Business Faith and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations - Jim Penman (Jim's Mowing - Jims Group) - 8 Feb 2022

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About to discover today that one of Australia's most successful small business entrepreneurs has an inspiring Christian foundation and that he has some more complex dimensions way beyond the popular image of a man pushing a lawn mower. Jim Penman is the founder of Jim's Mowing, the lawn care service franchise that has grown to more than 4,000 franchises in 50 different service industries and has an annual turnover of $500 million. Now that started as an Aussie business and now it's going global, expanding into the uk, New Zealand and Canada. That's not bad for a company that started with a capital of just $24. Well, some insights today into Jim Pend, his business, his personal Christian faith and a less talked about dimension of Jim's interests as an historian with a PhD in the field of what's called bio history. He even has his own theory of how civilizations rise and fall. Jim Penman, the founder of Jim's Mowing. Jim, welcome along to 2020.

Good to be here, Jim.

It's always good talking to you and we did do a little update with you some years ago, but what an opportunity today to talk a little bit more deeply. I wonder whether you've got a bit of an update. Some of those details that I mentioned, are they the right figures? I know business continues to grow for you.

Yeah, well, we're well past four and a half thousand franchisees now and yeah, we're booming. We've had a very good couple of.

Years and so far as the couple of years goes, I know some listeners will be familiar with your name and your face. You've been in the media at different times protesting even some of the mandate policies and keeping some of your franchisees not even working in the state of Victoria. How's all that going so far as business goes and things are returning a little bit more to normality.

Yeah, look, I have to say I'm a very big supporter of sensible government actions. We've been very strongly supportive of vaccination program, for example, and you know, wearing of Masks and not having contact direct with clients and all kinds of things. But the lockdowns that we suffered from where lawnmower contractors, now other outside workers working by themselves were shut out of work for no reason at all. And the government, the Victorian state government, has never been able to give any justification or reason for throwing hundreds of thousands of people out of work. That got me quite upset. Well, as things are now, of course, that's all over. We're all back to work, which is great, but it's been a very distressing time.

Well, certainly for the mowing side of your business. Summertime and the grass has been growing crazily. No doubt your mowing side has been booming for sure.

Well, all over, actually. We knocked back 328,000 leave last year. The absolute demand for our services is way past what we can cope with.

Wow. Hey, I mentioned that the growth of your business has been huge. And when people think of, you know, the picture of, you know, that's not actually a picture of you on the side of all of those trailers.

Yeah, it is. Look up Jim Penman images. You'll see the actual photo that was taken from with me against one of the old logo on a trailer.

Last time, last time I saw you, you didn't have the beard.

No, it was going a bit gray 21 years ago, so I shaved it off.

But that is one of the most well known images, you might say, around Australia. And it's your image on the side of those trailers then. Jim and Jim's mowing. But it's not just mowing these days. I mentioned there's 50 different elements of your franchises. Just give us a quick idea here how things have begun to expand into all sorts of things from, you know, fixing television antennas and to every other elements in. In looking after home life.

Yeah, well, all these things are very similar in the way they work. They're all services that people call up to get people to come out and do so. Whether you're mowing lawns or cleaning or pest control or dog wash or all these things, they all work very much the same way. The same kind of software, the same systems of support the franchisees, the same systems of customer service. The contracts are very, very similar actually. So it's almost the same business in a way.

And once you've got a system in place, things can grow to unlimited levels. And as I mentioned in the introduction there, starting with $24 capital, you've certainly been able to build on that $24 pretty substantially. Remember back to those early days when you did have $24 and you were starting your first mowing business, Jim, did you ever anticipate things would grow as big as they have?

No, I didn't. They were actually, Neil, I've been gardening since I was 8. So I did it, I did it as a kid just for a bit of pocket money. I did it as a student actually. I bought my first mower as a student. I've ever. I've been in continuing the business since 1971 and that was only just a gap of a few years when I wasn't doing it. So it goes back further than that. The great thing about 1992 when I started off is that I just basically failed in my academic career and I had nothing to do, I had no potential job. So I just went back to mowing lawns, which was my student job.

Well, we're going to get to your academic career too because it was at that time, as you say, when you'd finished a PhD that you weren't finding a lot of doors opening for you so you decided to start a mowing business. That's pretty amazing.

Yes, well, I had not the slightest prospect. Look, the thing of it is, what I didn't realize as a student, which was pretty foolish on me, that if I was in the field of history and if you want to be a historian, get some sort of academic post, you need to become the absolute world experts in say, you know, second phase of the wars of the Roses or something. Well, I wasn't just not. I was not. I was interested in the whole range of things. I was interested in patents across world East Asia, pre Columbian America, ancient, modern everything. And not just that, but cross cultural anthropology and zoology and biology and economics. And so it was, it was a wild, very, very wide theory and completely inappropriate. There was no possibility anybody would employ me.

It's interesting, isn't it? Sometimes people talk about when you're studying history, you've just nailed it there. Unless you are the world expert in a very narrow field of, then you're not likely to get that academic post. So if you're interested in a broad cross section across history that gives you insight into the trends that have shaped history and this has been where your interest has really been piqued. And even while Jim's mowing has gone from strength to strength over these decades, you've continued to develop some of your theories in the background.

Yes, that's correct. I never gave up on it. Even when I was mowing lawns. I would always, if I could Grab a day off, I'd go down to Monash Medical Library and read up on social, on primatology and so forth. And then I started writing. And as soon as I could afford to, 10 years ago, I launched a research project on a very small scale then, but we're now spending a couple of million dollars a year. Got a fairly major project looking at basically what it amounts to initially is a way of helping people with issues like drug addiction, alcoholism, those kinds of issues.

We might get into some of those. But come back to your having felt like you'd failed in your academic quest for getting a post. You've started Jim's mowing and you've got this interest that's going on behind the scenes. You're recognizing there are some trends in the history of the world. Now, I'm not sure when it was that you began to have your interest piqued around issues of a religious nature, but take us back to what it was that, that captivated you in understanding things more deeply and coming to a Christian faith.

I was, I have to say, I was at that time a very militant agnostic. I mean, you might say any Christian. I would go and buttonhole people and ask, what if they believed in God at a, you know, a church school and argue with them. So I was not just neutral, I was anti. What I like the question I asked myself in the age of 14 was why the civilizations collapse? Why do they fall? Why is something as brilliant as Athens in the late 5th century or the Roman Empire in the 1st century? Why do they decay? And what I came to the conclusion was that the whole nature of civilization depends on character. People have a certain character which we call a high C character, which is allows people to be productive, to form large states, to be democratic. Of all the things we associate with civilizations. And what happens is when society becomes decadent, then that system collapses. Because what's behind it, what's behind this sea, this character is traditional religion and for the west in particular, Christianity. So Christianity actually drives behavior in such a way, things like chastity and fasting and Sabbath keeping and other kinds of elements actually act like a kind of mild food restriction, has biological effects and changes character. And the changing character is what makes a civilization great. And when a wealthy society starts to abandon the culture, these cultural technology, these religions, then it collapses.

Well, we might even get into some thoughts that you might have, what's happening here in Australia. And of course, when you talk about Western societies, you're including nations like the United States or Canada or the UK and some European nations, the thought that when a society becomes decadent, in other words, they become wealthy and their wealth becomes more important than the values that grew that wealth in the first place. Is that a fair enough way of thinking about decadence and, and how you might need to deal with that?

Yes, yes, it's wealth and urbanization have this effect, but you can study it on rats. Basically. Humans and rats are very similar in this respect. It's all to do with the limbic system, with the amygdala and the way that certain hormones work, for example. Very, very similar approaches. Very easy to understand what's going on. Difficulty is trying to reverse it, trying to change it.

So even rats have a problem with decadence?

Well, yes, they do. Actually. We are going to give you a certain example. If you expose rats to, if you give them a sexual outlet at adolescent male rats, for example, as adults, I'll have much higher levels of testosterone. Now testosterone people think of as being something quite positive and good, but in fact it's very strongly correlated in human societies with poor work record, with unemployment, with criminal activity and so forth. In fact, the only place that testosterone gives you high status is when you're in jail. So you can see the same pattern. So when you have, say, back in the, in the late 40s and 50s, when Kinsey did the, his Kinsey Report, which supposedly showed that sex was great, his actual figures showed that people who had less sex as adolescents were far more likely to be successful in life, to have more education and to go on to a higher level of income.

So when we have an unbridled release of sexuality, we're actually on one of those bad trajectory paths that could lead to a downfall even of an entire civilization. Now, I'm sure it's a lot more complicated than that and I think we'll get into some of those complications as we continue our conversation, as we talk business, as we talk faith, and even as we talk the rise and fall of civilizations. Our special guest is a well known face to every listener. Jim Penman, the face of Jim's Mowing, the founder of Jim's Mowing. We're back with Visions 2020 with Neil.

Johnson, a biblical perspective on life, culture and current events.

Our talkback line is open too. An interesting conversation. Today. We might even, we might even characterise our conversation the World According to Jim. Jim's Mowing founder Jim Penman is our guest and we're discovering that there's a number of dimensions to Jim bigger than just the smiling face of a hard working Gardener on the side of those trailers for Jim's Mowing. 1-800-316316. You might have your own thoughts about the things we're talking about today. You'll be welcome to join in our conversation. 1-800-316316 Jim, talking business, talking Christian faith and this less talked about dimension. As an historian with a PhD in the field of bio history, as you started to discover that there were trends that you could identify in the history of the world, these trends led you to think about Christianity and the values of that shape nations. Take us through some of that journey.

As I said Neil, I started off with a fairly anti Christian attitude, very rationalistic. I thought this is old fashioned stuff, it's senseless, it's superstition, it's in the past. And I started to study societies. I realized that Christian values were absolutely fundamental to the success of our civilization and our society. And that opened my mind, you might say, I started to become more positive. And at that stage, and it was at the age of 28, I happened to get to know some people in the Christian Union of La Trobe University. And I got to like them and they invited me on this retreat and I went there and I sat down for a quiet time first thing in the morning and I stood up a Christian. I just felt that God had called me.

And you can come to a decision like that from thinking deeply about the way civilizations have risen and fallen and the factors that are involved there. So the influence of religion. And no doubt there's a comparative way you can talk about Christianity and the way the west has been shaped and the way other nations around the world have been shaped through their history too. But this can lead you to faith.

Yes, exactly. Right now there is a difference. There is a distinction. You can believe that religion is a valuable thing for society and not actually accept Jesus Christ. That is a very different thing. But it makes it seem reasonable, more plausible. It's easier to make the step once you understand. Look, the example, Neil, I give is this. If you had a washing machine, okay, and the washing machine broke down and you went out to your car and you got the manual from your car, which in my case the Mitsubishi, and you tried to fix your washing machine, it wouldn't work, would it? Because it's not the maker's manual. But however, if you were a lot more capable than I am about such things and you got the manufacturer's manual, who made the washing machine and you tried to fix the washing machine, you do a lot better because the people who made the washing machine understand how it works. Well, to me, God is the creator and the Bible is his maker's manual, which helps us to live a good life as individuals and society.

Jim, your thoughts on Australia and no doubt you've thought deeply about Australia's history too, because we started off with a good manual, didn't we? We had a biblical foundation right from the very first chaplain on the first fleet. And we've seen dramatic developments in Australia according to the values in that maker's manual. We've got a bit of a change that's been happening over some decades now. Any thoughts? If you're a broad brushstroke from Jim, around Australia and where we're at right.

Now, very much the same as everyone else. You see all the problems together. You see the decline of the work ethic, decline of discipline, decline, faith in government, institution, decline of faith. There's a same problem, same process going across the whole Western world. People are losing faith in democracy. Now. What's happened in America is particularly shocking, but we're not far behind. And if this continues, if we don't stop it, we're going to go the same way as Rome. There'll be a collapse, the economy will collapse, democracy will collapse, turn into dictatorship, and in the end the society will collapse.

And of course, institutions evolve because they are made up of individuals. So individual faith and values within the say we're talking government institutions here and whole nations. It does start with individuals, doesn't it?

That's right. That's the difference here. I don't believe in impersonal market and political and economic forces. What I believe in is individuals. If individuals change, society changes. Wars don't take place because of governments, they take place because of people. People are more aggressive. You tend to fight a war and there's actually patterns. If you can have a look at the reasons war broke out and you can look at the act dates that they break out, and you can look at this demographic pattern, then you can say, ah, there's the reason.

Take us back to you mentioned when you first came to faith in Christ. You were on a retreat, some friends of yours from La Trobe University, I think you said, and you were participating in a quiet time, a morning devotional, and when you got up from that, you realized something had changed in you. That change wasn't just for a momentary glance. No doubt there are some things that began to grow from that time. How did that look for you, growing in your early Christian years?

I actually felt that God had Spoken to me. I was actually writing down. I had a book with a red pen and I started writing what I truly believed to be a calling from God. And I just. I basically just switched sides. I'm a fairly extreme character if I believe something is right. So I actually went out and started getting involved in evangelism. I went to an evangelistic coffee shop and I, you know, all kinds of. It was a wonderful period. It was really, really magnificent. And I just started becoming very active as a Christian. I wanted everybody else to understand what I had, I had discovered. It was amazing. That first year I could remember listening to Christmas carols and suddenly it was so overwhelming. I knew what they meant.

I wonder whether there'd be some people listening to us now thinking, well, it's not people with PhDs who are having these divinely appointed moments of enlightenment and coming to faith in Christ. But you were already at that time, well educated. What are your thoughts for the idea that sometimes people who are highly educated do not easily come to faith in Christ? That's obviously not true.

People can have all kinds of problems and stuff. One of the problems with highly educated people if they get exposed to different kinds of propaganda which can be very negative. You have very clever academics making all sorts of arguments and statements and philosophical music and stuff which. Which amounts to an indoctrination. And universities these days, there's really intense anti Christian indoctrination. It's all around them, all their peers, their teachers. Everybody's saying, oh, this is all rubbish. You know, you should. Sex and drugs and everything is all fantastic and, you know, God's just a myth and, you know, let's be free. And it's a disastrous philosophy, but it's very widespread in that environment. Now.

Don't want to baffle everybody here, but in the sorts of theories that you've been working on and recognizing that the values of a whole civilization can be affected by the religious influence on it, you even have connected the way that people change with a biological behavior as well. And we're talking here, and I think the discipline is called epigenetics, a studying of how behaviors and environment can cause changes in people. And so you've got changes in people who don't believe and you've got things that are happening in people that do believe. How do you describe that, Jim?

What happens is that this is. When I first did this back in the 70s, early 80s, we didn't know what. I didn't know what was causing it. I knew somehow the environment was affecting people's Character, but I didn't know how, only with the epigenetics coming on since then, in the decades then, it's become obvious. But what you do in life actually affects the way your genes function. And what experience does is. It's like the gene is a tap spitting out some sort of protein. That's basically how genes work. Well, what epigenetics does is it turns the tap on or turns it off, so it changes what comes out of it, changes the way that genes function. So what we've been doing in the research study is figuring out exactly which genes are involved, which have been shut down, which have been opened up, and the different levels of activity, like things like cytokines and proteins and pheromones and stuff that actually result from that.

And for some, it might be even challenging thinking about these things. But in some sense, there's a certain logic and a common sense to it that when you come to faith in Christ and your focus is on a different set of dimensions, then something is happening inside you physically as well as spiritually. Is that a simplistic way of describing that?

That is a perfectly sensible way of approaching it. Look, what you do as a Christian, behavior changes character. Behavior has an effect on you physiologically and all sorts of things like chastity, like how much alcohol you drink, whether you take drugs, of addiction, like even how hard you work, how disciplined you are. Moral behavior has an effect. Every time you do something that you feel you should do, you're strengthening this aspect of yourself. You're making a physical, physiological change. You're changing your character. It's the same principle as any form of discipline. Discipline changes character. And it's a physical thing. It's not just purely mental. It's physical. And even prayer, for example, prayer, meditation, it affects your character in all kinds of different ways. When we praise God, when we give gratitude, that affects your body. It affects the way your genes function.

Jim, come back to your business at the moment. And some people might say, well, you started a business, you're a Christian, therefore you're a Christian at the top. And that doesn't affect the. The way you do business. Don't you do business just like anybody else? But from what I understand, Jim, Christianity is right at the core of Jim's group. How do you describe it?

Yeah, absolutely. I don't believe my business would have been successful to anything like this extent if it wasn't for that. Let me just give you one example. People talk about business as though the only responsibility you have is to make money. I didn't believe that goal right from the beginning was that my franchisees were going to be successful. That was number one. So even in the original contracts I put clauses in which give my franchisees extreme powers that exist in no other franchise system in the world. For example, my franchisees can vote out their franchise or they can move to a different franchise, or if they're not happy, they can veto changes to their own manual. No other system allows these kinds of things before. So what I've done is give them enough power to make sure that they're going to be looked after really, really well. Because if any franchisor doesn't look after them, they can do something about it.

So the thought of empowering those who are working in your group, in your organization, that actually comes from a Christian foundation. That's not just something that you picked up at a special seminar where someone was a wonderful, you know, speaker that you heard and they came up with a great idea. This actually comes back to the core of your Christian faith, empowering the people who work for you.

Absolutely. And look, the core biblical passage that I would refer to is Jesus washing his disciples feet which. And I don't think people quite recognize how totally revolutionary that was because in those days washing somebody's feet was a very degrading activity. It was something done by a slave. Now you might find a really revered rabbi whose disciples would wash the rabbi's feet as a sign of extreme respect. But for Jesus to do this, Jesus who was the Messiah, Jesus who was the Lord. Jesus who was the. It was extraordinary. And that attitude of service was something that was revolutionary to Christianity. And that's how I see what we do at gyms. We here to serve our franchisees. They don't work for me, I work for them. That attitude is fundamentally Christian.

At the risk of this being, you know, an unbridled plug for Jim's mowing called Jims and have youe Yard Mode. The thought that there are high standards for how you treat your customer so that you're not just greed driven. This is a part of a Christian foundation that ought to be in every business enterprise. But you've got it functioning in a working operational way in Jim's group.

Yes. Well, look, I'll give you an example. I'm the CEO of the company. We would take hundreds of thousands of jobs a year if a client like this morning, a client rang up who'd had a problem with a. Actually there was a blind that was being taken away and not removed. And they hadn't Got satisfaction. So they wrote and they were put on to me. So I got back to them and basically said, if you don't get your blind back within a week, send me the cost of the replacement and your bank details and I'll pay you the money for it. I personally get involved in making sure that franchise, the clients are looked after. We had one franchisee who've gone feral who actually went and took a whole lot of money from different clients over $100,000 and didn't do the work well, tell you what, we're pursuing that franchisee through the court. In the meantime, every client's got every cent of their money back.

In fact, Jim, you say that you could not have been successful in your business without these Christian values applied into the very core of what you do. How do you describe that? Do you reflect on that frequently? The fact that, you know, you'd obviously be seeing that as God's blessing on you, but it's because you've been obedient to apply some of those principles that we'd glean from the Bible.

It's God's blessing. Yes, that's part of it. It's also the fact that God's principles work. What we're taught in Christianity by the Bible is a better way to live and a better way to run a business. But there's also a supernatural element. Let me give you one simple example from the very first page. When I started mowing lawns full time and I was desperately, desperately poor, deeply in debt, really didn't have any money at all. My equipment broke down and I had to go and get some new equipment. And there was only one place, it was just after Christmas, only one place open in the whole area. And I went in there, they was very busy, and I ordered a mower and a brush cutter, and he wrote down the amounts and then he added up and he gave me the sum and I paid the amount of money and I left. And as I left, I'd realized looking at the paper that he'd written the sum down wrong. And he'd undercharged me by $100, which in those days was, you know, two or $300, it was more money. And I was really, really, really in a bad financial situation. So I thought, well, that's just my good luck. So I worked all the way to my first job, 15 minutes, drive away, got the MOA app, little nature strip. And I said, God does not want me to do this. This is wrong, no matter how desperate I am for money. And I really didn't even know how I was going to pay for this. I had to do the right thing. So I loaded them up, went back, walked into the shop and gave them the hundred dollars. And the manager was very appreciative. He said it would come out of my pay packet. But I thought, okay, well, really later on that day, that same afternoon, I was doing a job for somebody and I got into a conversation with them. This person was involved with the sale of office machinery. Now, I didn't. And I happened to mention that I was doing brochures. I didn't ask this. He offered. He said, what I'll do, I can do some leaflets for you. He volunteered. And not only did he volunteer to do some leaflets, but he actually told me how many leaflets he would give me. And the value of those leaflets was exactly $100. And this was only about four hours after it. And I just said, God, thank you. Because what that showed me so clearly is that when I do what's right, then God will look after me. Because he knew how desperate I was at that time. But it was far more than the money. It was the sign that I was being looked after. And I knew I could do the right thing. And somehow it always come out right.

So the application of Christian values, and so many will recognize do unto others as you would have them them do unto you. And you're telling a story where you've exercised that thought that honesty is the best policy. And someone might not have noticed, but I know God is watching. There is a certain sense in which you test God and you say, well, it'll be to my disadvantage if I go and pay that $100 back. But then you recognize that something special happens and God sets up something which to you, you recognize his blessing. There's something special in that. So for businesses thinking right now, you know, maybe I need to be testing God a little more and exercising do unto others as you would have them do unto you. That sometimes we know that as the Golden Rule. But the Golden Rule is a divinely appointed rule, right?

Look, I'm a firm believer, Neil, that you cannot put God in your debt. You cannot. But if you do what you should do, somehow it will rebound to your favor. And it may not be financially. In that case, it was financially, but that was a great message. It doesn't have to be. Look, I've been in a situation where I was so desperate that I had to pay my tithing, my electricity bill and my phone bill. You pay the tithing first. And the other things somehow get paid. I can't explain that logically or rationally, except that if you look after God somehow it always works out.

Jim, how do you get these biblical Christian values into the heart of your business? Do you start? I think what you're just saying just now is that somehow or other you've got to write them down. How do you start? How simple is it?

I have a book called Every Customer a Fan, which people can download for free from our website, www.jims.net which tells the story of what I've done. And that actually is very helpful because it tends to attract people who have the right values. There was one lady who actually was looking at buying a cleaning franchise and then she thought because she was a hospital administrator, she thought I don't really want to be a cleaner. But then she saw the, read the book and she said, I love these values. I love these values of service. She's not a Christian, but she's a wonderful lady. But she loved it. She bought a franchise, was very successful, became a franchisor a few months later, was incredibly successful that she now runs the dogwash division with nearly 200 franchisees. Sharon is just one of the greatest people you could ever meet. Now it was the philosophy, the teachings of the book that attracted her to us because she's a person that really loves people and really loves to serve people and she's got that loving, wonderful nature.

Well, we are taking, we're taking calls. Let's take a call. Jim from Daniel, who's in Minyap in Victoria. Hello Daniel, welcome along.

G' day mate. I was just listening to your show over lunch.

Oh, good stuff. What are your thoughts? Do you have a question or a comment for Jim?

Ah, just a comment based on. It reminded me of a story in my life many, many years ago when I was working for a guy who did the wrong thing by me and owed me a couple of thousand dollars and I had subcontracted another bloke to give to. To give him some of the work as well. And so in essence I owed him like close on a thousand dollars. And because I hadn't been paid, I wasn't in a position to type of pay the other bloke, which really, really bothered me as a Christian because I thought, you know, I'd promised this guy work, he'd been a really good worker but, but I hadn't been duly paid by the guy, you know, who employed us all. And I remember being in a men's group.

Sorry, I'm just.

Yep, you were in a Men's group?

Yeah, I was in a men's group and sitting down and having a chat with a bloke and, and this guy from many from years past came up and said to me, oh Daniel, haven't seen you for a while. And I was like, yeah. He says, funny thing about this, he says I've been thinking about you and this envelope for you. And I was like oh, okay. And so he said, well here you go, this is felt God to tell.

Me to give this to you.

And off he went.

Well, when I opened up the envelope it was the exact amount of money that I needed to pay the guy who I'd subcontracted out.

Some things like that, they are beyond human explanation. Jim. Jim, your thoughts for Daniel who shares a story a little similar to yours.

Yes, that's wonderful Daniel, and that's great. That's a great attitude that you have. And yes, God does look after you. I think those of us who live by faith can point to many, many wonderful miracles of that nature. It's a very inspiring thing.

Daniel, I'm glad you called. Thank you so much for your call. Our talkback line is open on 1-800-316-316 leads me to the thought here, Jim. And I can't ask this of everybody, not everyone has been as successful as you. But you can talk about the hundred dollars, you can talk about the thousand dollars in the envelope. What about the million dollar deals you've been at the forefront of, you know, a growth of a huge business, huge turnover. In Jim's mowing, does the same principle apply at the top of the bigger deals, not just the little ones?

Well, it applies it at every level of the organization. The principles are exactly the same whether you're talking $100 or a thousand or a million or a billion, it doesn't. The scale is not important. The principles is what matters. Jesus actually had a pretty good sense of business. He was a very business like person. I love the story of washing their feet, but I also love the story of the parable of the talents that God means us to use our abilities and so the best ability that we have. And I also love what Jesus said about the rich people too, that it's harder for the for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. I mean not the other way around, but that sort of story to the dangers of wealth. That's the other, isn't it? But the point of it is, I think that's, it's it's incredibly important too that when you are successful that you don't let the wealth destroy the base of your ethics, which too often happens. People who become wealthy become proud and they think, well, I did it all by myself. And then they let God go. And it's terrible, it's a terrible danger, it's a terrible problem. And they lose what made them great in the first place. I'm determined that will never happen. One of the principles that we have very strongly as we try to live reasonably simply, like I drive a $10,000 car. We went out to dinner last night with my wife, which was nice. We spent $60. We don't live like multimillionaires.

And those sorts of values are again shaped by your faith. We're taking calls. 1-800-316-316. Let's take another call. Wayne is in Mackay in Queensland. Hi Wayne, welcome along.

Hey, how are you, mate? Yeah, mate, I agree totally with this, what the man's saying. I'll just use myself as an example. Testimony to others I added. But I grew up drug addicted for 22 years, became a Christian, done all them things and doing all them things that this man's talking about, tithing, giving and that. I, I, I started, I worked six months a year but after that, and for the last four years I've got into cryptocurrency. I've done me research on it and my motive there with it is because I put it to prairies to tithe on whatever I get to give where God wants me to give. And, and even besides that, when I became a Christian, I was in about $750,000 debt. And the same thing there with the principles making God first priority in my life day in and day out. Today I'm debt free, I own a house. Whereas if I would have been in that same lifestyle, I never became a Christian, didn't depend on God, automation most probably being dead. But yeah, it's a different way to go. Cryptocurrency, I know it's a risk, but because I'll put it to prayer and I do make money on it, I wouldn't recommend it to anybody unless I do their proper research. And I just follow all the principles. I don't go overboard and putting everything in there, test the waters and I'm making nice money there and God's blessing me and I'm blessing others through it. And that's the motive of my heart.

Wayne, good to hear from you. And we won't turn this into a conversation about cryptocurrency but the same principle applies with investments and behaviors that you develop when you decide to be obedient to God and his word. Jim, any thought here for Wayne just before we move on?

Look, I respect his faith and his tithing and that's great. I have concerns about cryptocurrency as something that doesn't actually contribute to society. I personally, I'm not saying Wayne's done the wrong thing by his own lights, but I personally wouldn't get involved in any business or activity where I couldn't see benefit. I've got four and a half thousand families being blessed. You know, last we did our survey last year for our franchisees, only 7% reporting poor income, which is best ever. That, that to me is, is what matters. I can see the value. Yes, we make money, we spend money in ways like research that are useful. But also we help people with what we do. I would encourage people to go into activities that have some real benefit to other people. And now maybe some forms of crypto may, but I think to a certain extent it can be a lot like gambling.

Wayne, thank you so much for your call. And whenever we talk cryptocurrency in a commentary on finance, we always say ultra caution is required. Let's take one more call. Trevor is in Hellier in South Australia. Hi, Trevor, welcome.

Good morning, Neil and Jim. I'm just wondering if Jim has considered running for Parliament. Running for Parliament.

Okay, Jim, here's your opportunity to let us in on what's happening.

I know I do. I do get people. Jim, for PM is not an uncommon thing, but I have to say I have a strength in business. But I have some very major weaknesses. One of them is I have a terrible memory for faces as well as names. I'm also not very socially skilled. My wife says I've got borderline Asperger's. Mild Asperger's. I don't think I make a great politician.

Okay, well, Trevor, thank you. Good observation there and got to wrap some things together. And I wonder whether we might come back to the history and the biology here because we've been talking about behaviors and for those who really take a step of faith. And we've been hearing from listeners who've taken steps of faith in their business and they've seen God come to their rescue and God bringing blessing on them, behaviors and the way we then might feel about our lives. And when we're talking, you know, genetics and all sorts of issues around the scientifics and the biology here, the behaviors that we have actually can contribute to the way that we actually feel about ourselves, a sense of well being. And I wonder whether that relates not just for the well being that we have in our lives personally, within our family, in our business, but to our whole society if we get things right and then bad things if we get things wrong. A few thoughts just to top things off. Jim, any thoughts around just the way these sorts of principles apply across the board?

I'm a great, I have a great interest in the science of happiness, Neil, and it's not really being happy is not really what most people think. Most people tend to think that if I had more money and I had more stuff, I'd be happier. But in fact studies show that buying things has almost no relevance to how happy you are. You actually get more happiness from experiences than you do from buying stuff. But then you know the number one thing that you can do with money to make yourself happy. And this isn't me, this isn't a Christian speaking though I am a Christian. It's scientific studies. You want to use money to be happy, give it away and give it as some cause that you're involved in. That is a number one best use for money.

And again, that's got a biblical foundation too. Hey, it's been great getting your insights today, Jim Penman, Whether we're talking business or your personal faith and even connecting bio history to the things that we're talking about today, there's a bunch of books that you've written and for listeners who might be thinking, isn't Jim just the picture of that guy on the side of the trailer? Well, Jim's written a whole bunch of books. One called the Cutting Edge, Jim's Mowing a Franchise Story. There's one called Surprised by Success, the.

Very Australian story versions, the latest ones. Is every customer a fan? It's just quite up to date, but you can download these for free from the website www.jims.net Meet Jim. Just have a look in there and you can download anything you want.

Okay. Jims.net meet Jim and links to all sorts of dimensions to Jim, who we're talking to today, the founder of Jim's Mowing, the CEO of Jim's Group, Jim. Just great getting your insights. Thank you so much for joining us today on 20 20.

Great to talk to you Neil.

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