a very low margin business which works on quantity. So if we see this— but let me tell you, you've got to have a good division but the main thing is you've got to have good people driving it. And that's what I try and assess very quickly. And usually I know what I'm doing. Sometimes I make some terrible mistakes.

But yeah.

Hopefully not in this case. I don't think so. I've got to say, when we've come unstuck lately, it's people who go into it without a background, enough of a background in that industry. We've made a couple of— Jim's Beauty was an example, Jim's Massage. We did a couple like that, underfunded with people who weren't actually established in that industry. So when we see something like the testing business, I look for that kind of, I've done it in the past, this is how you do it, this is how you market it, this is how you charge for it. Yes, I can write up the manual. You need that kind of expertise. But really, most divisions don't come from Jim's group. Very, very few have come from Jim's. Most have come from people coming to us. And then we just look for the best possible leader.

Right.

Just another question if I can ask is where do you see AI taking, uh, and how it's going to be utilized over the divisions and in the next 5 to 10 years, how do you think it's going to be affecting?

Very, very big. And Joel will probably tell you more about that than me, but there's some really exciting stuff around. For example, there's some software we're developing, Jimbo. We're spending several million dollars a year on this. It's a very, very major project. We're doing all kinds of really exciting stuff. What potentially can do is, for example, just this year, booking automatically jobs into the diary. That's a huge change because the problem is getting back to clients. Being able to put clients on the market with a thing called Jimbo Marketplace, that's going to be a huge effect. But if we can go beyond that, so next year we've got plans, for example, somebody, a client can go into their backyard and take a photo of their yard and then come back and we can automatically give them a quote.

That's right.

We can figure out the size of the yard, how tall the grass is, come back with a confirmed quote on the spot, book them straight in. That kind of thing using AI. I don't know what other particular avenues you see, but I use AI personally every day. I do a lot of my research using AI, hunting up for my research projects and my books that I'm writing. What do you see as the—

Well, the franchisees using it to win more quotes is probably the main thing. Using it to write emails, better emails, more professional. They're using it to maximize their scheduling, uploading schedules in there for their diary. All that sort of stuff, though, is separately done in Claude or ChatGPT. So we want to integrate it into Jimbo. So what we'll eventually do is what Jim's talking about. We'll probably link it up with Anthropic, with Claude, and you'll have Claude for free basically in Jimbo. So for example, you can use Jimbo to directly generate emails or optimize your route, for example, within the app. Whereas franchisees are using another tool for that now separately. So they'll be on our cost with the tokens and stuff. That's how we're going to be doing it. And also from an online perspective with the quoting, as Jim was saying, that's stuff we've wanted— I had in my head for years to do, but it was never the technology to do it. So now we could possibly do it where customers can upload a photo of their lawn. And what that could basically do is once it gets allocated to a franchisee, look at what they've been charging in their book and give an actual proper estimate that the franchisee and the customer will both be happy with, right? So that's going to be a really big thing for us, and hopefully that will be not too far away.

And we'll be able to pick on what's going on in your business too. They're going to look at where you're working, how long it's taking you to do jobs and stuff, make suggestions about how you could improve in all kinds of different ways.

Yeah.

In actual fact, we're investing very heavily right now. We've got some really important things coming up this year, but we intend, if anything, to increase the investment next year. We don't mind how much we spend because it's the best way. IT, AI is the best way to improve the efficiency and the hourly rates and cut down the cost of our franchisees. And if we can achieve that, that would be remarkable.

I'll give you one example. We've got your Ask Jim bot. So we've got a digital Jim online called askjim.au. So basically all the content we've done with Jim over the years gets converted into words and you can access it. We've got franchisees now, because I can see all the chats, asking Jim, digital Jim, for advice, like technical, really technical and specific advice. And it doesn't act like a normal chatbot. It's based on all of his sources and transcripts, and they're having like 30 30-minute conversations back and forth with Digital Jim about stuff, and that wouldn't have happened a year ago.

It's got more than 2 million words based on all my books, everything I've written, all my talks, even things like this all go into that.

So this goes live literally from here. It will actually get uploaded to Jim's Digital Mind, and then within a week, for example, someone can actually ask something about this session and you'll get it literally from here. So we've got people using that now as we currently speak.

It's great. I tried it myself actually. I've even asked myself some advice. I actually said one thing, I don't even know how I came up with it, I said, okay, I've just cheated on my wife, what do I do? Which isn't true, it's not true at all. I never attempted to cheat on her, I love my wife dearly, never attempted to cheat on her, but I just acted as if I was and I thought the advice was very good.

What was the advice?

Well, it was you've got to be honest about what you've done and then you've got to make amends and you've got to build a relationship. It's just stuff like that. Look, it's the kind of thing I would say but it was my digital alter ego. It's very, very good and very shortly we're going to have this attached to the Jimbo app which people, clients can use. So you can download it on your phone. You'll be able to book a job by going— this is also by the end of the year. So you can go in there, you say, okay, I want dog wash. It knows who you are, where you are, phone number. It gives you the availability. Plunk. Book it in like that. Pop, pop, pop, done. And we'll attach things like the Jimbo to that.

It'll be in there, yeah.

So that people can actually go and talk to me and chat to me about things and they can ask questions about franchises or anything. So it's a mixed use site.

There's some weird conversations though because I can see them all. There's some weird use cases I can tell you right now. I should do some social media posts with what people ask, but there's some strange stuff. But it's some good stuff as well.

Yeah, you ought to do that.

Yeah, I should actually. There's some pretty interesting ones. I probably should get you to react to it and see how far the answer off is. I've got a few of those. There's some strange people out there, put it that way, that use it.

We had one guy we've got a dispute with who actually came up with, and it's a ridiculous claim, but he actually said, you know, I went into—

Your Digital Jim.

Digital Jim, and said, Jim has broken his contract with me, what do I do? And he said, well, it supported him. And I said, yes, but you told him that I'd broken the contract with you, which I haven't. So it's advice based on a faulty statement.

So a whole bunch of use cases, quite interesting. Yeah, I've seen that conversation as well. It went for a while. I know what you're talking about. I had a look at it.

He's trying to twist things. Sometimes they try and twist things. They try and get around me. It's very, very fun. You ought to have a go at it. I'll tell you what, people come to me, they want to be mentored and want to have advice. And I say, look, I can give you some very basic stuff, but you can talk to Digital Jim for hours and he'll never get tired of you. Whereas I don't think I could talk to you.

No, you wouldn't.

Suddenly people come to me, they want a mentor. Often people get offered me money to act as their personal mentor and I say, that's not really my job. My job is to mentor my franchisees, not anybody outside. Franchisees, it's free. Anybody else, no, that's not me. But go to Digital Gym and it'll mentor you all you like.

Sure.

I'm not saying it'd do a good job as Jim's life coaching, but I'm not— Digital Gym isn't a licensed life coach, but all the same, it's good. Alright, thanks for that. Great question.

Excellent.

Got a few online too, which we'll get to in a minute or two.

All right.

Hey Jim, I'm Ben from Jim's Mowing, Burpengary Central. Had to remember that then. Um, I'm also a Christian and would like to ask, as a Christian and business leader, how have you navigated the tension between pursuing commercial success and remaining faithful to biblical principles of integrity, stewardship, humility, and serving others? And how do you believe a Christian franchisee can measure success beyond simple revenue and profit?

Never had that one?

It's original.

No, that's a good one. That's a great one. Let me tell you, in my experience, there's no conflict at all between Christian principles and business success. Let me give you an example, okay? And I talked about this this morning. Alright, when I first started Jim's back in 1989, I was determined that I wasn't going to put anybody on the business who I didn't believe would be successful. If I had any doubt at all. Now, my thought at the time was that this would make it very difficult for me to grow the business. I never expected to be as big as VIP which had 250. I thought I'm going to reject people that I'm not confident of, therefore I cannot possibly grow as fast. as somebody who just takes anybody who's got the money. That was my belief at the time. Now, I discovered something very interesting. How did I compete against a company that is actually richer than me, bigger than me, has more money, has better offices? I'm running it from my basement. I realised after I had a wonderful weapon. This was a list of my current franchisees with their phone numbers. And people would come to me and say, why would I buy it from you, in effect, when you're running it from your basement and VIP is so successful? And I would say to them, here's a list of my franchisees with their phone numbers. I want you to ring everybody and ask them what it's like being in Jim's, and then I want you to go and get their list, which I knew they wouldn't provide.

Mm-hmm.

That one thing blew me away. By the end of the first year, I had like 60. I thought, this is amazing. And then we started going interstate and it just exploded. And I think that one decision which was purely on ethical basis that I wasn't going to take anybody who I didn't believe would be successful was one of the core reasons for that because I didn't have so many unhappy people. I get a complaint just recently from a franchisee who was unhappy about lack of work and the franchisor, I won't say who it was, I was in contract with them and I said, first of all, you need to put more advertising out. But secondly, this person isn't doing the things they're supposed to be doing. They're not doing the paperwork, not doing this. And he says, well, that's a problem with them. I said, no, it's a problem with you. What is your selection criteria? What are you doing? Why have you got somebody as a franchisee who's not able to follow the instructions that we've given them about doing things like pay for work guarantee? So that's an example and there's many, many others. When I was selling lawnmowing grounds way, way back, I was very bad at it. And then I took on the approach— I was trying to sell the lawnmower, this was pre-franchise— and then I took upon the approach based on the example of a guy in my church. And I stopped worrying about whether I was going to sell the business and I started worrying about whether I could help the person concerned. And I took a different stance to the extent that I would even tell somebody who came to me about a business, to go and buy another business if I thought it was in their best interest. That was an ethical decision and as soon as I started doing that, I started being successful. And I could name many, many other points in exactly the same way. So many things that you do where you actually look at it and you say, no, I'm going to do the right thing, I'm not going to do the commercial thing, and you end up actually realising that was a very good commercial decision. But it's not based on making money.

Hmm.

It's based on the principles that you believe in. So I don't think having good Christian or— sorry, I should— not just Christian but any ethics, any decent ethical system based on Hinduism or anything else that relies on looking after other people, doing the right thing, I think that's actually the best thing for business. And my experience of people in business is that those who are ruthless and put me first sometimes can succeed but far less likely than you could think. Whereas somebody who has a fundamentally basic ethical attitude, has a sense of integrity in what they do, tends to do far better. I recommend strongly books like Stephen Covey— Stephen Covey?

Yeah.

7 Habits of Highly Effective People, which is all about ethics and character. And that is the royal road to success. There are scumbags in business and they're disgusting people, I tell you what. and they sometimes make money. Okay, I'm not getting away with that. I wouldn't do it even if I could, but it's not worth it. As Jesus said, what's the benefit to gain the whole world and lose your soul, lose your life?

Yeah, cool.

Thank you very much.

Great question. Cool, go for it.

Hey, uh, Steve from Jim's Mowing, Quakers Hill. I currently work for a different gardening franchise and I'm moving I'm employed there but moving to work for myself for Jim's. I don't know if you want me to mention who they are.

Yeah, mention it.

So I work for Flower Power, and obviously they've got their own nurseries. Have you ever looked at like a Jim's nursery or having your own nursery to supply people or even other industries like fencing to supply what the workers need rather than us going to Flower Power to get what we need?

The biggest problem with that is we don't understand it very well. We actually went into health clubs at one time. And it's painful because a lot of my people bought into them and a number of people bought into them and they lost their money because we didn't know what we were doing. So we're actually very, very narrowly focused. We don't go for site-based. The only time we do site-based is when we've got someone like Jim's laundry person who owns a laundromat and they work quite well together. I think we've got a pool care, a couple of pool care shops.

Shops, yeah.

Yeah, but that's the franchisee doing that, that's not us because we don't know how to run a shop. We don't know how to run a laundry.

Yeah.

So that's kind of like, yeah. It seems sometimes people think that Jim's does everything, but in reality we are very, very narrowly focused. We focus on jobs where a service person goes out and does a job for somebody else. We don't understand site-based at all. I like service-based actually, I really do. It's a lot easier, you've got no rent. You know, we had somebody come from us who was a What was it, what's the name of it, Gloria Jean's. They had a cafe and they were describing their life. Now this is a business that cost them $500,000 and they worked incredible hours basically for wages and they were paying rent and they were paying their franchise fees, crazy hours, barely making wages. They bought a June's Service franchise because they said it's such a better deal in terms of return for the efforts they get. So stick with what you know. That's one of the hardest lessons for me. Stick to what you know.

Good question.

Thank you. Thanks for that one.

Good question.

Got a question for Jim, guys, feel free to come up and ask him. We've got a couple online I want to get to real quickly. Jim, just real quickly, I'll just ask these 2 to Jim online, then you're next. Jim, I'll go in order. So Gustavo's gone, hi Jim, could you please explain the importance of businesses to have a good and reliable bookkeeper?

That's what a bookkeeper should be asking me.

There we go.

That's what he says, what he put online. So very important. Scott North's gone, hi Jim, Scott from Mulling in Brisbane. So he's just started actually, he was at the last training. Can I seek your advice? I'm intending to buy an existing business with approximately 45 regulars. Given this time of year, should I focus on upselling the existing client base or focus on maximising new leads? From Scott.

Okay, well, the second question is, first of all, if you start with 45 clients this time of the year, especially going into spring, you're going to get very busy anyway. But it's very important to actually, in the growing season, in the spring, to build your regular client base. And that's something that some people don't do. They get involved— some cleaners do just vacay cleans and they get to the middle of winter and they've got no business.

Yeah.

So, it's great to have a roster of regular clients and then upsell from them. So, 45 clients isn't enough. You need a lot more clients. You probably need about 60, 70, 80 clients. 70 clients to keep one person busy and then you can make good money with your upsells. And as far as bookkeeping is concerned, well, yes, of course, you've got to have good bookkeeping. Otherwise, you can be making good money but because you don't realise that you've got to lay money aside for tax and GST and all the rest of it, you can go bust. We've seen that happen again and again. So, get your accounts in order, which Jimbo's very good for, and get yourself a bookkeeper, particularly Jim's Bookkeeping.

They're the best. That's right.

Hey boys, Kyle from Jim's Diggers Ballarat going live. in about 3 weeks. What belief do you have about business that most people disagree with?

Well, the biggest difference I find is that I am relentlessly self-critical. People look at what I do and they think, hey, Jim's amazing. But I look at what I do and I say, well, Jim is pathetic. I mean, Jim's an idiot. I mean, that's kind of the way I see things. So I look at how many mistakes we make, I look at how many often we fail, how many— it's endlessly frustrating that I can't get things done fast enough to help the changes that I need. I think that's the biggest difference honestly and what I find all too often is people are very complacent. They look at what they're doing and they just blame somebody else. They just say, no, it's your fault, it's you, it's the franchisor, they can leave or it's the public or it's the government. I hate the government anyway, what they do. But still, the point of it is, you point one finger out, there's 3 fingers pointing back. So I think one big difference that too many people make is they look to blaming other people when they really should be saying, what can I do different? That's the key to anything.

Beautiful.

One more.

If Netflix came to you and wanted a documentary on your life, would you do it?

I've been asked that one.

Well, my life right now isn't probably, isn't particularly that glorious. I run the largest franchise chain in Australia, but let's face it, compared with someone like McDonald's, we're little tiddly mice. So if you want vast success in financial terms, I'd say in terms of our impact on helping people to become wealthy, we've probably done a lot better than McDonald's because we start people with nothing and they can really, really grow. But if my research works out, if my book takes off, I think it's very likely that Netflix would love to do a story of my life because it's a pretty funny story in a way. I mean, if I'm successful in this, I'm trying to remake the whole intellectual nature of Western civilisation. I mean, I'm trying to change people's minds about what happened. It's a fundamentally different idea that changes in society and the economy are based on changes in character. which have a biological basis, which means that you can solve most social problems, or the biggest ones, with biological interventions. That is a hugely, hugely ambitious thing. It's overturning basically all of conventional thinking about society. Now if that was successful, I think they quite likely might want to do some sort of a story on my life.

Who would play you, Jim?

Well, I think somebody good-looking like George Clooney.

George Clooney.

You've got to have someone in the young days, the middle and the end.

My wife thinks— who's the James Bond?

Craig.

Daniel Craig. My wife thinks that Daniel Craig is incredibly good-looking. So I'd like him to pay me. That would be great. So yes. That should be a good love story too. Because I adore my wife. I'm crazy head over heels in love with her after 25 years of marriage. That's a good story. So you can have somebody who basically completely failed, was knocked back by the academic community, and went out and started mowing lawns and built this business that was able to eventually fund a multimillion-dollar research institute and overturn the existing thinking about the world. That'll make a great story if I'm successful.

Yeah, that's a great story.

That's a big if.

Thanks.

But we'll know. October, Growth Rate Crisis comes out. I've got 2 other books that are being released free that can back that up. with the full research, and let's just see whether the world takes notice. But I think people are starting to be very panicky about birth rates in particular, and we're the only people that's got a solution. It's a real solution as to what we can do about it.

Hi, Jim. My name is Sumit, and I just have a question, like, what would you say to the couples in the room that are working together?

I said it can be the most wonderful thing imaginable if you can get them together.

I mean, my husband and I, like, we've both worked before together, but I mean, we could only work it out just 6 months. It was really hard. But now that we are once again looking forward to working together, I'm not sure how long we can do that. Maybe I'll be the first one to step out because it's not in my name. But then I just wanted to really know because I can see a lot of couples in the room. And sometimes because I would like to have some insights over other experiences. And maybe something that we could work it, like, you know, obviously we wanted to be successful, like, you know, working together, but there are maybe something we're missing out.

If you can work together, it's wonderful because the first thing is communication. Like, my wife and I, we're both in business. She helps with Jim. She's also doing other things as well, but we talk a lot about business. Our conversation is a mix between extremely erotic and affectionate Conversations, often in bed with no clothes on, and business and children to a certain extent too. So it's kind of like a weird sort of— it works very well for us. But you've got to be able to get on with people. One of the things that Lee and I've got advantage is that we're very good at different things. She's a micro. She actually looks at how to do specific things. She gets right to the nuts and bolts and does it. I'm the ideas person, hopeless at the nuts and bolts, but I have the vision and the creativity and the boldness and the, yeah, let's just do it kind of attitude. So, have you two got different skills, do you think?

Yeah, I mean, we've got his— but I like to be boss on the— no matter if I know the thing or not, but I will like, yeah, just ask me, or maybe I'm right, but, you know, it doesn't work like that. He knows the technicalities and I'm just Like you know being into being safe, playing the same safe side. Not to want to get don't want to get into the trouble. And the second question that I have is we have had some number to look at. Like you know about Jim's getting number of you know complaints. How many complaints do you get from your house? Like and how do you manage it? Do you have any complaints from your house?

Like from my family?

Yes, your family. How do you manage time at home? Like you know family.

My family complaining about me.

Yeah, I mean I'm sure you must. You get some, I mean—

Well—

Yeah, exactly, not that number I was hoping to.

You probably have to ask them what they think of me. They think I'm pretty tough as a father. I was having a birthday party with my kids when they were little and I was chasing them around the front yard being monsters, you know, like fathers tend to do. And then one of my daughters told her friends about what we call the 11 to 3 rule, Which would mean you can't have anything electronic between 11 and 3. And this kid looked at her aghast and she said, I thought your daddy was nice. So fairly tough sort of father, or I try to be, perhaps not tough enough, I don't know. But I love my kids a lot. I've never neglected them. People think that's difficult but I would never, ever, ever. I never had lack of time to spend with my kids. I still drive my son to school and pick him up. Just about every day. And we spend a lot of time.

We're actually—

I'm actually— we're doing debating. He picks a topic from this thing and then we argue back and forth because he's very interested in debating. He's 17 years old. So I just spend a lot of time with my kids. I always have. And I see my older ones, grown-up ones, pretty often. And I see my grandchildren. So I've always got time for them.

That's beautiful.

I never think it's— I just don't think success is worth it. And tell you what, I would like my children to be successful. And some are doing very well. My oldest son is hugely successful, works for Google. He's— I don't know what he's worth now but he's a really top programmer. Another daughter who's a psychiatrist, another has his own successful legal business. So some of my kids are quite financially successful but my judgement of them is probably more, are you good parents? Are you a good wife or husband? And in that sense they've also done very, very well and that's what I look at more than anything else. I just don't think having money alone, I know I keep on saying it, and it's funny, sometimes I feel like a bit of a— people wanna talk to me, they wanna interview me 'cause I'm successful, but I don't think financial success is really much of a measure. And I think there's a lot, an awful lot of really better people in gyms who you would never look at and never look up to as being successful, who are actually in many ways better than me. But because they're not seen as being successful in the eyes of the world, then they're not Thanks, Jim. Thanks for your time.

If you've got a question for Jim, guys, feel free to come up. We've got one online which I want to get to from Jason because he's going to be in training next week, next training. He goes, do you see Jim's having a training centre in each state of Australia? And he's gone, is it better to buy a franchise with customers or a new franchise with no customers in looking at the opportunity to be at training in September?

Nope. We're going to run it here. I like to see as many of my franchisees face-to-face as possible. It's really, really good. We do it in New Zealand and I run a Q&A session, which is good because I get to speak to them. But I find that if I've actually met franchisees individually, I try and do some interaction with everybody, I find that when they have a need, they're more likely to contact me. And that's really important. And I think if you've seen what's going on today, the kind of the atmosphere, the spirit of this place, it's really quite exciting, isn't it? Training week's very fun here.

You can't duplicate Mike as well in each state, it'd be very hard. Not yet anyway, you probably can in 20 years or something.

No, I think you get it with like 100 people in a room, meeting myself, seeing the trainers firsthand, just enjoying the food and the companionship and everything else. I think you've got a better experience. We were reluctant to do it separate for New Zealand, but then there's visa problems there, so we We do it there the best we can. It doesn't work out too bad but I think having it here is a tremendous advantage and we've seen great success in doing it. We've had attrition rate drop dramatically since we started running in one place.

Is it better to buy a business with customers or without customers?

If you can and it's not too expensive then buy one with customers for sure. One of the things I do is I send a letter out, an email after 1 month which all of you are going to reply to, aren't you? everybody here is going to reply to. And I'll ask you how you're going. Most franchisees respond to me. I think the great majority do. I would get several a day typically, 2 or 3 a day. And what I notice is that anybody who's bought a business with regular clients tends to be off to a very, very good start. And they rarely have problems even with needing to do a whole lot of pay-for-work guarantee. But having said that, it depends what you're paying for it. So if you could pay an extra, say, $5,000, maybe $10,000 and get a good roster of regular clients, I'd say absolutely go for it. Fantastic idea. If it's going to be an extra $20,000, I'd say probably that's a bit too much because we'll get you the clients anyway. It doesn't take that long. Most franchisees get very busy within a few months. So yeah, I think it's great to buy a new business, an established business, if the extra cost is not too high.

Okay.

And actually, I do recommend too, sometimes people come with these enormous businesses that are making like a quarter million dollars a year, this kind of stuff, and they wanna sell it on the basis of the income. And I generally say to them, what you should do is split up. Do splits.

Hmm.

'Cause you're actually more likely to get good money by selling some customers here, some customers here, some customers here, than trying to sell— like when Dan Cayley, who runs the mowing division, He had a great business turning over close to a million bucks a year.

6 splits or whatever he did, yeah.

Yeah, he did a whole lot of splits. In the end, what he did is he sold his entire business to 3 of his top people, his workers. That's where he got the max amount of money. But if you actually had a look at the money he was making from it, that was— you just can't get that back because it's too easy to build customer base with us. Work is not that hard to find.

There we go. Has anyone got one more question for Jim at all? Now, I've got one more online, Jim, which I'll go to before you can think of your 3 questions. So Paul's gone online with the Vic Government talking about mandatory inspections for pest control. Has anyone been actually asked to consult on it, or are we just watching from the sidelines? Is the Jim's Building Inspections Division ready to step in for the mandatory inspections that may be coming?

Yeah, we're certainly interested in doing that. The only problem we have, concern we have, is that once it becomes a tick-the-box exercise, there may be a race to the bottom. What our people do is provide extremely good professional service because people want to know what's wrong with that thing, they want to identify the thing. If it's just a government tick-the-box thing, they might say, I'll get somebody in and pay them $250, something like that.

But we had a chat to a good man today who got called in by the government, which is nice to hear. Paul, Paul Comerford, who runs the division, actually called him in to consult about it. He runs Jim's Building Inspections.

It's potentially a very good thing if the people doing it are good at what they do.

Which your guys are.

Our guys certainly are. They're very professional. The biggest complaint we have about our franchisees in building inspections is that they're too good because the people who commission them say, you shouldn't have found so much wrong with my house. Yeah, well, that's my job. So that's a complaint that I completely wipe, ignore. Being too good at your job is not a complaint. You don't get that in any other division.

There we go. So Jim, what we'll do is— so what we're going to do, guys, just to let everyone know, if you ask a question of Jim, come up at the end and you can take anything you like.

If you ask more than one question, you can take more than one thing.

That's right, we've got some cards as well, but Jim will pick his 3 favourites, which means you basically get the first pick of what's here in the loot. So who were your 3 favourites, Jim?

I like that question about reconciling. Who said that? Reconciling your values with commercial success.

I think the gentleman up the back right. Yep, come up and grab anything you like. And who was next there?

The question about life coaching, that was good. That's our new life coaching guy. Who's that? Where are you?

The new franchisee? Do you want to choose on his behalf then, Sue, if he's not here? And who was the next one?

He loves it.

Grab anything you like. Yeah, take anything you like.

And the one about mental health, who was talking about mental health?

Ah yes, where's the gentleman with the mental health question? Is he over there? You with the R.M. Williams shirt on? Yeah, come up and grab anything you like. Now, if you asked a question, guys, you can take anything as well, so come up and grab anything first things first.

Or you can get a—

Or a gift card as well if you want. Yeah, take one of those too. So thank you very much for your attention tonight, we appreciate it. Cool.

All right.