#ASKJIM with it's biggest live audience ever!

So welcome everyone to the AskGym. Massive audience. Jim. So credit to you for doing your promotion during the. During the training week, which is. It's huge. Probably it's the massive, most biggest one we've had. So well done to you just to get through our housekeeping as well. So for those who don't know, we actually do have a thing called the gym a thon which is going at the moment, which all goes to the Smith family, which is for young kids. Now, it's going to get to three grand in donation, but if it gets to three grand, you're going to have to wear a beard and a hat. Next, ask Jim. So if people want to see you in a beard and a hat, which we do have the props, believe it or not, we do.

Well, at least for part of it.

At least a part of it. It's a bit itchy. I'll try and make itchy. But if it gets to three grand, so jimspayplan.comathon, they'll be by the next time. So we've got to get to three grand. Is that two at the moment, so it's not too far away.

Okay.

So please get on board. Cool. So what we're going to do, normal format, we've got. Anyone can ask a question online as well. Jump up to the mic. You do get prizes as well for asking a question on the mic. But we're going to read out your name here. When we read out your name, please come up to the microphone as well and just repeat it for Jim. We'll cut a nice clip out of it and we'll see what answer you get. So the first one here I've got is Roger from Skip Bins. Where is Roger?

Roger.

Roger here. First one's the toughest. First one's always the hardest. G', day, Jim.

I was just wondering why you.

You've shaved your beard off.

Look, everything we do as men is to please women, is that right? Yeah, yeah, I shave. I grew a beard because my fiance at the time liked beards. When I was 48 and single was going a bit grey. Shave it off. I need to find a nice girl.

So that's awesome.

So sorry, nothing deep.

Yeah, awesome. Thank you. Thanks, Roger.

Cool.

Next one we have here is from Rob from Handyman. Where's Rob from Handyman? Over there. Cool. Cheers. Hey, Jim, just wondering, back in the day when you were still on the tools, what was the biggest stuff up.

You ever had on your round and.

Were you able to fix it?

I think the thing I talked about on Monday morning that time when I started doing rubbish removal and he gave me a quote on a job and it was, take a pile of branches around and turn it to be concrete. It took me most of the day. I made nothing. That was hard. You don't make mistakes like that very often. You learn. Awesome.

Thank you. Thanks for that one, Rob.

Did I get a prize? Yeah, yeah. Come down. Everybody's asked a question. Come down and pick a prize.

Wait to the end, you can ask another one. Double prizes. We got here one and by all means, guys, come up and interrupt us. So if there's something you want to ask. Yeah, walk up to the mic. It's all right. We've got Viv here from mowing. Where's Viv from mowing? Viv from mowing. Hi, Jim. Just wondering what the most rewarding thing.

Is about your success. Oh, it's stories about franchisees that always gives me the biggest buzz. I mean, numbers is nice. I mean hitting 5,000 is exciting. But when somebody comes, when I speak to somebody who's been like a 10 year veteran and their life turns around, there's nothing to equal that. There really isn't. It's lots of little successes. Well, not little, but they're individual successes. People doing well, people saying, I wish I'd done this ages ago. I just love that. Yeah, they'll be big to us. So that's cool. Yes. Well, if you, when you write to me after one month and you tell me you're doing great, that is a real boost to my day, I can tell you, which is normally what people say sometimes they've got problems and I can try and help them. But to actually write back and say, hey, I'm doing so great, got great support, I love it. Making well above pay for work guarantee, that really does give me a boost.

Nice.

Thank you.

Thanks for that one there, Viv. We've got one quick one online. Jim, real quickly for you. So, Dennis Denny, Turnbull's gone. How many gyms mowing is too much in a town of 105,000 people?

There isn't any set number because we're only a fraction of the marketplace. What we find is that the more franchisees we have in an area, the more work per franchisee. And I don't know any limit to that. Now in 105, I have no idea, but it could be 20, could be 25. But don't forget, we're always the minority. There's always going to be more independents than us. But every situation's the same when we went to Cranbourne. The first time we went to Cranbourne. I remember we had one guy going to Cranbourne, one job in the first month. We've got five people working flat out in Cranbourne. And that's, that's, that's. There's. There's surplus work, there's work we can't handle. So there's. There's really no upper limit that we've ever come across, ever.

Absolutely. Thanks for one online. Got one here from Sean, who's from mowing in nz. From over from nz. How you doing, Jim?

You well, let me tell you my New Zealand joke after. Oh, ok, Roger, my question is, what made you go into New Zealand and how many divisions are there in New Zealand? Well, it's kind of logical, really, but mostly initiatives with franchisees from Australia. We had somebody who wanted to go across there and they just started it up. So in general, they started from here and then when they went across there we go gradually recruited. Until now, I think everybody in New Zealand is basically a Kiwi. But it's kind of. Most things happen. Most divisions in gyms don't start because we think of them, because somebody comes to us with an idea. So there's somebody tonight who's interested in crop spraying. Was that right? Somebody here?

Was that Jim's crop dusting or something?

Crop dusting? Yeah. I don't know if he's here, but I did say he welcome to come to this, but we just. People approach us all the time with an idea. So that's how it starts. As to which divisions we've got. Well, we've got mowing, we've got dog wash, we've got fencing, we've got test and tag, we've got handyman, a couple more.

Car detailing.

Car detailing, Cleaning, obviously. What else?

Building inspections.

Hazmat's just about to start building inspections. Yeah. We'd like to see all of our successful divisions go across there jumping castles. Great ones. Just getting off the ground here now. I reckon that'll go. I reckon Ken Weeds will love Jumping Castle.

Yeah.

So.

Yeah.

But you never know, somebody here might be somebody taking across there. Maybe you. Who knows?

You never know. Thank you. Thank you for that one as well. By all means, guys, just jump up anytime and ask.

New Zealand's actually a great place for us because New Zealand culture is very similar. I know you speak weirdly. You talk about gyms instead of. But basically, New Zealanders and Australians are very simple. We've got a sort of egalitarian ethos, like somebody's working with their hands, who would say a bank manager. And people would say, oh, well, I often thought of being business myself, but if you were in North America or Europe, they say, are you going to work with your hands? You're going to be a gardener. You know, it's. We're not as. We're not as class bound as snobby, I reckon. So the culture fits very well. It's a lot easier to fit into New Zealand, the way we think about it, than the Canada or to UK.

We're in 300 franchisees and the brand's pretty well known there. So a lot of people will know Jim as Marx Ben, therefore more than 25, five years.

We've just started New Zealand training actually, which of course you could have gone to, but you would have had to wait another five weeks or so. But it's got, it's getting, it's getting a lot. We had like 18 last training. It's really going very well.

Absolutely.

Cool.

The next one here is from Liam from Mowing. Where's Liam from Jim's Mowing?

Liam.

G', day, Jim. I am pretty interested to know what happened to the VIP home services.

I'm still around. When I started they had 250. We had 0 or 1. We first started off, they probably got about 250 still my best guess. So we're about 20 times their size. But you still see them occasionally, don't you? Who's sent a VIP trailer around somewhere? There's a few. I drive my son to work and we see about six students. Think so. It's a lot more of us.

Yeah. Right. Well, one more question.

How did you come up with your processes and procedures? Just by trial and error to a large extent. We just kept on trying things and seeing what works. Honestly, you get ideas all the time. I was just talking to the Jumping Castles people tonight. We talked about doing a gym as pinata, but they get a model of me and they bash them with.

Few people want to hit you. Few franchisors might want to line up and do this.

I enjoy that kind of thing. So we just get ideas from all over. Somebody comes up with an idea like proactive calls. Why does it come about? Because we found that some franchises were doing them and they were getting great success. Another thing we do don't. So we actually tend to adjust the model with time based on feedback, which is one reason I really like to hear what franchisees think. Well, I give everyone my phone number and my email address. And say, contact me, because I get a lot of really good ideas. And then we change the procedures and we still debate them. You know, things like exactly how you use social media, what's your rights to use it, what kind of forms can you use? This kind of thing, it's always changing all the time. Constant feedback, constant experimentation.

Fantastic. Did you have one more question, Liam, at all? Yeah, actually I do.

What did you get into the business.

And more or less what made you want to expand?

I'm just ambitious, okay? What can I say? Some of us are just built that way. We just have to. We just have to grow, isn't that right? Especially men. I think we have this. I think that maybe it's the urge to impress women. I don't know what it is, but you just have this desire to do more all the time. But I had a particular reason for wanting to grow. I was wanting to be an academic and I developed a theory of society back in my 20s and I intended to go into academia and do research for there. And I got completely swashed because I couldn't get any support, anybody to agree with me. So I said, I'm going to have to become rich enough to be able to fund my own research institute. This is, this stuff here. And we're now spending about $3 million a year. And we've got some really, really exciting results about things that could really change character, help people to become more productive, get over things like drug addictions, obesity. We've got some very, very good, exciting results looking at the epigenetics of social behavior. So for that reason, I don't spend much on myself, but the desire to fund my research institute was really the main driver in wanting to become wealthy.

That's fantastic.

Thank you very much, Jim.

There you go. Next one here we got Mandeep from Jim's Mowing. Where's Mandeep?

Mandeep.

Hi, Jim. How are you today? My question is, what's your next big plan for the future for your business? And another one is, how do you deal with your competitors?

My plan, we're not even specific. I have the one plan every day, same idea. How can we be better at what we do? How can we give better support to franchisees? How can we give better service to clients? And how can we do it in a cost effective manner? I mean, that's obviously really where it's at. It's not one big thing. It's lots, lots of tiny little things. Today we're in the office just talking about how can we Improve this. What can we do to this? How can we do this better? Give people a better experience? How can we shave costs? It's just constant, everyday little stuff. And that's what the success of business is. It's not the giant plans, it's the little things. What was your second question?

Second question was, how do you deal with your competitors?

Competitors? Yeah.

Do you feel like, is there anyone out there for your competitors?

Well, we compete with the independents, of course, but in general, honestly, there's so much work around. We don't really think about competitors very much. We just try and be as good as we possibly can. I don't really watch competitors, honestly. I just, I don't even. I don't even think about them very much.

Good. Fantastic. Thank you. Yeah. Another part which was. Was about buying out the competitors. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Another part was like, would you, if there's someone out there having a great idea, would you be buying out those companies?

I was offered the chance to buy VIP several years ago for $5 million and I, and I passed up on it. It's probably not very. It's very hard to buy a competitor. Like competing franchise systems in Australia are so. And in New Zealand are so small by comparison with us, and they have a very different culture. It's very difficult. I actually spoke to Bill Wiss, my opposite number at vip. He's a guy I do respect, actually. He was the one that pioneered the whole idea of service franchising in Australia. And I said, look, and he was talking about how we obviously done a lot better than him. And I said, why, why don't you copy what we do? And he said, well, my guys would never let me. They just got locked into a kind of a way of doing things and they can't change. Oh, yeah.

Did you have a few more? Yeah, just one more. Last. Okay. That would be a little bit funny, maybe. Would you ever go public? Like make.

No, no, I don't want to go public. I'll tell you why. When you go public, you have to start chasing your next month's, next quarter's financial results. And you tend to be very money focused. We are not money focused short term. In gyms, we always think long term. Make a lot of decisions that cost us. Now for the sake of revenue in the future, if we went public, even if I still kept control of it, you'd have a lot of pressure from the market to say, get your earnings up. Get your earnings up.

Oh, yeah, that's true.

And I think that's a very bad Dangerous thing to do. So not only do I want to go public, but as far as possible, I'm going to arrange it so the gym stays private under my ears. I've got 10 children, plus my in laws and so forth. Got some great potential sons in law. Potential sons in law. I would like to see it continue beyond my lifetime. I'm probably going to live for another 20, 25 years based on my health. But I would like to see some way that gyms would never ever go public. Because I think if we did that, you start, you wouldn't give the best service to franchisees.

Well, legally the priority is not the franchisees, it's the shareholders. Yes, that's the difference. Right.

And I don't agree with that. I think actually when you run a company, you have responsibilities to your staff. You have responsibility to your customers. As a franchisor, very particularly we have responsibility to our franchisees. The owner of the company, their interests matter. Of course, you can't afford to go bust. But if you start putting the owner's interest above everything else. This is the Milton Friedman idea, which I think is really obnoxious. Great companies are the past. You look at companies like.

G's 1.

Well, G's went the wrong way, but because they put money first and that just crushed the company. But what's that technology company? I forget. Anyway, but great companies tend not to be too focused on short term financial goals. They tend to think much more long term. And that's what we should do here.

Thank you. And another one about chess. Pretty quick answer. Would you like to play chess with me?

Yeah, sure. Sure. If there's a game where I'll play with you.

Yeah, cool.

Thank you. Good on you.

That was a good one. Mandy, got a question, guys. Feel free to come up and interrupt. Don't have to wait.

I don't know if you've got a chess set here, but I'll play you afterwards if you like.

I do have.

Yeah, I'll play you.

Bring it down.

You ever play 960? 960 is a great version. That's when you sort of semi randomly do the back line. That's a really fun game. I'll show you.

I hope you're good because he's pretty good. I'm smart enough not to play him.

All right.

Is he good? Okay. Well, there we go. Well, that'd be good. Could be a good battle. I'll be good. I agree. My name is Jotiba. Just want to know business ventures. How do you select them? Like you could Start your Jim's Airlines, Jim's Cruises or Jim's Bus Tours. So how do you.

Okay, there's a very simple rule which I've learned from very hard experience. Don't go into businesses you don't understand. Like we did things like we tried to got a factory going. Disaster, trade exchange, disaster. What we do is we actually focus on what we understand and what we're good at. And it's all too easy to think that another business looks good. You don't understand the difficulties. You don't know what you're doing. We know what we're doing. When you come to services, we're very good at what we do. We could be a lot better. But you go to any other business at all. So something like an airline? Absolutely. Never. But even retail franchises, I would never try and compete with likes of McDonald's or Domino's. They're a different kind of business. But if you want to have Jim's Doctors or something like that, yeah, I'd do that in a flash. It's a similar kind of thing. But that's your rule. And I suggest that to anybody too. It always looks as though the other business is going to be great. But believe me, you've got so many problems. I got a psychology research institute going. Actually, it cost me millions of dollars. That was a terrible idea. I've done so many stupid things, I can tell you. Really, really dumb mistakes. But basically all of it is involved with getting into something I don't understand as well.

Just the last question and how do you come with that idea of Local Expert? Your Local Expert.

Oh, that wasn't me. I forget who towards me.

Me. Yeah.

Was it you?

Yeah. We did a bit of research and basically customers knew we did everything but didn't know we did it well. So we just changed the brand positioning a bit for Local Expert. It's quite funny, there's another company that stole the name and called themselves Local Expert up in Gold coast now. But it was more just to combat stuff some of the perceptions with the market about us knowing that we did everything but they didn't know we did it well, that we're actually local in the area. They thought we were subby sent from head office.

You don't seem to be surprised at how little of what we do actually comes from me. I mean like the whole social media campaign, this thing here that we're doing now, that's all Joel. And Joel came in on a very junior job, just casual job, like 10. How long ago was it?

12 years.

12 years ago. Yeah. And just gradually came as a company and then learned how to do things and then come up with the ideas that he does. So a lot of things are like that. A lot of initiatives, a lot of things we do are basically just ideas. If I've got any particular talent is that I talk to a lot of people and I listen a lot. And I'm always open to somebody who's got a different way of doing things. And I tend to say, hey, give it a try. Whether it applies to staff members or franchisees or franchisors or anybody just listening and saying, okay, what ideas have you got?

But Jim's airline, when we did post, was very popular. You had a call from the. From the. Was the news.com, who thought you were literally doing it.

Yeah, I was. The journalist I knew, he actually ran me up once. They had a journal and I said, look at. Look at the. Jason, look at. Look at the date. It was April 1st.

He just laughed. But I got a lot of traction. That one. It was picked up a lot. So I did.

Well, the gyms. The gyms. Gym Land was the big one. We were number one on Twitter. Mostly negative. Mostly negative.

It wasn't good stuff on Twitter for two days. Yeah, it wasn't good at all.

I just. Glasses.

We were trending number one in Australia a little bit.

Yeah, the lefties don't like all the left.

Journalists did not like it at all. Yeah, they all fell for it, though. They weren't happy when we released the video. But, yeah, what can you do? All the money went to a good cause, didn't it?

Yeah, we did. We just ran to. Gave a personal check to a local men's shed. That was great.

Did a video go on, my friend.

Hey, how you going? I'm Adam from Jim's Antennas over in wa. Yeah, Adam, what would you say the.

Quickest or strangest customer story you have is? Or even odd fan request, maybe? Odd fan request, yeah. Bumped in you on the street.

What sort of fan request do we get?

People been asked to sign anyone's skin or anything? Are they tattooed or anything like that? I don't know.

I've never had a Jim's tattoo being. Being done.

The people do. Do Jim's tattoos. You just don't see them. There are people who do them, like every couple of weeks and upload them, expect some free stuff. And yeah, we don't give it to them.

I don't know. Customers can be very strange and very difficult at times. People say the customer is always right. And I tell you what, some dead wrong customers can be absolutely terrible. They can be very, very unreasonable. You know, you get people who complain and this is not just the worst ever, but, you know, somebody complained that nobody ever rang me and, you know. And you go to the franchisee. Yeah, I rang them three times, I texted them twice, I emailed them four times. I just don't know how can get service someone they're so impossible to actually get in contact with, they have a cheat to tell us. No, that's, that's. I know this because I wiped the complaint, I wiped the survey because the franchisee has done the right thing. But that kind of thing happens all the time. Some people are very odd. I don't know how anybody could get a service done when they are so impossible to contact.

Right. But we get some strange things like signing an empty beer can or something, or signing this or signing the monopolies, all that sort of stuff. So, yeah, autographs for photos and all that sort of thing.

I'm very flabbergasted at the kind of culture cult thing we've got going these days. It's just very odd. You know, our peak actual fans tend to be girls between 15 and 25. Isn't that bizarre? People do all kinds of things. They love the brand, which I'm very happy with, but it's just odd. This is a guy with a beard and a hat. I mean, it's kind of.

Well, it is like it's meme worthy. Right. So if your brand's mean worthy, that's a good thing. Everyone thinks it's a bad thing, but it's a good thing. Yeah, we always do it. Hi, Jim. Billy from Jumping Castles act now, you've said about some of your successful brands and some of the other brands that have made you laugh now, what's that brand that someone's come to you and gone? I am not putting my face or my name to it.

It's really hard to think of me saying no. The only one. I probably have a distinct problem with Jim's Escort Services.

Yeah, I don't think my wife would like me to know. That's fine. Yeah.

But really, we'll do anything. The reason we probably wouldn't do a division like, as I said, I don't know if this guy from Crop Spraying was here spraying with drones and so forth, but it's more of a question of whether we can find the leads given our current system of operation. But morally speaking, you know, look, I'm a teetotaller for 50 years, but we still provide, you know, Jim's lager. So I suppose I'm not particularly fussy about slugging. As long as it gets the brand a bit of fun.

Nice. Thank you. Thank you. So you try most things, don't you? You'll give most things a go.

I think Jim's drug couriers are probably something I would draw the line at.

Well, in America it would actually probably be a technical thing. Cause they're calling themselves drugstores over there.

Yeah, they would.

Could be something in America. Shane.

How you going, guys? More of a statement than a question. But at the moment the economy's apparently really bad if you listen to everything on TV and all the rest of it. But from my point of view, our leads are just growing month by month. The amount of people here tonight and every three weeks is growing more and more. I know we've got a great brand, but obviously that's going to keep going. The worse the economy gets, the bigger we seem to get. Yeah. The strange thing, Jim's is very countercyclical. In fact, the oddest thing about gyms over the past couple of years is that we've grown substantially, even though times are pretty good and there's been low unemployment. We tend to do like back in the early 90s, we grew from 1,000 to 1,400 in one year and that was all thanks to the treasurer. We had a recession, that was the last recession we had and we did really well because people were losing their jobs. So in practice, look, our leads are definitely down. We've got people in mowing division even in the middle of winter saying they need more leads, which is unprecedented. It hadn't happened for years, but we've still got most. We still had 25% unserviced leads last month. It's just not 33% as it was previously. So I think actually, I mean, I don't want to see a recession because I think, you know, I don't want to see Australians suffer from it or New Zealanders either, for that matter. But at the same time, a recession would be good for our business because we've got lots and lots and lots of work and we just need more franchisees because the worse it gets, more people seem to want to join. So I think they're obviously very encouraged by what they see out there from the brand, our limit to our growth. There's only one division where we're not limited by franchisees and that's painting for some reason. They always seem to want they have big teams of guys and they always want put. We can never find them enough leads. But apart from that, every other division is simply limited by franchise numbers. Great, thanks.

Good on you, Shane Berman. If you want to jump up guys, please feel free to do so. Hi, I'm Kelly Thorpe.

I've just heard a rumour, so I just want to see if you can.

Confirm it for me or not that.

Apparently you think Jim's Dog Wash is the best division. I've heard a rumour the Jim's Dog Wash people get primed to ask that question and everybody asks Jim, let me say, let me say if I was going to be a vote for the loudest raucous division. Kim's dogwashed. Every time. You can tell they're table because of all the racket arising from you guys. There you go. Well, thanks for everything so far. It's been really a great journey, so can't wait for more. My question actually need this paper because it's not very a long one. It's a bit of a cheeky one. Out of all these groups so far, who's your best? Your favorite franchisee? Your favorite franchisee out of all this group. Since you got to meet everyone in this. My favorite, favorite franchise. Yeah. As an individual. And if you say it's me, I'm happy to. Potentially, I would consider the James tattoo. Somebody today told me they've got 13 children. Thirteen children. I don't think he's here. Is that right? Oh, well, he lost them. I tell you what, he's the only person I've met who's got more kids than I do. I've got 10. So that. That would win the prize on that sort of thing. I was very impressed and he was doing pretty well. Sorry about that. Well, that was a cheeky one. But thanks for answering.

We never had that one before. We've never had that one before.

Jim, I'll tell you, I appreciate families. I do. And I think it's wonderful to see people coming here with their kids and so forth. And you know, one of the greatest things about people buying a franchise, the best thing of all that I hear from anybody is that the great thing about being a franchisee is I got to see my kids grow up. That is the biggest thing. Much more than somebody. It's great when somebody becomes wealthy and they do, but having a chance to spend time with your children is something that you just cannot buy with any amount of money. There's a wonderful saying that goes, no other success can compensate for failure in the home. In fact, the next version of the book is going to be called no Other Success, because I want to really emphasize that point about what's most important. You know, I lived a busy life, but I take my son to school and pick him up pretty well every day. And that to me is precious. And I build my day around that.

It's a very original question, though. We haven't had that in like 150 of these, so.

No, it's a good question.

Very, very good question. We haven't ever had one before.

Cool.

Reece from Mowing. Where's Rhys from Jim's Mowing?

So I've heard you like a video game. What's your favourite computer games? I try not to get too addicted. I play games like Wordmaster, which is kind of an online Scrabble thing. I play Conquest, which is like a risc version. It's good because it's very short. I play Slydris, which is sliding blocks around. I play mostly little games. As far as the other one's concerned, I don't tend to like the first person. I like the strategic games. I like to have a game where you can build an army and an economy and go and conquer somebody. I mean, that's just my nature. So, like the Age of Empires, Age of Kings type stuff. You played that Warcraft? Yeah, yeah.

Fantastic game. Used to love it.

Yeah, I love it. Actually. I haven't really come across anything better than that, but I do try not to get too addicted in those things. Honestly. You lose too much of your life, don't you?

Yes.

They can be a huge time sink. So I sort of say, okay, play a couple of games on this and then go and read something useful.

There we go. Thank you. Where's Gareth from Mowing? Gareth. Hey, Jim. What would you consider the biggest strength of the gyms?

I think it's our culture. There is a very distinct culture in Chims which is very difficult to spread. That's one reason that outside Australia, New Zealand, it's been very hard to go. There's a culture which is very communal. People help each other, people look after each other. When you go to meetings, I'm pretty confident you'll come across people who really want to help you and they'll see you as part of their team, part of their family. That's the great most valuable thing. And you can have all the rules and you can have the contracts you like, but if you don't have the right culture, it won't work. And honestly, that is something that I am quite Proud of because the values that we have are very much my values they had from the beginning. Even when this was just a pipe dream, when I didn't have any idea whether it could work or not, I had this sense my franchise was going to be number one. And I was fanatical about customer service. Little thing you see in my book at first, Prodigy is the welfare of franchisee. We're also passionate about customer service. We signed the new franchisees and franchisors. We are convinced we'll succeed. That was there from the beginning. Now everything else changes. And there's a book called have you read Jim Collins? Good to great people to ask those kinds of books.

No, I haven't.

They're really good about business. And one of the things they did is they looked at businesses that were successful long term. Now, admittedly these businesses are much bigger than dust, like Hewlett Packard. But it's the one thing that great businesses had in common was a very powerful culture which was shared. Everybody from the mail room to the CEO. And I think that's pretty widespread. Most franchisors are very, very pro franchisee. You know, like when they had a lockdown in New Zealand, people would. One of our competitors, I won't say who, actually continued to charge their franchisees fees when they weren't allowed to work. Now, nobody in Jim's would ever dream of such a thing. It just would be completely incomprehensible. And during the lockdown, people helped each other, they looked after each other, they do things. And that's the greatest asset, the way people think about each other. And one of the great strengths of my book actually is people read that and they tend to pick it up and they get it from other people.

Awesome.

Great question. Very good question.

It was Green Acres, New Zealand. I'll say it because it's the first thing you'll see on Google when it comes up. So it was Green Acres, New Zealand who did that. Cool. And where is Carol from Dog Wash? Carol from Dogwash. Oh, I can ask. This is a different. Well, this is a different one. So this one was, do you have any plans to take over Australia and make it. Jim Land was the. Have you seen the video of Jim Land they showed in training? Oh, cool.

I often get asked to go into politics, but that's a tough game. I have a lot of respect for politics. It's very difficult politics because you've got so many competing interests. I actually said to our former Nke Tony Smith, who was the speaker at the time, and I Said I would not change my job for yours. Which probably wasn't very tactful, I must.

Say, but still, gym for PM is something we always get on.

I always get Jim for pm.

Absolutely cool, guys. If you want to come up and ask a question, please feel free to do so. Those who do get a prize. We have David Bevin. Where's David from? Mowing. How you going, Jim? Just wondering why you called your name Jim's Mowing when your name's actually David James.

Yeah, well, basically when I left home, I went to work on a farm and there was a kid there who was the son of one of the brothers who worked there who was called David. So I just said, call me Jim. It's kind of got a more of a David's kind of like very. That's my name.

Be careful.

Very noble and very. I just like Jim. I've never been James. James is like a butler. Jim is kind of like very tough and rugged and masculine. And Dave's not.

What were you going to say about David, Jim?

What are we going to say, you know, when I say to women I change my name? You know what they always say? David's a nice name.

It's in the Bible, so.

Well, James is in the Bible too, you know.

Yeah, but your name's Jim. Yeah. Thanks anyway, buddy. Good man. Good man. David, good question. We're only from Ahmed from it. Where's Ahmed from it?

Is he here?

If you want to come up and ask your questions, just jump up. Interrupt us if you want, that's fine. Here, a couple of good ones here. Just jump up. Go for it.

Hi, I'm Melissa from Cleaning. I'm just wondering, what would you say is the single biggest mistake that new franchisees make starting out? Single biggest mistake. My goodness, there's a few. Listen, I think what sometimes can happen, which is a problem, is people get used to the idea of unlimited work and they don't get used to the idea of marketing themselves. They tend to rely too much on the system and we'll do what we can. But so often I had a franchisee approach me just last week and their leads were dropping off and they didn't get enough leads through. And I wrote and they were very upset about that and they wanted more advertising. It wasn't my regions I couldn't control anyway. But I had a look at the way they were set up and what they were doing and stuff. And I gave back about six different suggestions about things they could do to promote their own business. And she got very Upset this woman, she said, but I'm really unhappy about what you said because I thought you would support me. Now, to her, support means working out some way to get more leads, which I really can't do anyway. Whereas to me the support was helping you to run your business in a way that will make you prosper even though you aren't getting as many leads as you want. So I think that's probably the number one problem we have. Or people who say I'm not getting enough leads. And I say, what about pay for work guarantee? I said, I don't want to do that. I just want to get leads from the office. Well, you know, no, you've got to be proactive yourself. We'll do a lot and we'll support you and we'll guide you and we'll show you examples and we'll encourage you and you train you, but you've got to do it yourself. That's good question.

Thanks. Good one, Melissa. Cool. Got one here from. Is it Quan from Dogwash? Quan from Dogwash. Juan Hi Jim. So you were talking before about spending more time with the family and the kids and I think a lot of everyone here wants to buy the franchise. But to work full time.

How would.

You make a dog wash business work part time?

Well, it's not so much necessarily part time. It's a case of what hours you can run. Say for example, you could run your business on a Saturday and you could pick your kid up from school during the week, for example, or you could work different hours. Like a lot of women do, things like that, they actually got kids that they're in school and so they work school hours and maybe at the weekend the husband's able to and they go out washing dogs. Then it's not so much a case of whether it's part time or full time, it's a question of flexibility and also the fact that if you don't have to commute, let's face it, if you're doing a 40 hour a week job and you're commuting an hour to work each way, you've actually got a 50 hour a week job, haven't you?

Yeah.

So if you can spend 40 hours but not commute because you're working locally, then you've got more time for your family and things that really matter. But flexibility is the big thing. But look, if you're making enough money then you can go part time and still make a full time income. That's quite feasible.

What's part time to you? Like in Terms of hours or flexibility, what do you justify by part time? I would say just in time, but also considering all the, all the costs and fees from the business, you know, like, how do you make it work financially? Financially as well?

Yes, but look, you've got plenty of people who are making good money, three or $4,000 a week, who are only working 20, 25 hours a week. It's a matter of how much you charge. It's a matter of how efficient you are at doing your job. What you should be aiming to do when you start is looking every day at how I can improve what I do. How can you be more efficient, how can you get your pricing right, how can you learn new skills, how can you cut your traveling time down? So you might have a level of income that you need to keep yourself comfortable in terms of paying fees and so forth. But when you talk about fees, fees, on average, only about 6% of turnover in gyms, they're not that high. So you work out an income that you're comfortable with and then you say, how can I improve that? And so the first year you might be working 45 hours a week, and then the second year you're working 40, and the third year you're working 38, and the next year you're working 35 hours a week, and then you're working 25 hours a week. If you keep on improving what you do and you look at the pricing in the way that Dan Carle was talking about this morning, then what you should try and do is get better and better and better. There's no upper limit to what you can make in an hourly rate that we know of. Okay, well, you sold some figures he gave you. What does he say for an extra? What is his hourly rate? Like 180 bucks an hour. That's what he aims for. Now, you don't have to work a lot of hours at $100 an hour to make a good living, do you? Yes, that's correct. But that doesn't happen overnight. You have to learn how to do that. And you can listen to him and other people and learn how to do it yourself.

In dogwatch, we did an interview with a lady who won one of our core voucher winners and she's a trainer in New Zealand. Her name's Meg, and she's a single mum and she has full time care of her kids. So she does. Drops her daughter off to school every morning, does all the job for four jobs during the day, then picks up a kid from school, then on the Weekends, sometimes sets up the trailer at home to do walkings to her house as well. So she's a full time single mum running a business, plus does training in New Zealand. So the flexibility is there for her as well. And she makes good money doing it. So it's all about how you do it. That's a really good interview to listen to, which will be out next week on our podcast and stuff with her about how she does it.

Send me an email and I'll give you a link to the actual video and you can watch it.

Okay, no worries. Thank you. Because I would sort of define that's not part time, I guess, but it's sort of. She's worked it around four jobs a day. I guess you might want to call that part time in dog wash maybe, but she works that really well and she's a trainer as well and does it and happy with her income. So it can be done.

It's interesting. The actual fastest growing divisions tend to be one that are female friendly and that's dog wash, laundry and cleaning. And they've all got the same benefits. You can work flexible hours because women have childcare responsibilities or the kid's sick or something like that. You need a job that will fit around your life rather than your life fitting around your job. It's actually a very good business for that. And the actual earnings are pretty good, really. Your hourly rate should be quite substantial.

Thank you so much. Cheers. We've got one here from. Is it Mitch Cooper from Dogwash? Mitch. Hey, Jim, how you going?

Hey, Mitch.

Just want to know what your favorite Jim's uniform is. Fag uniform. Never been asked that one.

I reckon. I reckon Jumping Castles have got to be.

Catches the dog rush.

You guys are. You guys are too much.

Ever been asked anyone before about your favorite uniforms? The Jumping Castles you like obviously stands out.

They're certainly bright. I was sitting at the table dinner with the Jumping Castles and they just about blaze your eyes, don't they? They're so colorful.

Cool guys, if you want to ask questions.

I do love Dogwash. It's a great division. In actual fact, it's one that we. We're the franchise all for, not the divisional, but it's a brilliant division. It's going really well. Sharon is an amazing, amazing leader. Very inspiring, very strong culture. But it's really not fair to ask about favourites.

Absolutely. Guys, you've got a question as well. Please feel free to come up and ask one as well. And we have one from Cleaning. Is it from Gaurav? Gaurav I can't say your name, sorry. Gaurav. Hi, good evening, Jim. My question is, what is your one.

Of the best moment in your personal.

Life and in Jim's group which you count as your one of the best.

Like the top one, There are two. This is completely up. There are two times in my personal life that were the absolute most important, crucial things ever. One was the age of 28 when I found God and the other at the age of 48 when I met Lee, my current wife. Okay. They're the absolute peak meetings of my entire life.

One in your working in James Crook.

In business, it would be impossible to say, but I get a huge boost out of seeing people succeed. That really makes me very happy. That's all I can say. And there's so many stories. I think the story that I'm actually launching the book with was probably at a high point. I was Talking to this 10 year veteran and I asked him what he was doing before he got into gyms and he said, I was a manager in a supermarket. And one day he was actually about to leave for work because he worked really long hours and hardly saw his kids. And when he was about to leave for work just first in the morning, his little four year old son said to him, daddy, I wish you could have breakfast with us. And he said he drove to work and the tears were streaming down his face. And then he sold, he got out of the business and he bought a Jimmy's franchise. And he said, ever since then I've seen my son grow up. And I said, do you ever thank your son for making that comment? He said, every day. If you ask me one experience, that would be the most moving experience I've ever had. I'm actually launching the book, my new version of the book. It's going to have to start with that story because I find it so meaningful and that's really everything. Look, we've probably made more millionaires than any company in this country. There'd be hundreds of gym franchisees who have become millionaires as a result of being in this organisation, becoming franchisors or putting on workers. And that's fantastic. But I really think the greatest thing of all is people who see their children. Because no one's successful can compensate for failure in the home.

Good question. And another one, what it takes to be as successful as Jim.

I'm not particularly good at most things. That's the thing to bear in mind. I'm not particularly good at counts. I'm not very good on relationships. I lose my temper. I am lazy at times. I'm ill disciplined, I'm not good at accounts. I have terrible social skills. I invented without meaning to. There are so many reasons why I should fail. All I can say is that I have a relentless drive to do better every day, every day. And there's absolutely no reason why anybody who's listening today can't do as well as me or better if they just have that same focus. And maybe they've got lots of skills that I don't have, but constantly, it's got to be obsessional in a way that nothing is ever good enough. Every day of my life, every day, Christmas day, every day, I'm thinking the same question, how can we do this better? And it's a thousand, it's ten thousand little decisions that make all the difference. That's honestly where it is. And it's not because I'm some great genius or I've got some great talent. It's not, I think if anything, it's really. You know, even Einstein said that, and I'm not screwing myself with him. But people talk about what a great brain he had, but you know what he said? He said genius is an infinite capacity of taking pains. People overestimate how much it matters, how much money you've got, how much intelligence you've got, all those things, how good looking you are. I mean, all these things people think matter so much, but really what matters is character. Correct. That determination to do better.

Thank you. There you go. Got one here. Is it from Suta Kim from Laundry Services? Hi, Jim, nice to meet you again. I have a question, actually. I'm deeply impressed by your writing. And if you had a mentor, what.

Would you most like to learn from the mentor? I have lots of mentors, actually, because I would read on average, probably a couple of books a week. Reading books and so forth. I just like to listen to a lot of different stories about successful people. You know, we were talking today about something to do with the business and hiring processes and referring to a book about Netflix by Reed Hastings, one of the founders of Netflix. It's called no Rules Rules and the principles that he put forward. Now, Reed's my mentor. I never met him, of course, and he wouldn't know me, but there's so many great things. I'm reading a book, I've just finished reading a book the second time about the discipline of happiness and so forth and how you become happy and effective in your work. It's fantastic. Some brilliant ideas. I'm actually mentioning that in my Jim's letter this month, which I send out every month. So I reckon that it's a funny thing, people often, they'd want to talk to me and say I want you to be my mentor. And I say, well you can come and I can have a chat with you about stuff, but if you really want to learn, read my book. Look at all the podcasts and stuff that we've done, look at all the material, not just for me, other people too and just immerse yourself in the great material. So all around you, the great stories. I'm probably one of Amazon's best customers in terms of books because I just order all the time. Order books, books, books, books all the time. Everything I get my hand on about business in particular, but also psychology and motivation and lots of other things, evolution, history, all kinds of stuff too. That's my recommendation. Look for the. We can't always have the privilege of a great mentor, but we can all have the ability to learn from the greatest to most skillful people in the world. Learning every day, nearly all the different peoples right.

From the books and everywhere. Right.

And if you actually asked me who my greatest mentor of all time was, I'd say Jesus. Because if you look at the principles behind how Jim's works, this whole ideal of service and the idea that we are not Jesus washing his disciples feet or the power of the talents, I often think about that particular thing, how you, you can't compare yourself with other people in terms of your abilities. What you can do is make the best you can the abilities that you've got. And that's what the arcist. Now whether we've got the one talent or the two talent or the five talents in terms of ability, that's not the point. What are you doing with those talents? How much is your life worthwhile considering what you've been granted and what you've been given, that's what matters the most. So I'd say the gospels, particularly the synoptic gospels, I love them. And also James letter because James was Jesus brother and a lot of what he said is very similar. And then Jesus teaching about the value of poverty, not so much that, but it's harder for rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven than the camel to go through the eye of a needle, that kind of thing too. We talked about the dangers of wealth. That is the guiding line. If you looked at a mentor that I would have, that would be him. Okay, thanks. And one more thing is.

Would you be my mentor then? You bet you have Mentor. What would you like to be my mentor?

Then tell me about the most important things. Most important what? Sorry? Most important thing?

You just tell me about this business when I starting.

Well, it's what I've already told you yesterday, today, this whole business, passionate about customers, constant urge to do better. Always put the interest of what you're doing before the money side of it. Never put money first, those kinds of things. Principles. But I, you see, I am your mentor, aren't I really? First of all, you can follow me in any way you like and all the podcasts, but if you've got a particular problem, you just email me and say, I've got an issue, what can I do? And I'll answer you. Okay, so I am your mentor.

All right. Or call as well. You got your number as well. So thank you so much.

Thank you.

Good question. Thank you for that. Got a couple online real quickly you just want to get to because this is a good one. David Barber's gone as a 56 year old. Have I missed the boat on running a Jim's mowing business?

No, absolutely not.

Do you want to tell them about one of the.

Yeah, we've got guys in their 70s. One guy just parted his 80th birthday.

Jeff started at 79. He was on the Today show within two months. And he thinks he's a bit of a media star now. He's on the project and everything. So Jeff Campbell. So he's at 79 years old. He started a gym staring franchise.

People have got to recognize too. You know, when Ray Croc actually came across the McDonald's butts, he was in his late 50s.