Jim Penman: The Man Who Built The Biggest Franchise In The Southern Hemisphere

All right, welcome to today's episode of the Australian Lawn and Garden Podcast. We have a very special guest, a face that everybody recognizes, at least in its form in the 1980s. We have Jim Penman, one of the biggest franchises. It's the biggest franchise in the country, isn't it? The Jim's group?

Yes. Biggest in the southern hemisphere, if you like to say that way.

Whoa, wait. Biggest in terms of people. Right.

Numbers of franchisees, not in terms of turnover. McDonald's would compare with. McDonald's would be a tiddler. But, yeah, numbers. We've just passed 5,000. We're about 5,020 last time I checked.

Gee, how does that feel like 5,000? I remember when I got to my 10th employee and I felt like I was doing pretty good. You know what I mean? 5,000. Or is this. Is the number just meaningless now because it's been like that for so long?

It's a nice milestone, but I mean, the more important figure that I would say is 9%. 9% is proportion of my franchisees reporting poor income in the last survey. So about 52% was good, 9% poor. The rest is okay. That figure is actually more important than anything because it tells you how good a job we're doing. Also, things like complaint levels, for example, which has dropped dramatically. So we measured those directly. So those are far more important metrics. If you get those metrics right, great customer service, happy franchisees. Numbers will tend to take care of themselves.

Well, I want to talk about that in a minute, but before we get into anything else, I did some research in you last night, and I found out something that shocked me. It's not going to shock you, but I realized that, technically speaking, your entire empire is based on technically, a lie. Your name is actually David. It's not Jim. I was like, what the hell?

Sort of. My name is David James, actually, if you want to be technical about it. So it is my middle name.

It is your middle.

But I looked him up.

I was. I. I've always known you as Jim, and I've known a lot of stuff about it because obviously that's what it's called. And I was like, how do you. David, what the heck? Everybody was.

What happened, Luke, was when I left school, I went to work on a farm for a while, for a few months. And there was a young guy there about my age called David. So I said, right. Call me Jim.

Right?

Does.

Do your family call you Jim now as well, or is it. Is it like.

Well, my parents, my elderly relatives still call me David.

So apart from that, is it a.

Bit everybody, everybody knows me, my wife, everybody else is, I've always been Jim. I've been Jim since I was about 20.

So it's right, okay. I just thought it was funny like, you know, if someone was to ask, like, is Jim from Jim's mowing called David? No one would say that unless I researched it. But anyways, I just thought it was hilarious. When you came over to my story, I, I, I want to touch briefly on this because you weren't ever planning or wasn't really your idea to do a lawn mowing franchise in the first place, right? You were an academic guy and I mean this is a gardening podcast. But it's so relevant to the story because I find it fascinating that you start off doing a study on, you know, for those who are unaware. It's like how civilizations rise and fall, right? That's what you. And then you end up getting into mowing lawns and becoming the largest franchise in the southern hemisphere. How does that happen?

They're directly related. Luke Because I intended to be an academic. I developed this theory of social change which had quite serious implications in terms of, and I got to the end of it and I had no potential income career as an academic. It was just too wildly radical what I was doing. Also the implications of my theory to be tested were in terms of physiology, in terms of laboratory, which didn't have any training. So lawnmower was my part time student job. So we ended up with a complete dead end, no possible academic career. What I knew I had to do was to create a business that would give me enough income to run my own research institute. So I just started mowing lawns, which is my part time student job. Made it full time and it grew from there.

And so did you ever really, because I know a lot of people, they start off in the mowing business just because that's the, that's such an easy side hustle to have, you know, as part time thing. And then they never really have any passion for it, you know, and they, they. Did you start with a passion for the garden stuff or did, did that grow on you or was it more that you're gardening?

I love being outside even today, actually go off to my farm and spend a couple of days digging potatoes and planting nuts and stuff. I just always loved that kind of thing. So I enjoyed it. See when I was studying, studying is very academic. It's very desk bound. So yes, if I wanted a break for that, I wanted something completely different. I Don't want to be sitting at a desk. I want to be outdoors, working, physically in touch with nature. That was, I enjoyed it. I've always loved gardening.

So there wasn't necessarily. It wasn't like you had to make it work because it was the only option, but you actually did enjoy it wasn't like you, you, or was it the case that you left your academic stuff and that was what you really wanted and then you sort of stumbled into gyms and thought, well, I guess I should make the best of this opportunity. Or was there always really a passion there for the industry Anyway, I never.

Thought of being a career. I thought I was going to be an academic. It was never any thought. Even when I started working full time, I only thought of this as a short term thing until I found something real that I could make money out of it. I didn't really occurred to me it had the potential. But for a long time, even after I started the franchise, when I first started off, somebody asked me how many franchisees I might have and I said, look, if it goes well, maybe a hundred. I really didn't have any. I didn't have any notion of what it could do. So and I kept on thinking, trying. I tried a mower shop and a computer shop, holiday resort, terrible disaster. I just tried a whole stack of different things and the mowing thing just kept on puddling along and gradually growing and so, yeah, this is starting to work. All right, so.

So you made, it sounds like you made the most of an opportunity that you had, but there was always a passion there for the gardening side of it. So when you talk about a hundred. Right, so like, let's take you right back. So you've gone from university to you've got this opportunity, you've taken it with both hands. Right. Was, was it ever? Because I know for me I don't get stimulated working solo, you know, like, I love gardening, but as a career I need to push myself and challenge myself and try something that's more risky and, and that has, you know, a certain level of excitement to it, you know, was that sort of what was going on in your head? Because, yeah, mowing's good, but let me try something else. Or was it more natural that people were coming to you going, I like what you're doing, I'd love to join up. What can we do?

Well, first of all, I'm a fairly, I'm an extreme introvert. So for me, mowing lawns by myself, gardening is very satisfactory. So I didn't from that point of view, I was fine with it. The way I did it, Luke is not so much there was any great mind blowing idea or break. Whenever I do something, I always try and do it better. No matter what I'm doing. If I'm, if I'm putting the dishes away from the dishwasher, I have a, I have a way of doing it that minimizes the actual amount of effort involved. If I'm washing up, if I'm, if I'm sweeping the floor, if I'm doing anything at all, mowing the lawn, gardening, anything, I'll always look for the most cost efficient method. I have this kind of obsessional drive. Cut down your time, be more efficient. So it was that kind of process. I just kept on working. How can I mow a lawn better? How can I do it quicker? How can I do a garden job in a way the client's going to love? And it's very fast? And I got very happy clients very easily because I was obsessional about service. And then I started to get too much work. So I started putting on subcontractors. And then I started building up and selling off lawn mowing rounds. And then when I was faced with a competitor which was franchising, I basically franchised in self defense. But the idea behind it was, it was more of the culture of the idea. I had some very strong obsessions. One of them is customer service. I feel very strongly even today. I personally handle all complaints that come in. I look at all the surveys, all the bad surveys that I mark them and I do things with them. I do it today still. We've got 5,000 plus franchises. I still do it because I'm passionate about customer service. But also when I started franchising, I had one idea and one idea only. I once wanted to make a great system that you'd have to be mad not to join. That was kind of the idea. I just thought, okay, these are my customers and they are my customers. They don't work for me, I work for them. What can I do to make my franchisees really, really, really happy? And I was focused on that. And the same way I worked out a better way to mow a lawn or dig a garden bed. I kept on trying to work out better ways to look after franchisees and make them happier. So working out things like, for example, how important meetings are, how often you have meals, about every six weeks is ideal. What kind of contact is best. We tried doing half day, you know, business reviews. We tell it didn't work. So then we Started ringing them every month. We just got this idea and we people were trying, it would try different things. And then we discovered it was even better to ring them weekly. But even short phone calls, so short frequent interactions and then you, then you start putting food in with the meals and then you start looking at different ways of doing it. Rewarding people and incentivizement. It's thousands and thousands of little things with this whole idea. How can I make my customers happy and my franchisees and deraving fans? That's all. That's it.

Is there anything that you've done? Because you're talking really about 1 percenters, right? Like just keeping on incrementally improving these little one things and. But is there a moment where you did one of those little things and it just absolutely shocked you how beneficial it was?

Okay, let me give you an example. Fees seems pretty mundane now. Most franchise sisters like McDonald's look at a percentage. Most service franchises in Australia and New Zealand work on a fixed rate fee. It's the same income because you don't know what a franchise is actually making and they don't want to report pickups and stuff. So it's a fixed rate fee. We did that, but then I tried. What I was finding was that some of my franchisees were not following up clients very well. So I said, okay, let's change the system so it puts the new franchise, instead of a fixed rate fee, we had a lower fixed rate fee and a small fee for every lead provided. So we just tweaked the way that we charge the fees the same average level of fee. That's important to recognize. And then what we did is we did this for a while and then we rang up a whole lot of customers and asked them what happened when the franchisees, the franchisees that were on fixed fees, 25% of the clients said they had no call. Those that were on where the franchise were on lead fees, 3% said they had no call. And then when we looked at the conversion rate, how many leads turned into jobs? With the franchises on lead fees, it was about 3/4. With those on fixed fees, less than half. So that was just a tweak, just a try. Could this work? Could it be better? And I was blown away. And you can be sure that as soon as we saw those figures, immediately we went on to lead fees.

So when you're talking about this, like maybe some people are a little bit lost, but what I'm understanding is you're saying that people would call up clients, would call up wanting work.

Yes.

And you were charging whatever it was, let's say $100 for a nice round number. A hundred dollars a week you were charging for old leads as a general sort of overstating, overarching cost. And then when you went per lead, I guess people were. They were taking for granted that they were paying for those leads. And it doesn't really matter if I lose a couple here or there, but as soon as they're actually paying for each one individually, a little psychological trick, because they're probably paying roughly the same on average.

Right.

But the psychological trick was that Now I'm losing $20 or whatever it is if I don't call this person. And it is really costing me that. And so you've gone from your 25 of people are not even being called to 3%. That's a lot of people on your scale. Right. A lot of people.

More actual jobs done and more money made for the same volume of leads. So if you could work out a way of increasing your advertising by 50%. Yeah. By nothing. That's what you clearly want to do, wouldn't you?

Yeah, 100%.

Yeah. That's basically the idea. Look, another thing too, about our system, it's important to recognize we actually ask our franchises what jobs they want because most of them are fairly busy most of the time. So we might have 20 franchisees covering an area, and there's only one or two that can handle it, but we know who they are. So a franchisee gets too busy because they don't want to pay excess lead fares. They'll ring up the office or they go into gyms online and they'll turn themselves off work so they don't get the lead and then it goes to the next guy who wants to work. So it's an incentive not only to follow up the lead when you get it, but it's incentive not to take a lead you don't really want.

Yeah. How long were you out in the field doing the work yourself before you stepped completely off the tools? Obviously There was part one.

I had no contract for 15 years. I had a gardening business for many years. In fact, I've had gardening business basically since I was 8 years old.

Or just for neighbors or family members or something. Yeah, I. I started.

Yeah, I used to do the, you know, 8 years old. I did it for neighbors. I did it all the time for most of my life. I've actually had a gardening business or some kind of. Rather. I just like to like being outside. I'm just that kind of person. So, yeah.

Do you. Do you still mow your own little now, or do you get one of the gyms?

Guys, I'm not that crazy, but I got something to run over it with a ride on, actually, because it's. It's a huge. I live on five acres, but I prefer the actual gardening. I'm actually looking at a way to try. And I'm planting nuts on my farm, hazelnuts, and I find the rats are digging them up. So I've been trying all kinds of methods to stop them doing it. So one of the things I've done last week, I actually put a whole lot of different kinds of, like, scents and aromas on the tree that'll discourage the ruts. And I've just been in the bunnings just now and I bought some black plastic pipe. I'm going to try that still. So I can stick the nut into the pipe, cut it off, put it in the ground to stop the bloody rats. That's fun. That's really good stuff.

Yeah, I see. That's the scientific side of you doing an experiment in your own backyard.

Right.

That's. The academic is still in your blood. That sort of things.

Great thing is experimenting. When you're in business, you've got to try new things all the time. Most of the things you try don't work out, but some things work out surprisingly well.

I was just thinking, like, because you'd say before that you were this. You love improving what you're doing. And so when you're out in the field, it's like, how can I do this better? How can I make this better? And I. And I resonate a lot with that. And when you have employees or franchisees, it really grinds my gears way more than it should. Right. When somebody doesn't do something the way I would do it. Do you know what I mean? It's like, it's just the direction of the mower. It's like, I really shouldn't be annoyed at that. Should calm down about that one. It's like someone's. No, I'd go up to front on that. And. And sometimes I see people like, just, oh, man. It's like. It probably would have saved them 15 seconds if they had done it my way, which in the scheme of things probably doesn't matter, but those things really grind my gears. And I could imagine if you're like that as well and somebody is doing your lawn for you, it can be like, it's just easier to do it yourself.

Sometimes stopping by the guy was mowing a lawn. One of my guys bowing lawn down the street, and he was doing the edges, and he didn't cut all the grass for the edges. There was bits of grass coming over. Can't you see that? I got. I tried to be nice to him after. He's my customer, but it frustrated me. Look like you have some beautiful model with a big red. How could you not? How can you not see that? How can you not object to it? Every blade of brass edges. Yeah. This is the classic thing about lawnmower. Not too difficult to get the grass done neat. Mowing straight lawns. Bones pick it up, the grass up, you know, this kind of stuff. But edges, it's got to be done perfectly.

Yeah, I mean, I get like that. I'm the sort of guy that I'll mow the lawn, and then I'll get in the car, pack everything up, start driving, look at the lawn, realize that I've missed a weed or something like that. And you. You have to stop because it's. It's got to, you know, like, who are you if you don't. You got to stop, get out of the car, get the whipper snipper, back off again, and just touch that one little bit up, and then you can drive off. And I just can't. I can't handle.

Not that interesting thing about this, Luke, is the people who actually care about the job for the sake of the job tend to make more money and do better than those who care about the job for the sake of the money. You care about the job first. It's like with franchisees, my biggest concern is my franchisees being successful. And that's actually emotionally a lot more important to me than the bottom line. Even though.

Oh, I thought you meant. I thought you didn't want them to be successful. I was like. You're like, I'm concerned if they are successful. But no, you're saying you're concerned with them becoming successful.

Yeah, and it's frustrating sometimes. We have a system called pay for work guarantee, where if you don't make a certain amount of money, anything from a thousand to $25 per week, you can do free work and the franchisor pays, because if you do that, you'll tend to pick up referrals and upsells and all kinds of things. You build your business very fast. So I had a letter today from a franchisee writing back to me after I write him a letter after one month to say, how you going? And he said, oh, system's not, we're not getting enough lead. I said, what about pay for work guarantee? What are you doing? How many free services done? If you're not doing it, why not? Why aren't you making $2,500 a week? And then I still got all the reasons why you should do it. And I copied his franchisor and I spoke to his franchisor and said, you got to get on this guy and make him encourage him. He said, yes, I've been trying to persuade him to do it. That's very frustrating because here's a guy saying the system doesn't work, but he's not doing the system. He's not following it. That's unusual. Most people do it really well. One guy actually got back to me and said, I'm doing all this. I said, good crash. Well done. That's fantastic.

Well, you get some people, they just don't understand, like the 1 percenters you were just talking about then and how valuable they are. It's a different mindset from a small business because when you're an employee, it's like, just get me out of here, you know, give me my paycheck. Not everybody's like that, but it is quite common to have that as a mindset. When you take on responsibility as a business owner, it's your business now. And so those 1 percenters and caring about those little things and sometimes like, yeah, doing the free work or whatever, going above and beyond all those little things, if you don't get it, you just, you almost can't teach that. I think you do learn that. I've learned that the older I've gotten, but I guess it would be difficult for you because you'd find a lot of people. And I've been here as well. Like, you hire somebody and they looked great on paper, and then three weeks in, things start to change because they were on their best behavior. And now you realized, ah, right. This isn't, this isn't what I thought. You would have had that so many times with 5,000 franchisees. Right.

Look, we, we try very hard not to make mistakes in hiring. There's certain people that just you shouldn't take on. For example, a young man in his 20s, mother buying a business. That's the kind of thing where, you know.

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Put them out in a trialing day, see how they go. How do they operate? Are they good to get on with? I also actually ask, during training, I asked the staff at the conference center, is anybody troubling anybody? Being difficult? So we we try and pick good people, but we also do another thing. We, we what we call it, being gymnified. And that means there's a fairly strong process of indoctrination. The first, when they get up Monday morning, they got me for nearly two hours talking about customer service in a very passionate.

So, yeah, it's.

And then they get more of that kind of stuff and I speak to them about it and we talk about these things. So by the end of three days, hopefully people in the beginning have got a fairly good sense of customer service. But by the time they spent a few days with us, and then the franchisor rings them and talks them about it and there's feedback from surveys and complaints and things. There's a lot of. Bit like cult. Bit like a cult in a way. But this cult is. Is to do with. With customer service and caring about customers and caring about each other, these kinds of values. Probably more than that about money as such.

Well, I think a lot of people, they hear the word cult and they think, oh, my goodness. But I've actually been listening to business books, like, for years, years and years and years. And I remember actually hearing one of the business books that most successful large businesses have a. Literally what they said was a cult, like, core group of people. And it's not cultish in the sense of like, let's get the Kool Aid out and you know, or, you know, abuse or things like that, because that's what, you know, that's the negative side of it. But it's like we all believe the same thing and we're all on the same page and we all are heading in the same direction. And that's how. And it's like a. What would you call it, a strong fanaticism or something like that in a set of core beliefs. That's what they're talking about, the cultish behavior. I remember them talking about Apple, Jim.

Collins, Good to great book. Classic studies, the books. And one of the things that they talk about is one thing that united great businesses long term. I'm not saying Jim's a great business because we're very small by comparison with, say, Hewlett Packard, but they had a strong value system which was widely shared from the CEO to the mallroom. People that came in tended to either adopt this sort of attitude or they get spat out. Either they quit or they get fired. So we're a bit like that. Culturally, Jim's is very distinct. We had a guy, Brian Duckett, come from the UK some years back to a franchise or conference. And he'd been involved with dozens of franchise systems over the years. And he said he'd never seen anything like Jim's. Because this whole attitude, franchisees, first service, franchise, look after franchisees, it was very consistent. And I'm not saying every franchisor does it, but on the whole, people tend to buy into this value system. I've also got a book that I, that I. We give everybody new trainee, which it talks about history and all this stuff. So there's a lot of. It's, it's more. It's choosing good people in the first place, but also helping them to think the way that we think. Which, which works because we know, for example, that if you're got, if you're in the top quarter in terms of customer service, your chance of getting 40 poor income is only a fraction of what it is if you're in the bottom quarter. Yes. We also know that if you've got a poor rating, you're far more likely to leave the system, you know, so in the first year, like our average franchisee rating these days is 4.7, 4.8 out of 5. The average franchisee who leaves tend to write about 4.2.

Oh, right.

So customer service is very helpful to the group as a whole, but it's hugely important to the individual's success.

How do you get those ratings?

Well, we survey clients. Ten days after a job comes out, we send a simple survey to a client saying, how do you rate the service? B good, which is five stars. Sorry, G good, five stars. B bad, which we translate as one star. P for price, which is not counted. Stop. Just that kind of stuff. So it's a very simple thing. And then we ask them for an explanation and based on that we actually give them an overall rating. So if somebody's got like a 4.8, 4.9 rating, that's a sign of a very, very good operator. Or even 5.0 these days, if you like 4.4 or 4.3. Even though you're looking after 80% of your clients pretty well, you're not looking after all of them.

No. So that's fascinating because we do the same thing, not in exactly the same way, but we have a lady named Karen, of all names, which is quite funny. And her entire job, she just does part time, is to call up every client after their first service and then regular clients maybe two, three, four times a year and just say, how's everything going? Is there anything we can improve on all that sort of stuff? And can you give us A rating out of 10. And do you, you would have read how. I think it's how to Win Friends and Influence People. Yeah, yeah. Classic book. And, and I think it's, I think it's that author D. Carnegie, who was, who was talking about a. One of the rich steel guys, moguls back in the late 1800s. What was that?

He was a steel guy, The Scots guy.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So he. Yeah, yeah, that's it. So he was doing a. He went to one of his meals and they were underperforming and he chatted with the guy who was leading the meal and doing all that sort of stuff and was assessing the problem and got to the end of his meeting and said how many tons or whatever it was, units of measurement has this crew gotten in their 12 hour shift? Because there was a night crew and a day crew and they said eight. And so he got a piece of chalk.

So he marked it on chalk on the floor.

Yeah. And he says a big eight. And I don't know the exact numbers, but the story is they're like, what? The new crew comes in and they say, what's this big eight?

So they put their own number down.

And so they got the competition, which was a 10. I came back to a 10. And then the morning crew came back again and saw that they'd been beaten and then they did 11. And that on its own turned the entire business or the entire facility around. And I took that little clue and I was like, oh, interesting. So we took our ratings numbers and in our warehouse we've got a TV with a screensaver. And the screensaver is the last week's ratings and the average rating of each gardener over the, you know, since they started with us. And it creates this healthy form of competition where instead of trying to cut corners, you know, you get found out if you're not doing very well, you know, and most of, if not all of our bad ratings are miscommunications, not people cutting corners, trying to get away with, with, you know, something that's subpar. It's like, you know, I remember we had a, we had a four star, four out of 10 once and it was a, it was a miscommunication with somebody who was deaf. And it was about the height of whether or not the hedge was going to be cut or not. But it allows you to ask that question before any problems become serious and you allowed to fix it before bad press or word of mouth or whatever gets out. And the people who work for, you know, and Jim's as well, they know that that question is going to be asked. So there's. It's, it's not a form micromanagement, but it's a form of keeping people honest. So, yeah, you must have found that it's very powerful.

Luke, since we've done that, the, the volume of leads has risen dramatically. We. Last year we, we clocked up almost one third of our leads were in service, and that's with franchisees to be busy. In some cases. We've given back advertising money for franchise because we can't spend it. So it has an enormous effect. I would much rather improve customer service and double advertising.

100%. The return. Like, how much does it cost you to get a single client compared to how much it costs you to get the same amount of work from somebody you already have? Just ask them if they need more help or anything. How many? How many? You say one third, but that's going to be a lot because you got 5,000. I mean, that would be what, hundreds of thousands, wouldn't it? People knocked back.

Yeah, that's absolutely right.

That's crazy. How many people are calling you a day? I'm running the front, obviously. You've got Jim's mowing and cleaning and all that sort of stuff. Do you know, like, how many calls or emails you get a day?

It'd be the best part of a million million people booking a year. So, you know, figure it out.

That's crazy. That's a lot of invoices. That's a lot of admin. That's what I'm doing.

No, no, we don't do it, though. The franchisees do it. Think about your system is you have a much higher margin than us. Our gross fees probably amount to about 6% of a typical franchisee's turnover.

Right?

Which comes advertising and call center costs and everything else. So even though we're turning over probably not best part of a billion dollars a year, not an enormous amount of that goes into my pocket.

Yeah, well, we're definitely less than a billion dollars a year. All right, so.

Well, I know the BW wanted to put me down for the rich list based on turnover. I said, you got to be joking. It should be based on profit and.

We don't make it 100%. Yeah, but people get caught on those vanity numbers all the time, right? Because it doesn't strike me like, I mean, 5,000 is. Is an amazing milestone, but it doesn't strike me from this part of the conversation that you actually really care about those numbers. If you Care more about whether or not your franchisees are satisfied and whether your customers are satisfied. That's what I'm hearing from you at least, right?

I mean we like to grow, of course, and we do keep an eye on the bottom line, but emotionally it's not much of a driver. It never has been. I think the thing that makes me happier is just a message for a franchise who's happy. And the thing that makes me upset is hearing a franchisee not doing well. I mean those are just, that's just how I'm working. Somebody talking about mowing a lawn. You know, you're not really thinking about how much money am I making today. You're thinking of how amazing as that job. That's the greatest it look, clients would come to me, would say I never knew my law could look that good. That's something that you don't forget.

Is there a person who's worked for you either in the office or as a franchisee or anybody? I mean you probably have a lot, but I think one of the best things about running a business and having people working for you is there are these moments where you can see somebody who has grown and who has become. Things have progressed and life has gotten better and you get this massive sense of pride to be involved. Like, is there a person who, every time you see them, you just feel this great sense of achievement for them and pride in yourself for like. Yeah, I was, I was a small part of that.

Right? Yeah. Oh, look this, this. I've got a number of wonderful stuff that people who started on the basic level are now making trouble. What they made when they started, just, just fantastic. People we do tend to hide from within. Our top people very often come up through the system in some way and that's. It's very satisfying. It's a wonderful job. It's a very meaningful kind of job. What I do. Because you're contributing for success. I mean look, we probably created more millionaires than any company in the country, I would say. But you know the stories that actually rank the most is like when I was ringing One of my 10 year veterans, I try and ring people on anniversaries if I can get through them. And he told me, I asked how he got into the business and he said he was working for a, he was a manager, a supermarket. But he was very long hours. He would leave early and come back late. And one day he was just about to leave and his little four year old son said to me, daddy, I wish you could have breakfast with us. Just that one statement. He said he drove to work and the tears were streaming down his face. And then he sold, quit his job, bought a lawn mowing franchise. And he's seen his son, he's always been out there, breakfast with his son, ever so. And he's seen that little boy grow up into a 14 year old. I said, you ever thank him for that? He said, every day. Yeah. To me in a way that's probably a lot more meaningful than somebody who's turning over a million dollars a year because there's no, there's no. What can you buy? You can't buy that seeing your children and fathers are often so busy these days. And also you have mothers who got children and it's difficult and you want something like cleaning or a dog wash business where you can be with your child when they're sick or you can pick them up from school. Those kinds of lifestyle things to me is actually probably more meaningful than simply wealth creation. We love the people who make a lot of money. They're great stories and they're great speakers and they're very inspiring.

Yeah.

But in reality it's the. There's a saying that goes, no other success can compensate for value in the home. And that to me is probably the most meaningful thing of all.

Yeah. And I think that's what is the main attraction to becoming independent or franchise lawnmower and contractor. The. It's. Yeah, you can earn pretty good money that the more business minded you are and the more you take it seriously, the more you learn. Right. But I think most people, they're like the fact, like I had it yesterday because it's, you know, cold and wet here at the moment, like it probably is over in Victoria too. Yeah. I had maybe three or four hours worth of actual gardening jobs I needed to do. And so I'm not starting in the morning when it's cold. And I've got a family here, you know, and the kids didn't have any. My kids are very young, so I didn't. They're not at school age yet. So you can just spend a little bit of family time and then, you know, I'd much prefer to be working and this is how I work. And I think a lot of small business owners like this have your moments when the kids are around. Don't go to work then. And I'd prefer to after dinner after they've gone back to bed to work from 7 till 10 at night, you know, if I have to. But have 7am till 10am free to hang out with the kids or to spend time and that flexibility, you can't, you can't put a value on that for money.

No. You know, you're spot on. I've got a 13 year old son, my youngest of my 10 children still with us.

You have 10 children? 10 children.

Wow.

That. I had a, I had a classmate who had, who was one of 10 and that's the only other person and classmate from.

Well, I, I, I've got 10. Wonderful. All wonderful. But the thing of it is that I actually drive him to school and pick him up pretty well every day. And, and that's like three hours a week I'm chatting with Aaron and, and that time is precious now. As you say, I might work peculiar hours. I can work in the evening. I can do all kinds of things. I can be doing seminars the weekends. But I've got time for my kids and I always have had and you can't. Yeah. I don't think people exaggerate how much material success matters. And I actually, I have it. I have a mission in my research project which is really important to me and I need the money. But in personal terms, you know, I bought my first ever new car last year because I went electric. But the car I had before is worth $10,000. My, my clothes, my, my boots here, that's from Kmart. I don't even wear K. My wife cuts my hair because otherwise I just look too shabby and I won't go to a barber. So I'm, I'm very, I don't believe in, in spending money on, on stuff. People have this idea that if you have more money you'll be happier. But it's actually, it's actually not really true. Yeah, there's a saying that goes that social comparison is a thief of joy. 100 all your efforts in trying to impress people by having a bigger house or a fancier car or you know, splasher clothing. You, you're competing all the time and there's always somebody who's more successful than you. That's a lousy way to live a life. It doesn't make you happy.

The I I 100% because I, my business is 10 years old. And when I was about three years into business, I had the free time and this before I had any kids. My wife and I started volunteering at a drug rehab here in Perth. And it was a very strict, very intense place. She ended up working there full time. And I would volunteer Tuesday evenings into the night and then Saturday afternoons. And I had a very Small role. And that role was I'm a guy who doesn't really drink. I've never had any drugs or anything like that. It just isn't my, that's not my pitfall. I got others, right? I got other problems in my life. So I just wanted to be a at the time in my 20s, go hang out with the other guys in their 20s and be a friend to people who've never had a friend who wasn't a drug addict. And through that we got the opportunity to hire people and give them an opportunity. And we had lots of people come and work who had already gone through the program. Because I'm not a drug rehab. That is some of the most satisfying times of my life. One last week, one of the guys who used to work for us, we still mow his mum's lawn and I went to go, I had that job on for my list of the day and I got to the end of the day, he's my second last job and I pull up and he's there, he's at his mom's house and he grabs the equipment, helps me mow his mum's lawn just for old times sake. And he's telling me about another guy who they both graduated the program, both spent two, three years in this program and how he's doing so well. And this guy was the most accident prone person and just an absolute nightmare business wise. Lovely guy, like super nice, went to his wedding. Somebody who I really appreciate as a person but as a business owner it was painful. He probably broke, I'm not exaggerating, maybe three or four thousand dollars worth of stuff just from being careless, right? He broke fifteen hundred dollars worth of stuff in one hit accidentally. But. So it was a painful ride. But the satisfaction of hearing this guy say hey man, that guy, he's doing really well. It's been like almost two years since he worked for us and he's having a kid in like two weeks and all that sort of stuff. And at the time I was a solo. When I first started doing the, the rehab or work volunteer at this rehab, I was just a solo guy. But I had the time and because I didn't have any kids, that's what I did. I free, I volunteered two afternoons a week. That's some of the best stuff I've ever done. And I didn't get paid and nothing ever came of it financially for me. But there is no way going back then I would say I'd be better off working an extra four hours a week or whatever. It was. Or five hours a week, or whatever time it took me each week I was volunteering. It's just. There's no comparison. And we did that for five years until we had kids. So it's like. And, yeah, that was some of the best times of our life. And those are the things that. That you. And, you know, these types of businesses can free people up to do, which is just. It's got nothing to do with money.

One of my. One of my friends in Adelaide, I was talking to one of the things he likes to do. He likes to work with the homeless.

Yeah.

And he's got a business. He's a mowing guy. He works like three days a week. He makes enough money for himself and he spends his time working at the home at Scene. He says nobody talks to them, nobody listens to what they want. Just direct personal interaction. That's his mission, which is amazing. And to me, that's at least impressive as a person turning over a million dollars a year, in its own way. I think he's wonderful. We actually like these stories. We try and get people to tell us stories. We actually have little bonuses for them, like these Accord cards and stuff, if they can give us a story. That's the kind of thing we love to hear.

Yeah, maybe. I mean, you'd be running around in. I mean, maybe you are, maybe you aren't, but, like, there'll be a lot of what my experiences are for very wealthy people. And I do know a few people who, you know, have quite a bit of wealth. Not much. Right. But just being in business gets you in these sorts of circles over time. And I remember I went and had lunch with the guy whose role is to buy and sell mining businesses, small mining businesses, and sell them to build them up and sell them to big companies. So he's. He's rolling in some money.

We got.

We have lunch in this very wealthy area in Perth and we're just talking about business and we leave and we're walking out and he goes, I just want to walk this little detour. Do you mind? It's like, no worries. So we walked this little detour and he walks past this homeless guy and he just starts chatting with him. He's like, I can't remember his name. I should I. Yeah, it shows me how good I am at this. But this was a routine that this really wealthy guy did. And he just bought him a coffee and it was like that was his habit. And he knew the guy's name, he knew where he would be and that's what he just did. And you get these pictures of people that on the Internet or in social, you know, movies, things like that, of really wealthy people being selfish, arrogant, all about themselves. But there's actually quite a few people who are doing what you just said where they realize the money's not important anymore. That's not interesting to me. I mean, is that your experience? I mean, do you hang out with a lot of people like that who have that mindset as well?

I don't really know any rich people because my whole life is so focused on my franchise using my own people. I honestly don't mix with other business owners.

You also said you're quite an introvert as well, so that would play into it, I guess.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, every, every franchisee in Jim's group has my phone number and email address. It's not something I give to outsiders, especially not the phone number, but any one of them has it and they can contact me and they get several contacts a day about things, different things, so it's fairly intensive. I'm right at the center of everything here, so I have a lot of people that I keep contact with. But I really. We're very internal looking. We don't really consider competitors or anybody else or other business owners. Just don't, don't focus that way. There's enough going on in gyms.

Go back to the business side of things. Was there ever a moment where it was potentially the case that gyms wouldn't work out either? Early days or maybe a big financial struggle hit, you know, a growth period was really difficult.

Look, I've been through some very hard times, you know, just. Especially right in the beginning when it was just very tough and I was deeply in debt and, you know, just on, on the edge. But I guess I don't think you can be beaten if you don't give up. That's my feeling. Even the worst times, the thing that defeats people is despair. And fundamentally, if you've got a good business, which we always did, and it's a great industry, you make mistakes, but you just can't be defeated. You just keep on going. And one thing about me, I'm very resilient. I just. My wife says, well, you know, those, those plastic things with the weight in the bottom, you knock them over and they just spring back.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Because no matter what happens, you know, things go wrong. And I've made some terrible mistakes over the last year, but, jeez, if I go back a year, undo some of the things that went wrong, I'd be so much better off. But the way I look at it, hey, I've learned some really, really good lessons, and I'm so much more knowledgeable about how to run a business now than I was 12 months ago. And in other 12 months, I'll probably say the same thing again. So you just keep on learning, and every time you make a mistake and something goes wrong, you think, okay, what did I do wrong? Okay, I'm going to improve that. I'm going to get better. This is positive. And, you know, as a Christian, you thank God for everything. It's just an attitude of gratitude that we have. It's part of our culture. We're always appreciative. I love my wife, I appreciate my children. I love my franchisees, my staff. They're just great people. And so that's, I'm appreciative.

What do you look back on? Because there will be moments that, you know, like, there's, there's that level of, like, there's a false humility and then there's this real humility. And real humility is like, you know what you've done really wrong, and you know what you've done really right as well. Right. So on both sides of the coin, words are moment that you look back on, you go, if I had tweaked this, maybe from a business perspective or a hiring perspective, I made that mistake. If I just tweaked that 15 years ago or 20 years ago, what's the biggest thing that would have changed? And on the same side, what is the best move you made? What's the biggest thing you look back on and go, I did a really good job at that. For all my mistakes, that one thing, I nailed that one.

There's so many mistakes that were impossible to start.

Okay.

Hiring a good HR person from the beginning would have been a lot better. I should have got somebody years ago. I should have been paid to pay more for people who are more capable. I, I, I resisted with various advice that I should listen to. I resisted that I persist too long with people who don't have the ability to do the job. I'm very well lucky to let somebody go. And, and that can be incredibly expensive if you make a mistake and you leave somebody in the wrong job when it's should have been clear they weren't working out. I mean, there's just, there's just so many things that I look, I look back on my career, honesty and what I've done and how I've done it, and I Think how possibly could this idiot have succeeded? I just can't comprehend it. I've done so many stupid things.

People wouldn't think that of you.

You know, I'm not particularly good at finance or it or anything. I just have. I'm very creative and very passionate about. About the values and so forth. I've got those kinds of abilities. But most. Most things I'm pathetic at. So that's the bad.

People wouldn't believe that of you, right? Because they would think at the beginning they would go, this guy has so many franchisee people. And I. People who listen to podcasts. It's so important for me as well to be like, here's the mistakes I make. Sometimes I just talk about funny things, or I make a small mistake, you know, mowing someone's lawn or something like that. But it's true, right? Like, anybody who tries anything big. And like, I mean, you are 7,000 light years ahead of me in anything.

Right?

But you cannot do that without making a mistake, Right?

And making mistakes, you're not trying because you're not trying different things.

Yeah, Right.

And I was speaking to one of my friends today, and he was actually coming up with an idea which was not too bad, which is. Which is set up a system so that every time a French says he wants to leave, I have to know that and have a chance to communicate with them, find out what went wrong, could we turn them around? And it's a great idea. Just have to have the software set up. But that was just this afternoon. That was two hours ago. Just chatting about it. Always. One reason I like my franchisees to contact me is because I'm always. They're always. I'm always even hit with ideas. I also read a lot of books or listen to talking books. I probably read on average or listen to books a week, plus a lot of magazines, economists, news scientists and all kinds of things. So I'm always getting ideas about things all the time.

Yeah.

So. But I wouldn't. If a person looked at me and said, hey, this guy's so brilliant, I could never do it. That's the wrong attitude. What they should say is, this guy is such an idiot. If he can do it, surely I can. I mean, really.

I love that. I think, yeah, I love it because it's. I mean, I don't know you from a bar of soap. I mean, we only just met on this conversation here, but that's. I mean, from the. I love listening to audiobooks, too, specifically biographies, and I love biographies, and that's A common theme that, you know, goes throughout them. Usually the biographer really hypes them up. But if you get an autobiography, you find a lot of people will tell a lot more about their mistakes, especially people who've actually had great success, which is surprising, you know.

Yeah, it is. You don't have to be good at everything. You don't have to be good at very much. You just have to be persistent and good at one or two things and recognize your strengths and recognize your weaknesses. Often the most capable people aren't the most successful. It's not typically the top students at university who go on to the biggest success. It's often very middling students, those who aren't so good at everything, but get other people to do things they're not good at. Like, Richard Branson's a good example. I mean, this guy is hopeless. He can't even read a spreadsheet. But he has things drawn for him to understand. He's a super amazing character. I just listened to his latest biography, and he's an amazing guy, but he's not super, super capable in every way, for sure.

I remember him telling a story in one of his interviews of how he was in a board meeting and they're talking about the finances and he was lost, and somebody, you know, the head accountant or whatever took him out of the meeting and explained the difference between net and gross to him. And they like, he. And he was like, oh, that's what it means. And they went back into the meeting and the successful meeting. But he. That's like, he's.

Well, maybe that's why he's.

I had a teacher who always used to say deal sexic instead of dyslexic, because obviously if you were dyslexic, you wouldn't spell it correctly. But he's. My teacher was a little bit dyslexic, so he always used to write dill sexic on the. On the board. And then I found out that Richard Branson was dyslexic or is dyslexic. And it's like, that's funny because. Yeah, like, that would. For a business, numbers, you know, words, writing proposals. Right. You would think that'd be such a hindrance to anybody. And yet here he is, and he's so likable and he's so. I mean, he'd be top 10 people any business owner would want to meet in the world, you know, sort of guy. And you know what he started with.

But, you know, but the interesting thing about Branson is that if you fly Virgin, which I actually like. I don't like flying very much, but if I do fly, I like Virgin. Actually. You can see it in the cabin crew. That's that sort of cheeky sense of humor that they have. This is. Is. And that reflects him. That's. That's his personality. It comes right through to the cabin crew in the airline that he. That he founded and didn't actually fund to any great extent. He's just that cultural thing. He's an amazing guy.

I heard somebody say once about business that if you're five years in business, the problems you have in your business are the problems that you have personally if you're the business owner. Right. And if. And if people. If people grumpy and upset like that, it's probably because that's sort of the personality that you're displaying, right? And they're just feeding off you, you know, I mean, there's a limit to. To that because some people are just grumpy, you know, like, that's how they.

Are all the time.

But I guess, like, yeah, when you see. It's hard to believe sometimes that an organization is biggest version, the. The CEO could have an effect that goes down to the bottom. But there is an element of truth to that, really.

But it does work that way too, because my values, my particular attitude towards customers, particularly to franchisees, is very widespread through gyms. And I'm actually a lot more proud of that than I am of numbers.

Right.

It's the fact that some people like that, it doesn't actually go just to the franchisors too. You know, when the lockdown came a couple of years back, one of the things that really, it was horrible time. It really was very upsetting because I wasn't sitting in office in Spring Street. I was talking to these guys and they were so upset and people were devastated. But, you know, thing that really moved me was how franchisees would help each other. I remember one particular guy who's a test and tag guy in Melbourne, had no business. He was shut down. He could not work. He ran me up and said, jim, look, I know people are worse off than me because I've got resources. Is there anybody I can help? And there was a girl who was in dogwash who couldn't work. She was a student, no government money. She's been threatened with eviction. She can't afford to buy from food. Other franchisees who were out of work themselves were giving her menu log vouchers and stuff. We said, you get. You can come and Stand a conference center. I mean, that kind of helpfulness which you often hear stories about. New franchisee goes into a region and the other experienced guys will help, help him and advise him and they'll talk to him after hours, even spending hours of their own time. I hear those stories a lot. That's. That to me is something I take more pride in than anything. Yeah, I know they're decent people too, but I think there's a. There's a. There's a culture within gyms that's like that and it's like an extended family. We had an awful thing that happened. You know, the worst thing that ever happened in the hold of gyms group happened a few years back and it happened in Perth. I don't know if you heard about this, but one of our franchisees who was a mowing franchisee. Yeah, he killed his three little girls and his wife. Oh, wow.

No, I didn't hear.

It was absolutely shocking. And I flew across to Perth and we met in a sort of golf club building. And most of the franchisees in the entire state were there. And bear in mind most of them didn't know this guy, but they just felt so shocked and upset by what happened. And I just asked them a question. I said, people, what can we do to reduce the chance of this ever happening again? What can we do? And they came up with a whole lot of suggestions which we actually implemented. One of them was that we send out fridge magnet stickers with emergency numbers to every franchisee. We arrange mental health training to our franchisors. We have a psychologist that's paid for by gyms. Anybody could consult without any charge whatsoever. There were things like that, but there was other thing too. One person said, well, what if we had a system where franchisees could volunteer to act as mentors, unpaid, to anybody. Franchisee has a problem, particularly in the area state, they can ring somebody not their franchise or doesn't know them, but can speak from an understanding. Now that's a pretty big thing to ask. So that what I said to them is who would volunteer for such an onenorish job as that? And you know what? Most of the people in that room put up their hand and that was very, very moving. And they didn't know this guy, but he was one of us. He was one of our extended family and we really felt for what happened to his. It was very upsetting, but it was very, very moving at the same time.

You don't take me as much of a crier, but I'm sure that There was moments where you would have been brought to tears by things.

Oh yeah.

That happening in the business even now.

To talk about it. It's, it's, it's years ago now and it's.

Do you feel like you took you. I mean, like you're not responsible for any of that, but like, do you feel like that you can take that on sometimes, like too much?

I feel we just have to do more, that's all. No, I think it's, it's a good motion. I mean, I mean, I'll never forget that. I mean we won't. We, we don't, we don't let up. We're always talking. This afternoon I was talking with one of the franchisors. How do you make franchisees feel more of a community? And he's actually got a sort of spare, like a small warehouse near where he lives. And he was talking about the possibility of setting up sort of a room for people to drop in on local franchisees. So we're discussing how that could be done and what the cost would be. I mean, that's just an example they got this afternoon. So we're always thinking, how can we improve what we do? How can we create a greater sense of community, of family, to make people feel part of things? Because mental health is a big issue today, especially for men.

Yeah.

Deaths of despair, people dying of drink and of drugs and of suicide and just lonely and dying early from heart disease and this kind of thing. It's an epidemic problem. And it's the number one cause that we're invested in, I suppose, as an organization that men's mental health, because most of our practices are men. Increasing numbers of women, actually, especially in the fast growing new divisions like laundry. But it's so important to have a sense of connection and that's why meetings matter so much. It's even why you have meetings every six weeks rather than say monthly or quarterly, because that's the optimum time. Get people along, get them talking, make friends.

Yeah.

Each other, ask for advice, talk about problems they've had these kind of things. And then you don't feel alone. A lot of men get divorced. That's a huge problem these days. And it's usually the women that do it. I should know. I've been divorced three times, so I know all about that. But so many men are lonely. How can we help people to be connected to each other?

I guess that's one of the downsides of the lawn care industry. Whether you're franchise independent, whatever is a lot of Guys, they do stay. It's so hard to break out of a solo operator and then go to employees. And if you do go to employees, they're not friends. They are people who work for you. Sometimes you can find that balance, but it's very hard to have a balance where it's a friend or a friend and someone who works for you. Usually it's just somebody who works for you. And so.

But what I would suggest, if you're an independent, though, I would say what you should be doing is getting in touch with a local association of lawmakers. There are. They got. They're all over the place. Find people who are in the same situation as you and get together with them and talk to them and form a community of your own. In that sense, you don't have a natural one as a franchisee, but you can find one. And there are. It's very, very helpful. I have enormous respect for independence because we know how hard it is to succeed. You know, the chance that if you start a business, like a gardening business, typically from scratch. Now, based on the best figures I can get, your chances of still being in business in 12 months is about 10%. Well, with us, it's around 88%. And that's the difference when you've got a franchise, when you've got training and support and needs and the rest, but only 10% chance of success. So when I see a person who has succeeded as an independent, I have enormous respect for them. I really do. You've done a fantastic job to achieve so much against such odds. I take my hat off to you. Well done. I think they're great people, and I always love to chat with any independents that I meet and just say how much I admire what they've achieved.

Yeah, I find that. I took a photo today. I think you're one of the most. And this is why I really wanted to have this conversation, because I've listened to a bunch of the stuff that you've done, because you put out a lot of content for gyms, Right. And I'm an independent, but I like to learn from anybody. I got this. I saw this photo today on a group called one of the Lawnmower and contracting Facebook groups. And a gym's contractor had, unknowingly, by the looks of it, parked two of their wheels on the edge of someone's lawn. And there was these people. I'm just getting a photo up on my phone because I took a screenshot off it, because I just thought it was good timing where there was this Conversation happening online. And you know, like online conversations are where people are going back and forth, some saying, oh look, it's obviously just a clear misunderstanding. Just ask the guy to move it, you know, be a nice person about it. And some people are ripping into gyms as a group because they just like to throw people under the bus. I saw this comment and I'd like to get your response. I'm not going to say who it was, but, but it's so I think you're one of the most misunderstood people and here's what some people would say. This is what they. I'm reading in that this comment now quote, that's Jim's for you. Generally those who are franchisees to Jim are solely only in it for the money. A genuine lawnman wouldn't dare do this. And the whole thing that you've been telling me is just the opposite.

Right.

But you know, you still come across. No, I come across a lot of people who just see people who join gyms or you yourself. It's all about the cash money. It's all about the numbers. That's all they care about. They're not real. Where does that come from, do you think?

Oh, I think it's natural enough. I mean we are the big brother in the industry. We're the big competitor, they say, the ones that can get the higher prices and everything else because we generally tell our franchisees to charge at least 10% more than the opposition. If you want to know what to charge, find out what your opposition is charging at 10%. Yeah, right. Standard advice. So we're the high priced one, we're the ones that have got most of the leads. We've got surplus work and stuff. So yeah, I think they're going to be envious of us for sure. But as I said, I don't. Look, I don't mind. I think I can understand how he's coming from. But then again, he's a successful independent contractor. Good luck to him. Yeah, I mean he's a good guy. We actually find that in the very rare situations where an independent contractor decides to take the plunge and become one of us, we'll usually give him a free franchise. Because they're that good, they tend to fly their income like doubles and troubles very quickly because they, once they get, they've done so well by themselves, it's like somebody, like somebody trying to run a marathon with a, with a rucksack on their back with the lead. Yeah, well, and that's in a sense what it's like. It's so hard, but they're succeeding. You take the ruck tack off and you run and you're going to soar. So look, I respect people like that. I really do. I think that they, they do amazing work. I enormously admire somebody who manages all by themselves. See, I didn't start full time. I started part time as a student when I didn't really need the income. So it was easy for me. I built up that weight. Yeah, I learned the industry part time.

Well, one of the things that I think this comes from because you're just talking about essentially then tall puppy syndrome, you know, the big guy, you know, everybody, everybody has a crack at McDonald's but you'll see them next week going through drive thru to grab a Big Mac. You know, like that's what they do. But what one of the things that I think, one of the reasons why I think you get unfairly criticized and it's just my opinion. Give me your thoughts on it. I think it's because your name and your face everywhere. So there's a target. But the thing, because you know, like who's Mr. McDonald's? I don't know, you know the colonel from, from KFC. He's gone. But Jim's still around. We see his face and we see his name. One of the things that I was shocked to find out is that you didn't intend to actually have your face on the cleaning side of the businesses and all the ones after that. Right. You actually started out with a completely different name because.

Because I thought this was a gardening image. This is a guy with a beard and a hat. It's a gardener. That's what I used to look like. I had a beard. Yeah. I used to wear the hat when I was nine, Lawrence. Because you know, you want it fairly fair skin and you want to protect yourself. But of course you don't want a broadband hat because you get it knocked off going under trees. So that was me. Yeah, but how does that apply to cleaning? And what if it's a woman doing it? It was obviously. So we thought of this new logo. So I thought use the gyms franchise system. Yeah. With a, with a different logo called Sunlight S U N O I T with little sprays and stuff. So we did logos, sold a couple of franchises, couldn't make any go of it. Gave them the money back. Somebody came to me and said, what about Jim's Cleaning? I said no, it won't work. Will not work. It's a mowing image. Will not work for clean. They Said, yes, it was. I said, no, it won't. Yeah, we'll give it a try. We'll do it. Yeah, Partnership with you. I said, okay, all right. Give it a go. All right.

Okay.

And it works. That's it. And it does work. It's a brand that becomes purely extendable.

So here's the thing. People will think, like, oh, this. I mean, people who would make that type of comment that we just raised would also probably say things like, this Jim's guy, look at this narcissist who has put his face on everything. And, you know, like, yeah, we just love to criticize people, you know, as. As people, you know. But I just find it. It's like, no, the actual truth is, you didn't even want it. And now you're fighting against somebody and they're telling you, now, put your face on it. Put your face. Nah, that's not going to work. It's not going to work. You know, and there's an element there as well, where, you know, you'd find that certain figures in business would take compliments. Not compliments, but that would take the credit. That's the word I'm looking for, for that success. And here you are now. It was somebody else who had that idea.

Well, actually, most of our divisions didn't come from me, Luke. Very few of them we started ourselves. Mostly other people came to us with an idea. Like, somebody came to me with Test and Tag. I didn't even know there was such a business as Test and Tag. I said, okay, this is me. I've got a business. I'm in Alba Wodonga. I'm flat out, like, wow. Flat out will be Wodonga. It must be.

Yeah.

You fit 100 across the country. In fact, we've got five people in Wilbur Redondo doing it. It's a great division. It's got 240 franchisees. Fantastic division. But I didn't know what Test and Tag was. I thought Sparky's did it.

Yeah, right. Well, we talked before about your mistakes, and I asked you what your greatest success was or something like that. We never really touched on that. If you're talking about the successes of other people who have come to you, but as much credit as you're giving to everybody else, clearly you've had some great decisions that you've made. Right. Some great calls that you've made, do you look back on certain moments that were actually really pivotal, and you go, wow, that was the right call. We really did the right thing there.

Okay, I'll give you an example. This is a long way back before I was. I used to build up and sell lawn mowing rounds.

Yeah.

And I was very bad at it. I had, I had a business that was pulling these lobby rounds together and I was able to get the customers together and look after them temporarily with my subbies and myself. But then I couldn't sell them because I had really bad personal skills. I am extremely. I'm. I'm socially inept. I'm often say stupid things to antagonize people. I do it all the time. I upset everybody.

Okay, Is this something that you realize is happening or after the fact, you look back terrible?

I mean, you ask my wife, she says, she says I've got a mild case of Asperger's. She can't explain. Anybody can be so foolish. As. I mean, I just don't read people well. So I've got. So I'm a terrible salesperson, right? His entire business depends on being able to sell. There's not a good situation to be in. I actually tried. I had a guy who was a professional salesperson selling lawn mowing rounds on my behalf while I was in the same room because I. I was so lacking in confidence and my ability to sell. Right. And then I did. Something happened which actually changed my entire business career. I went to see a friend of mine in my church who had a successful advertising business. He was an advertising agent. And I went to see him and I was just, you know, crappy, you know, broken down Kingswood crappy old gardening clothes, no uniform, nothing. I was very tall at heel. And he had this very impressive office with his deep carpet and receptionists and glass top tables. Very, very impressive. Okay. So I sat there just basically feeling intimidated, right into his office and for half an hour he explains to me about advertising, right? And how to advertise and where to advertise and what principles to follow. And then at the end of that half an hour, he says to me, jim, you don't really need an advertising agency. You just go and do what I suggested. And I walked out of the room and I knew that if I ever needed an advertising agent, I would go straight back to him. I knew I would. And actually, in fact, I did. Years later, when I wanted to do tv, he was the first person I went to. Now the interesting thing was when I was thinking about it, I was walking back to the car, which is parked quite a long way away, and I was thinking, what has this guy done? What on earth has he done? He hasn't told me anything about his business, nothing. All he's done is show interest in me and success of my business and because of that he's actually completely sold me on his business.

Right.

So then I just remember I reached out to the car which I never used to lock because it was the worst car. I had the back seat ripped out and put in the rubbish and it was a really terrible car, it was banged up and it was filthy. Remember reaching out to the handle of the car and thinking I wonder if this could work for selling lawn mowing rounds the next time somebody rang me about a lawn mowing business advertised in the paper.

Yeah.

I knew the, the first time I asked, instead of actually saying, I said do you tell me, do you know what the cut of a lawn mowing round means? I asked that particular question. A cut is each job done once.

Yeah.

So if you've got 100 customers worth $60 each, you've got a six thousand dollar cut. That's how they're valued. People inquiring I knew didn't know that. So I started to explain this and I started to talk about the business and explain how to work and how you find work and what sort of prices to charge you, what sort of equipment. And when you came to see me I did the same thing. I just kept on talking about the business, how to be successful and the end of it, the conversation. I, I said look, here's some customers in your area, here's a summary if you're interested, let me know. That was my sales pitch and I started doing that three times. Then I got somebody came back to me and they said to me after they'd been to one of my these so called interviews, they said Jim, I've been offered a business in my area, what do you think I should buy? That one or yours? So obviously I'd somehow shown him that I was concerned about his business because he wouldn't have asked me his.

Yeah, yeah, of course.

Okay. How many customers? What's the cut? How far apart are they? How long has he had them for? What's he going to do, you know, is he getting out? Just obvious questions anybody in the industry know how to ask? And I said that's a better business by that one. And I got asked the same questions three times in a row and each time I said to buy the other business. The third time I said just charge, but he's charging too much. Better business, but drop the price by $1,000, that's the proper price.

Right.

So I gave away three sales because I thought I had to be genuine.

Yes.

And you know what happened? They all bought from me. Every single person with bought from me, even though I advised them to go elsewhere. And from that time onwards, this incredibly socially inept character became very good at selling lawn mowing rounds and later at franchise because I stopped being interested in what was in it for me. And I thought, how can I help you? So when I launched the franchise system, one of the things I used to do is unlike anybody industry, I would not accept everybody. You want to come a gyms franchise? I don't care If I've got 250 franchisees and I've got five. If you want to be a gyms franchisee, you're going to go out on the road with two of my top guys and they're going to give me a report. And if you don't do well, you don't get a franchise because I will not take somebody else who's likely to fail. Yeah, so I did that from the beginning and I thought that would make it very difficult to grow. I honestly did. But in fact it was an incredibly great business decision. That's the key.

Yeah, but you're talking about integrity there really, aren't you? Honesty, integrity, having a, being truthful. They're all long term strategies because you can make a quick buck just by telling white lies. People usually see through outright lies but you can sort of twist things here and there and get a few bucks in and then, you know, you don't. Those businesses don't last very long, right?

Well, some people can be very slick salespeople and just talk people into stuff. But to me it's a, it's a, it's a lousy business. And my experience is that the most decent people, the best ones, best franchisors really care about the people they deal with and they just, they want them to succeed and it comes across. And also the other thing too is if you, if a franchisee is sensible when they're investigating you, they will, they will look, they will investigate the people in your system. But the way I used to compete when I used to sell lawn mowing rounds, I actually do everything possible to try and make people successful and happy. I give them free lunches and stuff and I give them advice and it's not paid for it, I just used to do it. And every time they did, they bought a lawn mowing round off me. I would put their name in black text and their phone number, a bit of white cord and stick it behind me in My office and anybody who's interested in the lawman round. And I'd say, well, you know, I used to give them a little brochure about how to buy or build a business, giving all the information. And I said, why don't you bring any of those people that ask them what I'm like to do with. They say, jim's great. So when we started franchising and I was up against a competitor to 250 franchisees, they were huge. And I was running an office from my basement. It wasn't really anything very fancy. Yeah. But I had this, which was a list of my franchisees, right. I had to look at all the time and I'd say, take it away. Ring my guys, ring any of them, ring all of them. And then they'd ring them and they'd say, jim's good, Jim looks after us. Jim cares about us. And it was. They sold it for me, not me. Yeah, that was the principle. That's what made it work. And it was surprising. It was really, really surprising how well it worked.

Let me tell you this story about honesty that has come up today, actually, in our business. We, we had this opportunity 10 months ago, which we were asked to quote a very big facility would have been six figure sort of contract if they went to, you know, some sort of maintenance. What they wanted though, was basically bare bones maintenance and give us a huge price to rip everything out, restart, do this, do that, whatever, right. And I told them, basically, long story short, I said no. And the reason is that you have so many fundamental issues with your sprinkler systems, the quality of your soil, all that sort of stuff that I could, I could do your big job for you and take your money and run. And you probably would be 40, $50,000.

Or something like that.

Make some good money off it and in 12 months you'll have the same problem you need to. You're better off having a more thorough maintenance program and being patient and all that sort of stuff. And I would prefer to not have the money and keep my reputation, blah, blah, blah. And so another level that complicated it was, it was a really big company who, the decision makers weren't even in Perth, you know, so it was just like, okay, this is too tight. And I'd far prefer to be that sort of person who has that integrity. Right. And what ended up happening is last week I got a phone call from the bloke, actually, when I was recording one of these podcasts. And long story short, he says, everything you said was right. We Want you to come and quote for a maintenance program, you know, and it took them 10 months to realize it, but the way that they had been doing things in other parts of the world and other parts of the country was different. And WA is unique and it has its own little thing going on. And I don't know if they're going to accept my quote or if it's going to end up being, you know, beneficial for everybody. But ultimately that honesty is what gets you in the door and. And not just taking the quick dollar and all that sort of stuff. And, you know, that's. Yeah, we're 10 years, but that's a common thing in any business that outlasts that usual sort of five years where people usually give up in small business, you know, that's fine.

Actually. You talked about Dale Carnegie, how to Win Friends and Influence People. I actually like Stephen Covey better. 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. It's all about character and integrity.

Yeah.

To me, rather than Carnegie comes across to me. Manipulative.

Yes.

Getting people to get what you want, whereas Kobe is about do what's right.

I agree because I've read both books. I'm like you, I love audiobooks. Right. And that's one of the reasons why I wanted to start the podcast is because I think podcasts are basically the new books.

Right.

It's a new way of learning that's less formal, more conversational. And I. But circling back, when you said Jim Collins, Good to Great and Built to Last, they are some of the best books, period, for business. Built to Last, I think, is underrated. Everybody bought Good to Great and thought that was a fantastic. But I think Built to Last saved me about 10 catastrophic errors in business I was doing. I think I was ready. I read it maybe four years in, listen to it while I was mowing lawns because, you know, you can get on Audible. And that was one of the business books. I was like, man, that changed the way. I was a lot more frantic because you remember the story about the guys who were racing to the South Pole, the North Pole? Which one was it? North Pole. Do you remember that story? Was it Roll Edmondson and I think Falcon. Do you remember that story that they talked about?

South Pole?

South Pole. Falcon Scott, Right.

Scott was the one that actually died on the way back.

Yes, that's right. And the Norwegian guy. So there were one guy who was. Yeah, he had all the. One guy had all the money. One guy had no money and one guy had all the backing. And what they would do is they would do 100 mile days and then when there was a blizzard, they wouldn't do anything. And they do another 100 mile day and then I do another bliss and there wasn't anything. And the Norwegian crew, they just plotted along every day they got at least a minimum amount done. And it's this classic story of this, the. The turtle or the tortoise beating the hair. And the other guys, they had all the backing and everything and they put all their resources and all the eggs in one basket and they lost, and actually lost their lives. And the other people who were humble, patient, smart about it and I was the sort of guy who was ambitious and I was going to do this and do that and throw all the things. And I think that business book, amongst all those other stories, that specific story probably saved me from making some pretty drastic choices, risky choices that I thought were going to have 10x returns and stuff like that. Dialed me down a little bit, helped me make some choices and things like that. What books, what other books have you. Stephen Covey, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. What other books were super helpful to you?

There's so many, actually. Wonderful thing about Amazon is you can get almost anything. But I love Atomic Habits. It's a particularly good one. I've actually got a list on my phone here. I can read out some of them. No Rules. Rules, which is about Netflix. That's really good.

I haven't read that one. Who's that by?

Yes, Reed Hastings.

Let me write these down. Now, this will just be personal conversation. Now we'll record it, but no rules. Rules.

What else did I say? Atomic Habits.

Yep, I've heard about that one, but I haven't read. I haven't read that one yet.

Creativity Inc.

I know that one.

The Story of Lululemon. That's about the retail people, which is very impressive. Some of the things they say about stuff. No rules. Rules. Catch of the Decade. That's a Melbourne guide. Who did Catch of the Day? The Gabby and Libert and His Brother Invention by James Dyson.

Yeah, he's the guy who is from Dyson.

The Man who Broke Capitalism, about how to run a bad business. About what happened to GE and how they. And they did it.

Oh, that Jack Welch. Is that the guy that he's talking about there?

Was he gutted.

Yeah, tell us about that. Because he had this crazy policy about firing the bottom percentage and stuff like that, didn't he?

That's right. It was all based on the short term profits, next quarter's earnings, and he managed to Manipulate the earnings using all kinds of trickery to get them. So they continually rose and had this fantastic thing. But he set everybody against each other. It was a ferocious competition and they neglected things like long term research because they didn't show up in the short term profits. There's everything wrong with the company, the way that was done. GE was a great company and he destroyed it. He was terrible.

And he was seen as, as a, as a shining light in the 80s, wasn't he?

Yeah, he was a visionary. Everybody admired him and he became incredibly wealthy because of what he'd done. But, but he was, he was a, he was a horror.

He was a Steve. He was a Steve.

That will never work. That's, that's also about the early days of Netflix. Just in the really failing up to the time when they, when they went to subscription model. That's a beautifully written book actually. It's just really inspiring. There's honestly so many, I guess some of the ones, a lot of the books I like actually are not business. There's a lot of other things. How to avoid a climate disaster by Bill Gates. Everybody lies, which is about the Internet. Don't trust your gut, which is about psychology. The intelligence trap, about intelligence and ability. Dopamine Nation, which is about addiction. Guns, gems and steel, which is about civilization. I'm just throwing things at you. So called you have money. There are so many brilliant books around.

Yeah, well, I think business, you go.

No, no, I was just saying I, I, I still, I reread books again too and I read all kinds of things. I just go back and read them again and yeah, just inundate yourself with ideas. A lot of books I read all about health, about health and diet too and exercise and stuff, which kind of, the more you read things that are positive, it kind of, it's not just the intellectual side. It also emotionally kind of affects you. It's like being surrounded by very dedicated, disciplined people. They have an effect on you. So books are like that. Somebody asked me the other night who my mentors best mentors were. My mentors, the people I read about and they're always in my mind. I'm always hearing things. See, if you listen to books about healthy eating and diet and exercise, it's just easy. It's easier. Not easy, but easier to live that way yourself. And if you read books about discipline, it's easy to be disciplined. You just have to keep on giving yourself good influences and always challenge yourself. New ideas, things that change the way you think. Always challenge. That's it's fun. It really is.

Do you have somebody you mentioned the books you read are your mentors, but do you have people? It doesn't have to be a business person, but someone who you would consider a bit of a hero, maybe a politician over years or an athlete or you know, your parents or somebody like that.

Well, my, my great, my great exemplar is. Is Jesus of Nazareth. Yeah, Jesus of the gospels. If you look at the way that I think about business and about life, that is much more related to what his teachings were than anything else. For example, the story in John's gospel about Jesus washing his disciples feet. That's my impression of what franchising is about. I'm not there to control my franchise, I'm there to serve them. Now being served them, it means I might be tough on them at times and say you've got to change what you do, but ultimately I'm there to serve them. The parables are talents to me that is, that is almost the core. Yep, it's a wonderful teaching because what it says is it doesn't matter how much capable you are. Are you a one talent person or a two talent or a five talent person? It doesn't matter. What matters is what use you make of the talents that you've got. And of course talent is now a word for ability where it was a sum of money in those days. So that thing. And then, and then what Jesus said about 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 much in my mind. Wils is corrupting wilsp. Power and pride and luxury. It's very dangerous. And people can, you know, they can look up to you and they don't want to contradict you because you're successful. That's a very dangerous thing. People have got to be able to tell you that you're wrong. And if you haven't got that then you're in big trouble. So those kinds of, that's to me the greatest exemplar because that is very much to me the way life should be lived. And as a practicing Christian, I'm at church every Sunday and these things get drilled into you all the time. So it's a great influence.

You know, the parable of the talents. Because I'm. I'm a Christian as well. And the parable, the talents was this moment for me. For those who don't know the story, basically there's three people. They all get given a talent and It's.

It's maybe no one gets five, one gets two, one gets one, and it's important.

So the, The. The end result is that one buries it and the other two invest it. And the two who invest it get the same commendation, get the same encouragement. And so they both get, say, said, well done, good and faithful servant. And there was a time in my Life, this is 2015, 2016. Well, I was trying to make the Paralympic Games in 2016. That's a long story. People who listen to the podcast know they used to be a swimmer. And it got to a point where I couldn't possibly make the team. I was too far off the mark. And whilst I was improving, I wasn't improving enough. And I was thinking about throwing in the towel and just focusing on business. I was. I had a. I think I had one, maybe one and a half equivalent employees at time. I'd bitten off more than I could chew. I was too young, too eager. And I remember there was this time where I was like, why the heck am I doing this? But I felt like I couldn't. It wasn't the right thing to do, to pull out. And you were in this spot where it's like, I can't give up. It doesn't feel like it's the right thing, you know, And I read the parable of talents and the goal for me had always been about numbers. Getting on a team, hitting a certain number in the pool, you know, being successful as measured by a stopwatch, basically. And I remember there was a huge change in shift when I realized that in the story, the people who are successful are just simply the ones who don't bury their treasure. In other words, they don't give up. Like you're saying before, the. The little. The bubbly guy who's got the weight in the bottom keeps getting back up again. And I was about to throw on the towel, and I ended up going on and, you know, continuing. I went to nationals, didn't make the team, and I knew I wouldn't have, but it was a satisfying swim because it was a lesson that I carried for the rest of my life, that I'm not actually here to create a certain number of dollars to hit a certain number of things that are supposed to be successful. The whole goal is just to do the best you can with the time you have and the talents you've been given, and the end result of that is success, no matter what the number is at the end. And that was a pivotal moment for me. And I think that's what led me to be able to do the things like the volunteering at the drug rehabilitation and some other things I've done over time that actually provided way more meaning because it was able to, it was, it allowed me to step away from considering just numbers, which you need to know in business.

Right.

It's a different conversation. But step away from the number side of things and just go, what are the things actually going to give me joy, long term satisfaction? Where is my passion actually at? And at the end of the day, it's about helping people. And I actually think that most people fit in that and they just get distracted by shiny objects or all that sort of stuff. So yeah, I find that fascinating.

You know, people have a very distorted view of what makes for happiness, Luke. I find that again and again it's if I can only have more money and more stuff and more recognition and more fame, but it's never, never enough. Social comparison is the thief of joy. If you do something worthwhile and you care about what you do and you care about people you're doing it for and you've got a moral purpose to your life. Life actually. In fact, they found the best way to spend money rather than stuff. Spending money on experiences works a lot better in terms of happiness. But the best thing you can ever do with money is to give it away to a cause that you're involved in that that brings the highest level of satisfaction and happiness. Yeah, but people don't know that. They chase the wrong things.

What I would recommend as well is that a lot of people, they give money to a charity when there's a big event happening. And we have some friends who have run very small charities, you know, two, three, five people involved. And some of the best stuff that we've been able to do is a small amount of money to a small charity is a big amount of money. Do you know what I mean? And the effect that you can have. And so just giving small amounts, what you might consider to be a small amount, you know, like I don't have a billion dollars to give away, but you know, here's 500. That's a huge deal for somebody who's working in Africa with, with, you know, a completely different sort of economic system where that goes a long way. And it does give a lot of satisfaction to work in that way that you. Your $500,000 doesn't. 500 doesn't get you much here anymore, but it can get a lot in other places and it can mean a lot to somebody, you know, at the right stage. And I found a lot of fun, like literally fun being had, doing those sorts of things, rather than just, you know, let's make some more money, do some more work, whatever it is, you know what I mean?

I think it's very important with giving to follow the Bill Gates principle. Who's actually, if you ask me, anybody in the world living today that I admire would be him, basically, because the Gates foundation. Because what he's done is say, like, all this money, let's work out the most cost effective way to help people with things like childhood vaccination and stuff. Done an amazing job. And I think for those of us, obviously, you've got a lot less resources than him. The same thing applies. We've got to find a cause, not scatter it too widely. Find a cause that we like, we believe in, where we fully can do a lot of good, which is a perfect example, like in Africa, where it can make a lot of difference. Research it really carefully and focus your giving there. Now, to me, there's only two things I do with money. That's charity. One of them is my tithing, obviously, because that's, that's a biblical obligation. That's just an automatic direct debit every week. And the other is my research institute, which I believe it has the biggest potential to help. And I don't give anything else besides that. But actually, in fact, what I do is I give away about 80% of my net income in those terms, but very, very specific.

Well, Jim, I think that's a good part to finish off because I think you're one of the most misunderstood people and they wouldn't have thought that we would be talking at the end of a podcast about generosity, how you didn't want your face on something and what you really care about is quality for the franchisees and for the clients ultimately. So look. Honored to have you on. Thanks for coming on. How do people get in contact with you if they want to get to look into whether or not a franchise is right for them, Just go to.

The website www.jims.net or if you want to contact me personally, jims.net yep.

And if you've got any questions for Jim, send them that way. Like, you know, what's his favorite type of hamburger? Or.

We have a session called Ask Jim. So I do a live Facebook feed every. It's on. It's on the website. We have a look at every third Tuesday at 7 o' clock where you can ask any question you like.

Yeah, that sounds good. Thanks for coming on, mate.

Thanks, Luke. See you.