Facebook Live Number 1 Q & A with Jim Penman founder of the Jim's Group

Okay, so here we are. So welcome to the first Facebook Live with the founder of Jim's group and probably more known for Jim's mowing in the public, we have Jim Penman. So welcome, Jim. Just want to start with a few things before we get into it. When people watch, they'll start from watching up here. Basically shout out to anyone who actually liked or shared or commented on the post that we put up on the Jim's Group Facebook page. We also know that Jim's meming posted it. So thank you very much, guys for doing that. What we're going to do is we're going to start with the questions and comments that came through via the Instagram and via the Facebook page. So we'll start with those people first. And if you've got a question or comment, please leave it in the comments section and we'll try and get to it. Or give us a thumbs up or let us know what you're thinking. If you want more stuff like this, let us know. We're happy to do it, but we need to know that people actually want to see this type of content. Jim will attempt to answer any question that you have that's reasonable. So put it down there and we'll get to it. And basically what I will do is if you're not following Jim on social media, we obviously have the Jim's Group page, but Jim now has a personal Instagram, which is IM Penman on Instagram, and also Jim Penman official Facebook page. So basically, let's get started. And welcome to everyone who's coming to watch now. So the first question that we get asked all the time, and this came via Facebook and via Instagram and stuff like that was basically, Jim, what has happened to the beard and the hat? Why did you shave it? Everyone always says that. They said, I'm disappointed they see a picture of you now. They're always disappointed to say, where's the beard and the hat? They get very let down. So what happened to the beard and the hat?

The first thing to explain is that the beard had nothing to do with business and everything to do with women. The only reason I grew a beard, and this was 35 years ago, was that my then fiance liked beards. So I grew it to keep her happy. And 19 years ago, I found myself single through no particular choice of my own. And my beard was going a little bit gray, so off it came. That was all to do with women, nothing to do with business.

So basically, so would you ever try and grow it back or have you tried to grow it back?

No, I think it'd be white now, actually. I look old enough anyway, without adding to that.

I know some of the mowing boys a while ago did the Movember. And you tried to grow a mustache back with that one. How did that go?

Very, very faint. It's very pale. Because your face hair is different colour. I had ginger hair when I was young, so it was quite gingery. Much paler. My hair is sort of darker.

So a question here from on the feed here. I'll just interrupt with this one. So I got from Tim Harvey on the Facebook feed is can I buy a hat from you also? So we get questions a bit about can I buy Jim's merchandise or Jim's branded merchandise?

We probably should.

Is it something we would look at or.

Yeah, we look at anything if there's a buck in it. But my hats is a pretty. Pretty ordinary one of those. I was going to bring one today, actually. Just one of those, like army green hats like that. Nothing unusual. It wasn't signed or anything like that.

Maybe like a Jim's retro line. We can, yeah, get a little kitty ball back in the day, like the hat and all that sort of stuff, and maybe do some merchandise or something.

Via jims.net yeah, there's nothing particularly special about the hat. The reason I wore a hat is because I've got fairly fair skin and I need a hat. But if you're mowing lawns, you're going under branches and stuff all the time, so it kind of gets knocked off if it's a broadband hat. So that's why I used to wear that kind of hat. I mean, the picture is basically just me as I used to look mowing lawns. And the way that it arose, it wasn't anything very special. I used to do a lot of leafleting in the old days and I found that if I put my picture with the bead and the hat on the leaflet, I got more responses. It was as simple as that. And then when we franchised, well, you can't put a photo on a shirt, so we just got a picture drawn up of it. Not much thought in the talk. I know people spend millions of dollars doing logos. I don't think my logo cost me more than 50 bucks.

So just got a question that came through then, which I want to ask from Mimi Enemo, which was, Jim, what. What's your goals? So what are your goals now at life? You're a bit older now, so what are your goals now at this Stage in life.

My goals actually the same as it has been for the past 40 years. I want to understand the way society works. I want to understand the science of society, what's happened to our civilization, how to change it. I'm interested in funding research into epigenetics and into biochemistry. In those areas, I have a particular approach which I believe has a lot of function. The only reason I went into mowing was because I couldn't get a job as an academic right back in the 70s, early 80s. So lawn mowing was a way to, you know, become rich, I suppose that was my aim so I could fund my research. So my ultimate goal is research project.

So there you go, Mimi. The ultimate goal is the research project, which she's doing now. Is there like a website for people.

Or anything where they can look into it or www.Biohistory.org? if you have a look at that, there's some videos up there that explains it. And you can also look at copies of my book, which is called Biohistory and Biohistory Decline and Fall of the west, which is a bit negative, actually, but still, it's about what's happened to our civilization and what we can do about it. And I have very different ideas to anybody else about what's happening. It's all basically to do with biology.

Yeah, I think a lot of people don't know that you do. You spend so much time with your research, and you do have a PhD in history. Obviously, everyone just associates you with, let's say, mowing lawns and the group and all the other services now. But it's important to check out. Check out biohistory.org There is a book on there and there's a lot of videos on it. It's really good content. So basically, question. Another question in from the live feed. Darcy Comb Verrall. So if I mispronounce your name, what gyms, franchises do you have? That's the question. So maybe, I think this maybe. Is that a services question? Like what services do we have or.

What divisions do we have?

We have about 50 divisions. Yeah.

We have mowing, cleaning, dog wash and tenders, fencing, test and tag.

Building inspections, real estate, handyman. Yes, yes.

There's about 50.

It's skip bins, trees.

Yeah, I'd probably be hard pressed to name them all myself, actually. I sort of know them. But as to being able to say them all in the list, I probably couldn't do it. There's so many.

Yeah, that's definitely. There is definitely a lot. Probably the Best thing to do is visit Darcy is to visit jims.net there is a full list of them there. We're always looking to put more on, so I'll keep going with the questions that came via through the feeds first. So Robert Sarna via Instagram asked, tell me three things why I should consider Jim's over the competition. He's considering purchasing a Jim's Mowing franchise.

Look, I could say there's things that Jim's is different as for example, we're the only franchise system in the world that allows our franchisees to vote out their franchisors if they don't give them good enough service or even to move to a different franchisor. So it's very franchisee focused. But really I'd say I, not somebody you should be asking that. What you should do if you're interested in franchises, is go to two or three that look good, including ours. Hopefully get a list of all of the franchisees in that area with their phone numbers and if they don't give you the list, you don't go any further because it's required by law. And then go and ring as many as possible and ask them what it's like. Are you happy you made the decision? Are you being looked after? Is your income good? Are you being supported? Are they nice to you? And if they say on the whole, no, you don't buy, and if, say 90% are saying yes, it's a good move, it probably is a good move and I'd buy the best one. Whether that's us or whether that's somebody else, I'd buy that.

Some good advice there for you, Robert. And just a little comment then come on the feed and guy called Nick Kringle via Facebook has said, jim, you're an Australian icon. So this probably ties back into the first one. So basically with the logo now, how do you think about. What do you think personally about the logo being memed? There's obviously a site called Jim's Memeing, which is a great following, which is around 18,000. And thanks again to them for sharing the post. What do you think about how it's become almost like a little icon within Australian Internet culture about being memed left, right and centre? How do you personally feel about that?

Well, it's pretty weird to be sort of nationally famous because that's so far from anything I thought when I was starting off this thing.

I really.

It's kind of hard to. Hard to grasp sometimes, but in actual fact, people making jokes about this is Fun. I mean, we don't really mind. People keep on. There's a band that's going around with Jim's Brazilians on it, and people keep on calling me, you know, this terrible thing. And I said, no, don't worry about it. It's funny, you know, nobody takes it seriously. They haven't even done the logo very well. So I don't really mind. I suppose the only thing that I get upset about is something like Jim's Holocaust deniers or something like that, because I don't think that's very funny. But most things. We had a competition, one national conference to see who could come up with the new divisions. And I thought the best one there was Jim's Hit Men. They had a little, like, white shirt with a little black gun on it. You know, we'll plug them for you wholesale or something like that. It was. Yeah.

Yes, there you go. So I think that the Jim's maiming stuff, Jim's all for it. There's obviously some things he. Bobby doesn't agree with, but end of the day, it's a good thing for us. And if people get enjoyment out of it, that's the way to go. So Nick Fringle's just asked. I think we might have touched on this, but I'll follow this one up again. He said, did you used to look like the logo?

I absolutely do. If you want to know where the logo comes from. There was an initial logo that was done when I first started off. I had a very solemn look on my face and some of my staff thought that wasn't such a good idea, so they took another picture. And if you actually Google my name, you will see a picture of me standing in front of one of the old trailers with the old logo on it. And it's actually quite a common one. Just go on Jim Penman Images and you'll see that picture there. That's the actual picture. That's the basis for the logo. And one of the problems is I'm not very good at smiling at cameras. So they were really, really trying to get me to smile. And the only way they could eventually get me to smile was because one of my managers pretended to put his tongue into the photographer's ear and that made me smile. So if you want to know why Jim in the shimmers, like, was smiling.

That'S why someone was putting. Pretend to put the tongue in the ear.

Yes. Another. Another photo they were taking not too long afterwards. One of my men, they were really, really, really struggling to get me to smile. So one of the managers got up on a ladder and he had these, he put his pants down. He had these bright red jockey pants on. So they had to go to these extreme lengths to get me to smile to cameras. I'm still not good at it.

Well, you saw. That's the first one I've heard in eight years. That. So that's. There you go. I learned something. Everybody else.

That was great. Bizarre.

That was great. Bizarre. Right. So what I'll do is thanks everyone who's joining us now. I can see a few people are joining us. If you've got a question or a comment, please chuck them in the feed and we will try and answer it. If it's reasonable, we'll have a go at it. Rory Green via Facebook. This is a pre submitted comment. Rory Green's actually a mining franchisee. From the center of this question, he says, I purchased a new territory within the mine division 10 months ago. I now have 38 clients and couldn't be happier with the business at this time. But I'm worried about growing too quickly. Being that I only have 10 months experience as a small business owner, should I consider slowing down? What should Rory do?

Well, Rory looked up his system. He's a, he's a great franchisee. Been with us since May last year. He's got a rating of star rating of 4.6, which is really good. If I wanted something done, I would look up somebody's ratings and if they got 4.6 and above, I would, I would recommend it to anybody, family, friends, anybody. So he's a good operator and he's doing well and I think it's great. And I hope he. I don't see why, as long as you, as long as customer service doesn't drop off, if you start getting so big that you're not looking after your customers well, then that's the time to slow down. But it's going great. I mean, I love it when people build these businesses. We had more than 180,000 unserviced leads last year. About one lead in four. It's a horrifying problem. So we love it when people put on workers and multiple trailers and vehicles on the road. It's really good, particularly in divisions like mowing and fencing and handyman, where there's so much work.

So a really good question just come in via the feed here from Jim Stellan Paul. Sorry if I've stuffed that pronunciation up. What are your three best tips to a successful business?

Look after customers. Number one, be absolutely fanatical about making customers delighted. You want to amaze them, you want to wow them. And having said that, try not to compete on price. I'm a great believer in the quality service, the great service. Things that matter are phoning back promptly, turning up on time, being presentable, being polite, and just making sure the job is absolutely immaculate. I can remember, look, I've made so many mistakes in business, but I can remember clients saying to me, I've never knew my lawn could look that good. And that's basically what got me going. I just used to find it very easy to find and keep clients. Lots of referrals, lots of repeats. That's the first thing. I would also say you need to take an attitude in business where you're always looking to improve what you do. The best operators are the ones that look at what they do every day and say, how can I do this better? How can I improve what I do? And. And people often think that, hey, I was out there mowing lawns and suddenly, hey, Preston, I thought, let's have a franchise, and suddenly I'm a millionaire. It doesn't work that way. It's thousands and thousands and thousands of little decisions. And even now, every day I ask the same question. We make changes to the system all the time. Every franchisee has my personal phone number and email address, and they use it a lot. I'm always getting ideas through, suggestions. If they look good, I pass them onto it or whatever, and then we go with them. And the third thing I say is, great thing about success in business. We looked at some of our absolute top people, and the single most powerful thing about them is that they tend to be optimistic, people that have a positive attitude, people that don't get too discouraged. If you're in business, it's really important to have the support of your partner. We basically don't like to sign somebody unless they've got supportive partner and they're happy in what they do. They enjoy what they do and recognize that things can go wrong. One of my strengths is that I'm very resilient. I don't get discouraged. My wife says I'm like one of those, you know, those things with the plastic with the weights in the bottom. You push them over, they bounce back. I'm like that, and that's been a great strength to me. So have a system of life and relationships and stay positive and have positive people around you and get positive support. They're the three main things.

So hope that answers your question, Jim. We've actually got a Whole series on success in business with Jim. It's around 22 videos. It can be found via our YouTube channel. So if you just type in the YouTube Jim's group look at the channel, there's a whole series on that where Jim will expand on that and more. But thanks for your question Jim and we hope that helped. We've got around 51. I think we had around 51 people then joining us. So thank you to everyone who's tuning in. Just recapping, we've gone over the origin of the beard and all that sort of stuff. We've had some questions come in by the comments and also pre done questions. So if you've got a question, chuck it in the comments feed and we will attempt to answer it. Obviously within reason, but if you just put it in there, we will try and get to it. So if you've got anything on your mind, it doesn't have to be related to business. Could be anything about Jim's story, you know, anything generally could be politics, whatever, you know, chuck it in there and we'll have a go at answering it. So the next one I just want to go to is just shilling. So just shilling via Facebook. Her comment was this in question. Sorry, I honestly didn't know the scope in which Jim's has now become a very powerful brand covering many bases. How does someone discuss new division potentials? So when we bring it on a new division or someone says here's an idea, what's the process? How is it discussed? How do we go through that?

Okay, the first thing is very important. I'm a very easy person to contact. I actually give you my email address, it's jimims.net or if you email the office, they'll put you through. So anybody who's got any kind of idea for a business or any business they're in can get through to me very quickly. Then I will talk to them about the business initially and I first of all want to know what do they know about it? Are they running a business successfully? That would be the prime thing. Somebody who's running a business use not a one man band but something with a few workers, great customer service, good systems, want to grow. So I'm looking for a successful business already. I'm also looking for an hourly rate. Now our rule of thumb in gyms is that we don't interested in any business where we can't earn at least $60 an hour. I mean an average operator with a bit of practice, $60 per hour. So there's Certain things to do with government services where you just can't get that money. That doesn't interest us. Now, some of my franchisees make a lot more than that. They make hundreds of dollars per hour. You'd be surprised, but it's got to be had. The capacity for $60. Now, if that looks good at that stage, I will then introduce them to my team, which deals with new divisions, and we'll sit down and we'll go through it and go through it. It's not a very difficult process. We typically charge about $20,000 to get going, plus a bit of training and stuff. It's quite a modest investment, but we just look for great people. That's the biggest thing. If you look at the divisions that do well in gyms, they've got the best leaders. If you look at the regional franchises that do well, it's got the best franchisors. And if you look at the businesses that do what's got the best franchisees, it's much more to do with people than ideas.

So there we go. I hope that answers your question, Jess. Another good question in the comments is from Adrian Brincat. Hopefully I pronounced your name right. He asked, jim, what are your hobbies? I know them, but maybe if you want to tell everyone. What are your hobbies, Jim?

I love farming. I've got a farm and I love going out there and doing manual work on the farm, ironically gardening. I do that several hours a week. I really enjoy that. Outdoors, physical exercise. I love talking, books, all kinds of things, books on business. I'm listening to one about now about Facebook.

So you listen to a lot of audiobooks, don't you?

Audiobooks, yes. Whenever I'm doing anything, exercising or driving, I'm always looking to audiobooks. I'm interested in current affairs, read the economists and so forth. I listen to lectures. I'd love to spend a lot of time with my family. I really enjoy my family.

I've got.

I've got wonderful wife and 10 children, of which three are still living at home. So I spend a lot of time with them. And unfortunately, I've got to say I spend far too much time playing computer games, which I wish I didn't, but.

So what game do you play then? What's your favorite game? What do you like playing?

Well, nothing. I try and avoid things that are too addictive. I play a little silly risk game like called Conquest a lot. I love that for some silly reason it only takes about 10 minutes to play, so it's good. And I do Scrabble. I mean, they're my main interests, but too much time wasted on that. I try not to learn about new games because they get addictive. I used to be really into things like Age of Empires and that sort of stuff. And my goodness, they eat up your life. I got too much to do.

So there you go. Just a couple of the hobbies that Jim has. So I hope that answered your question, Adrian. So just going down the comments here, there's a nice comment here from Bill Nye. So Billy Knight, via the Facebook comment live feed, he said, we've been in Jim's for over 15 years. It's true. I do have Jim's private email and I've emailed him and got a prompt reply. So thanks, Bill, for. That's a nice comment and putting that in there. So there's another comment from here. From. Where is it? Sorry, let's get down here from Chad. Chad Wardle on the Facebook comment feed. He's gone. Do you have a landscaping franchise?

It's part of mowing. The way our system works is that when you're in a certain division, you have the absolute right to take any jobs in your territory covered by that division. Mowing people have the right to mowing, gardening, pruning, landscaping, and gutter clearing. And nobody else can have those. So the landscaping is done by the mowing guys. Having said that, there are certain people who specialize in it. And if you might see a trailer going down the road saying jim's Landscaping, well, that's simply a mowing franchisee who's chosen only to do landscaping. And by the nature of things, the way our system works, they can actually get quite a lot of landscaping work.

So one of your franchisors, Nico Curta, has commented on him. He said, computer games, classic. So Nico is actually one of our skip bins and trees. Trees guys.

He also runs the division.

He runs the division too.

One of the top guys.

Hello, Nico. Russell Hall. He says, hey, Jim from Jim's Mine. I think it's Bakewell up north in Darwin. So mine franchisee. Tune in. Hi, Russell.

Hey, Russell.

We've got another one here from.

I was in New Zealand just over Christmas and I saw a Jim's test and tag van driving down the road. So we went over a brush and knocked on his window to say hello.

Did you just point to the thing on the back and said, that's me? Do you know who you were?

Initially, I think he knew who I was.

I think he knew who. And then basically we've got another one from Lauren Bartley. She's gone. If you like listening to business audiobooks then she check out this podcast. I think she's putting here a link here. So business addicts so we can give that to Jim to check out. So thanks for that suggestion Lauren. I'll continue with a couple of questions here and then Jim's mamie's commented it's the man himself, Legion, living legend. So Jim's Maiming is the page we gave a shout out to before. Jim's maiming has around 18,000 likes. They do a lot of memes and people create memes and all that sort of stuff. So they shared this life. This live post we did as well before. So thank you very much. The James memeing Basically my kids are into Jim's mean.

I think it's the top meme in the country or something.

So there you go. Jim's mammy. Jim's kids themselves actually I think they probably follow your pages, do a lot of stuff and that.

So they don't usually admit who their father is. I must say people find out but they don't normally tell people. A bit embarrassing at times.

Yeah. So I got a couple more questions here that were pre given to us and as I said put your questions in the comments guys. As you can see we are answering him. So we're around 39, 40 people still watching. So thank you for hanging around. Put them in there and we'll attempt to answering can be about anything as well. So this is by a win name via Facebook. She's gone. I hope Jim's franchise will reach 100 division by 2020 or 2025. The more service the better will this happen? So moving on, let's say the next, next 10 years or six years, how much more? How many divisions would you anticipate we would have?

I could imagine hundreds of divisions eventually. There's not a lot we couldn't do. We haven't even started on health things like doctors and chiropractors and physios and all the other things we could do. We're starting personal training so there's really no upper limit. The difficult thing though, it isn't a matter of just starting a division. The tough thing is you've got to have the right leadership to make it grow. That's why we've got like six or seven divisions now that have got more than 100 franchisees and they're the ones that are really great, that are spread across the country and that are growing really, really fast. Two divisions just hit 100 just gone past. One is Dogwash and one is Phuket, and they've both just gone past in the last couple of months, which is a big thing. So in a sense, I'd probably rather have 50 that had 100 franchisees plus all across the country and have, say, 200 that were only in one state.

Great. So the next next question is from Daniel Richards via the live, the live comment section. He's basically said, what is the fastest growing division in the gyms group currently that you know of?

Dogwash is, is doing incredibly well. We've got a new divisional, Susan. Incredible lady, Sharon, and she took it over, I think a year and a half ago it had 60, now it's almost doubled.