From Lawn Mowing to 5,500 Franchises | #Entrepreneurship #Leadership #BusinessGrowth

I was impoverished and deeply in debt at the time, so I decided to turn my lawn mowing business into a full-time business as something that could hopefully fund a multimillion-dollar research institute. I give my phone number and email address to 5,500 franchisees, and people say that's lunatic, but it's actually quite sensible because, first of all, because I am, I can help them individually, and that's core moral purpose of my business. I don't personally have very great spending needs. I'm extremely stingy. For example, these shoes that I'm wearing, that's $10 from Kmart. That's me. If I can find something cheap, I'll use it. I amaze the customer, and that makes me feel good. People know I mean it because I walk the walk. I don't just talk about it, I do it. Giving your money away is actually the best thing you can do with money to make yourself happy. You actually get an enormous boost of happiness from helping other people, especially when you're involved with what you're doing. My franchisees don't work for me, I work for them. They're my clients, they're my family.

So I'm Alex Ward. I am a messaging expert, I'm a keynote speaker, and the founder of Core Story. And I work with leaders and brands to help them speak with guts. Heart, and real clarity. And essentially, that's what this podcast is all about. It's an extension of that. Welcome to another episode of Naked at the Top. Today I'm joined by Jim Penman. Hi, Jim, how are you?

Good to be here.

Thanks for joining me. So it's absolutely amazing to have you here. You're obviously known for the founder of Jim's Group and Jim's Mowing and you've got it, you know, up to, is it 5,500 franchisees around Australia? Yeah. And, but what, what really surprised me was how Jim's Mowing started and it was to, to find your research. Is that correct?

Yeah, that's right. I was a, I've actually done gardening work since I was 8 years old. Most of my childhood I had gardening jobs and in 1971 I Um, 1970, I left school. I took a gap year and I got a couple of, you know, garden jobs for putting a notice in the, in the local, um, hardware store. And through my studies, my bachelor's and my PhD, I just kept on developing that. Started with gardening, bought a lawn mower, intended to be an academic. That was what I really thought I was gonna do. And then when I got to the end of my academic career, I really had no prospect of any kind of job. So I decided to turn my warm-made business into something that could hopefully eventually fund the research program I wanted to continue.

So what, what was it about the, the research that, that really fascinated you? Because it was ancient history and biology, is that correct?

Yeah, I was interested in basically the reason for the collapse of civilization, why they fall, which is anything, what happens, why they rise, why they fall. Started off looking at sociology, decided that was rubbish, went to history, and then got involved in cross-cultural anthropology and a bit of biology and psychology and all kinds of things, just trying to understand patterns and come up with what I thought was an approach that made a lot of sense, that really understanding what was going on and wanted to continue that. But my interests had changed into like neuroscience. I just thought that the character was the thing and that had a biological basis. So you need a neuroscience. Now I'm a historian. I don't have any skills in that sort of area. I don't have any money. I was impoverished and deeply in debt at the time. So I just decided to turn my part-time lawn mowing business into a full-time business as, as something that could hopefully in the end fund a multimillion dollar research institute, which is I must have seemed rather unlikely, but it's kind of what happened in the end.

The way that happened.

Yeah.

Um, so what were you thinking back then when you first started it? Did you, did you think you had any chance to build it into the success that it is today?

Well, not, not probably lawn mowing. That was the thing. I thought lawn mowing was the only thing I knew how to do. And I, I thought there'd be something else that I could get engaged in. I hadn't gone Amway at the time, which is terrible. I was hopeless at that. Um, I tried different things. Like I had a computer shop at one time, a mower shop, tried to get a holiday resort going. I've done various things over the years. It's just this Warmine gig just turned out to be surprisingly successful, but I didn't really understand how it could be at the beginning. I just didn't, I didn't envisage the idea of having thousands of franchisees would have just been beyond my comprehension. Well, all I ever did was look at what I was doing and say, how can I do it better? How can I improve? Little things like when you're mowing a lawn and you know, you gotta pick up the grass. How do you, how do you actually pick up your grass with, with the, the least step? I can save one step in emptying my grass bag, my grass bin into a grass bag. I can save time or get around the tree quicker or navigate between buildings or, or hire people better or, or work out better forms of advertising. So thousands of thousands of little tiny experiments. Just trying to figure out how to do this business better and making lots and lots of mistakes and just, but just gradually learning.

So were you constantly just thinking up, conjuring up different ideas of how you can make improvements? Yeah.

Yeah. When I was mowing lawns, I was always thinking about improving what I was doing. Always obsessively like that all the time. I still do today. Every day of my life, including holidays, including Christmas Day, doesn't matter what day it is, I'm always in my mind, what can I do better? It's just an obsessional need to improve, I think, is, which I think actually is more to do with success than having some great brainwaves. People think you've got some genius that says, oh, well, you know, why don't I franchise or do this and this and this? And it's just not like that. It's tiny things that count. I have, I keep my phone number and email address to 5,500 franchisees and people say that's lunatic, but it's actually quite sensible because first of all, because I am, I can help them individually and that's really the core moral purpose of my business, but also they give me ideas all the time. What's going wrong? Why is this person not succeeding? What do we need to do to help them? How can we train better? How can we coach them better? How can we improve our systems, our IT systems? Just, just always being in touch with the grassroots is very powerful that way. And I think a lot of leaders probably neglect that. They're too involved in— I see that very often people get involved and they, and they look at reports and they're always spending time on the computer. I just find it's very difficult to know what people are doing, what's going wrong. Because to us, ultimate success is franchisee being successful. That's the base of everything. If franchisee is successful, they wanna stay with us. Others will come and join us. Look after the customers and the customers will come back and it just grows and grows and grows. But the core to us is the franchisee being successful. And so you can never spend too much time thinking about that.

Yeah. And being, and I like what you say, being connected with them, having those conversations is so important. It's the same as, you know, with your business, being connected with the customer and actually listening to the feedback. Um, and, you know, making improvements that way.

It's, I also get involved with customers too. I have a policy, if a customer rings a second time about a problem and it's not fixed, he comes to me personally and I look at it, which, which I can help to solve problems and keep people on their toes. But at the same time, it also helps them to understand what's going wrong. You know, why is this person getting repeated mistakes? Why is it? What can we do about it? How can we, how can we improve what we do?

Is there a moment in time where, you know, you have been connected with the customer or the franchisee and it's made a big change or improvement in your business that you can recall?

I don't know about big changes, but look, you have a case. Okay, let me give you an example where a franchisee has got a problem with a franchisor who's been dictatorial. But that's an issue because sometimes franchisees can get powerful. We have regional franchisors look after franchisees. So one particular franchisee rang me up. About a franchisor being very dictatorial, just clamping down the dissent. So they weren't doing anything wrong by the manual. They just really weren't helping the business at all. They weren't helping the franchisees because of this attitude. So what I did is I made a negotiation. I found out there was a wider problem. It wasn't just this one guy that had a problem with it. And then I went to the franchisor and I made a deal with him and I forget exactly what the incentive was, but I actually got them to change the contract. But basically what it said was that if the majority of franchisees in his region weren't happy with him, he would have to sell his business, regional franchise, which he didn't think was the case because he thought everybody liked him because they never dared to say anything against him. He agreed to that, but he didn't. I warned him he didn't change his ways. And so the net result was he got voted out. And that particular, that became part of our standard contract. The regional franchisors can be voted out by their franchisees. It's one of the unique things about our system, which actually puts an awful lot of pressure on franchisors to consider franchisees as clients. I have a single phone call, one person who just called me and said, I've got a problem with my franchisor. So we do something that actually has major, major impact.

Yeah, that's amazing. And ultimately it comes down to looking after the franchisees and making sure everyone, you know, does right by them. And then it, that has a flow-on effect to the customers as well. Right.

Yeah. And people find it very strange that I spend my time doing things like that. But in fact, I'm not particularly skilled at most things and stuff like, I mean, I don't know how IT works. I know what it's supposed to do. I'm not financially very, very literate. Um, I've never done a business plan in my life, but, but, so I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I don't even use social media personally at all. We have a great social media team working, but things are not my strengths. So my strength is, is being in touch with people, finding out what's going wrong. How can I help you? Why is this working? What can we do? How can we do it better for you? And I do fine. You know, just franchisees approaching me about, um, certain kinds of issues. Now we've got a tremendous library for franchisees of advice from different divisions about different subjects like social media, I think paperwork guarantee and different divisions and all kinds of different issues. And I had franchisees approaching me about these, but it was difficult to find them. So I went to the to Joel that you may have been in contact with through social media. And I said, okay, can we put them in categories? So now this happened just about 6 months ago. So now there's categories for each one of them. So I can refer people to individually to say, go and have a look at these videos in this category. And they have, they were asking me for help and I, I decided that was a better way to help them. So that's been very useful. So probably every, more than several times a week, a franchisee approaches me and I say, well, go and see the videos here because they're going to help you a lot.

Yeah. Yeah. So do you find, um, people are quite comfortable opening up with that to you and sharing their problems, asking questions?

Well, I'm not sort of like an agony aunt. These are specific questions about business. I haven't got enough leads, for example. I haven't got enough income. These are common ones. So I have different ways of, and then, and then I get these sponsors too. So I give talks at training. Like I give the first talk at training and the last talk at our franchisee induction training. So I, things that I learned from my franchisees, I introduce into those sessions to try and teach them in advance to help them. Because what we found is that the training itself is quite successful. It actually dramatically reduces conversion rate. We used to lose about 1 in 70% of our franchisees in the first year. To put that in perspective, if you go into independent cleaning or gardening business, you probably, you've got about a 90% chance of failing in the first year. With us, it was just about 17%. And then we put the training course in and we dropped that first year down to 10.5%. So a third of the people who were leaving in the first year weren't leaving because we started to train them better. This kind of thing. Yeah.

Wow. That's, that's, that's amazing. The difference in the numbers. Um, it's just about having that support and the right training around you. It's fantastic. I'd love to, um, I'd love to go back and get a little bit more insight into, uh, what you were like growing up. Um, I, during my research, I, I, I kind of gathered that you're a bit of a rebel. You like to kind of go against the main point of view. Uh, could you give us a little bit of insight into what, what little Jim, Jim was like?

Oh, very, um, very socially awkward, extremely introverted. Having terrible crushes on girls, which never went anywhere. Um, so very tormented. Didn't go with my father very well at that time. We did later. Um, just very, yeah, very rebellious. I was at school. I went to a sort of very conservative Christian school and got into trouble by basically taking issues with the, uh, powers that be and compulsory chapel and, you know, people who were stupid enough to believe in God and this kind of stuff, which is quite ironic. 10 years later, I've become a very fervent Christian. But at school, I would always take the opposite point of view. I mean, I would argue against anybody. Even when I was like 10 or 11 years old, there was, we were living in England for a year and I used to, I used to have long debates with the, the, the past, the, the rector there about, um, capital punishment and stuff like that. So I was always, I was always very argumentative, not very tactful.

It's interesting because you say you're introverted and you're, I always, when I think of someone introverted, I think shy. And so I wouldn't, I wouldn't think somebody that would argue against something. So it's quite an interesting contrast.

There's different kinds of introversion. Um, the different kinds of it, one, one is, is, um, being timid and shy and not careful. And then the other one is being very unsocial, disliking social events, being very uncomfortable. Um, common. And then they tend to correlate. People who are bold and strong-minded tend to be socially outgoing. I've got a very strong— I need this. The bold thing is what's called dominance. Raymond Cattell, psychologist, has a good say on that one too. He talks about the difference between surgency, which is life as a party type sociability, and dominance, which is strengths of mind, usually correlate. But I am actually a very strongly dominant, but very desurgent. Not at all social, but very, very strong-minded. Some people call it a loud introvert, often associated with people who are creative. I hate, I hate social events. I really, really freak me out. My friends would really go to parties and stuff and I would, I would just not do it.

What is it about? Um, cause I, cause I really like that. I love when I meet someone and we have a different point of view, I'm like, oh, interesting. This will be an interesting conversation. But many people then will back away from that if they think, oh, we disagree. Oh, let's avoid that topic. What do you think, you know, what's going through your mind when it's, you know, you want to, to kind of have that debate?

What's going through my mind? Probably not a lot. I'm notoriously tactless. My wife says I've got, um, I've got a case of Asperger's, mild case of Asperger's, because I'm so socially blind at times. I'll say things that offend people, but they send me emails and if they want me not to share it, they'll say, do not share, because I just automatically share things. I don't even think about the fact that what somebody said in that email might offend somebody else. I don't hesitate. I just don't think. I just say things. If you see some of the stuff that I put out, podcasts like this, I'm very blunt and probably offend an awful lot of people, but it's just me. I just, I'm not very good at being tactful.

Is there any, um, kind of time where it's, it's really backlashed on you?

Oh, lots of times. Social skills, like, I, I, I've been divorced 3 times, and, and it's not really me chasing women, it's, it's, it's being impossible to live with, I think, is probably the point. And it's very difficult for women to cope with that, you know, like, like, I, I'm very obsessed with my children. So like with my current wife, and we've been very happily married 24 years, but it's been very difficult for her because I have children from an earlier marriage. And when they come, I'll be so obsessed with them that I wouldn't even notice kind of thing. And that was very, very, very hurtful. But I just don't see that kind of stuff. I just don't read people very well. I'm very intellectually kind of know a lot of stuff, but I don't apply it very well to real life.

Yeah. Yeah. How does your, cause you've been married 24 years, is that right? How does your, how does your, your wife must have found ways to, to, to work with that?

Well, uh, our relationship has been very stormy. The kind of fights we've had over the years are really legion, I suppose. She's quite a volatile person too. But, but, uh, look, I'm crazy in love with her. That's all I can say. I think she's an amazing woman, gorgeous, my best friend, best thing that ever happened to me, apart from becoming a Christian, the two best things, meeting God, meeting my wife. She's just, she's just absolutely the best. And I, and I depend on her a lot and she on me too.

What, um, what do you like to, what do you like to do together? Like, with work? Because do you work together? Does she work with you?

Yeah, we do. She helps. She's got businesses of her own. She's a builder. And she's running, runs a conference center and she's developing another venture. Um, and she's also helping with my business too. So she's enormously, she's, she's very good backend sort of person. She does the detail work and I have the visions and the passion and the ideas and the courage to do a bit of anything. And she's got the ability to make it work and find the right people and stuff. So we're very complimentary. It's been difficult to learn to work together, but she's amazing. But we have a lot of fun too. We have a very affectionate, sexy love life, you might say. We do a lot of things I won't even mention on a public— Yes, yes, yes. We enjoy each other very much. And we have beautiful children together.

How many children do you have together?

We have 4 together.

4 together. Yeah, well—

From previous marriages. Yeah. Wow.

Yeah. You've got 10 children. So I've got 2 and I already think, wow, that's a handful. How, how do you manage 10 children and, you know, business of the size of yours?

I never felt conflict. I never, I would never not see my children or spend time with them. Look, like I'm fairly busy, but I just drove my son to work this morning. Sorry, school. So I drove to school, we were having a chat about things, all kinds of stuff about, you know, stuff that he's going through and work and talking about book I'm reading about bonobos and chimpanzees and stuff. So he's a, he's a very wonderful kid. He's very, very creative mind. He's great to talk to. And the way back, listen to a talking book. And I'll go pick him up from school this afternoon. And that's great time. I just, to me, that's just important. I don't think this is wonderful saying, um, no other success can compensate for failure in the home. And I just don't think it matters that much. I don't think making money matters so much that you should ever neglect your family.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

If anything, I'm worried about my wife that she's on the phone than me. We go out to dinner and she's taking texting and making phone calls and I threaten to take the phone off her if she doesn't Yeah, we have a rule at dinner time, no phones at the table. It's the one rule.

So you would say, um, you know, it's family first. You schedule the family time out first. That's your priority.

Yeah, I do.

And I often say when people say about work-life balance, I think for me it's more of a blend. It's, you know, sometimes you'll, you'll need to be in the business more and less in the family and vice versa. So what's your viewpoint on that? On that?

You do what's important and making money isn't really number one. Look, I'm pretty wealthy anyway, for heaven's sake. I mean, I mean, I can fund the research I need to and more with time. So that's, that's what I need it for. I don't personally have very great spending needs. I'm all about, I'm extremely stingy. Like, like, um, for example, these shoes that I'm wearing, that's, uh, $10 from Kmart. That's me. If I can find something cheap, I'll use it. I like to buy the, in the supermarket, I'll always look at the bottom shelf to see the shop brand stuff, to see what's the cheapest brand.

And you've just always been that way?

On things like books, unlimited books, all my kids too. If they want a book, I buy them a book. Unlimited fruit. Those are the two things that there's absolutely no limits in our household. And most, a lot of my friends tend to be missionaries and people like that haven't got any money. So we often shout them for dinner and stuff. So apart from that, I live very, very, very simply. My favorite job is actually, hobby is actually gardening. And I'd like to grow as much of my own food as possible. I like, I just love it. Begin out there and dig potatoes and plant fruit trees and things. It's just fun.

Yeah. Simple life. I thought it was actually going to be one of my questions for you, but a bit of a fun one, but maybe you do.

Do you mow your own lawn? At the farm, I've got a small farm. I do use a hand mower actually, which is good. My current place where I'm living has actually got too much grass and they can do with a ride-on. But yeah, I do. But gardening is fun. I mean, I did it for many years. It's not a bad job, you know. It's outside, it's fresh air, it's in touch with nature. In fact, if you look at what makes people happy, you know, Exercise, open air, contact with nature, flexible control of your lifestyle. Gardening business is one of the best possible businesses and it's actually known that gardeners are amongst the happiest professions.

Yes, you're out with nature, you're present in the moment. Yeah, absolutely.

You don't mind getting rained on and stuff and getting hot at times and stuff. It's not always physically comfortable, but I think it's a great job. You see the satisfaction of a job being done well.

And so you started mowing lawns in 1970, and your slogan back then was, most lawns, $5. Was there many other lawn mowing businesses at that time?

Oh yeah. Actually, I started originally working in 1970, it was $1.50 an hour, believe it or not. So it was a few years later I got myself a lawnmower. Basically, I wanted to buy a car. It shows you where these things come from. The reason I wanted to buy a car was I thought it would help me with girls. No, it was a complete failure. You're good there at all. So I decided to buy a car and then I bought a lawnmower to help me pay for it. So most lawns, that was $10 an hour because I could do 2 in an hour. So that was pretty great in those days. Um, I, my first, I bought my first house not too much later for $30,000. So it was, you know, you could do all the full up with, with, um, $10 an hour back in the day.

Yeah. And, and was it, how easy was it to get, get clients back then?

More than on mostly leaflets than a few local papers and stuff. Wasn't hard. The, the, the key really is, is I was very, um, fanatical about service. I was always working out ways to make my clients happier. I was trying to be quick. Like, for example, when you, when you, difficult thing about lawn mowing is, is mowing the lawn is okay. It's easy, but there's certain things you've got to do. One of them is you've got to pick it up clean. And I got very good at learning how to use a mower to do that, cutting straight lines and doing edges. The toughest thing is edges. And they used to have a wheel, like you go along the concrete mower strip and then you'd use the mower to suck the grass away and make it look a clean edge. But it used to frustrate me. I couldn't get around the, um, clotheslines and the retaining walls and stuff. And I remember vividly going into a mower shop, mower shop where I used to get my stuff fixed and seeing this, this gadget on the floor, which had a pole with a handle in the middle, engine at one end, and a funny-looking plastic thing with a bit of white cord sticking out. And I said to the guy who ran it, I said, what's that? He said, it's a brush cutter. I said, what does it do? He said, it's a new idea just out from Japan. You cut the grass without ringbarking the trees. And I bought it on the spot with a lot of money, but it really, really just amazed me because then I could do a job better than clients could do, but I could do it really quick. And make it look good. And people would say, I never knew my lawn could look that good. So I go and get myself a job and pick it up as a regular and I get the neighbors. I find it quite easy to get jobs because if you give good service, people just flood in. It's not difficult at all. And you don't have to charge cheap either. You just have to be good at what you do. Great job, turn up.

And having customer service at the center of all of that, which is, you know, something that we talked about you know, at the start of this conversation, it's still a big part of what you did today.

It's a very emotional thing for me, actually. I don't really logical. I'm not sort of thinking if I give better service, I can make more money. I'm thinking I can give better service. I'm amazed the customer and that makes me feel good. And I hate things to go down. It's just an, it's, it's an emotional driver. The same thing with my franchisees. I'm very attached to them. I kind of think of them as my extended family. I don't really mind if they contact me anytime, even Christmas Day. And I don't, I don't mind because they're, it's like my kids in a way. And that, that gives me a reason for, for getting up in the morning and a reason for living. And I get great delight in helping somebody and I really get troubled when they, when they get into trouble like you do with your kids. Well, you're obviously quite young, but you do, you worry about them. I'm a bit like that with my franchisees. That's a very emotional thing. You know, when they start thing. I thought maybe I said to somebody, somebody said, how big do you think it might grow? And I said, maybe if it works well, it could have 100 franchisees. It was quite unexpected. But I think a lot of that is that obsession, looking after customers really, really well, you get more customers looking after franchisees really, really well and caring about them. You get more, you get more, um, franchisees. And then that too, you, this obsessional thing about customer service. I just kept on wanting to do better. And as we developed systems to do that and better IT and so forth, as our complaints went down, the volume of leads has been up dramatically, far more than expected. I mean, I kind of theoretically thought it would happen, but it just did. It was astonishing in the early days of Jim's, very difficult to find clients. We actually had, because I was trying to grow this business, quite fast. I had canvassers knocking on doors because it was so hard to find clients. Now in recent years, we knock back hundreds of thousands of leads a year despite the fact we spend less per franchisee on advertising than in the old days. And yet most of them are flat out year round. And that's, that level of customer service has risen and complaints have gone down. We measured this very carefully. The, the reaction from the public is extraordinary.

Yeah, yeah, fantastic. So in, in 1989— was it 1989 that you, you started franchising?

Yeah, that's right. Yeah, yeah.

Um, so what, what, what made you decide to franchise? What made you decide to go from the Jim Penman to under franchise this business?

Mostly fear, actually, because I had this— it was little business puddling along, gooding up and selling lawnmowing rounds, had a few subbies and stuff, not going anywhere in particular. It just, just until something better comes along was my view at the time. And then this company called VIP came in from Adelaide and they were franchised and they had, you know, 250 franchisees. It was huge, huge. I had about 10 subbies. So they would, and they had this office and they had all this logos and all this kind of stuff, which I didn't have a clue about. I just thought they crushed me, really, really thought they crushed me. And I went, um, I actually rang up the state manager and said, I really, you know, I'm, I'm Jim's mowing. I'd like to sort of help you build your company rather than try to compete with you. You've got me in for that one. So I basically raided their show at the expo that year, 1988 Franchising Expo, went up to the stand, said to the guy there, tell me about this, interested in VIP. I'm a terrible liar. If you'd ask me why I wanted it, I would say because I want to compete with you guys. But he didn't ask. Well, he told me all this stuff and the state manager then came on and kicked me off the stand. He said, that's Jim Penman. Don't tell him anything else. And there's some good stuff about this. I can see some benefits to the franchise system, which in the past, you know, maybe I could do something that would work even better for franchisees. So that was what I did. And about 9 months later, after arguing with lawyers, basically, it was frustrating. I signed my first franchisee.

So it was really looking at what a competitor was doing and seeing that they've done it, I can do it. I could probably do it even better.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, my, my, it was very simple. You see, I was running it from my basement and I had this fancy office and stuff and people you know, these two comparisons, they both sell you franchises. So they sort of asked me, why would you buy from you rather than VIP? Because they're so much better established and stuff. And this office, you know, all this fancy stuff I didn't have. And I said, well, here's a list of my franchisees with their phone numbers. Why don't you go and ring them? And then go and get their list and ring them, which I knew they wouldn't provide. The crucial thing was that my people were happier. That was the full thing. I made sure they were. I talked to them, I helped them, I gave them work. I just really bled for them. And somebody would ring up and they start talking to me and the good people will do their research. They would ring and talk to them and they say, well, Jim is great. Looks after us well. It's a great system. It's very fair, very balanced protection. You know, Jim's is great. So they sold it, not me. Yeah.

Yeah. I love that. And you do, and you do things differently than other franchisors, don't you? Could you give us a few examples of how you do things differently?

Okay. The contract itself, right from the beginning, was very franchisee balanced. This is what the lawyers used to object to. For example, my franchisees can grow to any extent and their fees don't go up. They pay the same base fee whether they're turning over— I know at least 20 franchisees in Jim's turning over more than a million dollars Their base fee is the same. It's about $700 a month, something like that. They can work wherever they wish. If a job comes into their territory and they want it, they must get it, but they're not restricted. They can get referrals anywhere they like. They can, they can work from branches across the country. It's up to them completely. So it's very fair. They own the right to clients. We cannot take clients off them without their consent. Not allowed. Even if we can buy them, but they don't buy. So that was all in the original contract. They have the right of renewal at the end of the contract period. Even with a franchisor, they don't have it, but they have the right to sell their business at the best price they can get if we don't agree. So there's all these things in the original contract that were fair. And then with time, we put other clauses in, for example, the vote-out one I told you about before. Voting out. But nobody does that. This is the only one in the world as far as I know. And by the way, I can be a franchisor myself. So my franchisees can vote me out as the franchisor. They can change to a different franchisor. So we had a situation in Sydney cleaning some time back where some of the franchisees were getting unhappy about lack of leads. It was divided into two different regions. One of them, the people were getting unhappy about lack of leads. And I pointed out to the franchisor that they were getting less leads per franchisee than the guy in the other half of the city of Sydney. And I said, if you keep that up, your franchises are going to start bleeding across the boundaries. They'll shift from your region to his. So, you know, he immediately boosted the advertising to make sure they had enough work. We can even change to a different division in gyms and the franchisee No say. So if somebody's not very happy with one division, can switch to something else. And all these powers to franchisees, which basically gives everybody a very strong incentive to think about a franchisee as being the main person. And we also, in recent years, we've actually given them veto power of a change to their own manual. So if we want to change the franchisee manual, we have to ask them. If they disagree, we can't do it. And they've actually have knocked back some changes, which we thought was in one. So it's incredibly democratic in a sense that even though they're in charge, they have enormous powers. And culture of Jim is very, very pro-franchisee. We had somebody, a guy called Brian Ducker, come out and speak to franchisors at one of our conferences some years back. And he'd been involved in dozens and dozens of different franchising systems. And he said it's, he's seen nothing like our culture, which is very pro-franchisee. How can we look after franchisees? How can we make them more happy, more successful? It was really different to anything he'd ever seen before. Like during COVID in Melbourne, we couldn't work. We were forbidden to work, which was crazy and really brutal and necessary. And we didn't charge any fees, of course, but you know, in that time, my franchisors actually worked harder than they did normally because they were talking to franchisees and encouraging them and supporting them and helping them and sometimes giving them financial help and all kinds of things. And they helped each other, that, that culture of caring, very powerful. And I'm more proud of that than anything, much more proud than the numbers. I have to say the fact that this idea that franchisees matter and that we look after people is more important than anything.

Yeah.

Wow.

Yes.

Approach me, they'll want to do things like, like sometimes they're too, they're so, they can be a bit soft. They can be a bit soft on complaints and have to take a tougher line. Sometimes they're a little bit too slow to accept to charge fees. Sometimes they need to toughen them, but they have this caring attitude. It's cool to see.

Yeah, you must be really proud of that. It sounds like a really, you know, supportive environment where everyone feels like they belong, where everyone feels like they have a say as well.

Very cool. I'd like to say everyone, but it's not everybody. We have our malcontents too. A lot of people think I'm brutal and hard-hearted and tough, and especially when I— when there's complaints, systematic complaints, I can be very tough. You know, you do need to do better. If you don't, you can't stay with us. You can go independent, but you can't stay if you don't look after customers better. So they get upset about me sometimes.

How do you balance that in terms of, you know, you know, being, being fair, but also being strict and making sure the right thing's done and supporting the franchisees? How do you balance that?

It's no different to children. Okay. When you're a parent, you love your kids, don't you? I mean, sure you do. How old are your kids?

4 and 2.

4 and 2, beautiful age. All right. You love your kids very much and you want the best for them, but sometimes that means you've got to tell them what to do even when they don't particularly want to. Okay. They need to go to bed or obey you or help with the chores or whatever the story is, or, or not using proper language, this kind of thing. So, so it's because you care for them You gotta be tough for them, tough with them. And if you don't, and if you're not tough enough, then you're not gonna have, you're not doing your job as a parent, are you? So it's kind of the same idea really. Yes, you've got to be tough. I've gotta say to somebody, look, luckily I know you complain about the complaint system, but the fact is you're getting too many complaints. You need to work out why. It's not good enough just to blame the system or the client or your franchisor or me. What's going wrong? What are you doing? And then we send them a tough message. Like a letter or even a breach notice, which is very upsetting. And sometimes they can't sleep at night, but you've got to do this because you care about their welfare. And in the end, if they really, really can't do it, then you have to let them go, which means they can go independent if they wish. We just let them go. They can sell their business if that's possible, but they can't stay there because it's not working for them and it's really damaging my other franchisees. So you have to have a tough line.

Yeah. And do you have situations where, you know, people are really, you know, think it's too strict and there's a lot of complaints about it, but then once they turn around and they actually come to your way of thinking, but no, you were right. Yeah.

Well, yeah, I think one of the nicest messages I ever get when we have a system of monitoring complaints and there's a warning letter. And then there's a breach notice. But if after that the complaints drop off, they get an automatic reminder to say congratulations. And that's a really nice thing to be able to do. And they often reply to me and I say, well done. That's fantastic. I'm so pleased. I mean, that's a really good, that's a really good finding. Also, I mean, it's one of the greatest satisfaction too, is when people are struggling in any way and you can do something that helps them. And sometimes it does take some fairly tough talking, like, like you'll get a franchisee who's new. Who's not getting enough leads. And I had to come back to them quite toughly and say, we have a system called Pay for Work Guarantee. You need to do these jobs, these messages, use this, do this, this, this, this. And if they actually come back to me and say, I did that, it's working, my cash business is building, thank you. That's a really wonderful feeling of achievement.

Yeah, I get it. What do you look for in franchisees? Because I'm assuming it's not just anyone could. Can look for the franchise.

No, I'd say it's one of our, my founding principles, um, that I wasn't going to accept people that I wasn't happy with because I knew I used to sell lawn mowing rounds and I knew that if somebody didn't have a good attitude towards customer service as shown by our training days, they tend to fail. So I was determined not to do that and my competitors didn't do it. VIP, they didn't select anybody. They just took anybody who had the money. And that's quite common in service franchising, not, not in retail like McDonald's, but service franchising, they tend to take anybody. I've always had very strict policy. In fact, a franchisee who is found not to proper due proper discretion can be let go. It's a really serious offense. We won't renew their regional franchise if they do that. So we look, we look for, um, I usually find trialing days is the best. Put a person out on the road and, um, now for lawn mowing, for example, they'll be shown what to do. Okay. You mow around the edges, then you mow straight lines. If there's a, if there's a hose in the corner of the lawn, there's usually not much grass there, just a few sprigs and a bit of leaves, but you still, you pick it up, you wind it on the garden and you mow to the edge. Every blade of grass got to be cut. That's kind of the principle. Now you tell a person to do that. You might tell them twice. This is my trainers, not me. At the end of that time, they can't pick it up. Then they're not suitable because they're not listening. They're not learning. They just know what to do and they're not going to listen to what you say. That's a big danger sign. Or a person turns up late. They're supposed to leave at 8 o'clock. Everybody's loaded. They turn up late, 20 past 8. They don't apologize. That's a very bad sign because somebody's waiting. Their whole day is waiting to go out with them. That kind of thing. You look at, look, it's easy to pick the good ones. Good franchisees are going to be people who ask a lot of questions, who've done their research. How much do you know about the company? Are you looking at the competitors? They should, they should, they should look at everybody. They should be dressed appropriately. They should communicate properly. Now, a lot of our franchisees are actually immigrants. So their English isn't perfect, but as far as that's concerned, obviously they've got to be understandable. Looking for a whole stack of different things. Good attitude. You don't want somebody who just says, how much can I make? As if it's a job. That's not the sensible question. I mean, it is reasonable, but it's got to be more sophisticated than that. It's not a job. It's a business. It's your business. Yeah. I'm not going to guarantee you anything. We have a guaranteed income, but you have to do free services to pay for it, find people to help. And that's not always easy.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

That's where they've got what it takes. But most people who've got like $30,000 or to spend $25,000, $30,000, they're usually reasonably confident.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I like what you say about the, the research, have they researched you and your competitors that, that, that just shows that, you know, they're, they're, they're in it. They, they want to do this. They want to know more. I think you just show up, how much money can I make? Is your heart really in it?

Well, yeah, it's just, it's central businesses. I mean, why would you go and spend even $25,000 without spending a couple of hours making a few phone calls? I'm astonished that people can do so little research. They just, they just don't do those basic, I mean, even for me, that's a lot of money. If I could spend an hour and maybe not make a mistake of that nature, I would certainly spend it. What, Why would you go into something like that? It's just got no sense. They should, they should research you. They should have been watching. There's so much around these days. They should be watching stuff and learning and then asking sensible questions. You know, a person would come to me to buy a franchise and they had a big pan of questions and they often be quite apologetic. And I'm thinking, oh, this is great. I love this person.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I've had it before in a past job. We were interviewing someone and, you know, at the end of the interview, you say, do you have any questions for me? And she had like a list of questions. It's great.

It's a good sign, isn't it? I want someone applying for a job too. Yes. If somebody comes in and they know a fair bit about the company and they have good questions to ask, and it's what you look for. It's the same thing.

Yeah. Yeah. So what would you say your leadership style is, Jim?

You have to ask other people. Fairly passionate, very emotional, quite blunt, but preach the same message. It's the servant leadership thing. And I think people know I mean it because I walk the walk. I don't just talk about it, I do it. And everybody knows that. So it's kind of, it's funny though. And since I've become sort of well-known, people, People kind of have this awestruck attitude sometimes, and it's very, very odd because I'm pretty ordinary in a lot of ways. They just, people who know me well aren't impressed at all, not one slightest bit, but strange as that. Look, I'm very visionary. I always think long-term. The worst thing you can do is think short-term. Gouging profit all the time. I like to save money, but you've got to keep basics. You never drop your service. You never drop what you do for people. You've always got to try and improve. One of the great things about automation is that you can actually give better service at a lower cost. It's phenomenally good, but I don't run a business primarily with money in mind. Like, I mean, just give you an example. People, Forbes came to interview me, um, early this year. And Forbes, as you know, it's a magazine about wealth. I said, you've really got the wrong person because if you, first of all, I'm a lot more famous than I'm rich in any case. But secondly, it shouldn't even, wealth isn't even in my top 10 priorities. It just isn't. I could make a lot more in all kinds of different ways, but I'm just not going to do it. One of the things I most fear is when If I'm not, I'm going to protect my franchise. If somebody comes in and grabs hold of Jim's and starts ripping people off, which they could do and turn to make a heap of money. I've actually put a clause in all my new contracts as from last year, which says that the majority share controlled ownership of Jim's group cannot be sold without the written consent of a majority of franchisees. Said that will dramatically cut the value of your business. And I said, good. First of all, I don't even sell it. And secondly, the thing I most fear is that somebody else will hurt my franchisees and they will rip them off. That's happened to so many great brands in the past. When people like Retail Food Group come in, we, we, they do disgusting things. They're just greedy for money. I, I always think it's the long term. It's the, you gotta keep it in mind. The ownership, the owner of the company is not the most important person. Everybody matters. You've got to make money, of course, otherwise the whole thing falls apart. But you've got to look after, in our sense, particularly franchisees, but also clients as well, you know, suppliers and staff, of course.

So you really, you've built that, but you fill that in to protect your franchisees and your brand that you've worked so hard to build. Um, yeah, when, when Forbes came to interview you, did you show them your shoes? Um, quite a few of the leaders that I've interviewed for this podcast all, um, talk about, you know, having the ability to have fun and, and not take yourself too seriously in business and in their growth. And I really noticed the trend between all of them. Is this, is this the same for you? Um, is that important to you to keep having fun in your life? Oh yeah.

I, I, I have a great, I have a great life, Eris. I, I enjoy my life very much. I am, I am as, as blessed as any man on the face of the earth could be. I have a great business. I have an amazing wife. I have great kids. I have a great church. I have a great mission in my research program. Um, it's not about piling up money. I'm very interested in the subject of happiness too. People have this extremely wrong attitude that happiness is just about piling up more and more wealth. Really, it's not. Past a certain level of income, it makes very little difference how much money you have. Um, but what really doesn't work is status goods, you know, like expensive clothes and house and car and this kind of stuff too. They really don't add anything significant to your satisfaction. It's very briefly, but after a few months, it's gone. Nothing there. But things that really make people happier— experiences, sharing, society, community, friendship, those kind of things. And giving your money away is actually the best thing you can do with money to make yourself happy. You actually get an enormous boost of happiness from helping other people. When you're involved with what you're doing, I believe life should be joyful. And, you know, we're in a very fortunate situation. We're a wealthy, safe country with incredible medical advances. I'm grateful every day. I thank God every day for the wonderful world that we have.

Well, on that point, you, you, you talked there about, you know, your faith and believing in God. And was it— it was when you were 28 that you found Christianity. Could you take us back, take us back to there. Like what, what was happening in your life and, and how has it helped you throughout your life since then?

Well, I was, I suppose, interested, but also antagonistic in a way. I, I would argue against people who believed in God. I was notorious at that at school. And I remember going to a Billy Graham concert and making fun of people who went down the front, which is pretty awful. But that's the kind of obnoxious kid I was and still am, I suppose. But I just, I was interested, I suppose I had this, this, this felt need somehow, but I, and what, what actually helped me in a way too, was I was doing, um, my research program trying to understand how societies work. And one of the things that became obvious over, over the years of doing my PhD was that religious religions were very effective ways of helping people to achieve the best. They might make the key to what makes society work. Things like restraints on sexual behavior, for example, and the sanctity of marriage and the way you treat children and all those kinds of, even things like fasting and Sabbath keeping and so forth had enormous point, enormous sense to them. So I could understand that this religion that I saw as being very irrational was actually incredibly powerful and sensible, and it was the best way to a good life. And that kind of, in a way, opened my experience, my heart to something different. And, but the main thing, actually, I was just wandering through our, um, union during, um, orientation week, and I, I got chatting to some people in the Christian Union stand, just got talking and I liked them and they invited me to go on this retreat. In the first morning of the, of the retreat, they were supposed to sit and have some quiet time, like prayer and so forth. And I couldn't pray because I didn't believe in God. So I, I had this book that's like textbook and a red pen. And I, and I just started to write down things that were going through my mind. And I just thought through that exercise, God called me. I sat down atheist and got up a Christian. It was sudden and unexpected and surprised a lot of people too, because, because I'd been so obnoxious.

Yeah. Yeah. Do you recall what that, what that was? What you felt that, that calling was?

It's just, just a sense that God called me.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Or I'm here.

Yeah. Yeah. And, and how is it, how, how does it, how does it show up with you in your daily life and, and throughout your business and things? Is it, is ease your friends really down, did you?

Yes. Look, if you look at, understand what we do in gyms, the whole concept is, is, is servant leadership. And it's the same thing as he's washing the disciples' feet, which is something I talk about a lot, but it's, it's washing somebody's feet was a really degrading, dirty job in those days. It was something that slaves did. It was really low because people had very filthy feet because they'd walk in sandals on dirt roads and stuff. No, no bitumen or anything. It was just Occasionally you had a very revered rabbi, his disciples might wash his feet as a sign of respect. Jesus washed his disciples' feet. Now a lot of what Jesus taught was very much in the pattern of Judaism at the time, and which is a great, great faith and a great culture, but this was really revolutionary stuff. That idea of servant leadership is really central. I don't My franchisees don't work for me, I work for them. They're my clients, they're my family, they're not people that I have to look after. That attitude is really ingrained. And there's so much too in the Gospels. Like Jesus said, it's harder for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven than a camel to go through the eye of a needle. That's very something to keep in mind because wealth is corrupting, wealth makes you proud. Wealth makes you think that you're— there's a Proverbs, Proverbs number 30, I think it's verse 7 and 8. And it says, God, don't let me be too poor or too rich. If I'm too prosperous, then I might forget you. If I'm too poor, I might steal. And then that, that's, we just heard that in church on Sunday. And that's a great idea. And I am obviously wealthy, by most people's standards, but at the same time, it's dangerous. You gotta watch yourself that I'm not, I'm not becoming proud. I'm not becoming puffed up. I'm not putting something ahead of God. So I always see money as something that's, that's entrusted. It's not something that we own. It's something that God's given us and said, okay, here's some wealth. What can you do with it?

Yeah. And a lot of your wealth, it goes back into funding your research. Is that?

Net income, about 90%, it goes back into my research with the smallest amount. And that amount, we tithe 10%. So it's kind of, look, we live very well, honestly, by normal standards, we have a nice house. And, you know, I don't go around with ragged clothes and stuff, the whole books and the fruit I want. So we live well, but at the same time, nothing even remotely close to the money I make. The kids, my kids, which is also for the sake of the kids too. Really? Because they would have some sort of, especially my younger ones would have some theoretical sense. We were quite well off. Where's, where's the mansions? Where's the, where's the luxury holidays? Where's the, where's the servants? Where's all this stuff that you're supposed to have if you're rich? No, sorry. You see, they've always had a good attitude towards money. They save well and they work hard. My youngest son started working at McDonald's, which is, which is great training, terrible food, but great training. They all, they just got their energy because they're not brought up spoiled rich kids.

And I think that's really important, right? Because if things come too easy to us, it doesn't, it doesn't serve us well in the future. You know, if you give your kids everything they could possibly want, then they don't have that, that drive and that, that work ethic to go out and, and make something for themselves. So I think it's a really valuable lesson.

Life wasn't meant to be easy. It's not good for us. No, one of the things that's interesting in my research, what we think we've come across is the idea of dopamine reaction systems. If you have like an example, there's a drug like cocaine. If you take cocaine, it actually gives a surge of dopamine to your brain and that, um, but then if you take it again, it's a lesser effect. And the reason for that is because if you put surges of dopamine into your brain, the brain reacts by becoming less sensitive to dopamine and you need more and more. To feel okay, which means you feel miserable if you don't have it. And it tends to have really bad effects on character. Well, there's a lot of things that have the same effect and leisure is one of them. If you're not working, you're actually, you're not, you're doing something to your brain that makes your dopamine system less reactive. And the same thing with junk food and the same thing with, with too much in the sense of social media and a whole lot of other things like that are the same kind of effect. They actually undermine character. So our whole brains are built upon the idea that you've got to have a reasonable toughness. Too much of the good thing is not good for you. And that applies to everything, to drugs, to leisure, to gambling, to social media, to overly big concern with your own status and success and pride and wealth and things like that. They all have a really, really bad effect They undermine character. It's not good for people, it's not good for kids.

No, not at all. Not at all. Where there's light, there's dark, right? And there's a reason for that, I think. Yeah. So what's next for you, Jim? What's in the— you said you're a visionary. What's in the future? What's happening?

Well, in the business, a lot of exciting things going on. We've got a a program called Jimbo, which we're developing for franchisees, which is really far advanced now and they're starting to adopt it. That's gonna really help to improve productivity. It does things like remind them if they haven't actually contacted the client, for example, which reduces the level of complaints. And there's other things in it which will make it easier than to give good service. Also, it'll be able, they'll be able to do things like down the track a bit, one of the things we're most looking forward to is the ability to have clients, if the franchisee wishes, the client can book a job directly into their diary. We'll know where they are and sort of how much time they've got. But instead of saying, we'll get a call back, book it straight in. Ability to be able to sell surplus regular clients to somebody else and buy them if they wish to, those kinds of things. And there's, there's a whole lot of stuff happening with that, that should dramatically improve customer service and also franchisee profitability. So it's very exciting. That's actually a lot of that's going to be done by the end of the year and early next year to do even more. So that'll be great. We'll have a financial package set up so they don't need anything like, um, Xero or QuickBooks or anything at all. It'd just be built into the system. No, no charge at all.

Fantastic.

And there's a possibility of taking that to the general contractor community too and providing it free and so forth and then doing a whole lot of things that the world. It could be very, very big. So technology is extremely exciting area. My research is really, really interesting. We have tested like 100,000 drugs to have the effects we want because we can, what we're doing, trying to do is develop a, a, a treatment to have this beneficial effects of, of religious involvement or food restriction, very similar. So that's been, understand the epigenetics, we've actually been testing them in, in, um, human brain cells, hugely automatic process. And we're about to test 9 that have proved very effective in animals to see if we can get the effect, which will include things like being better parents and so forth. That's how you'll measure it. So that's exciting. We've got somebody we've, we're assigned one of the top CRISPR experts in Australia. CRISPR is a way of directly going into the genome and changing things in our case epigenetically. But very targeted. That's really exciting. So about this book I'm writing, I'm still working on it. We're waiting for some research findings now that'll go out early to mid next year. And I think it'll make a splash because people are starting to panic all over the world about the collapsing fertility and they're trying these and not working. And I know exactly why they're not working. What you need to do is to change your character. And with proposal. So I, I'm optimistic that enough people will listen to this to actually fund the research to get this thing to work, in which case we will be able to turn around society. Incredibly exciting things happening in my world.

A lot happening. What's the title of the book?

Birthrate Crisis.

Birthrate Crisis. And early next year it'll be out?

Early, early to mid next year. We've got some really good experiments going that really backs up a lot of the stuff that, that we're, or tests a lot of the stuff that we're doing. So that's, that's going to be interesting. And I'll do a lot of publicity for that. And I may have to travel. I hate travel normally, but if I have to, I will. It could change everything. It could change the world. I don't know. I mean, it sounds very grandiloquent, but I don't think anybody understands what's happening at the moment. Why, why birth rates are crashing, collapsing. They think it's money, but it's not. It's priorities. And why you've seen rising deaths of despair and why people are more and more lonely and miserable and cut off from each other and why suicide is going up, for heaven's sake, in a wealthy society. You know, you know, the lowest levels of suicide are people who were born during the Great Depression. Yes, we think of prosperity as being so wonderful, but it has some very bad effects.

So what's, what's the mission with all of this? What do you hope when you, when you, you know, release this book and do all this research, what, what's the mission? What do you, what do you hope for?

Well, basically we want to develop treatments that will basically reinforce the good side of our character, the sides of faith, self-discipline, hard work. We want to be able to help people to achieve that more readily. Interestingly, now some of the weight loss drugs like Wegovy and so forth seem to be having effects of this nature. We are testing those for these kinds of effects. So this, um, basically, look, if we found a treatment that's effective, what would we really work for is to treat people like depression and drug addiction and so forth, because it helps have a more disciplined and long-term view on life. That would be the base. Initial aim for treatment. We can help people develop better character and then, then they will have, they will want to have more children and be better citizens too. This kind of thing.

It's fascinating. I'll be watching, I'll be watching this space and looking at the Bitcoin when it comes out. Um, we're coming towards the end. I could, could speak to you for hours, Jim, but I've got, um, I've got a quickfire round that I always, always do, um, before the, the last questions. So what's, um, one thing people will be surprised to know about you?

I know people know a lot about me. I'm a real cheapskate, notorious miser. Do not like spending money. I hate travel and I'm a lot more famous than I'm rich. People think I'm, you know, people think I'm a billionaire and then this kind of stuff. It's not even, I'm not even, not even a fraction of that way. I sometimes think I'm a bit forward doing it. People come to me to secrets of being successful. And yet in financial terms, you know, I'm pretty well off, but my goodness gracious, the BRW wanted me to join the rich 250. And I said, that'd be ridiculous. I'm not even close to that. Are you talking about the billion-dollar turnover of the business? It's probably about right. We're probably turning over my franchise, probably turning over a billion dollars a year. But the fact of the matter is only a tiny portion that comes to me. So it's, I'm not nearly as rich as you think I am.

Yeah. Yeah. We've got all that research to find out.

Well, as I said, most of my income goes into research anyway, because it's just not, not my priority.

So I think that, I don't know.

That's what I like people to know. I don't think money is the all and end all. I, I, sometimes I feel a bit of a fraud if, if, if people coming to me to say, how do you become wealthy? Because it's not really my aim.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We've got a much bigger mission, but thanks. What's, um, what's your favorite division in Jim's group?

Mowing.

Mowing. Has it got a special place in your heart?

Well, yes. I mean, I was a mowing contractor for 15 years. To me, mowing is really, it's a wonderful, wonderful lifestyle. It's healthy. It's outdoors. It's just great. I love it. Gardening now is my hobby. So yeah, mowing, mowing is good. I don't understand how somebody would want to clean houses or carpets or do anything else. To me, gardening is just the best, best manual job there is. But luckily people have different priorities. You know, somebody who loves dogs, they would think dog wash, oh, fantastic. And they love it. They think it's the greatest thing ever. Great working with dogs and they're friends with the dogs and they're just different people. Or somebody likes cars, for example. You know, to them, washing, cleaning cars is a wonderful job because they love cars so much. See, that's the point. You got to fit, you got to fit what your temperament is. To me, to me, lawn mowing, gardening, particularly gardening. I'm like, look at the spade, you know, digging out, digging out gardens. I've just, I love that so much. It's just so therapeutic.

You see your light, your face lights up when you talk about it. What's your proudest moment outside of business?

I hear people being successful. I hear stories about people who've done well, who've turned their lives around. I mean, that really is something amazing. You have somebody who's, one of the things I do is I ring franchisees on their 10-year anniversaries and you get stories about people who've seen their kids growing up, who've turned from being, somebody who's 50 years old and a financial failure and 10 years later they've got their own house and a boat and just their whole life is different. I mean, that is amazing to hear. And then when your kids do great things too, you, you, you're so impressed. I mean, I know, I know that sounds trivial, but we had a family gathering, um, about a week ago and my son Aaron, 16 years old, he just kind of basically did the whole washing up, which is a lot of us too. There was about 9 of us there and he just, he just got up and washed up. And cleaned up. And I was so impressed. I thought, wow, this is a great kid.

And you didn't have the animals. That's, that's impressive for 16. Didn't he beat you to it?

Yes. You know, when he was 8 years old, we used to do, uh, fasting every, every month. We do a fast where you don't eat certain things during, for a whole month, like, like the Lenten fast. And he would do it with me. That was great. So, yeah, we just needed children. Now, mind you, Aaron has also got his weaknesses. He, he's, uh, He tends to get his assignments in late, which his mother might get quite upset about. And, uh, so he's got his weaknesses, but he's, when you see somebody doing something that's really good like that, I know it sounds small, but are you with your own kids when they grow up? You'll see them, which shows that they've really taken the lesson. They're really helpful to somebody else, that they're really reliable and hardworking and stuff. You take pride in that sort of thing. You really do. And that's, that's, that's a great glow of satisfaction that, that, yeah, I can relate.

It's usually the, the, the smallest things. Like even when I just see my 4-year-old or my 2-year-old just playing nicely, just the little conversations you overhear, like, you know, you almost cry just because I'm just like, oh, it's just, it's often those small moments. It's not the, um, the big moment thing.

The kids get on well with each other too. We have this, especially our youngest 4. That Lee and I have, and they're just such great kids and they get on really well together and they care for each other and they're just good people. I mean, there's always things you'd like them to be doing better. Why don't anybody get married and start having kids, for example? But they're great.

Beautiful. Well, this has been a great conversation, Jim. I always end with the last question as a kind of pass-it-on gift to the listeners. So You know, you've built one of the most recognizable brands in Australia. What's one lesson or story you pass on to someone listening who wants to build a legacy such as yours?

Don't, don't focus primarily on money. It's a good, it's a good, you've got to make money what you do, but do something that you love. Service industry is a great one to go into because it's not very competitive and there's very little capital involved. With it and just, just do it well. Look after people, look after people really, really well. Think of the value of what you're doing. Don't, don't put money first. I think one of the biggest dangers people, like, like speculation, they want to put money into something because they think tomorrow you'll pay more, like crypto or something like that, which is gambling. That's a really bad thing to do. You should never ever put money into something simply to make money out of it. You should always see some value in what you're doing. So how can you help other people in some way, provide a service that will help them? I think service industry is, I mean, I'm biased in that one. I think the service industry is wonderful in that particular way. We reckon we've created more millionaires than any company in the history of Australia because, because you can start with very little and you can build anything depending on, and we'll show you how. So find something and just, just do it better. Be endlessly self-critical. Look at what you do all the time and say, I've made a mistake. What can I do? How can I learn from this? That is so, so powerful. Humility is one of the most underrated virtues when it comes to business. Say, I've done the wrong thing. I'm sorry, made a mistake. Okay, what do I learn? How do I not get buried by your mistakes? You just got to say, What can I do better? And if I look back even a year ago, I reckon I could make a good point of mistakes that I've made. Two years ago, terrible mistakes. Obviously making them, but then trying to learn.

Well, yeah. Fantastic. Thank you so much, Jim. It's been a wonderful conversation. I really appreciate you joining me today. Thanks, Jim.

Good to talk to you.