FAQ's about owning a Jim's Franchise with CEO and Founder, Jim Penman

Thank you for inquiring about a Jim's Group franchise. I'm Jim Penman, the founder and CEO, and I'm here to answer any questions. Why a franchise overdoing it yourself? Simply speaking, chance of success a lot greater. If you look it up online, you'll find that the chance of a person starting a cleaning or gardening business, something similar, still being in business within 12 months is between 5 and 10%. Our figures show an average of 88% of franchisees will still be as franchisees after the first year. And some of the 12% have actually gone independent and still in business. The support that we provide as a franchise system is, first of all, we train very thoroughly. We have a minimum three day period of generic training, plus divisional training. On top of that, we also have regular meetings. We have a franchisor who is responsible for ringing you regularly at least once a month in the beginning, ideally weekly. And we have regular meetings, at least eight meetings a year. If people have very strange ideas about fees, our average fee for most divisions is probably around about 750 per month. Our franchisees, based on surveys, mostly turn over a bit under $3,000 a week. So the fees would average about 6% of turnover. But it's not calculated that way. It's a base fee plus a fee for every lead provided, a small fee, which means actually the more that you make, if you make a million dollars plus a year, your fees might be 1% of turnover. We actually encourage you to build the business as big as possible. There is no limit on how many employees you can take. There is no extra fees for having extra people on at all. We have several franchisees making well over a million dollars a year. We don't have an income guarantee as such. What we have is a pay for work guarantee. So what a new franchisee needs to do, if they're not making their minimum level, which can be anything from $1,000 to $2,500 per week, they can offer free services to anybody they wish. Friends, neighbors, relatives, other gyms from other divisions, anybody at all, through Facebook, any way at all, offer free services up to a certain value. Usually it's about 90 bucks. Now what we need for that is name, address, phone number, and then we will do some checking to make sure it's genuine and then we will just simply pay. The really good thing about this, as opposed to income guarantee, is that when you go out offering free services, you'll tend to pick up a lot more work than actually you get paid for by us. So you can Upsell, you get referrals, people come up to you in the street, people hear about you. So it's actually a very effective way to building a business fast. Yes, it's a completely unique system actually. In the beginning, right back in the beginning, I did offer an actual income guarantee if we can't provide you with the work. But we figured out that we can actually do 50% more. We can actually offer a much higher pay for work guarantee because doing it actually promotes the business. There's no repayment, there's no catch. The only thing we do require is that the franchisee takes work consistently. There's no good asking, say for territory every day of the week and then saying, oh, I want to do free services. You need to take the work that we offer you within a reasonable distance of territory. Usually it's 25Ks. Our leads are actually very good for the simple reason that only one franchisee gets the lead. We do not give it to more than one. Unlike say a high pages lead where you can go to five different people. You're the only person to get this particular lead. So in general, the conversion rate is most leaves will turn into jobs if they're running back promptly. How many leads do we receive a year? Best part of a million. But actual fact, something close to 30% of those tend to be unserviced. There is a lot of work to go around. It depends on the division. The real benefit of the brand is it gives customers comfort. Now, there are all kinds of reasons for this. First of all, if they've used us before, they've usually had a good experience. Not always, but usually. Which means they've had good service, somebody rang back promptly, somebody did a decent job. So there's a reason. We also widely advertise that we have police check, that we have $10 million minimum public risk insurance. If anything goes wrong, we will follow up with the customer. We will fix jobs ourselves. Sometimes in excess of $100,000, we will make clients right. So people have a lot of reasons why they want to use us. The benefit to a franchisee is first of all, we tend to get a lot of leads. But secondly, equally important, the conversion rate tends high and we don't need to cut prices. Technology is a huge advantage for us. We would spend three to four million dollars a year on technology. And there's various ways to do that. One of the ways is through the system we call fms Franchise management system. So that when a lead comes in to the office, for example, the call center operator can immediately Figure out who is taking work. Now, There might be 20 franchisees down for that area, but today only one wants that particular service. We know who that is, we give it to them. Precisely. We also have technology concerned with customer service. So we send out surveys to customers, we get the feedback back, which means we can keep an eye on franchisees, the minority, the small minority who don't do the right kind of thing. And we put pressure on them and we send them warning letters, which means that overall service rises. We also have a system called Jim's Jobs, which is the system that we provide free to franchisees to schedule work. And that is a quite sophisticated system being developed massively, all the time, and that is free. A great benefit of gyms over systems like hypages. If we have a live call center and most calls come in to our call center direct. So, for example, customers, some customers don't mind booking online. We do have that prospect, but most actually like to talk to somebody. The benefit of our call center is it's in Australia. We surely have a call centre in New Zealand as well. So local people, local accents. We have a very strict sense of time. Now, the average time it takes after the recorded message which we need to give is less than 10 seconds. And I go personally into the call center every day to check on those figures. So we answer quickly, we answer well. We also find too, that people who ring are more likely to convert into leads than those who book online. So they're very good quality leads. You are a really important person as soon as you join gyms. First of all, you have an individual coach, which is your franchisor, who is there to answer calls at any time. Usually within 24 hours, they will respond. In fact, they have to respond within 24 hours. Usually they respond on the spot. They take the call or ring you straight back. You also come to meetings, you meet with your franchisor and other franchisees. I mean, we don't always strictly enforce it, but we very, very strongly urge our franchisees to go to meetings. And also every franchisee is given my direct phone number and email address with very strict instructions to give it to nobody else. You and your family get it. You can call me day, night, evenings, weekends, Christmas, holidays, anytime. And you will find I'm very, very fast to response, particularly in emails. I'm known for responding to emails within two to three hours normally. How do you decide what you want to do? There's one principle more important than anything else. What do you like doing? What do you enjoy doing? Now, two Reasons for that. Firstly, because if you like doing what you do, it's not a job, it's a passion, it's a hobby. But the other reason, equally important, is that if you love what you do, you'll tend to be better at it. Now I, for example, was a lawnmower contractor 15 years and I still love gardening. That's my hobby. I love being outside. I love getting my hands dirty. Okay, so to me it's obvious. I tried carpet cleaning. I hated it. So what do you like? Do you like dogs? Do you like animals? Do you love cars? Do you love electronic stuff? In which case something like antennas is good for you? Do you love it? In which case it. Do you like challenging problems to do with people's homes and so forth? Pest control is very good. There's a whole range of things depending on what you like to do. And what I strongly suggest that you do is actually spend some time out on the road with somebody doing the job and figure out whether you'd like to do it. Because if you love doing it, it's a great, great business. When talking to your franchisor, the first thing you've got to work out is can you get on with this person? They will become very close to you. Your relationship with your franchisor is very, very important. I talked to 10, 20 year veterans. I actually call them on major anniversaries. And the one thing I hear again and again, my franchise, always great. They really care for me, they look out for me, they'll respond to me, they'll help me any way they can. So it's really important that you get on with your franchisor, that you like them as a person and that they like you. Now, apart from that, the most important thing you really should do is spend time out on the road with experienced franchisees. Get a feel for the job. Look at whether you can make good money, Would you enjoy doing it? How much money can be made. And also very important. I recommend that you ring as many franchisees in the region as possible. Just pick up the phone and ring them. Spend an hour on the phone talking to people who are there and just listen to what they say. And quite frankly, if you don't get an overwhelmingly good response, you're not in a good region. But generally speaking, you will. If you ring up 20 franchisees, you might find that 18, 19 are really happy. One or two may be struggling. That's the kind of I expect you to get. If you find half of them struggling, stay away. There are so many great Stories of franchisees being successful. We've had franchisees who started off just an ordinary franchise paying 20, 25,000 for a business who are now multimillionaires. I know one guy in particular, he was a cleaning franchisee, actually had his own cleaning business. When he came to us, he was actually literally cleaning toilets, doing floors. His net income is over a million dollars a year right now. Next step, talk to your franchisor. Get to know them. Arrange a day out on the road, at least one day on the road with a franchisee to get a feel for it and do some research if necessary. Look at several different divisions. Don't be too narrow. Talk to the competition. I encourage you strongly to do that. Make the same effort. Go and talk to them, have a talk to their franchisor, ring their franchisees, make a comparison, do some research. We find actually the best franchisees tend to ask most questions and do the most preparation. It's an important decision. Buying your own business. Spend some time. If you come to training, I will be delighted to meet you. I can't say I'll shake your hand because I get infections, but I will bump fists with you. I try really hard to meet individually every franchisee who comes for training, usually more than once. And you have a chance to have your picture taken with me. And as I said, I'll also give you my phone number and my email address. And if you ask anybody there, they'll tell you I'm a very easy person to contact as a franchiser. You join my family, you join my tribe. My people don't know how to describe it, but you're one of my people and I will look after you.