How Jim Penman Boosted His $600M Per Year Business With A Viral Tiktok Video

I had a Lawn Mowing run seven years later in the franchise that recently just passed 5,000, we're now at about 5,060. It's just insane. We've got record numbers in trading. I can't explain it in any other way, Ken, except social media. I have a very strong emotional connection with my franchisees. Do something you love and just try to be really, really good at it. That's actually a very good risk of the business. The heart came first and the money later.

This is the Content Capitalists podcast. We talk to business owners who've used video to grow their business to a million dollars a year or more. How they did it, what worked, what didn't. Welcome to the Content Capitalists with your host, Ken Okazaki.

Hey guys, welcome to another episode of the Content Capitalist podcast where we have interviews with businesses who are doing at least a million dollars a year and, and using content as a big part of their strategy. I have someone from Australia today and to be honest, I only just met him. As far as having like a live conversation, we've had a couple emails back and forth, but this is the first live conversation that I'm having. So a lot of what you're going to hear is not stuff that I've known before. So I'm going to be asking questions and when you hear me ask these questions, I'm listening for the answers just as much as you are because I can't wait to figure out what he's doing, how he's doing it and why it's working so well. Jim Penman, welcome to the show.

Good to be here.

All right, so guys, first of all, if you're listening in the, on the audio podcast, I'd recommend you go click the link below and check it out on YouTube. Jim, I see on your. Is that a blazer you've got there? You're supporting your logo. It says. Okay, yeah. Whether you're hot or cold. Yeah, you can see it. It says Jim's your local expert. So you got the branding down. You've got a beautiful like bookcase behind you. You look like you're sitting in, you know, a study at home maybe.

Yeah, that's fine.

Do us a favor and 30,000 foot view. What is your business? Who do you help and how do you help them?

Well, it started back in 1992 when I was a failed university academic and I had a lawn mowing run which I part time student job which I went full time seven years later in the franchise. It somebody asked me at the time how many franchises I might have one day. And I said, well, if it goes well, maybe a hundred. Recently we've just passed 5,000. So we're the biggest franchise chain in the Southern hemisphere, actually, and covers lots of different areas. Mowing was the original one, less than half now. Cleaning, dog wash, pest control, handyman, 45 different divisions. So we have a franchising model that's very Australian, very, very democratic, very egalitarian, where franchisees have a lot of power and we listen to them. They can even do things like vote out their franchisors and veto changes to the manual, all kinds of things. So it's a very like the egalitarian, democratic sort of system.

Yeah. And do you see that working uniquely in Australia and not other countries, the way you set up the systems, it.

Particularly, it works particularly well in Australia and New Zealand because we've got a very similar culture.

Got it.

We've had a go at North America and we've got about 50, about 60 in, in Canada. But it's never taken off in the same way. I think our culture is peculiar like that. Australians are very. We don't mind working with their hands. I suppose if somebody's been a bank manager in Australia, goes out and starts a lawnmower business, people say, oh wow, you're working for yourself now. I think in many other countries they say, what, you're going to be a gardener? I mean, it's that.

Yeah, people might look at it like a step down. Right. When really it's just a different career path.

That's right. I spent 15 years as a mowing contractor, part and full time. And it's a great way of making a living. Very, very flexible, very healthy outdoors, quite profitable. Yeah. Good business.

That makes sense. Tell me, what part of Australia are you in?

Melbourne.

Melbourne, okay. Got it, got it. When I went to Melbourne and I've been there maybe 10 times or so, one thing I noticed is that people love their coffee down there. Are you a fan of coffee? No. You don't drink coffee. Okay. Because I come from Tokyo, Japan, and literally there are vending machines where you buy coffee and they come out in a can or, or a plastic bottle. And that's the, you know, the level of astuteness I had about coffee. And then when I started going to cafes in Melbourne, my friends turned me into a snob. Now I can't enjoy coffee unless I know how much crema there is or whatever all these terms are that they taught me. But I guess if you're not a coffee drinker we'll put the conversation aside for now. So you said something earlier. You said you have the largest franchise in the southern hemisphere. Is that bar none, including all like convenience stores, gas stations, fast food, like it's bar none the largest. Is that right?

Yeah. Well you know, obviously lot of chains like Subway are larger in terms of numbers, but if you just count, if you just count something hemisphere, I think we're the biggest by far. Amazing beats in Australia by a long shot.

Amazing. Okay, so I'm really curious now about how you said briefly how you got into it. Um, most of the people I interview are in one of two classes. There's the ones who come out of pretty much their mother's womb as an entrepreneur and they're selling cookies or candy at school and they progress through that. And then there's the ones who actually go down a corporate path and then switch at some point. Could you tell me about what your path was to figuring up as academic?

I was interested in the rise and fall of civilizations and I went to university and did a PhD on that subject. Trying to understand the reasons why societies change, why some become wealthy and others didn't. And I always intended that to be my career. It's only when I bombed out of the academic theories were too wildly radical. I wanted to keep on funding my research which by that time was mostly got to do with biology and biochemistry, genetics. But I had no money and I had no academic future. So I went out and turned my part time student rowing route into a somewhat larger business. Nor come from a corporate background. I haven't actually had a job, I've worked for anybody else since I was 18. So.

And what was that job at 18?

The bar and drink waiter at a guest house.

Okay, got it, got it. So if you had continued down that path then I read a book that I loved. Guns, Guts and Germs. Yes, Guns Steel.

Guns, Germs and Steel, yeah.

Jared Dahmer Steel. Yeah.

There.

Loved it. Is that the kind of like the academic studies that you were into finding.

That kind of information, piecing Jared Diamond's fantastic. It's a really brilliant book and beautifully written too. I'm looking at the sort of the biology behind it. Like my theory is sort of the idea that the way people create civilizations is by developing a form of character which in animals is associated with mild food restriction. I know that it sounds bizarre, but there are reasons for it. For example, if you look at things like the age of puberty, which is a lot later in the 19th century than it is now, but it was also quite early in the, say, the 14th century. So it rose to extraordinary peak late, very late period in the late century. And then it's declined since then. That is indication of a change in epigenetics, in actual fact, in the way that our bodies are constructed, which has implications for character. And that's why people became very good machines. So it's very different from the way you'd ever heard about society thinking about before. And I love the way that Jared diamond talks about it, but he's talking about the results. I'm talking about the way it happens, the way it's done, the psychology behind it.

Wow. I now I feel like I should go pick up more books on that because, like, that's opening up a whole new world. Like 99% of my everyday thoughts are about video technology and, and marketing and social media. And I forget, like, this is whole really curious side of me that I kind of, you know, kind of shut the door on a little bit.

Cracked.

But when someone like you comes along, I'm just like, whoa, I forgot there's that whole other universe of stuff that.

I'm really, really idea of what I'm doing. Go to biohistory.org and you'll see some video that one of my sons did. So he explains what it's about. Stop assuming I've got a major research institute going at the moment, which is funded by my business.

Okay, well, we'll put a link down below in the podcast show notes. If anyone listening wants to see that. Or if you're watching on YouTube, check out the description. So let's jump into your PhD. Like, how many years is that to get a PhD and study?

Well, I started in 1971 doing undergraduate, so I would have started in about 1976. And I more or less finished working full time on it in 1982. Didn't actually get it.

76 to 92, that's. That's a lot. Wait, let me do some math here.

Well, I kept on extending it because I kept on wanting to do more, and I really was no hurry to finish. I just wanted to develop this thing. Yeah.

So, okay, well, that's what, 14 years? Is that right?

Well, I started my studies in 1971 as an undergraduate, and I finished in 1982. So that's kind of like 19 years then.

No, no, 21. 21 years. My math is so bad right now.

Okay, that would be 11, 12 years.

Oh, 70s. Okay, guys, now you know how good I am at math and why I have to hire people on my team to do things like accounting. So thanks for sharing that. Now after all that time and you going into the business you're in now, were there like your peers who were like critical of your decision are kind of wondering like, is this guy okay? Like why. Why are you switching at such a late stage?

Well, my dad wasn't very impressed. He was an engineer. He thought his son should become a doctor or a lawyer or an engineer or something like that. So doing history wasn't really a particularly favorable thing for our family. And then when I actually finished up, that didn't even get my PhD originally. I did later and became a gardener. He wasn't impressed. But mind you, to the end of his life, when I had about a thousand franchises, I said to him that it really wasn't such a bad career choice. And he said, I guess not.

So got it.

But what else do you do? I mean, what do you do with the PhD in History of Evan say there's not many jobs for it, historians and lot people with ideas, radical mind. So it was just natural. But it's fun, you know, I like.

I guess you write books and you do lectures at universities. Pretty much, right? That's about it, yeah. Okay, so you started this business and how much time did it take before you decided, hey, I should be franchising this out like before when you were solo to actually starting to grow a team?

Well, having. I really didn't think of it as potentially franchiseable because I had business eventually that got into building up and selling lawn mowing rounds. And I could see the value of that because it gets a person into business. But what I couldn't see is the value of the ongoing fees. Why you keep on paying fees, but once you add a good roster of customers. And I have to say, it wasn't really my initiative so much as a rival. There was a company called Vip which was established in Adelaide, and I vaguely heard about them doing these things and they came to Melbourne and they had 250 franchisees, which in those days was huge. 250 is a lot of franchises. Even back in 1980, 88, I just basically panicked. I actually rang them up and said, look, I don't want to compete with you guys. You're obviously too successful. Can I just help to grow, you know, vip? And they said, no, I'm not interested in that. So I said, well, I must try and compete with them. So I actually crashed the franchise by that year, went up to the stand without telling me who I was. And said, hey, interested in vip? Can you tell me about it? So they explained how it works and I thought, okay, good thoughts here, good ideas, but maybe I can do it a bit better. So that's how I started in June 1999. Just signed my first franchisee.

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Okay, and at that point, how much money were you making, if you don't mind sharing?

Oh, that was. I mean, I bought a house. Just. Just bought a house for the first time I started. Lucky, massive student debt, like $35,000. I mean, you could buy a house back within 1982.

Yeah, in Melbourne. Imagine that. Imagine that.

That's fine. Couldn't even buy a garden shed these days. And then I was making a bit of money. I mean, I really don't know. I can't even remember how much it was, but it was probably a little bit better than the average income.

Would you say it's above or below six figures for yourself?

Well, don't forget money back in 19.

Yeah, money back then was worth more. Got it.

Yeah, it probably wasn't a low six, three figure income, something like that.

Low six figure. Okay, got it. And that's revenue or like your take home income at that point.

Yeah, well. Well, profitability. But when you say take home, I kept on reinvesting. I didn't. I mean, I always lived cheaply. I had the most decrepit old cars and, you know, back into me, the parking spot. I remember somebody backing into me in the parking lot and they dent the car. He said, I'm so sorry, I'll pay for it. I said, look at the car. Don't worry about it. Instead.

So tell me, at that point, how were you acquiring clients? Were you dropping flyers in people's mailboxes or what was the deal?

Originally, we started off with leaflets. They worked quite well, especially in the early 80s. Local papers were effective, more effective, cost effective. That's one of the reasons I started my business very locally and spread very quickly because local paper classifieds and the yellow Pages, those are the three main methods we used in those days.

Okay.

Totally different.

It is. It is. So right now we're at the stage where you went and you kind of got the idea of how their business is structured. What was the next step after that? Once you got the master plan, you want to improve on it. Did you start right away announcing, hey, I'm hiring franchisees, or like, don't be.

Nine months to get a contract, which.

Was to get one contract.

Okay, so I'm nine months to get a contract. 2. Lots of lawyers doing it. Really difficult to get, understand what I wanted. They kept on saying, you're being too nice. You're giving your franchisees too much. How? Nobody does this kind of stuff. So that was so. Yeah. And then I.

Is that how you differentiate yourself, by democratizing the model more than the competitors?

Yes. Well, what I wanted to do was to make my franchise easier to fans. I didn't have any much money. I didn't have the resources that my competitors did. So the only way I could do it was to treat them better. So I just did everything I could to make them happy. So the way I used to do it when I was much smaller than my rival is I had a list of my current franchisees with their phone numbers. And if somebody come to me and said, well, why would I buy from you when you're running your business in your basement? This company is obviously much better established. You know why? And I said, well, there's some differences, but main thing is, here's a list of my franchisees. I want you to go away and ring any of them, all of them, and ask them what it's like. And then I said, you go and get a list of their franchisees and ask them. The thing is, I was being a bit precious because I knew they wouldn't give them the list because I knew guys weren't as happy as mine. But that's what did it. It wasn't me so much selling, it was the fact that my people were happy. So yes, we caught it. I actually, I used to make them apply. I'd say look to be part of because I knew the other company, vip wasn't selective at all. And I was quite selective. I wasn't going to take anybody on who was likely to fail. I didn't want franchises failing, I wanted them to succeed. So I would actually knock back anybody that I thought wasn't good enough. And one of the ways I did that is I'd send them out in the road with one of my trainers and I get them to be like Mark, get an assessment, you know, A, B, C, D is how good they are. And if they don't do well, I would not take them. And I made that point. They knew they had to be good enough to be in gyms. So kind of like a reverse sell if you like. But it's was real and it was quite genuine. So I would not take a person I didn't know succeed and have good customer service or relationship skills. I wouldn't take them because I wanted them be successful. So my aim was to get every single franchisee happy, which we don't 100% manage, but we do it pretty well.

And at that time, was it like on a face to face interview with them, you just asked some questions, kind of get a feel for it. Would you actually, like, how would you know what the customer service was like?

Put them out in the road.

So you'd actually do some test projects with them?

Not me personally because I was finishing my work. I had some people that I trusted who had very high standards and I put them out on the road and I think go and work with this guy for a day or two and they take them out. Just things like, for example, okay, if a trader says, do you want to. When you mow the lawn, you go around the outside once and then you mow straight lines. You do it this way. If there's a hose in the corner of the garden, of the lawn, you pick it up, put it neatly in the garden, you mow under it, there's just things like that. So you tell them to do that. And if they weren't listening to what the trainer said, then they fail. Or if I got anything like a person turned up late, picked it to leave at 8, everything ready to go. He could have a quarter past eight. Doesn't apologize now, that's a bad sign. So fail. So we just used to say any sign of anything. Like, for example, you start a person off the first couple of times, you actually show them what to do, unload them. I would do this. Do this by after a couple of times, they should be picking up, they should be doing it themselves. So you look for those kinds of characteristics. Actually, you can interview people and there's good signs of quality. Like, for example, if somebody is asking good questions or does a lot of research, those kinds of things is a very good indication present. Well, they impress you. That's good. But actually, I've used to find on the road was the best way to pick people out. Because some people just, they go half the day and they say, I'm sick, I've had enough of this. And they go home. Well, you know, you can't even spend the day in the field, then you're not worth having.

Yeah, yeah, makes sense. So I love that. And so just by focusing on, number one, getting the right people in, that will allow new people to vet how good, you know what it's like working with you. But yeah, yeah, you'll never get there by accepting everyone. So that's. That's amazing.

They didn't want bad people in the. Because they knew it would upset the brand. If a customer has a bad experience as one person, the word gets around.

That's right.

You know, franchisees will get quite upset when you have a bad operator in the area because it's hurting their business as well. So they have a very strong incentive to keep the standards up.

Yeah, you're teaching me so much right now. And I feel like there are ways I could implement elements of that in my agency because. Yeah. Well, I guess we've never met, but I have a digital media agency. We create content for business owners all over the world, especially US and Australia. So maybe I should start implementing some things like that. Being more choosy about who I allow in. And then if someone's thinking about working with me out with permission from my clients, say, hey, call up these, you know, 10 or 15 people, let them.

Tell you we have a system in Jim's. We talk about it. We don't sell franchises, we grant franchises. It always should be an application process. I was doing training for my franchise yesterday. I made that point very strongly. You don't sell your grant and you're very selective. And I go through all the reasons why it's important to be selective.

Make that line long. Yeah. Okay, so tell me about currently, what's going on as far as how are you using content creation? Now, that could be in many formats. Podcasts, like we're doing right now. Video, like, which we're also creating. Written. How are you using that in your business currently?

I have a wonderful guy, Joel, who's actually came in from a very junior role in the company 10 years ago, and it's just progressed since then. He's fantastic in that area. What we actually do, to a large extent, we do a huge amount, and we find actually it's the primitive stuff that often works better. We've tried things with fairly high production values, and they really don't seem to grab it, but lots and lots of little clips. So, for example, every third Tuesday for an hour, we have a session called Ask Gym, and it's done during our training. So you've got an live audience of probably, you know, typically 20, 25 people. They can ask questions, come to MA, and I just answer any question. Anything, you know, business, personal, this is.

Anything in your home or your office or in a conference center.

We typically have something over 100 in training. It better be three weeks. So.

And these are employees that are asking.

Now, these are potential franchisees.

Okay, got it, got it.

So you've got over 5,000 franchisees. Just to maintain that, you need quite a lot of people coming through to go through the thing. So we have a conference center attached to our office. They come, they stay there, they listen to talks. I give a couple of talks myself. Try and meet every prospect at least once during that time and say hello to them and establish some kind of a bond. And one part of that process is this Ask Jim session. Now, we have maybe up to 100 people watching it or live or in person. But the main point of this is you take segments out. So somebody asks a question, and then I answer it, and you take that part out and you put it on TikTok or whatever, that's. That's part of it. We do interviews too. Like, for example, we have a lot of good stories. So what we say is, if you come and you do an interview, if you've got any kind of story, you know, you've done fantastic on your first month, or lots of good customer service, or you've done something good for the community, or, you know, you've got certain number of employees or whatever it happens to be any good story, he will do an interview, which is usually by Zoom. And then we'll give you an accor voucher which is worth about 600 bucks, which is get you free accommodation and discounted meals and all kinds of things. That's a sort of a thank you for that. So we get these. We do about 500 of these every year. We've got 500 vouchers, so we'll need to do that many. So. And then each one of them is a short thing you put out somewhere. So something just take off. You don't really know why. You know the best thing I ever did, I told a joke during Ask Jim which. What? 1.6 million views. You know me even I think it's a pretty good joke.

But okay, now we have to hear. And also we'll drop the link down below. What? What was the joke? I got to hear this.

You want to hear the joke?

I do, absolutely. I think my audience does too.

This is a story about the creation of the world, okay? And God and Satan team up together. They decide to make a deal where God is allowed to go first and say anything he likes about a country. But Satan has to agree with that, but he can add anything else in. So, all right, God says, let's start with Japan. Japan, you know, good area for you. Japan's going to be a really amazing country. I'm going to make this best country. It's going to have beautiful mountain ranges, very scenic and lovely seacoast. Gorgeous country. And the people are going to be very polite and disciplined and hard working. And Satan said, all right, all of that. But there's going to be so many mountains and seacoasts, there's going to be hardly any flat land at all. And the people will be very polite and hardworking, but they won't be able to relax and enjoy life because of that. So, all right, God said, Africa, not going to make the same mistake. Going to be a country, lots of beautiful sea coasts and mountains, but lots and lots and lots of flat land. And the people will be really loving and happy and they'll be dancing and singing. The Satan said, right, half the land is going to be jungle, the rest is going to be desert. And the people will be so busy laughing and singing and dancing that you're going to have famine and plague and all kinds of terrible things going on. All right, God said, New Zealand. New Zealand, we're going to get right. This is going to be the best country imaginable. It's going to have beautiful scenic mountains and sea coast, but lots and lots and lots of flat land. No jungle, no desert. And the people will be disciplined and they'll be hard working and they'll be law abiding at the same time. They'll be relaxed enough to really enjoy life. And he said, satan beat that. And Satan said, easy. Wait till you see their neighbors.

I saw that one coming. I saw it coming. This is Aussie and New Zealand joke thing that you guys have with each other and it's so we like, we.

Like making, we like making fun of ourselves in Australia. The funny thing is if I did that in the metro Americans about Canada, I don't think it's funny at all.

Yeah, but then you could talk about like Canada versus the U.S. or something, you know, or. Yeah, well anyhow, that's a good one and I can see why, especially in Australia and New Zealand, people would love that. Thanks for sharing. Thank you. I'm going to actually cut out that clip and put it up with and see how that goes. Now I've got a question for you if you don't mind. How old are you?

71.

71. Now it is not very many like demographically 71 year olds on TikTok, much less, you know, YouTube and Facebook, but especially TikTok and Instagram. And you're kind of publishing across multiple platforms. Was there some hesitation in the beginning where I assume you or somebody on your team thought it's a good idea to start publishing stuff there? Tell me about how you got into it and if age was ever an issue for you.

Well, it never came up actually because I don't do the posting myself. Joel does all this. I provide the raw materials and the clips and everything else but he does it so he just automatically. But the very strange thing about this is we have an extremely odd demographic in terms of our fans. Our top demographic is 15 to 25, which is not normally the audience that normally want services done. Nor are they peak for franchise. Not too many 16 year olds want to buy a franchise. They can't drive in the country anyway, so. But we just have this brand image which is so powerful. But people love it, the kids love it, they really do. It's a huge thing in Australia, especially about the Jim's brand and I'm the person behind the brand. Look, it's a funny thing. My son gets hugely embarrassed. He's 13 years old and he didn't take his bathers to school one day. So I drove down to take them to me. He was in the swing by the swimming pool, took them and I threw it at the right and said Stupid kid. And then the other kids worked out who his father was. Oh, my goodness, your father's gin. That was. So they were in, they wanted to be his friends and come to his party. He was so embarrassed. I went to pick him up from a school party and he said it, texted me, dad, don't get out of the car. Don't get out of the car. So, yeah, the old geezer somehow seems to relate to that. I don't know why.

This podcast is not for the faint hearted. We're here for the entrepreneurs who are ready to dominate their industry and take no prisoners. So if you're enjoying this ride, buckle up and share it with your crew. They deserve to know what's up.

That's hilarious. My kids also, I mean, I don't have as big a presence as you do, as most of my clients that do. But at the same time, every now and then someone spots me on the street, especially when I'm traveling either in the US Or Australia, and it's an interesting experience that my kids are with me. Tell me how you're seeing the content you're putting out on social media. Are you seeing a correlation between like a cause and effect in your business and social media? And if so, what is that?

Oh, massive, Massive, massive, massive. Look, before COVID we had about 3,800 franchisees who were stuck there for about three years. We weren't growing. We're a business that likes recessions. We have lots of clients. We have like last year we had about a third of our leads were not back. We got surplus demand. Our problem is franchisees. And we just, in a reasonably good economy, we couldn't attract franchisees. During COVID I made a bit of a fuss because the local state government here stopped independent workers from working contractors. And I got really riled up my people and went on TV and did all kinds of exposure about that, about how stupid it was, the whole system. There was no kill threes. The reason, because we've taken that to court to try say, what was your reason? No, they can't give it. It was just a stupid, nasty, silly, brutal decision by government for political reasons. Okay, So I became very well known for that. Became quite unpopular. Two of my daughters wouldn't speak to me. I had 10 children, two of them. So just so, 10 children, mother to divorce me and this kind of stuff. They were really furious. But with time, as it went on, I started to get more purchase and people started saying, hey, but you're right too. Why are these, all these council workers working in groups and individuals aren't allowed to doing the same job. And so the tighter public opinions, to a large extent, turned and I became known as the public figure. And then at that time, we were boosting all the social media and I became very well known because in the past, people knew the brand because there's thousands of trailers and stuff, but they didn't know me. But then I became known myself, and it just sort of took off in an amazing way. We just couldn't believe that the degree of interest in that, especially in the younger demographics, it just got to be huge. And the effect of that was extraordinary. So we were growing during COVID which we hadn't beforehand. Partly we thought, well, maybe this is because the. It's because people have got. They're losing their jobs. You know, they need something to do. They couldn't do restaurants and so forth, so they're buying franchises. So that's reasonable. They are growing. That's fine. Okay. But then Covid stops and we kept on growing and we. We like unemployment. I don't like unemployment, but it's good for the business because it also.

People lose their job alternate, you know, they're looking for something new. Right.

Had the tightest labor market in living history with the biggest demand for workers. And we're still growing, and we're growing fast. We hit 5,000 about two months ago. We're now up to about 5,060. I mean, it's just insane. We've got record numbers in training, so I can't explain it in any other way, Ken, except social media. We have a very strong social media presence, but we do it all the time. It's daily. I was out there yesterday actually doing brush cutting and mowing lawns and digging over garden beds because people love this kind of stuff. It's all very Jimmy, you know, it seems to.

So do you spend a significant amount of your time actually on the tools?

No, not for.

It's mostly for the video. Right. So how long ago was the last time you actually got paid to do lawn work or landscaping?

1988.

Okay. And since then you've just been working on the business, not in it, Right.

I still do it myself. I actually mow my own. One of my.

But you don't get paid for it, right?

Well, I paid for it. It's my own. I love gardening, so I enjoy doing it as a hobby. But no, I don't charge for it these days.

So. Interesting because, like, the way you say you love gardening and things like that, I don't know about Australia, but I'm Japanese. I kind of sound American because I went to American International School in Japan and that's where I learned my English. But with my American peers, a lot of them pick their careers based on what's the potential income and whether they actually like doing the work is way down the list. And I think that's where that's just a recipe for, you know, eventual suicide or depression. Right.

And very bad idea. Yeah, well, gardening, you see, it's a fairly low status job in terms of you working with your hands and so forth. You're like a manual labor.

It's quite therapeutic, isn't it?

They struggle to get the idea that somebody makes good money. You know, I was. We have a guy who started as a franchisee with us and he's. He was turning over close to a million dollars a year within a couple of years. Now, one of our major franchisors, I mean people can make very, very good money. In fact, our average turnover based on a recent survey is just under $3,000 a week. Now this is Australian dollars, but what it means is that you're clearing well over the average Australian income by doing something like gardening and in your own business for civil hours. I mean, it's a fantastic opportunity. And yet you put a job for a, say pre Covid. We put a job for somebody helping finance. We're talking minimum wage here, Australian terms, 50 grand a year. We've got a hundred applicants, half of degrees to do a job like that. That guys wouldn't even get out of bed for that kind of money. So this is very foolish prejudice against manual. One thing I like is my hands are actually quite calloused. I like having a rough feeling hands because I just.

Mine are really callous too. But not from garden work. It's mostly from hitting the gym regularly, which I'm quite religious about. How would you look at what you're doing? And what you're doing is very unique and there's not very many people who are in the same business position as you. But I'd like to hear your advice for someone who's in business for themselves, an entrepreneur, they might be in the business of selling information online. They might be in the business of painting houses or servicing cars, I don't know. But in the services industry, if they haven't quite jumped into it, could you share some advice for someone like that? Like how should they look at this and approach content creation and social media as it pertains to their business?

Look, talking about business in general, there's some very important principles. What you said before is very real. To do something you love, people often ask me, what do you go into? What division? What makes the most money? So it's the wrong question. What do you enjoy doing? Do you love cars? Car detailing? You love gardening? Mowing? You love electronics, Something like antennas? You love dogs? Dog wash? I mean, pick something that you enjoy doing and you can't if you don't enjoy what you're doing. What have you got to share? Anyway, this is the start. So do what you love. Then what you do is you go out every day and you ask yourself the question, how can I do this better? How can I do it faster? How can I have a better finish? Like when I was mowing lawns, I was fanatical about edgy. And I was one of the first contractors in Australia back in the 70s as a student to have a brush cutter, which you can do all the edges around the trees without rimback and turning balls and stuff. So you can do a much better job, but you've got to pick it up clean, but you've got to do it fast. So you have this obsessive do something you love and just try and be really, really good at it. That's actually a very good recipe for business. And every day is minuscule, tiny changes of improvement. Now, if you go to the social media, it's the same thing. What are you doing? You're showing people something that you enjoy doing that you believe in and that you're good at. And if you can do that in a way that communicates well with people, then people will be interested in how you do it. This guy, Dan, I was telling you before, the guy who was turning over close to a million dollars a year, he's a high school dropout. He dropped out of school at 15. So he's not the kind of person you'd expect to be hugely successful. He's now in his 20s, he's a multimillionaire, he's wealthy guy. How he did it. He just went in and he did the job and he worked out ways of doing it, and he teaches others how to do it and quite a few people he's actually mentored and making several hundred thousand dollars a year now because he's good at what he does. And everybody learns. And there's a lot of things I've learned from him too, about the way he does things that we've learned from him. He's got all kinds of videos all over the place about how he does it. Because he was so good at it.

That's amazing. Thank you so much for that. And what about, like, people who say, well, is this going to make me money? Like, what do you say to that? Because in my business, we create content and there's not necessarily a direct ROI correlation between, you know, not like an ad, for example, that you put on TV or on social media these days, but, you know, organic content. If someone says, when's it going to make me money? How do you answer that?

I'd say, you're coming from the wrong angle. I would never put the money first. Money should always be something that comes out of it. You should do what you love, you should do it well. And if you do that and you keep a reasonable eye on the bottom line, you'll tend to make money. It's like launching the franchise is the perfect example of that. I made this decision not to take anybody I thought might fail. Now, I thought that was a bad business decision. It turned out to be one of the best business decision in my life. But it wasn't fundamentally made for money reasons. I didn't think, if I do this, I'll make more money. I think I don't want my franchisees to fail. I have a very strong emotional connection with my franchisees. So I hate people failing. It's the worst thing. It gets me more upset than anything. So if you think about what you're doing, you're trying to help people. That is the idea. Like one of the ways that we talk about. When I was selling lawn mowing rounds, I was initially very bad at it because I'm not very personal, I wasn't good at selling. And then I went to see somebody in my church who was at an advertising agency and to ask him. So I thought I might need an agent. And he actually spent a half an hour telling me about advertising. And then at the end of it, everything he knew just freely gave out the information. At the end of it, he said, look, you don't really need an advertising agent. Go and do this. And I thought, well, if I ever do need an advertising agency, I would use this guy because his only concern was my welfare and the welfare of my business. And therefore he sold me on his business. So when I saw that, I wonder if this could work for selling lawn mowing rounds. So what I would do is when somebody rang me, I'd start asking the questions, you know what the cut of a lawn mowing round is, which is one each job done once, and then I give information and help them and Give them advice on what to buy, where to buy, how to advertise and how to do things. And if they actually asked me, if they came to see me and ask my advice as to what was the better business, mine or another one, I would advise them properly. I would tell them go buy another one if it was a better deal. And as soon as I started doing that, stopped worrying about money, started worrying about the person I was dealing with, I started to actually make a lot more money and do a lot better. But the heart came first and the money later. And I would say the same thing applies to whatever you're doing in digital media. Do what you love doing and do it for the sake of the person you're dealing with. And if you do that well and just keep a little bit of an eye on the back, the bottom line, you tend to do all right. I mean, I'm hopeless at money. I make stupid mistakes all the time, I really do. But I'm very, very strong on caring about my people. You know, we had a guy yesterday, just rang me up and every one of my 5,000 plus franchisees have my phone number and my email address and he rang me up and so I got real problems in my division, which is security doors. It's this. And this is going so pair me. We started talk to him. Now what I'm doing is trying to arrange for him to go to another division where there's a lot more work. Now this is actually one of my direct franchisees and I'm going to be losing from this if they go somewhere else, but I don't care. I want this guy to be successful. That to me is, it's great. That was a high point of my day and I'm still following up to see what's happening. And we're actually looking at other people in the division, see if we can help them to go again. I'm going to personally lose out of it, but I don't care. Have that attitude and you'll be successful. That's my, that's my.

I think it's an attitude of abundance that really differentiates. You know, scarcity is you just wanting to hoard as much of the business or income as possible. Scared that there's not enough for everybody. Abundance is, you know, there's enough. It's a bigger pie and we can.

All share it, right?

There's enough for everybody. Then a pie is a circle. So it comes back around and it's just the way it works.

We don't do mediocre. We don't do average. We're here for the entrepreneurs who are ready to take things to the next level. And if you're one of them, make sure to rate this podcast five stars and let the world know who, who's killing it.

Okay, we have people from the competing franchise systems. We had a guy from the States who had a gardening type franchise system and he had no interest in becoming part of gyms. And I said, come over, do our full course, just pay the same price as anybody else. Cost about one and a half thousand. Franchisee training, franchisor training. Learn everything you wanted from us and then go back and use it on your own business. We've done that more than once. So just give it things away.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now you said earlier something, you said you've made a lot of mistakes to do with money. Would it be okay with you? And here's the reason I'm doing this is there's so many listeners who are not at the level you are with 5,000 franchisees, multi eight figure business. And they might look at you and say, well, you know, I can't do that. I want to bring it down and just help everybody realize, you know, we're all human. Could you just share a few mistakes that you made along the way? That might be a learning point for our listeners.

Okay. The biggest single mistake I've made, and I had to say I made it repeatedly, is to go into something I don't really understand. Like, for example, just launched the franchise and I started wanting to go into a holiday resort. I had this real dream of a holiday resort and stuff and basically it cost me a packet and wiped me out. We lost my house and everything. And this was while the business was still building, the money business was still building. In more recent years, I tried to get a psychology institute. Well, I succeeded, but it cost me a fortune, wasn't worth it. Tried to do a mower shop way back in the past, didn't work. A computer shop, didn't work. Tried a. What else did I do? A factory to make traders. That was a disaster. Cost me a fortune. I mean, I keep on doing things that I really don't know much about. I hope I'm more disciplined these days and I've learned what I'm not good at. So that is one very fundamental mistake. And sometimes when money keeps on plumbing in too easily, you start getting slack and you let the staff numbers rise and so forth and don't keep a knife and eye on it. It's all very exciting and stuff and Then you come to a financial crunch and you start to run a bunny. You think, oh, I'm going to stop this. I'm actually a lous businessman, Ken. I really am. If I look at my, if I look at my own career and I say, how can anybody who's such an idiot make any money at all? I don't really understand it to be quite honest, but.

Well, thank you for sharing that. Thank you. And I think I've done the same thing a few times. You know, something looks like such a great opportunity, somebody else is really fired up about it, wants to partner with me and then, you know, I open up my checkbook and, and six months later I realized I don't like it and all the arrows are pointing in the wrong direction.

Stick with what you know is the best thing and work from that. We understand the service industry very well. It's something we're good at. And it's surprisingly enough, it doesn't matter whether it's mowing or cleaning or dog wash, they're all very, very similar. Somebody contacts for a service, we go out and do it. You get into different things like site based franchise or other kinds of business. They look good on the outside but you don't understand what's going on. So yeah, if you're expert in something, work from that, from an area of strength and then gradually expand your business in another direction. But don't think that something else, nothing that looks easy is easy. I also say another thing, very good, just an overall investment advice. Never, never invest in anything that's based on the idea that somebody will pay you more because on the whole you'll.

The greater fool fallacy, right?

Yeah, go greater full fallacy. Just go for something that's got real, real value. I would never want to be in a business or an investment that I couldn't see some genuine benefit from the person at the other end. Look, like in franchise, it's easy to say. You look at statistics of people who go into business like a cleaning or a gardening business, okay. You look it up on the Internet, the chances of you surviving the first year, between 5 and 10%. Our relevant figure, 88%. Like to say it's 100%, but it's not. But it's a lot better. But then you do things like you put better training in place and you watch it and you see the attrition rate improve. Used to be high, used to be at 70%. Better training gone down to every session you do, everybody you talk to, every design of the system, it's always said, how can I improve this performance work from what you know, and thousands of little improvement every day, my life and I, including Christmas Day, Easter Sunday, anything. I'm asking myself the same question. How can I do it better? How can we improve? Never, ever, ever can be good enough.

Amazing. Amazing. Now, just for anybody who's listening this far, and we've been talking like a full 40 minutes, obviously very, very interested in your story. Otherwise they wouldn't be listening at this point. If someone wants to find about how to, you know, get into your services or get you describes these weekly meetings you have, what's the best place for them to go and get that information?

Well, Jim, www.jims.net or if you want to, you can email me direct jimimyms.net my email address is very open.

Perfect.

My answer emails within. If it's relevant. I'm not about marketing. I get a lot of those too, which I just, you know, it's delete, delete, delete, delete. But I'm very open. Anybody with new ideas, anybody with a genuine interest, I'll talk to you.

Okay, Emails. Great, guys. We'll put the links down below. Be sure to reach out to Jim. Uh, Jim, I really enjoyed having this conversation with you. Um, now I just want to say I've brought a lot of people on here and most people come from the Internet marketing space where things are very digital. You come from like, literally soil, right? And dirt and plants. And the word I have that keeps coming to mind as I'm speaking to you is grounded. You're grounded. And my impression of you is you're grounded in not just your business principles, but in, like, human relations, like your interest in biology and how that affects history. It's all to do with, you know, humanity and earth. And I think there's just this kind of central groundedness about you that makes people like your clients, that makes people like your franchisees, that makes people like me, who's having this conversation with you, feel very comfortable having this conversation because of that. So I just wanted to share that with you because that's the impression I just kept getting over and over throughout this conversation. I think it's something that more people in the world, if they allow themselves to get as grounded as you are, then they probably find more happiness and success and more money, probably, than if they just went chasing the money like a lot of people are.

I think one of the most understated virtues in business is humility. It's the willingness to recognize you make mistakes and that you're not perfect and that you need people to do things that you can't do and to appreciate what other people do. You're too full of yourself. You don't listen enough, and that's really fatal.

It sure is. It sure is. All right, I've got to wrap this up. Jim, thank you so much for joining us, guys. If you haven't yet, check out the links below. Drop Jim an email, tell him that you heard him on the podcast or watch this video. Also, check out his website. And that's it for now and I'll see you next time.

You've been listening to the Content Capitalist podcast Conversations with with million dollar business owners about turning content into cash. We hope you've enjoyed the show and we hope you've gotten some useful and practical information. Ken has been a video producer for 15 years and created hundreds of video marketing campaigns for high profile CEOs. Make sure to like, rate and review and we'll see you soon. But in the meantime, hit the website for additional additional free content@contentcapitalist.com.