Jim Penman's most controversial podcast interview ever!

How's the morning been?

That's good.

Good. Interesting. Always. Lots and lots of good stuff going on.

Yeah. The boys have made you have to come all the way up from Warrnambool for at gym, so. Ever been to Warrnambool?

Oh, yeah, yeah. I didn't talk down there before, COVID Yeah, you did too. Yeah.

What are your memories? What are your first impressions? What. What do you take with you?

Oh, it's a nice town.

Yeah.

My. My son, one of my sons went to university there. Oh, yeah, he did a law degree, actually, which is. He likes it too.

Yeah.

All right. That's a negative.

I hear a few of the podcasts and do you have much kind things to say about him or is he the sort of the. The boxing bag?

Yeah, this guy.

Yeah.

Yeah. Joel's done a brilliant job. He's been very well recognised, especially over the past year or so. He's. Actually. We've had an extraordinary year. Before COVID we were flat on about 3,800 franchisees for about three years. We are now in the time when we should be declining, if anything, because the labour market is the tightest and obviously what we want, we've got plenty of work. What we need is franchisees. So this has been the worst year it should be providing franchisees. We've grown substantially and I think it's likely Joel's. Yeah, Joel's doing. He's done a great social media campaign.

Well done. And that's what he was sort of just saying to us was, was it 2019 when sort of that idea of using social media a bit more pumped up a little and started with Ask Jim? So Ask Jim was sitting. I sat in front of my webcam. Yeah, yeah. He started asking. Answering questions.

Well, I asked the question back in the day.

Yeah. Not much. The early ones that were number one.

Because I remember the Buganda Gorillas as the footy team back in the day and you didn't have one and you said Buganda Guerrillas would be your team if you were to make one, so.

Yeah, yeah. Because my kids kept on asking me, which football team do you barrack for? So I refused to give them a Uganda.

Are they a real team? No, I thought they might be rugby or.

Uganda was an African kingdom which was on the. It's on the north shores of Lake Victoria, which is the sort of the core of what's now Uganda. Yeah. Where the name comes from. That's where Kampala is. So. Yeah, that's just a nonsense.

Yeah, yeah.

No, I just speak to you Guys.

Yeah, that's what we're doing. It doesn't have to be hard.

Yeah. All right.

How many of these have you done?

I did quite a few points. Very rarely in person, I must say. You guys got a lot of trouble to do this.

No, we appreciate it. Thank you.

It's good from our point of view because it gives us exposure and usually to entertain people. Actually, I find most of these things go quite well and I like and talk about anything and everything, including stuff that's nothing to do with business.

Perfect. We can get you going on a few of those things and that's what.

We sort of find. Like, because work can sort of get in your head and it gets you so full. And this is sort of our little bit of a letdown. We do this sort of every couple of weeks. Yeah, every two weeks we sort of do this.

I enjoy business, but I'm interested in a lot of things too. I'm interested in science and epigenetics. In my research program, I read a lot. A lot about business, a lot about health, happiness, this kind of stuff like that. Everything. I'd probably read a couple of books a week. I just. Lots of interests. That's a lot of things going on.

Are you a quick rater or deliver on?

I read fast.

Yeah.

And I also listen to talking books. Like this morning I was exercising and doing a tremor running and listening to this book called Dopamine Nation, which is really interesting. It's about addiction and actually why Help me understand things like why things like fasting and cold water and cold showers and stuff. Actually they're like an antidrug. They actually have the opposite effect. Making people feel better in the long term.

Right.

This is just something I've come across in the last few days.

30 minute run, bare feet.

Is that right? Yeah, yeah. Bear everything. Yeah.

We better not do that.

Say that in public.

Yeah, that's good. Yeah.

We'll do a quick intro. What we're doing now is the podcast, Jim. So essentially.

So I'll just do a bit of an intro and then we'll get chatting. So.

So.

Right, guys, episode 10 of the Bricks and Banner podcast and we have a very esteemed guest. We're very lucky to have Jim Penman on with us. So thank you very much for giving us your time, Jim. We know you're a busy, busy man and we're just very appreciative that you've given us this opportunity to pick your brain about a few things. So thank you very much, mate.

Alright. You're welcome.

And, yeah, we'll get into it. So, Duke, are you doing to start us off?

I was just going to say we've been invited. Were we invited or did we sort of force our way down to this wonderful. It was the Swinburn University, once upon a time. Muralbach campus, down in Muralbach. And you're in a whole different world down here. It's. It's amazing.

Yeah, it's amazing how vast and big it is.

It's brilliant. You probably don't need to leave for anything, do you?

Oh, no, I live next door. So I walk across. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yep, yep, yep, yep. Unreal. So.

But yeah. So, Jim, just start. Or wouldn't mind going back.

Just tell us a bit about your.

Childhood growing up, where you. Where you grew up and how that all came about.

Grew up in Adelaide mainly, when I was about 14 and went to Sydney for a year and then Melbourne after that. I don't know what you say.

Yeah, I had one question and I get asked this one a little bit, but what would you give yourself Advice As a 15 year old, if you were to. To go back and sort of give yourself any advice as a young fella, what would it be?

I don't know. I think there's more future in gardening than I ever thought at the time. I've done gardening jobs mostly since I was about 8 years old, but I never actually thought it'd end up being a career.

You didn't do the lemonade and squash as well at the same time?

No, I didn't. I just started. I started off doing some work for a neighbour across the back fence. Mr. Tapley used to rake his driveway and stuff. I don't think I was particularly good at those days, but I've always done it. I just love being outside and stuff.

So.

Yep. I never thought of being in business. Yeah, I don't know what my young self would have said about that. You know, you're going to end up, you know, you'll do an academic thing, which is what I thought I probably would do. And then you're going to go into business with a lawn mowing contractor. I would have said, you're nuts. I don't believe you, old man.

And that could be part of it, you know, as a 15 year old, no one knows what they're going to do. And I really struggle with talking to kids that are about to leave school, that they need to know when they're 15, 16, choosing their university sort of courses, what they're going to be for the rest of Their lives. And I certainly didn't. Nor did I. I've done a lot of different things and I had a.

Lot of stupid stuff. I went to university to study sociology of all stupid things. And it was just rubbish, rubbish, rubbish. If I'd have known what I know now, I would have gone in for history still. But I also would have gone for biology.

Oh, yeah.

History and biology together. That would. That would have been. That would have been the place to go.

So we have some idea. But where did your curiosities lay as a child?

I love dinosaurs. Yeah. Crazy about dinosaurs. And therefore evolutionary thinking and so forth. Yeah. And I also loved history. Yeah. So when I was 14, somebody gave me a copy of the Thucydides, the Peloponnesian wars, and I became absolutely obsessed with this idea of civilization decline. Why does civilization decline? I used to read up lots of books about the late Roman Empire, this kind of stuff like that. Yeah. So just very asking questions, you know, basic questions. I loved the Naked Ape by Desmond Morris. That was a big influence on me. Probably had a pretty sexy cover, which didn't hurt. When you were 15 years old, this idea that you can understand human behavior in terms of our animal antecedents and stuff, that's something that really fascinated me.

Well, that's where we come from.

Yeah. We do. We are 98% same genes as chimpanzees. We're very, very similar. Even things like. Desmond Morrison talks about how women's breasts, why they're so large. It's because when we moved from mating from behind to mating face to face, yet there had to be equivalent stimulus.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And the lips are the same thing, replacing. You know what? That idea fascinated me and I think.

The idea of that when a baby's born, and whether this is true or not, when a baby's born, they look very similar to their father. And does that come from that tribal sort of. So they know who the father was at the time, I heard. So, yeah, that's what Theo was born.

They reckon she looked like me and now she's a dead ringer of a mum.

So.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Babies look like anybody. I must say, I love kids, but the first couple of years, not quite so good. After they get to be about 2 and start trotting around. Absolutely, I agree. Which. Why I got 10 of them. There has to be a reason for.

I'm only seven behind, so I'm trying.

You'll catch up.

He's trying.

I'm nine behind.

We have Peter Cox. Stello was the Guest here and I was welcoming him, who's the speaker, and I said Peter, you said one for Mum, one for dad, one for the country. How about one for mum, one for dad and eight for the country?

You're doing everything for the country. Yeah, that's right.

I think so, I think so.

So your passion lays in history and you've written a book at the front that we have here. So how much time and energy do you put yourself into or devote to that?

Not a huge amount these days because basically I've got a research team. I've just been spending a few million dollars a year just on project looking, basically working with rats. And we're looking at trying to in a sense reverse engineer the beneficial effects of food restriction. Looking at pheromones, looking at microbes, cytokines, micro RNA methylation, all kinds of things like the tract, try and do it. And if we can succeed in that, it should be a very good way of treating problems like drug addiction, alcoholism.

So that idea of fasting is sort of to reverse engineer. Are we eating too much is what you're saying?

Yeah, but in a sense what we're trying to do is to do it so that you can achieve the beneficial results without needing to fast though actually would make it easier for you to fast because it'll help people become more self disciplined, more long term thinking. That's the idea. We've seen some good results with rats. We know for example, that if you expose rats to the bedding of calorie restricted rats, they tend to act as if they're calorie restricted. Yep, yep, yep. And if you actually calorie restrict the fathers and you make them and they never see their offspring, the offspring act as if they're calorie restricted, there's ways of actually influencing this and if you could achieve those effects, you, it'll solve a lot of problems. Not only drug addiction, but also things like poor academic achievement, for example. You should help people to achieve more. You should help them to lose weight, to keep fit, to become more disciplined. We'd achieve a whole lot of things if we could achieve the beneficial effect.

Yeah, absolutely.

And just staying on that, on the diet and routine. Are you very strict about your diet, routine, exercise, all those kind of things?

Well, they're about strict but I'm pretty rigorous. About half an hour a day at least of vigorous exercise and I probably walk about another 5000k's just in general life. So I keep very active. I 16, 8 fast. I don't eat between usually before 1 o' clock in the afternoon.

Yeah, right. Yep, yep, yep. I'm interested in this because I'm just transitioning from. From that.

It works, I find it. I used to do it religiously and it works quite well.

Yeah, yeah.

It's very powerful actually. Yeah, it's really, it's a really good exercise. It's actually very good for your cells because it sort of cleans up the muck and stuff and as a side effect, it also makes it a little easier to keep weight under control. I aim to be 22 BMI. That's. That's my aim. I don't want to go beyond that. Yeah. I mean 66, 67 kilos.

So can we just explain that a bit further? Something I've never done just for anyone who is viewing that hasn't.

Body max index.

Oh, sorry. The fasting, like 6 to 8.

Sorry.

So when do you fast?

Well, I usually. I would usually. Well, I normally finish my meals by seven or eight o' clock at night at the latest. Yeah. And then I don't Normally eat before 1 the next day. I'm not fanatical about it but I just, just. It's pretty easy and you get used to it and you feel a little bit of hunger at times but then you do something else and forget about it.

What about coffee and sort of things until that one o' clock in the morning, is there.

The only thing I have is what I call wham. Hot water and milk, soy milk. So it's like. It's like coffee without the coffee. Yeah, yeah. I don't believe in drinking coffee. I don't believe in caffeinated drinks at all. Yep.

And that's that stimuli, that sort of that imbalance that you're talking about.

Yeah, yeah. I was a Mormon for quite a long time too and I still keep that. Coffee, tea, alcohol, tobacco, just absolutely not. Yep, yep, yeah, yep, yep. Yeah.

Beautiful.

So we're just about digging into a bit of the franchise stuff. So obviously you've got over 5,000 now, is it? Franchise? Yeah, nearly 5,000. So what would you say is your. Been the hardest part about getting that up and going from probably when you were younger to two, now it's learning.

How to do it correctly. I had no comprehension of what I was doing at the beginning. All I had was a vision and it was a correct vision. It was a central idea. If I'm going to be successful, I need to turn my franchisees and the fans. So I designed a contract right from the beginning. Took me nine months arguing with lawyers that was as favorable to franchisees as I could make it. And they kept on telling me, you're mad. This is not how you do things. But I kept on looking at all the different things that were wrong with other systems and I put them into the contract. For example, I gave my franchisees absolute right to any work from their territory. But they could work wherever they want. They can have as many employees as they want without paying any more in terms of fees, because our fees aren't based on the percentage, the fixed fee plus the lead fee. They had the right to control their own clients. We can't take regular jobs off without their consent unless the client asks us to. So things like that. And then with time, we actually made even more. We give franchisees the right to move to a different franchisor to vote out their franchise or to veto changes to their own manual. So I wanted to design a system that was very franchisee friendly. But having said that, I didn't really understand the process. One thing I didn't understand is how important the personal element is. I thought franchising is a matter of giving people work and business advice. But what we found is that it's the relationship that matter. Relationship with the franchisor, relationship with other franchisees. So things like meetings, franchisors ringing regularly to a franchise, at least monthly, ideally weekly, all those things, and then just everything. Can people feel part of a community? I didn't know that. It took us years to figure it out.

We sort of had that conversation this morning about, you can have the most rigid structure for work, for religion, for whatever, but the variable in there is personal, human nature. You can't prepare yourself for the different tangibles there. So it sounds like you've got a nice little ecosystem there, and you've got enough structure, but you've still got enough room for personality.

Yeah, that sounds very static. It's wildly changing all the time. We're always doing things to improve what we do. Every day, every one of my 5,000 close to franchisees have my email address and phone number. And they contact me often about all kinds of things. Issues with the system, ideas, problems, all kinds of things. I get several contacts with franchisees every day. And the biggest problem is people say, that's crazy. How do you do that? And I said, the biggest problem is they don't contact me enough. I sometimes don't hear about things that I should hear about or somebody will contact me. Had a problem, and it's been costing them income for four weeks. And I say, why didn't you contact me four weeks ago.

And we sort of say that too. Like you want to be seen as that duck swimming upstream. And your business pat on the back looks very organised and structured above the water, but under the water there's all those moving parts and it's pretty frantic.

Constant, constant frantic innovation. I put a list together just last night of all the things we're trying to achieve. It's about that long. Major different things that we need to do and to work on this year.

Yep. And do you have sort of what, what sort of goal setting do you, do you run with? I'm a one, two and five year goal setter. Or has that changed over the years?

Well, we certainly, we certainly watch numbers. It's quite exciting when you hit major milestones. I want to hit 5,000. It's going to be party, so that's fine.

And you're very data strong, aren't you?

Oh, yes. We measure everything. We look at things like attrition rate, for example. That's probably one of the major ones. What proportion of franchisees are you leaving you're losing in a year? So how many in the first year? We actually lose around about 12% of franchisees in their first year. Now, they're not always people who fail, but the ones who leave tend to be those who've got poorer customer service ratings and so forth. Not always, but usually that's the case.

And that's okay for you. That's natural.

That's pretty good. Actually. When you look at the figures, people who go into independent cleaning and gardening businesses, the actual first year attrition is like 90 to 95%. You can look it up online. That's what it is. Ours is 12%, but that's too high, so why can't we get that below? And then we have another figure. When we do a survey of our franchisees every year, one of the questions we ask them a lot about support. How often does your franchisor ring you? How often do they, how quickly do they get back to you? How helpful. We also ask them questions about income. So we ask, is your income good, satisfactory poor? Now that's their personal mind. That's not asking how much you're making, that's just saying how do you feel about it? Okay, traditionally speaking, about 10% poor. This last year, 8% poor. That's good. But I'd like that to be zero.

Yeah, absolutely.

Those kinds of figures are the ones that we really, really look at.

Room for improvement. It's interesting just saying that. Then it's a bit of a social sort of thing that gets thrown around. You know, if you make it through your first 12 months of business, you know you've done well. There's a huge loss rate in that. But what you've sort of said there might have hit that on the head. They're probably all independent contractors without that, you know, that help from someone like yourself. So once you are structured within gyms, well, you've probably got that help and support.

Well, you keep on looking at things like, for example, for many years we were losing about 17% around it. Yeah.

Right.

Big difference is we set up a very organized, structured training program.

Yeah.

And as soon as we did that first year, attrition rate dropped to 10 and a half percent, even. Even better than now. But every course that you do, we measure every course, we get people with prospects to actually rate the speakers, including myself in the two talks I give. And we look at that and say, why isn't this working out well? Why isn't that coming through? But every. Every session is saying, what's wrong? How can we help you to be better? How can we give you more chance of succeeding, More chance of making a better income?

It's amazing being in the complex here because you do all the training and that on site here, don't you? And that's just like a credit to you and to obviously Joel and the rest of us.

That's why we bought this place, actually. We wanted a place people could actually come. We could have our national office. We could also have people trained and we also have people living on site. So it becomes like a community. Yeah, absolutely. It's really quite intense.

And we did bring our workout gear, but we're a bit. Just disappointed to see that.

I'm disappointed, too. It was supposed to be a finish months ago, but because of labor shortage, hopefully January. Yeah.

Jim's Gym.

That is great.

So, got to keep fit. What do we got? Racquetball or squash ball? Are they the same?

No, no, no. Racquetball is different. Racquetball you can get off the roof. It's a big blue ball like that. Squash is like a little black one.

Yeah.

And it's got thin and everything else.

And you're a squash man.

Yeah, I played squash. I haven't played racquetball much, but I'm told it's better. So I'm going to be really into racquetball. I love. Squash is great. Racquetball is great. I'm sure it will be, too. It's really, really competitive and really exhausting. You can play tennis. I could play tennis for two hours. I wouldn't hardly raise a sweat because I'm terrible. But with squash, I play for half an hour.

It's amazing with squash how long the rallies and stuff would go for too. You're in that tiny box and you can just keep going and you're always going to be on the move. I've only played it minimal, but it's.

A really funny game because you can also hit so many different balls. Yeah. When the front wall is big. But you don't just hit the front wall, you're going to get killed. You've got to hit a high, low, soft sidewall. Even the roof and the back wall for racquetball. So it's just really interesting game. Interesting, competitive, exhausting. That is exactly what I like to do for exercise.

Perfect. And a bit of strategy too.

Yeah, Interesting. You got to think about where the other guy is or where they think you're going to go. So if they think. If he thinks the ball's going to go over there and you can hit it over there, even if it's not such a good shot, it's a better shot because you're out foxing him. Yeah.

We have a mate that played tennis for Australia and he's not the most mobile of blokes.

Not anymore.

He is brilliant. So he's a tennis player and he doesn't move. He makes you hit the ball to him. So. So the people that are better at these sports, they can see three moves.

Lots of strategies as you run. Playing with somebody who's not quite so good as me, a whole lot of fun. I get them to run around, just torture them, just to get them, just so they can just get there and go get it and then I get it back there. That is so fun.

How often would you play squash away?

I haven't played for a while. Haven't played for a while. We had an arrangement to look at a local private club, but I was always expecting out our place to be ready.

We have a segment that's Battle of the Agents and that's a bit of a sporting one. So I'll make sure we don't play you at squash. Terrible. Yeah.

To refer back to the. I guess it's a question we can relate back to your book and the history and that sort of thing. You're very driven, individual. Is that innate or is that something that you've developed over time?

Oh, I guess it's pretty innate. I might have Been pretty driven, pretty competitive. I mean, you know, what sort of teenager spends all his time reading books about the decline of the Roman Empire? You have to be a bit of a nerd socially, completely inept, totally clueless. I didn't even know the names of most of the kids in my class. But you ask me questions about Roman history or biology or something and I'm right on top of it. Typical.

Typical.

But how do you go dealing with that? Like obviously you got a large employee base here. How do you go like with name retention and things like that and trying to meet all your employees?

Oh, I'm terrible. I'm also face blind to a large extent, so I find it hard to recognize. I've seen on one of your videos.

You try and take a photo of your franchisees attached to number in your phone, is that right?

Yeah, sometimes I do.

I suppose that's a great way to remember.

At least with my franchisors. It's funny though, I can talk to a person endlessly on email and when they come in I won't recognize them. But I don't see people that often. Yeah, my staff I sort of vaguely know.

But do you prefer phone calls, email or text?

Email's good. Yeah, yeah, I live off emails. Emails are great. I'm a very fast typist. You can really respond. It's in writing, it's. But it depends what it is. Sometimes people just want to have more of a discussion and then a phone call is good. Yeah.

Joel was saying you sometimes respond to people and it's a generic sort of email just with a sign off of Jim at the bottom. And they don't realize that it's the gym.

Oh, they don't actually. I actually had one occasion last year when I was, when I was ringing. Well, I ring method on anniversaries on 10, 15, 20, 25 years, one guy was ringing and I said, this is Jim for National. Obviously he said, you're not really Jim, are you? I said, yes, I am. No, no you're not. I know what Jim, she's nothing like you wouldn't believe me.

Look a little different to the. The caricature.

It's not a caricature, it's me.

No, it is, it is actually.

If you actually look up Jim Penman images online, you'll see a picture of me with a beard and a hat in front of the old logo trolley that's actually taken from that image.

Will the beard come back? No, the beard's gone.

The beard will be white now. Don't it.

When did the beard go?

Going to look back.

You got the T shirt on too. Look at you go, oh, he had the mustache last week.

Is that all right?

Look at that.

That is.

You can't even tell the difference now.

Yeah, I could too. Bit itchy.

Well, Luke's got a bit of a background in that space, don't you?

Oh yeah, it is interesting. So I had a bit of a. Like you were saying, I went to school and then went to uni for a year or two and did marine biology and then I actually did a green keeping apprenticeship. So I worked on golf courses and finished that up and come back to Warrnambool, lived in Melbourne, come back to Warrnambool and had no job, no idea what I was doing. I just knew that I wanted to be at home and started up Luki's lawns. So.

Didn'T quite take off like Jim's.

Did, but it probably was a little bit behind. Behind that because you've got so much influence over what? Everything, sort of. Jim. So gyms is everywhere and everyone talks about gyms and everyone in Australia would know Jim. So no, there's probably a little bit there. But that only lasted a few months before getting into real estate.

It's amazing what, what you. What where you can start from. Almost doesn't matter. Yeah. What kind of person you are, what business. It doesn't matter. What matters is if you go in every day and say, how can I do it better? Yep. I mean the difference between me being a part time student, lawn mowing business or gardening business and then buying a lawnmower, for example, that was a big jump in itself. And just to where I am now. It's not one thing. It's thousands and thousands of little things every day of my life, including holidays, Christmas Day. Every time I'm asking myself the question, how can we do it better? How can we improve? It's that obsessional difference that makes. Yep.

That internal drive and that obsession. Nearly the addiction to getting better.

It's really fun too. People ask how much you can take up on Christmas. Well, as little as possible. Really, really difficult not to work.

Yeah.

I try not to work on Sunday actually, because it's the Sabbath and stuff. But yeah, I just can't.

No, it's. Well, see, nice.

I can't stop completely. I don't work all day, but I just have to at least do some emails and phone calls and I just have to.

What do you do to try and switch off?

I do a lot of gardening, actually. Strangely Enough. I've got a farm. I'll be up there this afternoon. I'll be digging and chopping firewood and clearing blackberries and stuff. I enjoy that kind of stuff.

And what animals do you have on the farm?

We've got some llamas. Yeah.

Llamas, yeah.

Mostly it's. Mostly it's trees, like fruit trees and nut trees. Yeah.

A few acres or 250 acres.

Yeah.

Beautiful.

I go through the bush. I can't do it now because it's the wrong time of year, but he's digging holes and putting nuts in it. Right through all the forested areas. Yes.

We solved. Paul Jennings, the children's author, he had a house down in Warrnambool and he basically. It was just grazed land and he basically did the same thing. Just went and tried to turn it back to its native. And it's really odd because it's about 40 acres and you've just got farming land, farming land, farming land. And then just a massive corridor of trees and just bush.

This isn't native. This would be a. An organic food forest.

Oh, yeah.

I've got a guy working on. He's a man on that kind of stuff, too. He's a super, super organic freak. He's a great guy.

Yeah. So you've got a few animals in there, then?

Just a few llamas, yeah.

Nothing much.

A few llamas and some chooks. Not really very much.

Has it attracted any natives, though? Kangaroos and.

Oh, yes. They're all over the place. Yeah. Actually, the kangaroos, mostly the wallabies, they're about that big. And the wombats, even the deer there, which. Which is really a pest. They eat everything. But they're hardly. Because I'm around so often, they're not scared of me. I can walk, you know. I can't be as close to a wombat as you are.

Yeah.

Right to me now. And they'll just look at me.

Beautiful. Any questions?

No, I'm pretty good.

Yeah. Favorite superhero. I reckon I already know it because I just. We just went and saw your office, so.

Oh, is that superhero.

Well, heroes, we're talking.

Oh, super villain.

Spider Man. Yes, Spider Man. I love the. The first two, Spider Mans. With Toby Maguire. Yeah.

Yes.

Couple of the best films ever made. Yeah. Because it's all about moral choice, moral decisions. I really, really love that. With great power comes great responsibility, which is, to me, a motto for life. Yeah. But I probably am more into villains. You're quite right. Whenever my kids would watch. Watching Simpsons, if I hear If I hear Montgomery Burns, I'm out there watching.

That's brilliant.

I love. I love Monty Burns. I don't know if you've ever seen the one where he actually has a trillion dollar bank.

Yes.

I just love it when they've actually. When they've actually escaped from Cuba and they're going back to the US and he says this, he says, and if it's a crime to love your country, that I'm guilty. And if it's a crime to steal a trillion dollars and give it to your country's enemies, I'm guilty of that. If it's a crime to bribe a jury to equip me, I'll shortly be guilty of any crime. I love Monty Burns.

It's very clever.

But the other thing, too, I mean, that's not. I reckon Palpatine, the emperor in Star Wars, I think people don't understand from his point of view. He is a man who is doing everything he can to bring peace and order to the galaxy. I mean, he's the real hero of Star wars if you think about it. Yeah, he's not this Luke Stigwood. But the only thing, I think George Lucas was very unfair to him because anybody who's clever enough to become Galactic emperor, which he did.

Yes.

Okay. And then he tries to get his main follower, who's more stronger than him, that's Darth Vader, to kill his only son. That's ridiculous. What smart man would ever do such a thing? To kill Yarani's son. So naturally he picks him up and chunks him down. That's the end.

He's master manipulator.

People do not. No, no serious Galactic emperor would ever do such a thing.

I agree.

So I think the trouble is people don't see villains from their own point of view. They've got to understand the motivation of the bad guys. And that's one good thing about Spider man, too. The villains are comprehensible. It's like the Green Goblin.

Yes.

You know, you can understand why he did that. I mean, I could understand if somebody took my company away from me and I had the opportunity to charge him down with a ray gun. I'd be sorely tempted. I'm not saying I'd do it.

How did you feel about the last one where all three Spider men were in there? I got really confused there.

No, I didn't watch. I only watched the first two.

I did see that. I did see it, but I never thought anything. But those first two, I. Those first two were absolutely brilliant. I Just love that idea. Moral courage. And I love the. The editor, the one who was always down on him and so forth and stuff. That's a great character. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What's his name?

I forget I know the actor, but.

Yeah, I've forgotten it on the spot. No one's good on the spot.

But to me I've always got a thing about villains. When I used to do. We used to do these things at Belgrave Heights. There was an evangelical conference and I used to go out with other kids and we did improv to basically entertain the kids, which is fantastic. In this vast open sided hall. And you have this basic script that you were given to follow, but you could adapt it. So one of the ones we did was I was like a television reporter, supposed to be a neutral person describing the life of Jesus and the kids weren't reacting very well. So we actually made the television reporters the center of the story. And I become. I made myself the bad guy. So a little bit puzzled how this guy who starts off as the sort of neutral good character becomes the villain. But I worked it that way. It was just so much fun.

We need villains, don't we?

We do. If you look at any film, you've got to have a great villain. Actually when I was at school, we did this school play and I was Munro Murgatroyd, the bad guy.

What a name.

Munro. Munro Mergatroyd.

So good.

And I had this great speech and I was complaining about how I wasn't made the head boy of the school three years in a sixth form have I been before which twice in fifth. Yet my experience is spurned. This manly do good standeth in my way and must therefore removed be I will too. And then I go on about how I was getting my wicked sister. And at the end of it there was this fiendish laughter. The G. I've done it. What television program? He had the monologue of the bad guy and everything. Like Richard iii, you know, he's a great. He's a great character. A little bit distorted from the. From the historical reality, but it's a wonderful thing. I love that play.

Well, they've been around forever, haven't they?

Did you see the version of Richard III when it was like set in the 1930s? It was a really, really great version. It was. I loved it. I loved it so much it took both my parents to see it.

Yeah, beautiful.

What about like films and tv? Do you watch much of that or.

Like a little bit. A little bit. Watching Big Bang Theory again.

So you're pretty general then. It's a little bit everything.

I love historical stuff like the White Queen, the White Princess becoming Elizabeth Wolf hall, you know, dramatizations of history I particularly like.

And how far back in history are you most passionate about?

Well, this was 15th 16th century, which is pretty interesting. But any good historical. There's a series called Rome, actually, which is fantastic. I've got the DVDs of it, which is brilliant, actually, about the events of Julius Caesar and what happened afterwards and so forth. Good historical drama. I mean, when I was a kid, historical dramas was terrible, but they have some really, really good stuff now.

Yeah, I need to go back and do a bit more history stuff because I got really wound up like that. I watched a lot of stuff about the Second World War and the First World War, but how all that happened. And I got really tied into it for a while. But even if you'd like. You're saying if you go back further into your 15, 16, it's probably just as much stuff.

Even more interesting, love ancient history. Ancient Greece, probably my favorite period in all of history would be Athens in the late 5th, 3rd or 4th century, which was the most amazing period in human history. This little city, by modern standards, it covered a fraction of what modern Athens is, a few tens of thousands of people. And their achievements in terms of architecture and philosophy and history and drama and painting were extraordinary even there. The vases were amazingly works of art. I mean, what did these people have? What was about them? What was their character that could make them so brilliantly creative? We still live in their shadow, this small bunch of people.

And is that sort of genetics and epigenetics?

Yeah, well, that's the epigenetics. This is the point.

Yeah. The dietary.

Well, no, no, not so much dietary. It's to do with a mixture of things. It could be diet, it could be practices to do with religion, sexual behavior to do with child rearing, to do with what your parents and your grandparents. It's how your genes are set up. It's. The interesting thing is if you could actually understand this is what this book is about, the basis of how epigenetics relates to character. And you could change that, which with modern things like CRISPR is certainly coming about, is getting close to that. You could actually have people who were extraordinarily productive and creative. You could make the average person more creative than the top 1% of people is now. The potential achievements would be dramatic and it would include things like the ability to cure poverty worldwide for the cost that it'd be just like similar to a limitless inoculation. Limitless. You could do anything. If you look at someone like Elon Musk, I've just reread his biography by Ashley Vance.

Yes.

And this guy, what he did with people like things like SpaceX was extraordinary. And he had the greatest engineers. That's working in an unstructured environment where they could contribute and creativity. Amazing, amazing things. Actually doing space shots for a fraction of the price of anybody else. Just with great people, what we could achieve with really, really brilliant, great people. And we could all be like that. Because I don't think intelligence matters as much as people think intelligence. Probably only about 4% of achievement. The other 96% is character. And that character can change. Now, it can change as individuals. We can change it in their cells. But if we understood the epigenetics and the basic physiology, which we're very close to doing with my research project, then we could do it for anybody.

How do you feel about AI that's getting close, like Elon and these sort of groundbreaking things and then good potential. Yeah, yeah. Do you see it being a positive or do you want sort of human nature to always win out?

Look, I tend to believe in technology as being positive.

Yeah.

I say the one thing that really freaks me out is genetically engineered viruses, which I think is likely what code was. I don't care if anybody has. I reckon it came out of the Wuhan Research Laboratory. There's a book called Whatever Happened in Wuhan which is really convincing about that. But that was. Obviously, even if it was released from there, it was an accident. But if you could genetically tailor a disease to be really, really catchable, like the Omicron version, but had like 10% mortality, like the Spanish flu.

Yeah.

I mean, you could devastate a country in no time.

Well, there's been movies about it for years and years. So obviously the idea is there, we.

Have a great civilization, but we are very vulnerable. The other kind of thing is emp. Electromagnetic pulse.

Yeah.

All you have to do is to let off a hydrogen bomb high in the atmosphere, just one, and you kill all the computers, all the. All the electricity. We'd be back. 90% of the population will be dead within a year. Yeah.

And that's. Yeah, it's a concern, isn't it? It's big concern.

Security is a big, big issue. I tell you what, people do not understand how vulnerable we are. And the more our technology advances, the more vulnerable we are to any sort of problem, like that disease. Look, what happened with COVID I mean, Covid is not even that serious. It's like a 1% mortality. The average age of the people who die from COVID is like above your life expectancy at birth. So as a disease it's mild. If you compare it with something like Spanish flu, which is about 10, 10% mortality or worse, something like smallpox or bubonic plague or any of those sort of things, they work many times worse. We are so vulnerable and if you can start genetically engineering viruses, it becomes really, really dangerous.

We're losing those skills that we once had to be self sufficient. So your gardens, your veggie patches, your.

Cattle, that's what I do on my farm actually. I go up there and I plant stuff and I grow things and I learn how to.

And when we're talking about history, then what I was thinking is that history is an interesting one because it's something that you look back upon and then study, but you don't study it as it's happening. You know, you don't call the last one or two years a research on history, do you? So will it be another 20 years before we look back and use that as a history sort of dialogue?

Well, what I find is reading books from the past, you can see what's happening around you presently. That's, that's why I use it. So you use past lessons from the past to identify what's happening now and unfolding.

So I'm very aware of living through history. What's happening in Ukraine right now is amazing. This is an astonishing thing. Who ever would have thought it? Who ever predicted, not me, not anybody, that the Ukrainians would fight back so.

Well, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Against what was seen to be overwhelmingly powerful. I think it's an amazing story. When I read up the paper in the morning, online, of course, I just, I go to the world section. What's happening in Ukraine?

Yeah, I just find it really interesting as a layman that other people aren't helping. And that's obviously unwritten rule or written rule within, you know, world wars and that sort of thing. But for them to be small, you know, fighting that back and not having.

Much help, they can't because it'll escalate.

Well, they've got lots of weapons and stuff and ammunition and things, which is what they need.

But that's the thing. If you're giving them weapons and you're giving them everything, well, someone might as well be there, you know.

Well, if you're actually going to propose that NATO gets involved and start fighting Russia directly. I think maybe that would be a little.

Lucky. You're not the prime minister.

They're already talking about dropping nuclear bombs on people, which is really pretty scary.

It is? Oh, absolutely. And that's something that's been around for, what, since Cuba? You were talking about Cuba. Well, there you go. The Simpsons with their forecasts, they've been correct a lot of the time, so. Yeah, there we go. What about you boys? Which superheroes would you be?

I do love a Batman. I'm a Batman guy.

He's dark.

Dark.

Yeah. As a hero. He's got a really good dark side.

I love his. You like the gadgets? I do.

I love the gadgets swinging from buildings. That's both similar to Spiderman.

But.

No, I'm a Batman guy.

I love Batman.

Pretty superficial. Superman, for obvious reasons.

Straight to the top.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

What about you?

I think he's too. He's too invulnerable. That's my problem with Superman. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I like. I like a. I like a hero who's. Who's vulnerable. That's fair. Which is more modern, actually. But Superman's the original one.

Yeah, yeah.

It's.

It's a superficial answer, but I just think, well, if I had a Jim's franchise. So Jim's mowing.

Yeah.

Imagine how many runs he could get done that day. So I think I'd be productive.

I think I'd probably go with the Hulk. Like, I like the Hulk in terms of Louis.

Built like the Hulk.

Paint him green.

Yeah.

Just in terms. Well, you're talking about vulnerability. And I see him as. I love the word vulnerable. And I like being vulnerable. But he's. He's one that sort of lives outside that life, and he's, you know, I.

Like it, I think, very intelligent, too, scientists.

Who's your favorite villain, though? That's.

That's favorite villain.

Mine's Darth Vader.

Yeah, Darth Vader. He's a good villain. Yeah.

He's vulnerable. He's vulnerable, yeah. That's why I liked him. And he. And when I was a kid, I was very frightened of him as well.

And was he born that way, though, or was he.

From the prequels we know.

No, no, he turned that way.

I know, I know. But was he actually.

I think the first six Star Wars. First five, actually. Three prequels, plus. Plus. Yeah. What do you call it? And up to. Up to Empire Strikes Back. Yeah, they were good. I like the prequels, actually, because it sort of explained how a guy becomes bad.

Yeah.

And it really is as a matter of love. Yeah. I mean, I would never be a Jedi. I like kids, I like sex. I like children, family, and this kind of thing. So in a sense, by trying to change him into this sort of, you know, someone else figure, it didn't really.

Yeah.

It didn't work too well for him. And you can understand why he did it. It makes sense. The only thing upset me is when they killed the kids. I really find that quite off. Putting apart from that, it's understandable. Yeah.

Yeah.

And then revenge against his mother, for example. That's. That's understandable. Yeah. I like to be able to understand a villain. Yeah. To see in their mind.

That's right.

I don't know if I understand, but I like the joker as a villain, especially like the Heath ledger joker, because he. It's just chaos.

Yeah.

You just don't know what he's gonna do. And he's got. I think he just seems to have no morals.

Yeah. They keep rolling. That's a villain.

That was a bit of a shame, though. We didn't get to see Heath Ledger, you know, unpack that role.

That's the beauty of it, in a way.

Yeah.

Yeah. What about Thanos? Have you dug into the multiverse at all?

No, it's too deep for me, too.

Yeah. It gets a little.

I think we're talking about a Simpsons villain. Scorpio. You see, that's my all time favorite, favorite Simpsons story. This super benevolent, friendly, democratic guy who turns out to be a bond superhero. I love that.

That is a good episode, that. It's quite clever. Homer accidentally stops James Bond there and then ends up being gifted the Denver Broncos and didn't want them climbing down.

Just going with the machine gun, having great fun. I love that. Simpsons is a really clever. I mean, the way they satirize everybody. They make fun of Rupert Murdoch, which is particularly funny when you think. No, he owns the character company.

Oh, yeah.

And then they're pictures of the republican. You ever visit a republican party? And there's this castle on top of a hill, like the vampires and stuff. And the democrats are like. They're lisping in the kitchen.

It's a great show, isn't it?

It is. It is a thinking person.

The funny thing about it, the great thing about it too, is it appeals to kids. But I would sit there watching the Simpsons with the kids, and I'll be packing myself laughing, and they say, what are you laughing at? They couldn't understand the joke because it was. There was a different level. Yes.

But there was a joke at the awkward phase of my life. Might have been 18 or 19. I was watching the Simpsons and my grandmother, yeah, she's a churchgoer and she was in the background and Reverend Lovejoy was talking to someone about their sex life failing and I don't know who he was talking to and said he was trying to raise Cain but he wasn't able and even then started laughing. And I just thought, oh, this is awkward.

Yeah, if you don't laugh, you cry.

Yeah, that's right.

That's brilliant. What about your, your real estate life, Jim? Are you, you into real estate? You sort of just deal with what you deal. Nothing.

My wife's a builder and she develops real estate. I'm not that keen on it. Look, I, I can, I back, I back at Jim's, I buy a regions regional franchise. It returns 25 per annum plus CPI, plus capital gain. I mean what property investment is going to be called out? Yeah, you invest it. You work on what you know. Yeah, I never invest in anybody else. I know what I do. What we do is really, really, we understand what we do.

Yeah.

And it's working very, very well. Yeah. The biggest mistake, one of the biggest mistakes, I mean is trying to do things I don't understand too. Or like launching a psychology institute which just cost me a heap of money in the end, sort of. Okay, but factory, for example. Yeah. Health clubs with at one stage, if you don't understand something, don't do it. Work with what you know.

Yeah, but you got to get to those boundaries to know what you do and don't know and where you're comfortable and I guess. Have there been many franchises or do you do all the data and know the unserviced leads before you jump into some of those Franchise which division works.

Has nothing to do with the division. It has everything to do with the person driving it. Yeah, yeah. Pick an example. Dogwash. Started off, we got going fairly early. Was one of the earliest companies. We got to about 60 franchisees. I put a guy in charge who was a divisional franchisor and he was looked the loveliest guy in the world. He was really colorful. He used to come to national conferences dressed like Priscilla Quinn, that kind of stuff in drag. He was a lovely, kind guy, but he was a hopeless leader. Dropped the division down to 30 and his other rivals went past us. I then basically brought it back off him and then went build it up to 60 and then I gave it to a lady called Sharon Connell and Sharon Connell was a great Cleaning. She started the cleaning franchise. He became a franchisor. She's brilliant. We've now got 220 or something like that and it's just booming ahead. It's really growing fast. He's also launched Pet Patrol. What's the difference? Well, she's a great leader and if you look at the divisions that have worked, they've all had great leaders. People like Paul Come for building inspections or Brett Blair in pool care. If you've got a great person in charge, you can do almost anything.

What are the tangibles in a great leader that you'll find generally, but basically.

Obsessive about improving every day looking at what they're doing. Look, the key difference between the people we have a division in gyms between what we call gold, bronze and lead. And it's one thing, it's how you look at what's going on in the company. If you're a gold, which is like a leader, top franchisor, someone you're looking at saying, what can I do different? How can I improve? How can I change? A bronze will sort of listen to a leadership. If you give them advice, they'll listen to you. A lead's the sort of person that says anything that's going wrong is not my fault. I blame the client, I blame the system, blame anybody else. I'm the only person that can never do anything wrong. It's that one attitude. How much do you look at yourself or how much do you blame other people?

And you've got to self audit and you've got to look within and you've.

Got to be humble too. I believe humility is one of the most underrated virtues in business and in life. I often think of Jesus washing his disciples feet which if you think about it, it's an extraordinary story because washing the feet was something that was very demeaning because people were filthy because they used to have sandals and walk on dirt roads and stuff. It was something that only a slave would do. Now occasionally a very revered rabbi, his disciples would wash his feet as a sign of reverence. But Jesus did it to his disciples. And that whole idea of service is so powerful. And I think it's the absolute core of what we do in gyms. We say we're not the boss. I'm not the boss of my franchisees, they're my clients, I've got to look after them. You're my boss. That's what I tell them at training. You're in charge, not me.

I listen to a few so, you know, self Growth podcasts and that sort of thing.

Oh, sorry, that's my ring.

That is a villainous sort of ring too, isn't it? So in terms of that, it's. And it's interesting looking back at leaders over history and. And the skill set that they've got, and that skill set of. It's basically getting people to like you and then having a group, you know, no one gets to the top by themselves. So you've got to have all those skills to be able, you know, to endear people, to come in with you and help you and grow you. Like you haven't got here by yourself. You would have had people around you help over time.

I'm probably the most incompetent person in my entire business. If you ever look at someone like Joel in terms of social media, I didn't even use social media. I don't even know how to do it. Yeah, Joel does it all for me. I write stuff down under his brick and he posts it and stuff. And I'll do responses and stuff, but Joel does it. Or look at my CFO Cynthia. I mean, she's amazing in terms of her focus on her ability to get things done. I can barely read a spreadsheet. I can, but I struggle. Or Rocky, who's my divisional manager. He's fantastic. Or Megan, who runs. Who runs what we call James plus where we surplus jobs. Or Charlene, who runs the call centre. All these people are straight streets better than me at what they do. I'm basically. I just sort of wander around and chat to people and try. And the only thing I've got is I'm always coming with ideas. Yeah. So I'll have a discussion. I'll come down with Rocky and Joel in the evening and we'll talk about stuff and come up with an idea. But he's the one who's going to do it, not me.

It's very interesting you say that, because it's exactly what we're going through at the moment. So a year and a half ago, I was laying on my couch and just had my own business by myself at home. And then we progressed into having an office, having a couple of staff members, and right now it's that I was a control freak and I wanted to run everything. But you can't because you're ceiling just headbutting. So now it's the giving up to different people and being okay with that. And you would have got there probably the age of 16 when you started selling off franchises, but not quite that ill. But you've got to. With growth comes that. That ability to trust within other people around you. But having the right people around, you.

Know, it actually helps not being. Not being very competent, because if you're not. If you think you can do it, if you're the best at everything, then you'll do everything. Yeah, yeah. But if you're not very good at doing most things, then you have to find people who are better than you. And you recognize that and you appreciate them and reward them accordingly. And listen to them, too. I'm a great believer in listening to people. If somebody says something, I have to think carefully before I say no to it because, I mean, that's your area of enterprise, and I don't discourage that. Yeah. So it's good. When they look at students and American college students and try to work out who's most successful, it's very rarely the top students. The top students tend to go on to become the expensive, you know, lawyers or financial people like that. But it's the middling students who actually go on to build the great businesses, because they're the ones who actually say, well, I'm not so good at this, but let me find you, and let me find you and let me find you.

I think that's sort of happening at the moment, is that not that reliance upon getting the best score at VCE and then having the traditional university degree and then going on, because a lot of people, by the time they're in their early 20s, are already on their way, and you sort of just got to forge your way. And as you said, it's that intention, internal drive of someone that is what makes the success, not what they do.

The value of education is grossly overestimated, in my view. There's a wonderful book called the Case Against Education. I can't remember the writer, but it basically suggests that the only real value of education is it gives you a parchment. It gives you something to get you an interview with a job which you otherwise wouldn't get. You don't actually learn very much. Relevant to. All you've done is shown you've got the ability and the discipline to. To actually endure several years of tertiary education. Apart from that, pretty useless. But, I mean, you look at someone like Dan Carl, it's one of our top franchisors now. He's getting amazing results. This is a guy who dropped out of school about the age of 15, went to work for McDonald's, other places. Became a franchisee. Buying a franchise was really scary. Became a brilliant franchisee. Turning over like close to a million dollars a year and then became one of the most successful franchise owners and he now teaches and stuff. This is a guy who's like 26.

Yeah. And it's uncanny how many times you hear that similar story.

Well, he's got great systems in place, Dan. I've listened to a few of his training sessions where he's been a trainer and yeah, he speaks very well and he's very motivated and he's very self aware, you know.

So if you look at his education actually it's to a large extent it's McDonald's and what he's learnt with us. Yeah, yeah.

With the whole group training concept. So he took that from McDonald's and made it work in his own franchise and yeah, he had a pathway I suppose for which motivated his employees.

Yeah.

I think it's a pity people are so focused on tertiary education. A lot of people, especially boys are not suited to sitting at a desk. They're not very good at it. There's a wonderful book called the Millionaire Next Door which is, which is about American millionaires and people think they're sort of like tech gurus and lawyers and stuff, but the typical American millionaire is more like me actually. They're somebody who's got a service business and grown it and developed it and they don't tend to live spend a lot, which I don't either. Until recently I drove a ten thousand dollar car. This is a guy who's.

Was it a Volvo?

No, it's a Mitsubishi. I gave it to one of my kids actually. Yeah, just a new baby. I've now got a new car. My first time in my whole life I've ever got myself a new car because I want electric.

Yeah, right. Where'd you go?

Tesla?

No, I got, I tried. They didn't like the Autopilot. I've got a Volvo.

Oh yeah?

Yeah, it's really good actually. I love having an electric car. You just plug it in. No petrol station.

Yeah, yeah.

That's amazing. Electric cars. I had a choice, I was an auto electrician before I started real estate and I had a choice to do an electric car course it was just as I was getting out of it though and there's a fair bit into it. There's so much Canada.

Yeah. Do you need any brake lights out that Eli can help with?

Yeah, on the way out.

You don't want Dom's help.

That's a brilliant idea. Solar panels all the house. I just plug it in.

Yep.

And I only charge you in the daytime. When. So it's basically. It's the sun's charging my. I love that.

Yeah.

Well, in my previous life I did have a, a new division idea that I did run by Joel, but he, he canned it pretty quick. And that was Jim's funeral. So that was, that was my idea.

We do Jim's funerals.

Yeah, that was, that was my idea initially. I raised it five years ago. So.

Yeah, raised it all.

We do.

Funerals is good actually. Funerals is not bad. You don't have to have a party making a mobile.

That's right.

That's what it was just about a.

Few weeks back about.

I'll help you refine it if need be.

But like all those little ideas that people come up is that basically you seem to be very forward thinking. So you must have just ideas exploding all the time.

Yeah, I do all the time. But new divisions are easy to think of, but it's hard to good people to drive them. Like I said before, the divisions that work aren't the best ideas. They're the best divisions. See, test and tag. I didn't even know was in business. 220 franchisees, like our third biggest division. I would test and tag me because they had great leadership. Whereas something like pest control, for example, which should be 10 times as big, it's got like 60 franchisees, which is not bad.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But why you should have 6,000. I mean really, leadership.

That's the exciting part about life, I think, is that you. And with that 1, 2 and 5 year goal that we sort of set, you get to two years and you look back and you go, didn't see that we'd be here. So what's around that next corner? Who knows? And sort of evolving with these different franchises. Who knows what's next?

It's very difficult to predict anything. Yeah, everything is always changing so fast. You're always learning new stuff. Things that you think are brilliant ideas are actually pathetic. Some little thing that you think is just comes out to be brilliant. There's a wonderful book by Mark Randolph about the early days. It's called that Will Never Work, about the days of Netflix. I've just finished it. One of the best written business books ever. And what's so striking about it is the informality. Like they had this thing of renting out DVDs when they still got this idea. They didn't even know what a dvd. They'd never seen a dvd. They actually posted a CD through the mail to see, to check how they would work. But they had this idea. And it was so obviously failing, it was costing them far, far more to attract a client. And people weren't rebooking and stuff. And then they were just doing this and it was obviously headed for the rocks. You looked at it from the point of view, how could this thing possibly succeed? And then they said, oh, well, what about the idea of subscription? Oh, that's probably. That won't work. Yeah, give it a try. Pow.

Suddenly it works everywhere now, isn't it?

Yeah, that's right.

It's. They didn't even think it was sort of something to try. It was just a little experimental idea that turned a complete obvious failing business. You know, his mother gave him like $25,000 basically as a gift. Now she actually got it back a hundred times over when it went public. So she wrote a gift, but she never expected to see it again because it wasn't expected to work. But just one little tiny idea that doesn't seem very good somehow. Evidence. Brilliant.

Speaking of Netflix, how about the Royals? How do you feel about the Royals? Do you follow them at all or.

Actually. Oh, I think, like most people, I think. I think Harry and Megan are pathetic.

Yeah, we were talking about that on the way up.

Bug me. They're whining, oh, I'm so hand on my life. I've got a hundred million girls. I'm so poor. I hate the press. And then they go and search out the press. I think they're pathetic.

Well, that was on the radio. They were on the radio being interviewed before and I turned it off.

Yeah.

Could not stand it.

They really, really bugged me.

Haven't really lived in that Now.

Now, I tell you what, the Queen was a great lady.

Yes.

Really admired her. Her self discipline, her just. She's a. She's a terrific icon of duty, a wonderful person. And I think. I think I've got a lot of time for William. William and Kate. Yeah, I think they're great. They're very responsible. Now, having said that, I'm an ardent Republican. I think it's ridiculous to have a Pommy head of state, a Pommy aristocrat as our head of state.

Well, when are they coming out next? When's Charles coming out?

Never.

Do you think he talks about us or even knows that we exist?

Oh, he does. We leap into school here.

Well, my grandfather was great friends of Bill Roycroft and Charles used to spend a lot of time with Bill during the school holidays because he knew the Queen during the. Due to the equestrian.

So a lot of respect for Charles, though, honestly. Speaking. I mean, I know he's always, he's always talking about the greening of the environment. Everybody should cut back and stuff. This is. A guy has five magnificent stately homes and he flies his family to holidays on a private jet. Yeah. You, you, you pledge it all. You should control your spending because, you know, you're living on, you know, 50,000 a year and you've got to really cut back. And me, I'm. No, no, I'm too important. I can just preach about I don't have to do anything.

And it's sort of that nature and nurture, isn't it? A little bit.

Like.

It'S easy for us to sort of think, oh, you know, you don't know what it's like. But they. Being in that environment where you don't know what it's like to be us is probably. Yeah. You know, like they probably don't know how to, you know, tie up their own shoelaces or wash their clothes. It's probably just a completely different fabricated life. Yeah.

So it's a ridiculous idea, really, having a hereditary head of state.

Oh, yeah, it is. Yep.

And that doesn't mean I don't admire. I really did admire the Queen. I thought she was a great lady.

Did you watch the Crown?

Yeah, I do.

Yes.

We're looking forward to the latest episodes just coming up now. I haven't seen that one yet. No, no, but, yeah, look, it's fascinating stuff. It's a great story and it's a great series too, actually. The whole thing is beautifully done. Quite questionable. And what are the details of what.

About other royal families within sort of history that you follow in terms of different countries, Anyone? Or they're the. Well, probably because they're in charge of us. That's the one that we follow a lot.

Well, I'm very interested in Chinese history.

Yes.

And that's fascinating about the dynasties. I mean, I've always felt that the most successful people in history are not those who were great for themselves, but who found the dynasty, like Liu Bang, who founded the Chinese Han Dynasty. This is a guy who was a peasant. So when the first Chinese empire started falling apart in rebellion, he was leading a group of workers to the capital and he was being delayed by floods. And he knew that if he got there, because they had really severe punishments, he would be killed because they were so harsh. And so he decided to rebel. So this peasant launched this rebellion and he becomes the emperor of China. And his descendants ruled China for 400 years. I mean, this is.

And that's a more relatable story for the common man, isn't it? You know, the peasant to the, you know, the top.

I admire the dynastic founders, actually. I think that's a great thing. It's not just a matter of individuals, it's an achievement. It's your family. What comes after you. Your achievement in life is more to do with your kids than to do with yourself.

Yeah, that's one of my questions. Your thoughts on afterlife. Is there an afterlife? Is it just in the, in the dirt?

Well, as a Christian, I need to accept that Jesus certainly thought there was. So, yeah, I'll take his word for it. But I have to say I don't find it particularly attractive. I mean, for heaven.

I'm afraid of death all the time. I think about it all the time and yeah, I do, I do. And I just, I just don't want to die.

Look, in heaven, you're not supposed to be married.

Yeah.

So I mean, what do you. No sex. I mean, no family. What's the life of that? To me, to me, to me, paradise is married to a woman you love, having great kids, having a great life. That's paradise.

Yeah, definitely.

The last 21 years since I met Lee. So there you are. I don't think anything really could compare with that.

Yeah.

As I said, I take that you.

Live in your paradise right now.

That's right.

Don't try and get there wherever, just live in it as we are.

Just wake up and life can be wonderful.

It really can. I'm a really, really happy person and there's a way of doing it. You have a job that you love, you're healthy, you exercise, you control your weight, you have good social relations, you have a sense of purpose in what you're about. This is happiness. That's a healthy, happy life.

And do you really try to control your balance in terms of that? In terms of. Do you have a structured day where. Yes, you exercise, there's work, there's family, there's. Or is it just whatever comes?

It's all mixed up. Yeah, I mean, I don't, I don't work, you know, in the afternoon I can go and have a nap if I want to, but I might be answering emails at 2:30 in the morning.

Yeah, right.

Yeah, I just, just when it happens, I don't, I don't like taking time off to. But, but taking time, like if, like I, I drive my son to school, 13 years old and pick him up in the afternoon most days. Yeah. In school time, that's to me, a very precious time of day.

Oh, it is, absolutely.

Yeah. If I was working 9 to 5 in the office in the city, I couldn't do that. But to me, that time that we spend together and the relationship we have and the fun we have is just priceless.

Never get it back too.

One of the greatest things too, when I talk to franchisees about, especially my 10 year veterans and so forth, what was the difference? You know, the biggest thing they say, some of them say I've made a lot more money. Some of them say I've got my financial situation. That's great. But the most common thing is I say I've seen my kids grow, growing up. Yeah. The one thing they say, and, and there's a wonderful saying. This is no other. No other success can compensate for failure in the home.

Yeah. Yeah.

And I totally believe that making a whole lot of money, becoming famous, becoming rich is worthless. It's meaningless if you're, if your family life is. Has been destroyed.

Yeah.

Yep, yep.

We usually put that there. You know, family always at the top, work other things after that.

But yeah, I love that philosophy. But you can have a blend with. Yeah, absolutely.

Money has a lot less sort of happiness than people think. I'm very interested in the subject of money. For example. You know, one kind of spending has almost no relationship to happiness. It's spending on stuff. Yeah. You're having a better car. Having a dopamine. Exactly. Having a better car, a bigger house. These things are zero relationship to happiness. More happiness is more achieved by spending on experiences. Yeah. Like when I take my kids out to meals, I try and seal my kids regularly, which there's a lot of them. It's a very active social agency.

Do you have a favourite?

Yeah, I love all my.

Well done.

How would you ask me? But that's, but that's, that's better. That's better. The experiences. You know, the best, best way. This is, this is not. This is not preaching, this is scientific research. The best way to spend money is to give it to a cause that you are personally involved in. Like my research, for example. That is the number one thing. Best thing you can do with money is to give it away but be involved in it.

Yeah.

Anonymously.

Yep. And in terms of. Do you do sponsorships and that sort of thing as well, or.

No, I have one charity.

That's your outlet.

Bill Gates. Most admired person in the whole world is Bill Gates. Now, as a businessman, he was great, obviously, but the Gates foundation to me is one of the greatest things ever Been done. This guy has probably saved millions of lives. He's an extraordinary man. He developed all his amazing intelligence, his drive to looking at how can I spend my money in the way that had the biggest impact on the most people. He's extraordinary. And not only he's done himself, he's influenced others like Warren Buffet do the same thing. The billionaires pledge. This is my man of the century, Bill Gates. Now I have the same principle. Basically speaking, I have two ways to spend my give money away. One of them is tithing, because that's Christian obligation. And the other is that my research. And if I've got more money, I'll spend it on research. If my company's ever worth a billion dollars, which it may be one day, it'll be funding that research. That's what it's for.

Fantastic.

And how long has that research been going now?

Well, about 10 years, actually, since. Since we started doing some very small stuff. But it's really ramping up lately. I've got some terrific results lately. We've done methylation studies and all kinds of things. We're getting some fantastic results.

Yeah, yeah, fantastic.

We're trying a whole lot of different.

Approaches with technology moving forward in that as well. Does your research have to keep adapting with that?

Well, yeah, well, the technology is great. Like crispr, for example. This is wonderful, wonderful technology. There's a book by Jennifer Doudna, the one who won the Nobel prize too. It's a great book about CRISPR and how they just had actually discovered it and making use of it. That's a fantastic technology. CRISPR can be used to go in and change individual genes, but more important from our point of view, it can actually target the actual genome. It can turn off methylation, turn off that gene, turn on that gene, change the character any way possible. Now the problem at the moment is that it's not specific enough, it's not guided enough. So you can turn off this gene like that, and this one over here gets turned off, but it has a different effect. So at the moment the technology is there, but within the next decade it will be to the stage we can go in and we can specifically tailor the genome, which means that we could actually turn. Change character any way we wanted. We could have somebody who's a drug addict and they could become an adaptive, productive, happy citizen basically, you know, within a few weeks.

Yeah.

Really?

Yeah. And poverty, all these things could be solved once we understand this. So this is amazing technology that also depends on AI. It's the computer revolution that's made possible.

Yeah. And what about sort of world population and growth and where everything's going like food shortages and that sort of thing?

Well, actually by any objective sense the world's better than it ever has been. If you look at the first two decades of the 21st century when also we had higher life expectancy, less children in poverty, less kids dying of disease and so forth, it's been an amazing period. I think the problem is our civilization is in decline as it is now. But that's easy to reverse if you understand the science.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yep, yep.

But in terms of population. Well, actually the world population is about to, about to plateau and then start dropping because the birth rate is below replacement level in a lot of countries, including Australia.

Yeah, right.

Oh, which to me is a sign of a problem because if you don't have enough, any society that doesn't even want to replace itself, it's got no long term future.

Yeah. And do you think that's a monetary sort of thing where you support it.

Or it's very characteristic of a wealthy urban civilization?

Yes.

And there's reasons which are described in this book because the desire for children has to do in a certain limited sense with, with this factor to do with limited food restriction. Yeah, the, the, the, the zoology is weird actually. But yeah, we have a certain kind of character that's been developed in advanced cultures that is hard working, disciplined, formed large states, all these kinds of things like that. Under the pressure of wealth and urbanization, we are losing it. And part of that we are losing is the desire to have children. People are less interested in children.

Self, absorbed, happy to look after myself.

Yeah, look, it's all psychology. And why have I got 10 children?

I was about to say because I adore children.

I love children. They'll do studies to show that a person with children is less happy than somebody without. Which seems to be on average the case with me, absolutely opposite. I adore kids.

Really.

I really, really enjoy children around. It's been one of the greatest joys of my whole life.

Is that study done by someone that doesn't have kids?

No. Some life scientists, they actually measure levels of happiness and they do find people with kids are a little bit less happy overall.

They're right.

That's why people don't have a lot of kids because they don't really enjoy kids enough. But if you look at someone like Charles Darwin back in the 19th century, he had the same attitude as me. He loved his kids.

Yeah.

And people at those days saw home as a haven yeah. So it wasn't just the fact that they didn't know about contraception. They really enjoyed their children. Yeah. And that's what we're losing. People don't want to have kids enough to replace themselves. We've got no future.

Yeah, yeah. Oh, absolutely. It's pretty simple math, isn't it? So.

Well, look at the birthday busy boys.

Yeah.

How many kids have you guys got?

I've got three.

One. One, Three.

Yeah.

Well, you're not doing too bad.

I'm under pressure to have a fourth.

But just.

Yeah, do it.

I will.

Jenny heard that here first, I reckon. Do it. It's fantastic. It's so much fun having kids.

I love being with the boys, I really do. I enjoy their development. I am. It's harder in some respects. But you do enjoy your life a little bit more. It's certainly more fulfilled.

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

You definitely appreciate your partner, don't you?

But even when they grow up, they're still a big asset. I love seeing my kids. I like visiting them. I have wonderful. Just my children, their partners and so forth. I get on so well with them.

And they're how many grandkids?

32. My children are very bad breeders. I didn't have my first kid till I was 30, 32 or something like that. So I was a bit late to get started.

It's a bit of practice.

What's life about? I mean, I get to the end of my life. Well, I had a lot of fun, I had a lot of alcohol, I had a lot of enjoyment. What does that mean?

Yeah.

You're lying in your bed, you're thinking, what have I achieved? Well, I've enjoyed myself. I had a lot of nice meals. I mean, big deal, come on. Yeah. But I've produced something worthwhile, I've done something, I've produced a business, I've produced something to do with scientific research and my kids. Your kids are part of your achievement, kind of your purpose in life.

Yeah, that's my sort of life goal is and motto is to and from my parents to me to the next generation, is to leave your offspring in a better position than you found yourself, you know. So Mum and Dad come from? Not much, but I was given a little bit. But then you hope that the next one's given a little bit more.

And what makes you want to give his character? See, the interesting thing about my kids, especially when the younger ones are growing up, we're actually quite wealthy. You know, we've got a multimillion dollar annual income, but we don't live like that. We never have. They actually theoretically know that we're rich, but they see the mansions and the expensive cars and overseas trips and stuff and there's nothing like our lifestyle. Dad drives his beat up old car which never gets washed and stuff. It's just. They haven't been brought up in privilege. But they're great kids. They've got their discipline, they're good with money, they control. They're all good savers. They don't. That's. That's more important. Wealth is destructive. See one benefit. You guys, you're both from Warrnambool, is that right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a positive thing too.

Yeah.

Because the more you're away from the big city, the less this corrupting influence is.

It.

It's the wealth, it's the density of population that causes problems.

We don't like being here, but we.

Like being here in this.

Pretty rude about that margin as our guest. We do appreciate it.

Thank you very much for giving us.

A country town's good actually from a social point of view, I'd rather live in a country town. From the point of view of business, it's not so convenient.

Well, it's interesting. We spoke about this on the way up and we sort of. We drove into Melbourne and we. If we were real estate agents in Melbourne, we would have to work in a completely different method than we do because we rely on, you know, the good name and referral and friends and family and doing a good job and it gets around. Whereas I just don't know if that would work up here. It'd be a bit more cutthroat. But that's us not knowing. But we love where we live and we've all sort of lived away and come back.

Reputation is the core of any decent business, I think, in the city or in the country. But I do think a more rural lifestyle is healthier. It's more community based. It's more. It's more personal.

You'll need a little farm down there then maybe.

Oh, my farm's down. I go there quite often. I'm heading up there this afternoon actually, so it's a half hour drive. That's, that's. Yeah, that's great.

That's enough. Half an hour. Everywhere in Melbourne, though, it's only five minutes. Everywhere in Warrnambool.

I went to visit my son lives in Deer park and that was like an hour and hour and 20 minutes to get there. That's like, like. Oh, that's so far.

And especially if you don't sort of go many places.

No, you probably.

Probably hate being in the car, do I don't mind.

I've got talking books. I listen on all the time. I never waste the time. There's wonderful, wonderful books around. I read so many great books all the time, so it's never wasted.

How long did this one take to write?

Well, that one's a sort of update of an early one, but, you know, it took. Which is also in turn updated my PhD thesis, which is updated my honours thesis. So it kind of gradually got written over the years. I don't know, probably a couple of years on and off.

Yep. And a bit of help there, obviously.

I've got one son who's actually invested in this, who believes in it.

Yeah.

And he'll be shortly starting a PhD in neuroscience. So it's great.

Yeah, beautiful. What about. I had a question earlier. The longest serving Jim's employee.

Employee, Yeah. I think Stuart be about the lowest, wouldn't he? He was our first ever IT guy. He must have been around about, what, 25 years?

Yeah, right.

It's amazing, isn't it?

It's good, isn't it?

Quarter of a century.

Absolutely it is good. Look, I take pride in it, actually, as you should. I've had problems at the senior level. I've had very difficulty finding good people at that level until quite recently with Rocky and Joel and Cynthia. But we do tend to have very low attrition. Yeah, but that's very important too, to me. I find the idea that the business is only run for the sake of the shareholders, or in this case only one, is obscene. A business has responsibilities to everybody, but most of all to their staff. In my case, which obviously includes franchisees, but also the community itself, the owner is just one of those. I spend a lot of my time actually trying to work out whether people are happy. Now it's franchisees, but I wander around most offices pretty well every day, just chat to people. How are you getting on? What's going? You've been looked after even in the conference centre, how you're finding things, Are people treating you well? This kind of stuff always want to know. And then we do things like staff lunches, for example, and then the sporting complex, which is partly for the conference centre, but also for the staff too. I want my staff to be healthy and then we provide fresh fruit, so we try and keep the chocolate somewhere and we encourage them to keep fit and so forth. I think that's just so important and to me, success of any business, one of the best indications is the longevity of the staff. The staff stay with you.

Yes, certainly.

And that's one of the mind blowing things of being here today is how it all operates over there and it's all open plan and everyone's in there together. And your office and I love that transparency and empowering your staff to, you know, you're not up in the, you know, the glass tower up there and locked away. You're down here with very accessible bit like our office. We're about this far apart from each other.

But I see in full arrangements are great. That's one thing we missed during COVID I used to come down, I love to come down in the evening, usually about 5:30. I chat with Joel and Rocky and just about everything. We come up with ideas and sometimes this conversation is just about nothing to do with business. But definitely it just relates that way.

But that's where those ideas probably are born. You know, it's not a think tank where you're stuck in a room and you have to think. Creativity comes from all types of business.

Is really, really fun. It's more fun than you could possibly imagine. People ask me how many hours a week I work and I say, well, I'm not quite sure really because it's so spread out. But I said if by work you mean something that you do for money rather than for sheer fun of it. I stopped working probably 20 years ago.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yep. It's just a lifestyle now. And, and I love the part that you're empowering all of your workers, you know, and the way that that's it up is that if, if they go better, you go better. But it's not, they're not captives, if you know what I mean.

The thing that's very characteristic I find is that is that people are very engaged, they believe in what they're doing. I think it's having a sense of purpose is important. We know we serve our franchisees more than anything. There's nearly 5,000 families out there dependent on us. What we do makes a huge difference to them. And I think people feel that sense of mission. It's not just about making Jim rich because they know anyway the money I've got goes there. Yep, yep.

And that transparency is fantastic. And no one else is going to say that similar thing to yourself.

And people often ask me, you know, if I'm proud of having so many franchisees. And I said there's one thing really that makes me the most proud is when I see French, my people living up to the values that I have. We had a guy, for example, he came from the UK to go to a national conference and he'd been involved in franchising for two decades and had contact with dozens of different franchise systems. And he said, what I saw with your people is different from anything I've ever seen before. And it's this attitude that we care about franchisees, that we serve them, and.

You want them to buy in and they obviously have that ownership and they. They want to be there and. And, you know, especially over that last couple of years where every industry is really struggling for workers, whereas your attrition rate is still there, you know, you're still growing.

Yeah, well, we still lose too many.

Yeah.

We are endlessly thinking the ways to try and reduce attrition. What extra can we do? What recognition, what rewards, what certificates, what bonuses? Like everything we could possibly think of is a constant, constant topic. How do you make people want to be part of this community and stay with us? Because the trouble is a lot of them, when we lose them, it's not so much that they. Some of them do fail, some of them get offered another job, but some of them actually go independent, which is possible. It only costs a few thousand dollars and they can go. Now, we want to give them the reason to stay. Now, most people actually do stay with us. They don't go independent, but we want to give them more reason not to want to leave.

And do you get many that come back from being independent, back under the umbrella, or is that sort of.

Yeah, yeah, we do, we do. Actually, one of the things we do is we ring people who've left and sort of invite them back. We had one guy, went to one of our competitors, I won't say who, and then after a few months, he very sheepishly get like, can we come back? Because he dropped from about $7,000 a week down to $1,500 a week because he wasn't getting any work. There was no support. So it was very embarrassing. But, you know, we love Jared. I'm not going to say his surname.

That's okay. We get in the way.

But it was a big boost. We were all really, really wrapped at that. We walk in and we'd open our eyes, come back, orders forgiven.

But that must be pretty galvanising for yourself, too, to know that, you know, people do want to come back. And it's a good workplace.

It is, too. I think when people leave, often it's a funny thing, people can leave, and even if it doesn't work out, for them. Them are going to recommend people to come to us.

Yeah, yeah.

Because they know that, you know, we have some negative people out there, but a very small minority.

Yeah. Have you got any questions for us, Jim? Anything you could think of, probably.

And stuff? I think you guys are going pretty well.

No, we appreciate it, Jim. Thank you for giving us your time.

Now.

You're a busy man. And thanks, Joel as well for getting us down here and.

Yeah. And the whole crew. Dylan. Dylan hasn't actually. Dylan's been very excited by these cameras that are around here. Just. Just watch these fellas. They. He might. I was gonna say, you got one really big political person on here and I'm on the way down. I was saying you should ask him about. Because there's a lot of misconceptions about the lockdown period. Devastating. Batson.

Because no, Jim can talk about the lockdown.

Yeah, but how it's been good for us. Yeah, well, there's been a lot of sort of airplay. Yeah, yeah. The villains. Oh, yes, the villain. Is that where you tried to lure me? I know which villain you're meaning, but anyway, it's pretty well known that you've helping with a bit of a class action against the Victorian government. And how's that all playing out at the moment?

Well, at the moment we actually. What? We don't.

Are you winning? Are you?

Well, what we're trying to do is to actually get them to admit that there was a stupid thing to do.

Yep.

Because you know, you know what happened. Basically, they send out the guidelines that specifically said from Health and Human Services that individual solar operators can continue to work, which is pretty sensible. How can you infect anybody if you're mowing the lawns, you're not talking to anybody. And then the Premier comes up at a news conference on like the following week and says, you can't give your lawns mowed and your house is clean now. He wasn't thinking about the contractors, he was thinking about his affluent inner suburban supporters. People who like him couldn't give a stuff about 100,000 plus Victorians thrown out of work for no reason. And I took exception to that and I got into a lot of trouble. Two of my daughters wouldn't even speak to me for some months after because they were so angry because I wasn't supporting the beloved Premier. Interesting enough, they both come to a different viewpoint with time. So I took what was quite an unpopular stance and I kept on pushing it and I pushed it and I pushed it and we actually got overwhelming community Support. And the biggest thing I'm after, though, is that anything that happens again, and this won't be the last lockdown, we want to know that they won't do it again, that they'll look at sensible, scientific responses. Now, what we've done is taken a test case against the Victorian government because their own law, passed by Andrews themselves, says that you cannot deprive a person of their livelihood without proper reason. So now we've gone and said, okay, 100,000 plus Victorians lost their livelihood for two months. What was your reason? You know what the response is. We have to tell you the reason. So in other words, the law says you have to have a reason, but the government doesn't have to give you a reason.

Yes.

Just trust us, because we are. Now, we went to vcat, basically, the government refused to give the emails, refused to give the evidence on which that decision was made. We're now appealing to the Supreme Court.

Yeah.

And they promised a response to that, which is obviously was delayed by the election. Yep.

And when you dumb it right, it relates to everyone. If you dumb it right there and you say that the council worker's allowed to mow the grass but the private person can't. Well, there's no difference.

Even the council workers said that was stupid. I had them come in to contact me and said, we support you fully. It idiotic. We don't agree with it. We've got overwhelming support from the community and that's the main reason why we did it, just to hold people accountable. Because as far as they were concerned, as far as Andrews was concerned, ordinary people had no say. Ordinary workers were just garbage. They're not going to vote for me anyway, so I don't care about that.

Well, that's what you're saying before, and I nearly brought it up in leadership. I know we have to sort of wrap things up quite shortly, but we'll talk about humility with leaders, leadership and the like. Well, as a leader, what are your thoughts on Andrews?

Well, that's the point. He was. Look, give the guy credit. He's a brilliant political operative. Correct. He's just won election again. Which, considering how he's acted, the stuff up of quarantine, this unnecessary lockdown is amazing. Now, he's clever as a politician, he's very clever. One of the things that he's obviously got is you don't admit fault, you never back down. And he's good at it. He does massive amounts of polling, he spends huge amounts of taxpayers money to understand how Victorians think. He's very good at staying in power. He's a lousy, pathetic leader.

Well, there's no vulnerability there with him, is there?

When you compare the great leaders that we've had in Australia, people like Hawke and Keating and Howard, brilliant leaders who had courage, who did important, disciplined things to change society for the better. And you compare someone like Andrews, who was just a political hack, good at staying in power, good at nothing else.

And as we were sort of saying earlier, that those leaders in the past, they're obviously good at, you know, admiring, getting people to admire them, the certain people to get what they want. And whether they're the villains or the, you know, the great kings or whatever, there's certain skills there that allow them to get the right people around them.

Well, Hawke's a classic example. I just read his biography too, which is. Amazingly unpleasant man in private life, but a great, great leader for this country. What he did was he was a very relatable guy. He's the kind of guy you won't have a beer with in a pub. Not while I drink beer, of course. But anyway, he's that kind of guy everybody likes.

What about Plug for Jim's Beer?

Lawn lager?

We got to get on the Bachelor of this because my kids are crazy about it. They want more. But that was great stuff. But the interesting thing about the whole situation was that I took what was originally a very unpopular, very problematic stance, but it actually turned out to be very good for the company because it raised our profile in a way. And a lot of people actually bought franchises because they saw me sticking up for franchisees. Not only that, but people in the industry. I get people like independent contractors who come up to me and want to shake my hand and congratulate me and thank me for what I did, because I actually represented them, not just my own franchisees.

Yeah, I find it so interesting, and in years to come it'll be interesting what comes out. But to look back as a bit of a social experiment and look how it affected certain people and certain people, it just like politics and religion, it split everyone. You had people that were just dead for it, the lockdowns and that, and people dead against it. And a lot of those people, I thought would be the other way around. And it's obviously just something in someone's personality that they've headed that way.

I refuse to take an extreme view, too. I think strife is too polarised. See, when it comes to reasonable things. I didn't like not being able to go to church. Yes, I really Found that I missed it, but I didn't object to it. I thought it was sensible. I very strongly supported vaccination. We run Jim's jabs campaigns, all kinds of things, and we gave stuff away. We did everything possible to get people to vaccinate. So sensible precautions. Yes. Absolutely. Stupid, senseless, harmful ones. No, I refuse to be totally. I won't say I'm pro Labour or pro Liberal. I'm pretty much in the middle, actually.

Yeah, yeah.

But. But I. But I like good policies.

Yes. That help the most people, things that make sense.

And I don't like the division in society that's taking place where you have to be one. People actually get onto me. They say, well, you're supposed to be on the Conservative side, but you favour taxing carbon and stuff like that. You can't do that because that's inconsistent. I blow that for a. Like, I believe what I believe.

Well, everyone's allowed to have an opinion, aren't they?

And we shouldn't be plotted into certain areas. I subscribe to four different publications. Two would be Left of Centre, one would be right of Centre, which is the. The Australian. And while I economist, I have no idea what they actually. How you actually prescribe them. So to me you've got to get ideas from all over, different points of view. Think about it. Read different books from different points of view and just come to your own conclusion, which are totally your own.

Yeah, you're right. Rather than being.

But that's what we saw during the lockdowns was the unbalance at the Victorian Parliament because the upper house and lower house, they could just push everything through. So having that balance with politics all around, that. That's so important, the yin yang.

Yeah. Becoming more marginal.

Well, no, no, it's. It's having a balance because it was out of balance. And you could push through these extreme, we'll say, laws or policies that were having an impact on the broader community without being checked.

Yeah. And that.

That was probably the issue overall.

So I'll tell you what, I've never so much appreciated the free press as what happened.

Yeah.

You had basically an elected dictatorship in Victoria. Not accountable. Couldn't give a stuff about so much of the population. The press held Andrews to account, particularly the Murdoch press, obviously, people like Sky News and so forth.

Kevin Rudd's friend.

Yeah.

Jeez.

He hates.

He hates Rupert Murdoch. Kevin Rudd.

A lot of people do. Yeah. Yeah. But it's good to have a balance, though.

Oh, that's right.

You've got your left wing press, like the Fairfax Press, I don't know what they're called now and the abc. They're the lefties and the Greenies and stuff and you've got Murdoch who gives more of the right. He's got the medals definitely.

And I think that's something that really sort of came up and was highlighted is that different media outlets probably suit different people's ideas and that they're not all the same. You know there's different agendas getting pushed in different ways and. But as long as everyone understands that and you can take an objective view of it all and you know, and.

Take it the most offensive is that the thing that we all pay for. The ABC has no interest in giving a wide range of opinions. They decided we're in the extreme woke Greeny side. That's our thing and you can pay for a billion dollars a year for us to push that barrow. That's wrong. There's nothing wrong with having a whole media outlet for the Greenies. But they should pay for it. They'll ask us to pay for it.

Yeah, yeah. We're the same. And I'm a person that tries to stay in the middle and see both. It's like life. You have to be able to see both opinions and if you choose one way or the other, well at least you're educated correctly rather than just barreling down one road and exactly what you said.

Yeah. I think Albanese is doing a decent enough job. I'm not unhappy about him at all in terms of what they've had. So to me it's just what is that individual person doing? What policies are they pushing forward? What vision do they have? And sometimes you'll get the best leadership from different sides of politics.

Would you ever run for Prime Minister?

No. We could have started the campaign. Think somebody with a mouth like mine. I say what I think.

Unfortunately not because we need more people of your real that are happy to stand for something.

It's a very hard thing politics though because you do. It's the gaff thing. You say one thing out of context or in. In a result and. And it's completely blasted and you're crippled and crucified from then on.

That's what's wrong with politics in this country because it's a career job but you push all the good people away. They. They flourish in another.

No, you're absolutely right. We don't have the caliber of politicians that we need because it's such an important job but it's not very well paid if you look at it by Comparison what you can make in industry. Someone like. What's it called? The Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, you know, he was a real rich guy. He didn't need to be a hobby. It's a hobby, politics. And I think. I don't think he was too bad, actually.

And we see that in local government in Warrnambool, where, you know, people are so busy trying to make ends meet anyway, that. And we know that like, even committees and. And things like that that you're involved in, it takes so much of your time. So. A lot of those.

Yeah.

As you said, the quality character, just look at it and go, oh, I can't bother.

And then you get. Then you get the public approach, people criticizing you and watching all the time. It's a pretty thankless profession.

Way to be a tough job. Yeah.

I would not favor. I said that to my mp, who was the speaker. I said I wouldn't change my job for yours. Tony Smith.

What would you do, though, if you weren't doing what you're doing?

What would you do if I wasn't in business? Yeah, I mean, you can't imagine. Something to do with science, I guess. Yeah.

Yep, yep.

Look, politics has a certain appeal. I could be sort of like an independent senator or something like that.

Yeah.

Then you could speak out about issues that matter.

Farmer.

I think one of the best things you said was just being reasonable about like, you know, like you were saying about going to church and things like that. Fair enough. If the virus is spreading, don't do that. But like, I just think just to be more reasonable and more, it comes.

Down to what point, what onus is on the individual as well. If you're elderly and frail and you're poor health, well, maybe you should stay at home, but not everyone should stay at home because you don't have the self control to pick and choose where you're going and not going.

And probably because it was unprecedented and we hadn't seen that before, if it happens again, we hopefully do it better. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And that's all you want to give.

The government due credit. You know, shutting down Australia as quickly as we did was a brilliant decision. It really was. That was the Federal Government and you've got to give it to them. They did the right thing and they were criticised a lot for it at the time. They were really blasty. Forget all that. But they did the right thing. They cut us down. They tried to put quarantine in places like. They gave us time. And then by the time that the Omicron and stuff got in. We had vaccines, which was an extraordinary achievement. Yeah, that was absolutely unprecedented. Producing. You know, there was this book, anti Vaxxers, it's called Vaxxers, which actually described the process. This is for AstraZeneca in Oxford. How that was done. It was like they had a vaccine, a working vaccine within a few weeks of getting the. The DNA.

Did they already have it ready?

Most of the time was just in doing tests and stuff like that. It was an amazing achievement.

Yeah, that's the thing, that turnaround, it's just incredible.

Even the vaccine rollout, nothing like in the past. It took years or decades to do vaccines in the past. They did it in weeks.

And I'm a political novice, I'll say that. And you try and talk to me about it in the office and I just sort of turn around and sell another. But.

Well, you need to, you need to get. You need to take notice of it.

But this is what I'm about to say. I. I didn't realise and I probably should know this, but the Federal Government not having much control over Victoria like that, that sort of blew my mind that the Prime Minister wasn't. It can't really affect any change within Victoria. Like he could want whatever he wants.

Suits the emperor down here.

So that's. But in a sense though, there is a benefit to that too because different states had different kinds of policies. So for example, you look at New South Wales, which had a more sensible approach, and Victoria, which had a really ridiculously strict approach and caused a lot of suffering and real damage. The actual mortality is the same. It made no difference. So next time they look at it and they say, well, let's try the New South Wales model instead.

Do you think he's got the humility to try the New South Wales model next time?

I don't think. I think if we got it again, I don't think they do the same thing. I think they've learned. I think the actual politics became so toxic now, even though they managed to get elected and they couldn't Stones. I do not know how well they.

Got the people in the right places.

Preferences, Preferences. So it was 35, 36 on the two party preferred. So Liberal would have lost anyway. But it was like the federal election. Liberals won that on the two party preferred and then the preferences got it over the line.

I think it's a pity the Liberals couldn't get in things like carbon taxes and stuff. Adopt some of those causes more strongly. I know they're held back by coalition, but really I Mean, the way we handle carbon taxes is greenhouse gases is really stupid. What we're doing is we're subsidizing things like solar panels, which is bad from two points of view. First of all, because it pushes up the price of electricity for everybody else, including people who can't afford solar panels. So it's, it's regressive. It actually helps people who are better off, like me, because we've got solar panels everywhere and it hurts the people who can't afford solar panels, like living in rental houses. So it's progressive, it takes from the poor and gives to the rich. And the other thing is, it's extremely inefficient because a carbon tax, a really heavy carbon tax, would actually, and especially if you get it on a per capita basis, would be a far more efficient way of reducing emissions, because then you could do anything. You could have solar panels, you could insulate your house, you could buy a coat and turn the power down. You could do all kinds of things.

Give them choice.

Give them a choice. Any economist will tell you that it's more efficient to use the market. So the systems we use now are stupid. They really are dumb. You want to control global warming, do it properly and do it in a way that's fair to people, especially those who are worse off.

And speaking of, how do you feel about the capping of the energy prices, which is just coming up?

It can't work.

What a good idea. They've tried this. You interfere with the market, you muck it around.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Like they're going to get it somewhere else. It's.

It's.

If they're capping the market in Australia so more gets shipped offshore. Yeah, to pick up the shortfall.

That's how I see it.

Then you've got a shortage.

Well, there should be a way of compensating the people who need it, which is basically, people like myself don't require energy prices to be capped. That's ridiculous.

Yes.

Nor, I'm sure, to any of you. But there are people who are vulnerable out there who are living on fixed incomes who really need a bit of help. So why not distribute the money back on a per capita basis or get to those who need it rather than everybody? The trouble with all these subsidies and things, they help the people who use the most energy, which is the people who are best off?

Rob and Peter.

We have too much in our society. There's too much gap between the rich and the poor and too many government policies say, how much money can we take from the poor and give to the rich. It's the wrong idea. Like things like taxes, for example. Okay. One of the things I'm very keen on is land taxes. We should move lots and lots and lots of our taxes onto land. Really hefty land tax, unimproved land value. What that does is people who living in a $5 million house pay a lot of tax, but they can afford to otherwise why somebody who's living in a basic house, they don't have to pay it. And the great thing about that too is it actually pushes the property into the hands of those who use it best. If somebody's got a huge body of land, their land tax goes up, they say, well, I'm going to sell that or I'll subdivide, do something. And then you get 10 other families able to live in the same area.

Just make it productive.

So you actually push. You bring property prices down, which are ridiculously high, and you let people live close to where they want to work and live at the same time, you're raising revenue in a fair way. There's so many great ways that we could actually have a few fairer and better society and also be more efficient. Yeah.

And you've seen that as a history man over the. Is that escalating, that getting worse?

Yeah, it's very. Look, we had a great moderation up to about 1960 or thereabouts. The. The gap between rich and pool was actually getting less.

You're right. Yep.

There was a moderation. There was a whole lot of more community, more togetherness. And it's quite interesting, back in the day, in 1900, there was very unequal.

Yes.

By about 1960, 1970, we became much more equal society. And since then the Gini coefficient has.

And what was that?

I think it's a move to do with biohistory. I described it in the book. It's to do with the change in the population, changes in society, changes in economics, politics, everything. Ideas all relate to character.

Yeah. Yep.

And there's a change in character and it's really a bad one. We'd be a lot better off with the society. More like some Scandinavia, I reckon, where you had heavier taxes, but more done for those who need it. In that sense, it's funny thing, I was listening to reading about Anthony Albany, some of his ideas when he was back in his socialist days, and I thought that sounds pretty good.

Yeah, it's interesting.

But do it in a way that doesn't empower the government to take over too much because that makes Everybody poor. But you can have systems of distribution which actually are efficient and effective, like carbon taxes and, and land taxes, which actually help ordinary people and don't distort.

Well, and it's giving people that reward for getting out and working too, which they should. And we have that conversation all the time. Like if you're rewarding people that are not doing much, why go out and, you know, and bust your gut to.

Well, taxes on income are a problem too. They're too high.

Yeah.

They're a disincentive. There are disincentive people to get off the dole and go and get a job. So we need to reduce those. That's why I said land tax, carbon tax. Those kinds of taxes are actually positive. Another good tax is a. What do you call it? Tax on congestion tax.

Yes.

Where you tax people who are driving into the city, especially in peak periods, which actually has the benefit of raising income, but also it reduces congestion, reduces pollution and so forth. There's a lot of ideas that you could do which have actually very efficient, cost effective, good for the society, good for growth, which actually tends to reduce the gap between rich and poor.

Yeah. And that can be something that could change that gap back towards where it should be.

I'd like to think it'll happen, but I don't think so because the character is changing.

Yeah. How do you change character? Is it diet? Is it, you know, you could.

Politics in practice. No, no, not politics, not diet, not economics by science. That's what I'm talking about. If you understood the nature of what happened in mid century, in that 1960s had a certain kind of character which was very congenial to those kinds of thinking. Like for them, they had very, very high marginal tax rates as an example. And there was a lot of policies at that time, strong unions which tended to push out wages and so forth. A lot of policies that did that. But it was based on the character of the Australian people or people in other parts of the world. You can't change that unless you change character. That's what we're working on with this research project.

Yeah. And a bit like the Jim's Group, people are buying in, you know, is that like the 1960s and people are buying into society and they're, they're happy and they're not worried if they're being taxed a little bit more. But if everyone's happy, everyone's making money being self employed.

You've got so many tax advantages.

Yes, yes.

Even if, even if they pay honest tax, which we always encourage them to do, but we know a lot of them have a lot of cash.