Jim Penman's 30s Were a Disaster—Here's Why That Mattered

Welcome to What I Wish I Knew at 30. Today on What I Wish I Knew at 30, I'm joined by one of Australia's most recognizable and influential entrepreneurs, the man behind the hat, the beard, and one of the most remarkable franchising success stories in the world, Jim Penman. What began in the early '90s as a small lawn mowing job to support his family while he completed a PhD in history at La Trobe University in Melbourne has grown into Jim's Group, the largest franchise network in the Southern Hemisphere. From a side hustle and a single mower, Jim has built a household name with over 5,000 franchisees across more more than 50 divisions—mowing, cleaning, dog washing, fencing, IT, and more—spanning Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and beyond. It's a story of persistence, values, and the belief that ordinary people can build extraordinary lives. But Jim's story is much more than business success. Today, he divides his time between mentoring franchisees, helping customers, and returning to his original passion—history and research. He personally invests millions of dollars every year into studies exploring how societies rise and fall, the biological and behavioral roots of social change, and how Western civilization can protect itself from decline. How we— he writes not only about business but about humanity, how we think, how we live, and how we can do better. And yet, if you ask him, his greatest achievement isn't Jim's group. It's his family. As a husband and father to 10 children, Jim believes true success isn't measured in wealth, awards, or the size of your company. It's measured in the life you live, the people you love, and the legacy you leave behind. Jim Penman, welcome to What I Wish I Knew at 30. Did I miss anything out of your introduction?

That's very thorough, Fran.

Amazing. I love that. Would you like to tell us a bit about what you're doing at the moment before we get into the podcast? What's, what's really on your bucket list right now?

Um, restructuring the business to a certain extent. That's, that's a major issue. We've got, um, a lot of things we'll be doing in-house, like running the mowing division, for example, that we're now passing out to some of our most capable people so we can focus more narrow in on the things that we are good at, which is customer service, service to franchisees, IT technology, that kind of stuff too. So that's one of the major things. The research program is going very, very well. Testing, starting to test drugs we've identified, which could be really extremely helpful in terms of helping people to live happier and better lives and also avoiding things like mental illness and depression and so forth. We do a lot of studies on food restriction, mild food restriction in rats, looking at the changes to their, to their physiology and also to their epigenetics. And we're, we're looking to reproduce that.

Fantastic. Well, I'm looking forward to it. And is that, that's coming onto the market recently, you know, in, in the near future?

The market's a long way away. What you want to do with these things, what we did initially, this is, this is only one part of the research is you, you, you get a, you get thousands of drugs and you test them in little capsules on human brain cells. And then you look for the epigenetic effects that we're interested in. And then you narrow that down, you look for potential side effects and so forth. And then when you've got some that you look really good, so from 1,000, we went down to about 60 initially, and we're now testing about 9. And then you test them on animals. And then when that's done, And that's showing the kind of results that you want, presuming it does, then you potentially go to human trials, but you normally have to go to a drug company to do that. So it doesn't happen, doesn't go on the market fast.

No, but I love that. I love that focus on mental wellness and, you know, sort of against depression. I think, um, you know, everyone needs to be really aware of that. And I think there is a growing awareness. It's not under the carpet.

There's a lot of bad things going on in the world right now, Fran. People are hardly aware of it. There's a rise in mental illness, in depression, anxiety, deaths of despair, which is suicide, drug overdose, alcohol issues. People are lonelier than they were in the past. There's a loss of morale, loss of sense of purpose. People are— faith is dying. People are not leading churches and so forth. It's— and our work ethic is going down too. You look at the attitudes of young people, for example, they're far less focused on family and children and meaningful work and sense of purpose and far more interested in very superficial, you know, success and wealth and leisure and those kinds of things and personal indulgence. It's a really bad change that's happening in society. And if we don't, if we don't do something about this, then we're in terrible trouble as a civilization.

I agree. And, you know, family is so important, but work ethic is too. And you're right. I mean, people don't want to put the hard yards in. They want that quick fix. They don't want to you know, understand the fundamentals. And I think, you know, that's a very dangerous— you look at the growth of AI and, you know, how that's— yes, you can get the outcome, but if you don't understand the steps how to get there, or you don't, you don't have the intrinsic knowledge or the built-up expertise, it's a very dangerous place to play in. And I think going back to your point before we get— I feel we could go straight down a rabbit hole, but I think purpose. Is one of the biggest things. Because if you don't have purpose, what do you have?

You're quite right. People just live their lives. If it feels good, do it. It's the worst possible advice. And people are quite deluded. They think that— one very common belief is that I have more money and more stuff, I can buy more stuff, I'll be happier. And it really isn't true. In fact, buying stuff for competitive reasons, like because it makes you look better than somebody else, like a better car, better house, clothes, luxury holidays actually has no relationship to happiness whatsoever. Experiences tend to make you happy. Unity, communication, faith, and so forth. Giving money away to a cause you believe in. These are all known creators of happiness. What people think makes you happy is they're winning the lottery. It's just not true. People who win the lottery, they've done studies on it. 12 months later, they're the same as they were at the beginning.

Absolutely. And look at, you know, some of the richest people in the world aren't the happiest people in the world.

Yeah, I had a close friend whose brother committed suicide. He was substantially wealthier than me, but just so messed up in his family life.

It's just so sad, you know, creating that awareness around sort of really all areas of life. I mean, I'm not a great believer in life balance. I think when you're focusing on one thing, other things have to give, but I am a believer in communication and having those support networks around you so that when you are focused on something and you're building something that's worthwhile and in your purpose, that you, the people around you understand that and are able to support that as you are able to support them.

Well, I'm a great believer in the saying, no other success can compensate for failure in the home. I don't think that any success is worth neglecting your children. My latest book actually is called No Other Success. And it starts with an anecdote about a guy who was a retail manager in a supermarket, spending long hours at work, making good money, but not seeing his kids. And one day he was just going out to leave him for work. And his little 4-year-old son said to him, Daddy, I wish you could have breakfast with us. He said he drove to work, tears streaming down his face, quit, bought a mowing franchise. This was 10 years ago. And ever since then, he's, he's, he's been able to have breakfast with his son. And, you know, I, I, I'm a busy man. I'm a CEO of a company and I do a lot of stuff, but I drive my son to school and I pick him up and we spend time talking and we spend several hours a week just talking about all kinds of things. I've got time for what matters.

Yes. And look, I think that's, that's the important, that really is the important thing. So Jim, I do feel like we could talk all day and we could go down all sorts of, um, all sorts of different topics. You're 30 years old again. Where are you? What are you doing? And what's going on in that stage of life? Well, when I was 30, that was 1982.

And, uh, I had just spent, uh, something like 11 years at university getting myself eventually, uh, to submit a PhD in history, thinking I would have an academic career, thinking that my ideas were novel enough that it would give me and I came to the stage when I was 30 where I realized this was not going to happen. My ideas were just too completely outrageous. My actual, my thesis was originally knocked back. I was granted it later. I did some rewrites, but completely dead. So everything that I'd planned to do, everything that gave meaning to my life, which was this study of society and what could be done about it, was just down. And so I, got myself in a situation of saying, well, I'm not giving up on this. I've got a research project I want to follow. And now one of the crazy things about it was that I was, all my studies were in history and then related things like cross-cultural anthropology, but all the implications were in terms of neuroscience. So I found myself, I would, I had no money. I had no income. I was deeply in debt. I owed about $35,000 and I wanted to actually be able to spend millions of dollars on a research project in a field which I know nothing about, had no qualifications or experience in. I guess at that stage, somebody looked at me and thinking, this is not, this is not somebody who's going to be a great success in life. In fact, he's a deluded idiot. What do you think he's doing? So what I did was I had a part-time lawn mowing gardening business, which is how I funded my studies. And I just thought, okay, well, that's all I know how to do. I didn't even think it would be the future. I just thought, I don't know anything else. So I just launched that. That was Christmas 1987. I was 30 years old in every normal sense, complete failure, failed PhD, failed career, little gardening business. And that's what started.

So you, you didn't think at that point then that you had life figured out? Do you think you were winging it?

I thought I was going to succeed. I mean, I'm insanely self-confident. I just thought somehow I'd work out a way to do it, even though nobody in their right minds, my mother thought I would succeed, but mothers always believe in their sons. We were very close. So, but in normal circumstances, I really didn't have a hope, did I?

I mean, you had come through a degree. You'd obviously, you'd obviously gone through, you'd done, you had the disciplines to do that. You'd gone through, you'd gone to your PhD, whether, you know, whether it was outrageous and it was something that everyone go, what on earth? I mean, you were at that point. So there were certain fundamentals there that were already in place.

Well, I certainly was hardworking enough when I focused on it. This research was a passion and I worked extraordinary, put more effort into it, you know, mental effort and stuff. This is years and years of intensive research and thinking and putting above, living very simply. I still don't spend much. I'm naturally as stingy as all hell. I never spent much. It was the most basic fashion imaginable. In fact, I've never even bought a new car until I was in my 70s. In my whole life, I never owned a new car. I've just always lived very simply. So I had that sort of passionate, driven attitude towards life to have a sense of purpose. I actually just recently become a Christian too. So that made a lot of difference too, in terms of my, um, my world, my worldview too. That was a very happy experience and very powerful. Community and purpose and, and so forth. So yeah, I just did it. That's a beautiful thing.

I mean, the, you know, sort of Christianity is, is kind of rising again and through like younger people and not necessarily the traditional churches, but there just seems to be a real sort of collective and a connection through like that universal connection, which is, which is really beautiful. And, um, Yeah, I'm loving, I'm loving seeing that happening.

It is a, it is a rare sign of hope. The younger generation, especially young men, are actually starting to come back to church after decades of decline. And what do you think that is?

What do you think is driving that?

I don't know exactly how to describe it actually, except what we're doing isn't working. This whole idea that says, you know, if you just, you're just selfish and individualistic and you do whatever you feel like, somehow you'll end up happier. And yet all the research shows that it isn't. And people are getting more and more lonely and miserable and depressed. It just doesn't work. Christianity works. Yeah. And I don't mean just believing in God. I mean, being part of a community that actually demands something of you that says, don't behave in this, in this selfish short-term thing, have a larger purpose, help other people, be part of a community, live a life, something beyond you. And that actually is work. It's difficult. It's easier to sit down and just go through Netflix or social media or porn or video games or all the easy things you can do that just give you that instant sense of, but it's like, it's like, they're like drugs. They're like cocaine. They might immediately be what you want, but in the long term, they make you absolutely miserable and lost and broken. And I think in some element, especially young men, can I think that this is, this position in society is becoming so much worse than it was.

I agree. And I think the beautiful thing in the community around Christianity in, in whatever form it is, is that it gives a community. And I love that, you know, that it gives those values, it gives expectation of how you behave. And I think that's something which is, you know, I will always be grateful to my parents. They always had expectations of us. I don't know whether, you know, kids these days. Whether we have that same connection. It was always in church and think you're all the, you're the kids, the family, everybody was there. But if you were doing something, you guaranteed everyone knew about it before you got home. That community was important and it was encouraged and it was founded on a connection of combined values or shared values. You know, I think that's one of the things that, that is bringing those young people back into. And as you said, especially young men, being able to really express themselves. And unfortunately, I've lost, my children have lost a lot of friends to suicide and to mental illness and just tragic, just absolutely tragic.

Yeah, it's a screwed up way of living that, and, and, and some people are recognizing it and that, that's a, that's a rare, rare hope. I've actually belonged to a church which is growing quite fast, which is quite amazing experience. We've got an auditorium, we have 1,000 people on a Sunday and there's several services and it's just growing. It's hard and hard to get a car park. You have to get there early to get it, get us in. So that's, that's different. Um, sort of daughter branches, our campuses out there, they're launching, you know, every few months we're launching another campus. So it's exciting to be part of it. But that, this is a church that we call it, it's a Baptist church. We call it Baptist because it's very, enthusiastic, very lively, but very, a lot of, a lot of, um, organization and a lot of demands, which I think is what people need. People need to have expectations on them. So you need to do this. Don't take the easy way out. Look at what's worth doing. And everything that we're taught in church and everything the gospel teaches us is, is don't do the easy thing. Do the thing, the right thing. And when it comes to exercise or diet or looking after other people or avoiding impurity or Working hard and working meaningfully in your job and trying your best at your job. All these things are to do with happiness and to do with satisfaction in life. Absolutely. They're not easy. Life is a struggle. One of my favorite songs right now is actually a hymn that I used to hear at school. I didn't appreciate it so much. It's from Pilgrim's Progress. He would valiant be, let him come hither. It's the song. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he will constant be, come wind, come weather. And that's that idea of a struggle that life is, as Malcolm Fraser, ex-Prime Minister, used to say, life wasn't meant to be easy. That we, that we need to challenge ourselves. We need to do the hard things instead of the easy things. And that's what life makes, what makes life meaningful and makes it good.

Yeah. No, I agree with you 100%. So Jim, going back to when you were 30, what was your biggest dream at that time?

My research project. I also wanted to be a father. I loved kids. I always, always enjoyed kids. When I was a teenager, families would come to visit and bring the children with them, and I would take the kids down to the park to play with them. And these parents would say, oh, what a wonderful young man this is. He's so kind and considerate. I just preferred the kids to the adults. When I was at university, the kids across the road would come across and have barbecues with them and so forth like that. And when I was a Christian, I was always teaching Sunday school or something like that, you know, or doing, um, we used to do improv theater to entertain kids at the evangelical conference at Belgrave Heights. So I always, always loved kids, and I really, really, really wanted a family, and I really wanted as many kids as I possibly could. I actually said I would like 6 kids. That was my aim in those days. So that was, that was my aim. Yeah, well, yeah, not with the one marriage. I didn't quite do it the proper way, but as it turned out. But I did want, I did want a family. I did want children and I did want my research to change the world.

And that's why it's a purpose and a passion. And obviously you're still doing it. And I love that. So the question, the next question I'm going to ask is, did life take you where you expected?

Well, In one sense, yes, I did get the family I wanted and I did get a research foundation, but the actual way I got there was very different because I wouldn't have dreamed in those days that lawn mowing could possibly be the avenue for success in terms of funding all these things. I just, if somebody had said to me, I'd say, what are you smoking? Come on. This is ridiculous. It's a lawn mowing business. It can't possibly have. That sort of impact, you can't achieve what you want. I actually tried a whole lot of different things over the years. There's so many things that I've tried. I've tried Amway, which I was pathetic at because I got no personal skills. I've tried a computer shop. I tried a mower shop. I've tried a tourist venture. I've tried trade exchanges more than once. I've tried factory making fiberglass. I've tried an psychiatry institute. I have done so many stupid things, all of which lost money. All right. Every single one. And this little lawn mowing business, this gardening business that I've been doing since I was 8 years old, turned out to be the vehicle. But who would have guessed that? Who would have thought? I couldn't even comprehend how you could do such a thing from mowing lawns. And that's the reason that I did it, because I like gardening. I actually enjoy lawn mowing, gardening. I like being outside. I like green stuff. I like being physically active. In fact, you know what I'm doing this weekend? I'm going up to a small farm I have. I'm going to be digging potatoes and pruning fruit trees and doing all the really fun things. That's my hobby. I love it. Beautiful. And so something I enjoyed doing actually ended up being the basis of my whole career, but very surprising. If I had— what I wish I knew at 30 was that there's a lot of money in grass, and I don't mean the marijuana kind.

That's going to be a definite clip on this one. I love that. So looking back now to when you were 30, what was something that you were completely wrong about?

Well, I can't think of anything more than that one. Honestly, Fran, I just didn't think lawn mowing was it. I just didn't know. And the big mistake that I made, and this is something that's probably one of the best lessons from your career, is that everything looks good from the outside, but what matters is what you know. So you're often better sticking with something you're already knowledgeable about. Because people always ask me, why don't you go into this? And I say, I don't understand that. I don't know it. Therefore, I can't help you with it. We are pretty good at service industries in general. People come to me with ideas about developing products or doing retail or anything like that. I just, I say, no, I don't want to do it because I don't know about it. You've got to, you've got to look at what you know, what your strengths are, what are you good at and focus on those and the things you're not good at, you find other people to help you with, but you focus on your area of expertise. It's very interesting. I'm listening to a lot of audiobooks about Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger, Berkshire Hathaway people. Warren Buffett is a wonderful guy. I love these guys. I really love them. He's a very humble man, Warren. He's one of the most storied, most famous investors in the world, still lives a humble life, lives in the same house for decades. He just doesn't— he loves McDonald's, which I think is terrible taste in food. McDonald's and Coke and this Cherry Coke and this kind of stuff too. But you know what's interesting about Buffett is he's a very humble man. He would talk a lot about his mistakes and the things he's done wrong. And he talks about his circle of excellence, what he understands, what he knows. And that's why he's famously aversive to technology. He says, I don't understand it. Now this is a guy who is an amazing human being, an amazing investor, an amazing sense of ethics. I love him. He's so willing to admit, I just don't understand technology. I don't understand things like It's not my area. So he's so aware of his own failings and weaknesses and the things he's done wrong and he's open about it. Where so many people in business will just say, I'm good at everything. I've just been listening to another talking book about Enron, which is about the most opposite you could possibly do. And this is a company run by people who were so deluded about their own abilities and they basically relied on pumping up the stock prices and counting fraud to achieve what they did. And it all came crashing down, destroyed so many people. It's an opposite attitude. It's that arrogance, that belief they can do anything. Whereas someone like Warren Buffett is so humble and so—

Jim, they say that life is the best teacher. And sometimes the lessons do come wrapped in disaster. So let's talk about what were the biggest curveballs that ever came to you, you know, whether it was in life, business, relationships, but what's one experience that at the time felt like the worst thing ever, but it actually ended up shaping you?

Well, the crash that took place in 1982 was pretty bad. I basically got wiped out. I used to, I'd done quite okay during my studies. I even bought a small house, which is amazing. You couldn't do it these days, but from a lawn mowing business, but I had one and I just made stupid mistakes. I got very I got very lazy. I got very cocky and I got too distracted and I blew it all and ended up deeply in debt. That was a really bad experience, but it was a humbling experience too, because I've never been as cocky ever since. I've never been as lazy ever since. And, and, uh, the, the, the turning point was actually getting married. I got married in the end of 1982 and I knew I had to support a family and being a husband and very shortly a father. I had that sense of responsibility and direction. So that was, that was a very bad thing to happen. But I think the lesson has been good and I've never forgotten it. Yeah.

And if you could go back and whisper advice to yourself in that moment, what would you say now?

I would, I would rip its head off myself. You lazy, arrogant so-and-so. This is stupid. Focus on your business. I sort of had this idea. That I was above mowing lawns. I wanted just to manage the business and so forth. And that kind of contempt for manual labor and so forth, which I think was, it's common in society. And I just had that at that time, which is rank. And I see it so much and I've never, never changed that. I actually mowed lawns and did gardening for many years up till 1998. But when the business was really growing so much and Even since then, I still like to get my, I love having calloused hands, actually, from doing gardening and stuff. So I think that belief in the value of manual labor is something that arrogant twerp that I was in those days, I wish I could give him a few lessons and just say, focus on your lawn mowing, Jim. Come on. It's good. It's got far more potential than you could possibly imagine. And don't be so much up yourself.

Exactly. So how did that challenge, if you had to really articulate that, how did that challenge change the way that you approach success?

You've just got to do the hard yards. You've got to do the focus. You've got to do the difficult things. What we were talking about before, life isn't meant to be easy. You've really got to do the tough stuff, make the decisions. You get up in the morning and you, and you, you go for that run. I practice 16:8 fasting, so I don't eat at certain times. And there's a whole lot of habits and things like that. And the way I handle emails. I'm known as, I'm very good on emails. I clean my email box, I have a way of doing it. So I'm always, I'm always on top of things. I'm doing things that I'm supposed to do. That sense of discipline and determination and sticking to it and just no excuse. Look, I still goof off at times. I play more video games than I should. I wasn't expecting that.

What video games do you play?

Very simple games that are quick to play because they don't take me too long. A game that takes about 15 minutes, I'll take a bit of a break and I'll play it. But the point of it is I never let it get control in the way that I would have in the past. I have better habits of work at 73 than I did at 30, that's for sure.

Well, that's all part of the experience, isn't it? And understanding if you want to get where you're going, then you're better off being disciplined and getting it out of the way than you are leaving it to, you know, getting around to it.

Success isn't big ideas and it's little tiny habits. There's wonderful books like Tiny Habits or Atomic Habits, which talk about how you develop disciplines of life, doing the things that you know you need to do. You know, this book I've been working on for the past couple of years, Birthrate Crisis, which I think is going to be potentially could have a big impact. And it was very hard to get down to it. And in the end, what I had to do was to set up a very habit, which I made, I must do some work on it every day. At least 5 minutes a day, because my day can be pretty full, but I've got to find 5 minutes. So when I find 5 minutes, I go for more. So I had this book, which I really couldn't imagine writing, and it's now almost finished, due out early next year. Now, one of the ways that I did that is I made myself accountable. So we have a life group at church, and I would say to them, I am struggling to do this. I want you to hold me accountable that every day I must do some work on this book. and it got done. Yeah.

Brilliant. That's such sage advice. If you, if you're not finding that motivation to do it yourself, get someone to help you be accountable for that. And, uh, you know, that's so important. And that's the fundamentals behind obviously life coaching. And I see Jim now has a life coaching arm as well. Is that correct?

Yes, we do actually. It's good. And it had some very good effects too.

It does. And it's about those disciplines, isn't it? It's about bringing in, you know, life balance. And all of the things that people just need that support with these days. And, uh, we, I was very fortunate. My mother was a life coach. Well, she wasn't, but she, she was just about discipline. She was about if you set out to do something, you finished it. Her famous words were always, there's no such word. It was killed by, you know, no such word as won't. It was killed by Elkhart. Um, she was just, and she still is. I mean, she's very disciplined herself. She's an excellent role model and she, and, and also the gift of tremendous expectation. Life coaching is very good, actually.

I did some training for that from a church service. We did a course on it, how you go about it, doing it, how you, you listen to the person and learn what they want to do. And then you set up a program to help them to achieve that and to be held accountable to it.

Yeah. Beautiful. Because so many people know exactly what they don't want to do. And I think throughout my career, that's been one of the, one of the things that has always sort of, I'm an eternal optimist and it's always sort of confused me in some ways that people are so determined to stay in the, well, I don't want this or I don't want that. Yes, but what do you want? I don't know. I don't know. I've not thought about that. How can you not have thought about that? But people don't. And sometimes they do need that support to do it.

Well, it's not, it's not, not the zeitgeist of the modern age, is it, Fran? It's more about just, you know, what's in it for me and wealth and success and status and leisure and excitement and travel and all these sorts of things that people think about with this idea, just, just, it's the rainbow. If I keep on going, I'll reach the foot of the rainbow, but you never do. No. The joy is in the journey and the journey has to be somewhere meaningful. Yeah, definitely.

Somewhere meaningful and also sustainable. Yeah, that's right.

I don't know. I can't tell people what purpose is. I do think that ideally a faith community of some kind, and I've got good friends who are Muslims and stuff. I've got a friend who's struggling to keep Ramadan and I really, I really encourage him on that. He says it's very hard because he doesn't, he hates to give up coffee. I was talking with him yesterday about that. I said, you're going to keep Ramadan this year, aren't you? Aren't you, Haydar?

Ramadan's a tough one when it's, when it falls in the summer months. I do, I do quite a lot of work in the, in the Middle East. And I mean, not so bad, bad there because you've got that, like the, the days and nights are pretty much the same length. But when you get to, when you come to Australia and, you know, sort of Ramadan's in the summer, that's a long time from, you know, sunup to sundown and you can't drink either.

I practice 16:8 fasting, but I can, I can drink, drink water. I just don't eat outside that, that 8-hour house. Ramadan is bad. There was a study that was done actually on communities where they lived, you know, away from the equator. And so you had summer and winter, and they found that when Ramadan fell during the summer, the country took an economic hit. It actually did less well financially, but people were happier. Okay. Very tough thing. If you're going to go for what, 14 hours, 16 hours maybe in the heat, not eating or drinking. That is a really, I admire them greatly.

But one of the, I guess one of the beautiful things about fasting is that effect that it has on your body. I mean, I don't know if you've ever done a 3 or a 7-day fast, but it does become quite euphoric going into, I mean, obviously I've never done a, I've never done a, 3 or 7 day fast where I haven't been able to drink. So that, that would never be a thing, but it is, it is a, it's a great way of cleansing, detoxing, and actually— So you've actually fasted for 7 days?

No eat, no food?

Yes, I have. Wow. Okay. Well, I haven't gone there.

Wow. All right. Okay. And it is uplifting.

It's incredibly uplifting.

Well, I, I don't find 16:8 difficult. I get a bit hungry in the morning sometimes because I normally have it, I try and have an early dinner and then lunch.

Especially if you're running as well. Yeah.

You get used to it. You get used to it. But not, not eating for days. No, I never tried that one, Fran.

Maybe I should one day. I've only done it once. I've only done it once, but it was the first few days were difficult, but then you kind of take on this incredible energy and it really is. You're quite uplifted, you're really focused. So it just goes to show, you know, the foods that you eat— and that's a whole different topic— but just how, you know, sort of modern foods with preservatives, additives— my background's in the, in the food industry, and we've spent the last 30 years taking all kinds of preservatives, additives out of the products that we manufacture. A lot of our products are gluten-free. But it is definitely— that cleansing gives you an incredible Um, yeah, just uplift is the best way of saying it. So, Jim.

Oh, sorry, I didn't even know you do, you do packaged food, do you?

Is that how you— Frozen, frozen food. So, um, food manufacturing. What's the company called? It's called Paramount 21. I wear lots of hats.

I'm interested in that. We're just, we're just in the process of developing a thing called, uh, Jim's Healthy, which is basically, um, frozen, uh, packaged food, um, stuff. It's a bit Tied up now, but I didn't go through the supermarkets. But one of the principal ideas of that is you can have, um, you're supposed to have at least 5 serves of vegetables every day. It's designed so that you not only have, you know, you don't have a lot of preservatives and stuff, but you also get your full, if you have 2 of these meals every day, your full macros, you get, you get your full diet as, as recommended by the Heart Institute and everybody else, which is the difficult thing. It's easy enough, I suppose, you can avoid sugar and salt, but people, most people don't have enough vegetables.

Yeah, no, definitely. Or enough protein or enough carbs.

Plus at least 2 serves of fruit. Mm. Which is what I try and do, but that's not always easy. No. It's very difficult if you're relying on packaged food, so yes.

So, no, all our products are frozen. So we've been going, uh, 1988 our business was set up. So we've been going a few years. I say my sister and I say we set it up when we were 3, but of course it isn't true.

I'm very interested in that. I think, I think diet and exercise is part of it. Mental and physical health.

No, definitely.

Community, purpose. They're all, they're all part of a good life.

They are. They definitely are. So Jim, let's get to the heart of the episode. If you could give your 30-year-old self just 3 pieces of advice. What would they be?

It's what I've already told you, Fred. There's a lot of money in graphs. Lawn mowing, stick to lawn mowing and gardening. You just have no idea what the potential is. And I, and I would, and I would talk about the potential road to franchising. I just didn't have the vision in those days. I couldn't see it, just how it could be done, the system. That's what I would focus on because if I knew what I know now, when I was 30, it would take me less than half the time to get back here because I made so many silly mistakes. I didn't understand the potential of the service business. I just did not comprehend how it could do. I didn't know how it could work. It took me a long time. Even when I started franchising, I didn't understand. We used to do things like business reviews and I really, and it took me a while to realize that frequent short calls, ideally weekly calls to franchisees, being responsive, meetings every 6 weeks. And then things like the way you control customer service and so forth, the importance of technology. It took me, it took me decades to figure out how to do this thing properly. And I'm just now at the age of 73 beginning to get to the stage where I'm, my goodness, if I knew this when I was 30, that was the big mistake. And also in terms of the research, I would definitely have done it a very different way. I have a magnificent research head now, who's a former professor and he's run a very senior research team. You've got to get the right person in charge. That's the biggest thing. And I tried to do it through a part-time— mind you, I didn't have much money in the early days, but I would have done it differently there too. So you just learn things. I learn every day. I mean, I look back on it a year ago and I think, what a fool. What stupid things I was doing even 12 months ago. So go back 43 years to when I was 30 and there was just so much, but basically in terms of business and the research.

I love that. Do you think that younger professionals and entrepreneurs today struggle with the same things we did, or do you think they're facing a completely different world? The world's the same.

If anything, the world's lazier and, and, and slacker. In a sense, if you've got a strong work ethic these this age, you can achieve anything because, because we're a lazy, wealthy, fat society. You've got any degree of drive and entrepreneurship, you can do amazing things. Young guy, Dan Cahill, who was a high school dropout, just school at the age of 16, completely hopeless academically, went to work for McDonald's in his early 20s, very bravely got enough money to buy a lawn mowing franchise, a Jim's franchise, with great trepidation, I might say. Great reputation. He's now, um, in his early 30s. He's now one of the, he's one of the top franchisors in the whole of Australia. He's a multimillionaire. He mentors hundreds of franchisees. He's just an amazing guy looking after the entire Moan division. I mean, what's this guy got? You know, no qualification, no experience except in book dance, which is a pretty good experience actually.

Yeah. But he's just got great character. So what does he have? What are the qualities?

He's just got great character. He's a very humble guy, Dan. He's not, he's never arrogant. He's just decent. He's ethical to the extreme. You don't get far within gyms if you're not like that. Um, and he's always looking for ways to improve. The biggest difference in between success and failure is not so much having a lot of qualifications or being intellectually brilliant. It's having an attitude that says, I'm going to do— what can I do to improve? What can I do? We have a very clear distinction between franchisees, and that's something I know a lot about, between— we talk about gold, bronze, lead. Gold franchisee is somebody who is looking always to improve. What can I do different? Okay, environment's not quite what I want, clients are difficult, Jim isn't helping me the way I'd like, but what can I do? And they constantly, constantly say, how can I improve? Then you've got people who we call bronzers who are probably not inherently like that, but they'll listen. And when you coach them and you say, look, you really need to ring the client back. Don't wait, ring straight away, send a text, do this. Okay, you've had a problem with that. Try it this way. Say this to the client. When you go into a client and you've finished a job, you say, If there's anything else you ever want done, you know, mention, mention examples, you know, rubbish removal, gutter cleaning, I'm happy to help. You teach them, you train them to do these things, you show them how to get. So these are guys that'll listen to you and with help, some of them become gold. Then you get your leads and a lead is somebody who says anything's going wrong, not my fault. It's a franchise fault. It's Jim Penman's fault. It's the system. Everybody's at fault. I don't need to change because everything I'm doing is fine. Even when they get warning letters for customer service, they still say, no, this is unfair system. You know, I'm not at fault. No, no, I've done nothing wrong. And you look at anything, no, they're going to fail because they cannot change. Yeah. That's the one thing. Yeah. And that's one question too. I don't look, I've made so many stupid mistakes. I reckon I've made more dumb mistakes in my lifetime than any normal 20 people have. But the question I ask myself every day, and I mean every single day of my life, is how can I do better? Something went wrong. What did I do wrong? What should I have done differently? How can I learn from that mistake?

And is that, would you say, a fundamental— I mean, you're in the customer service business and, you know, that, that really is the most important question you can ask, isn't it? How can we be better? How can we serve our customers better? How can we make that journey? How can we make it really easy for them to say yes to us?

Yeah, you can look after your customers better, but you've also got to look at a way of doing it efficiently. It's not just a matter of mowing a perfect lawn and edges. How can I do it in the least possible time and still do a fantastic job? How can I save money here? How can I put my prices up? In actual fact, as a franchisor, my priority is not actually customers, it's franchisees. My prime If you see it on the bottom of my email that I sent you, a little two-part thing at the bottom. Our first priority is the welfare of franchisees. We are also passionate about customers. We sign only franchisees and franchisors we're convinced will succeed, which is also about franchisee welfare. So emotionally speaking, in terms of time, I'm far more invested in service to franchisees than anything else. But having said that, of course, we do know that the better your service to your clients is, the more likely you are to succeed. And they've got statistics.

Yeah, no, of course. And Jim, going back, what's the best advice that you ever received and who gave it to you?

Well, this is going to sound a bit strange. It's, it's actually from, it's from the Bible. It's Jesus. If you look at the way that we run the business, now you can't, I don't know if you call it advice, but you look at the story of Jesus washing his disciples' feet. And that's a very radical story, much more than people realize, because washing feet in those days was a really filthy, low job. It was something that slaves did. It was a really degrading job. Occasionally, a very revered rabbi, his disciples would wash his feet as a sign of respect. Jesus washed his disciples' feet. That sense of servant leadership. I am not in business for myself. I'm there to serve and help my franchisees to succeed. Now, in the end, by doing that, I actually don't do too bad myself, but it's never my goal. So, and the parable of the talents. I love the parable of the talents. And that's the story. If you don't, I presume you know it. But the idea that it's not so much how good we are or how much we know, it's what we do with what we know. And that's why the master in the story was so angry at the servant who buried the talent in the backyard. He should have used it, at least put it in the bank to get interest. Does that affect the finance? Whatever talents that God gives us, we're there to use that, not to compete with somebody else. I know I'm not an Elon Musk or a Bill Gates or someone like that. I'm not even a shadow on them. That's not my— but I don't need to be. God didn't make me a 5-talent person, maybe a 2-talent or a 1-talent person, but use that. Yeah. Yeah. So it's not a person. It is a person. It's actually Jesus that would really be the fundamental And no living person has taught me that. My father once said to me, actually not good advice, only business advice he ever gave me. He said, don't gamble what you can't afford to lose, which was pretty good advice.

I've got one from my dad. You can't afford to buy cheap. He always used to say to me, buy once, you can't afford to buy cheap. But yeah, I love that. Don't gamble what you can't afford to lose. That's a That's pretty sage advice, isn't it? Although sometimes it's worth taking a risk.

Oh no, you don't even— I take risks all the time. You can't be an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurs take risks all the time, but you never bet the farm.

No, that's right.

Look, I live in a very conservative sort of world. Our total debt is less than our annual income. Yeah. And we've got property and stuff to back that up. So it's, it's, um, I have it. I've run a very conservative business, always made money. And I look at businesses, but you're all about piling debt on debt and debt and they, and they, and they frighten the hell out of me. I don't like that kind of business. I have, ever since I was pushing a lawnmower, I've always made money and it's always been profitable. I don't leap ahead. Sometimes you think if I borrowed this money and I did this, well, no, I don't want to do that. I'd rather just the cash flow build and just work on your process and your systems. It's taken a while. I've been franchising for about 36 years now. And, you know, BRW wanted me to be in their rich, rich 250, and I said, don't be kidding, I'm not even close to that. It's not a— it's, it's, well, we only take about, probably we might turn over a billion dollars a year, but we get less than 1% of that in terms of actual profit. So it's a, it's a very generous system. Looks very big. I'm rambling a lot, aren't I? But anyway, that's—

Absolutely. It's fascinating. I'm loving, loving just listening to your passion and the insights and, you know, it's so important. But Jim, we've covered the deep stuff. Now let's have a little bit of fun. I'm going to hit you with some quickfire questions and just come out with the first thing that comes to mind. What was the worst business or life advice you ever got?

Well, if it feels good, do it, but I never listened to that. That's probably good because the rest of the life advice—

Yes. If you could have lunch with any historical figure, who would it be?

Well, if I could have lunch with anybody, I'd have lunch with someone like Bill Gates or Warren Buffett, 'cause I'd try and impress them with my research ideas. Does that count as a historical figure? I mean, they're pretty famous.

Yes, they can be. It's our podcast today. We can have whoever we want. It's fine. What's a guilty pleasure you refuse to apologize for?

Nutella straight from the jar.

Don't let the kids see.

Well, yes, I actually try and keep it out of the house because I do, but when I had my wisdom tooth taken out, it was a bit painful, so I bought a couple of jars of Nutella. I must say, I've been indulging myself in that because it's the downtime apart from that, but normally I don't do such things. But yeah, that's all right. I'm known. I addressed a We had at our conference center, we had some people who were suffering from addiction and they were all the drug addicts and all kinds of acute addictions. And I got up and I said, well, I gotta confess, I've got an addiction to Nutella straight from the jar. I don't even spread it on anything, Fran. I just put the spoon in and eat it. I've seen that before.

My boys do that.

When they try and have it, they're trying to hide it from me. They put something like in the bread maker. I can always sniff it out.

I think that's a guilty pleasure you're allowed to have. If your 30-year-old self had a theme song, what would it be?

Oh, I have no idea what my 30-year-old self liked in terms of, but I mean, I was, I was mad King Christian in those days. So it would have been some sort of a Christian song of some kind. How Great Thou Art or something. One of those, one of those songs or Keith Green. I love Keith Green. When I first became a Christian, it was a big, big thing for me. He's a very, um, Challenging guy, real prophet. I want more than Sundays and Wednesday nights, so if you don't come to me every day, then don't even bother coming at all. It's a very extreme challenge. Or he's throwing the sheep and the goats, those kinds of songs. That would have been my beating when I was 30.

Brilliant. And what's one thing you absolutely sucked at in your 30s, but you reckon you've kind of mastered it now?

Well, One thing I sucked at is I'm very socially insensitive. I don't read people very well. Now, if you said I mastered it, I think that'd be an exaggeration. I think I'm slightly less abysmal at it than I used to be, slightly. Because I can go into, you know, like we have conference, we have training, and I try and greet every friend, every trainee, because we usually have sort of 80 to 100 people. I try and greet them and say hello to them. Make conversation with them. That's something I was absolutely abysmally terrible at. With practice, I'm slightly less, less abysmal. So that's—

that's a beautiful thing that you became aware of it and worked on how you could improve it.

I could not be aware of it. People would tell me. It was that good? Yes. I've been divorced 3 times. I'm not a, I'm not a philandering man. It's basically because I'm impossible to live with. So that tells you something, doesn't it? Oh dear.

Jim, that was incredible. I know so many listeners are going to resonate with your story, but before we wrap up, let's just do a quick recap. We've talked about a huge amount of different topics and I would love to sit here for the whole day and talk to you, but what's the biggest single takeaway that you'd like people to remember from our conversation? Live your life to some purpose.

Don't do what feels easy and pleasant in the short term. Find some meaning in your life and be disciplined and do the things. You'll live a better life, a more useful life, but also a more happy life too. Don't take the easy way out. I love that.

I love that. And for everyone listening, here's my challenge to you. Take one thing from today's episode and apply it to your life this week. Do it now. Maybe it's reaching out to someone who can mentor you. Maybe it's finally taking that leap you've been scared of. Whatever it is, take action. Maybe it's talking to Jim about a mowing franchise. If this episode inspired you, make sure to subscribe, leave a review, and share this with someone who needs to hear it. And if you have a question or a topic you'd like me to cover in the future, please send me a message. I'd love to hear from you. Thank you for tuning in to What I Wish I Knew at 30. And remember, you can still create your best chapters. The best chapters are still ahead. So from myself, Fran Harper, thank you so much for tuning in to What I Wish I Knew at 30. And Jim Penman, thank you so much for joining me today on What I Wish I Knew at 30. It's been a wonderful conversation. I've really enjoyed it. And thank you so much for your time. You're welcome.