Jim's favourite episode of #ASKJIM ever!

So welcome everyone to another AskJim. So during training week, for people who don't know watching, we do a live with our live prospects in training, we do a live podcast recording which goes to YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, all that sort of stuff. And we've got a lot of people in with a lot of questions. So let's get started. Now the mic's open to anyone. If you want to come up and ask Jim a question right now, please do. But I'll go through these ones as well. So we've got. Is it Josiah from it? Is Josiah still here? We'll start with his question so you guys can see how it works. So Josiah's asked how has your faith influenced your business or the way you do business?

It's a very big influence. The idea behind Jim's franchise is the servant leadership model, which is exemplified by John's gospel, the story about Jesus washing his disciples feet. That's how we see it. So we see the role of the business is to the leaders in the business. Franchisors. National franchisor is to serve franchisees. It inverts the power structure. Jesus was a revolutionary. He was somebody who spoke for the poor. And I think a lot of franchising today and government regulations actually unfairly help the powerful and wealthy against ordinary people. And we want to reverse that in Jim's.

Did anyone see Jim on Channel nine News last week at all? Jim was on nine News last week about this, weren't you?

Yeah.

You saw it? Yeah.

There are some appalling things to go on in franchising. Franchisors act in shocking ways. They make people buy stuff that's double the price of what you can get from Coles. They make arbitrary changes. They let a person finish their build a business for 10 years and they take it back off them. There's just awful things go on which shouldn't be allowed to happen. And the government does stuff all to protect anybody. It infuriates me, but we are not like that in this company.

So guys, you've got a question, please come up to the mic. You don't have to wait for me to read them out, just jump up anytime. The next one I've got here is from Bernadette and Wade from Dogwash. Are they here? Are they gone? Bernadette? No, I'll read it out for her. If you're a new franchisee today, Jim, which division would you choose and why?

I do mowing because I like lawn mowing. I like being outside actually. I spend quite a Few hours at the weekend. Gardening, clearing back press. I've got blisters and callous all over my hands from clearing blackberries on the big paddock. That's what I love doing. Love being outside. And that's really the lesson. There's no one division. That's great. It's what's best for you. If you love cars, car cleaning. If you love animals, dog wash. If you love electronics, then things like test and tag and antennas. But I'm a gardening guy.

Come up and go for it. Ross. Ross Kirby from mowing in Western Australia. Thanks, Jim. For the week. It's been really, really great so far. A lot of fantast. Got two questions, if that's okay. Won't get in too much trouble. Interesting ones. If you can invite three people to dinner, living or otherwise, who would they be and why?

And.

Sorry, do you want me to say a second? We'll go for the first.

That's a good question. I'd go Bill Gates, Elon Musk and Dyson. Okay. Because there are billionaires. If I can get any of them interested in biohistory. Poor weird mate. And when they listen to me, I don't know. But if I could get to speak to them, I'd try. Yeah.

Fantastic.

And I admire them all very greatly, actually.

Is there a word or a phrase that people commonly misuse that irritates you a bit? For example, when people ask me to be more Pacific, I just think of an ocean. Is there any of that going on?

I think it most annoys me when people say that I favor eugenics. Eugenics is breeding people for the supposedly beauty. What I believe in is epigenetics, which is ways of helping individuals, which is all in this thing here, this book. Helping individuals to change and develop their own character. So it does annoy me when people use that kind of. They don't understand science. Epigenetics is the way that the genes are turned on or off, which has dramatic effects on health, character, lots of things. Yeah.

Fantastic. Thanks for getting us off. And that's a good man is the first question. Yeah, yeah. Fernando. Guys, anyone who asks a question gets a pick up the prize at the end. So just please feel free to come up, don't wait, ask anything as well. Angela, you're jumping over. Good stuff. I had your question in the guy next as well, but that's all right. That's good.

Good on you.

Thank you. Hello.

Angela Gallo, Jim's Bookkeeping, Sylvania.

So I heard you're a good big Star wars fan.

So I was wondering which one was.

Your favorite movie and what you think of the Mandalorian.

Okay, well, big Star wars fan Mike DeJuration. I like the Regional 2, and I like the prequels. Okay. I like the ones. I like the story about how Anakin turns. I love. I'm very like villains. I love. I love how Palpatine becomes the Galactic Emperor and all the intrigue. And I love the. The turning Anakin Skywalker to the bad side of the Force. I think that's an interesting story and I enjoy it. I can't watch the Mandalorian. I don't like the recent stuff at all. Okay. After those first five films, I think it's just lost it. I've tried other ones. I'm not. I'm not keen. Sorry. What's your favorite? Yeah, the second one was the one.

That I saw first when I was growing up, so.

And the prequels, just because I love.

The actors that were in it. And I love that whole, like you said, how it was the story from before it all began.

I think George Lucas had a way that nobody else had, that you can reproduce the costumes and the ideas, but he just had a storytelling knack, which is nobody's really got my mind.

And the scenes are just, like, comic.

So I tend to see them all because it's Star wars, for heaven's sake, but never as good. Thank you.

You had another one, Angela, about retention rate. About the highest retention rate.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

So the other one here. Yeah. So, Jim, the other one Angela had was what division has the highest franchisee retention rate?

I think Test and Tag, actually. Test and Tag tends to have remarkably low attrition rate. Never quite sure why it's a great division. I mean, they're all great divisions, but Test and Tag seems to be peculiarly good at that sort of thing. Got a very strong culture. Great, thank you.

And Angela did the online training and come back as a Dundee in person.

So. Wow. Good on you. Good to have you back.

Thank you. Thanks.

Angela, what's the contrast, Angela? How do you feel the difference online versus in person? Oh, online was great because it was.

The experience and getting to know my franchisor and everyone else in a closed environment.

But nothing beats coming here and seeing everyone in person.

And it's amazing, even for franchisees to.

Do it as a refresher every couple of years.

That's actually.

I wish they would, actually. We'd love to. It's a big effort, but people come back here and catch the vibe and the fueling and the excitement again. Yeah, it's amazing.

Good stuff, Angela. Cool. Now if he wants to come up, please just jump up like Angela did then as well. Next one we've got here is Georgia from cleaning. Is Georgia from cleaning around? No, she might have gone. Basically the question is how do you keep yourself running too well? Or how do you. How do you keep yourself running well, Jim, I presume.

Yeah.

Well, could have made him physically, financially, I don't know. It could have made a few things health wise.

Exercise, I get up in the morning. I do weightlifting. I'd run half an hour in the treadmill. I also do a lot of gardening. I walk a lot. I spend several hours the weekend on my farm. Basically try and eat well, don't eat breakfast to practice. 16, 8 fasting. Those are really big things. But a lot of it's just happiness. I've got a great job. I've got a job that I really love. It's a job that has impact on the world, has a sense of meaning that I really, really enjoy. I don't commute, I actually live next door. So I walk to work. I've got a happy marriage, I love my kids. I've got a great life. I love my church and that sense of community and a sense of purpose that comes out of that. So psychological, mental, it's a big subject actually. I read a lot of books on that sort of thing.

Good question. Next one here is from Bill. Where's Bill from cleaning? Is Bill here? So, Bill Cosmopoulos. I'll read it out. What do you see as the biggest threat to the Gyms group in the next five years? Good question. Bill should be here. You probably get a prize.

Wow, that is a good question. It's very hard to think, actually. I mean, I think if we lose our sense of purpose and direction, there's an ongoing thrust in terms of wanting to do better all the time. If we ever got to the stage where we let that go, we start to drift and become more ordinary, start to make compromises. I think I'd be very concerned if June's became a public company because they tend to be soulless, they tend to suck the morals out of anything. They're chasing the next quarter's earnings. I think if anything happened to me, I'd be concerned about what happened. I'm trying to set up a succession plan based on my children. I'm actually seriously considering putting a clause in all of our franchise contracts. We've been discussing it over the past week. That actually means that the Jim's group cannot be sold without written approval from the majority of franchisees. Because I am concerned if I'm not around now, I'm going to be probably after another 20 years. My health is very, very good, but after I'm gone, I'm concerned about that happening. So. Good question.

Well, Bill just chimed in online and said, apologies, I had to go pick up my son. So you've forgiven Bill, that's fine.

Bill, very good question.

Very good question. Aftermarket date.

I haven't been asked that one before, but I think it's a great.

It is a great one. Everyone wants to come online. Just jump up to the mic, guys and please do so. I've got one from Glenn from pest control. Is Glenny from pest control? Yep. This is a good question, Glenn. I don't know if Jim will know the answer to this one. Mike's over there.

Yep. Hi, Jim, I'm Glenn. Hey, Glenn. We've met. We have, several times.

What's been the nastiest complaint you've had.

From the pest control franchises? I don't remember anything that's particularly nasty.

Sometimes miss termites once or something. Pest inspection can be.

Yes, you're probably right, actually. If you examine a house and you miss termites and somebody buys the house and they find out that there's termite infestation, that can be hugely, hugely costly. You know, we did one place over $100,000 to fix it up. It was awful. So, yeah, that'd be the worst damage. We don't get a lot of complaints from pest inspection, but very rare, Very rare. But that's the worst. Yes. Okay, wonderful.

I've got one more story.

Go ahead. What's been your favourite book to read? Reluctant to say this one, but.

There'S.

So many great books. There's so many. I read probably a couple of books a week or listen to I Love Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond. It's a beautifully written book, but it's really thought provoking as well. I think Atomic Habits is a fantastic book. If you haven't read that, read it. It's about developing character, discipline and good habits. I love Dopamine Nation, which is talking about the nature of addiction and how you can overcome that and so forth. I love. I could just keep on going. There's so many great books and actually it seems to me more of the time I love books like Everybody Lies, which is about things coming out of the Internet, or Freakonomics, Super Freakonomics, about the economics of everyday life. I Exercise is a Recent one I've just read, which is talking about the meaning of exercise and how it works and why we evolved to do it. There's something about the rise of mammals, talking about why mammals survived the end of the dinosaurs. I just discovered something that had puzzled me for years, why the dinosaurs died out and the mammals survived.

But there's one that's influenced you, that's actually made into training, which is the Resilience Project. That book. Resilience project, yeah, by Hu Vane Kylenberg. So the GEM principles and that one's in training now.

7 Habits of Highly Effective People. That's a brilliant book. Stephen Covey is great, and it's about character rather than personality. I think it's a heap better book than how to Win Friends and Influence People, which people often cite. But the Covey is brilliant. I'm a great believer in reading and actually, when I'm traveling, I want to do anything. When I'm gardening, I'm always listening to a talking book. Just finished listening to one about Da Vinci. Da Vinci just talking about what his genius was. And I'm in the process of reading about Einstein. So it's just. I thoroughly recommend books and talking books are fantastic. You've got an immense library in here. There's no wasted time. I drive my son to school and drive him back. I'm listening to talking book. Wonderful. Great question. Thank you.

Audible Books. Yeah, we'll put a. We've got JimPeman.com that is a website. We're going to put a book list. Going to put a book list on there for everyone, because you've got a lot. So we can list them all on there. And people always ask us.

Yeah, I keep on coming out with new books. Expectation effect. Fantastic book. Talking about the way what we expect affects the way we perceive things, even, you know, how we eat and how we feel about exercise and stuff. It's an amazing book.

Now, we just started a new newsletter with you as well, which is not the Jim's franchisee one. It's your own personal one, which has book recommendations and all this sort of stuff in it.

So a lot of wild ideas are offended by some of my things. He asked me to personally take it off the list, which you can do by unsubscribing, wanting to tell me you.

Want to get to know Jim. Yeah, JimPeman.com for that list. It's a good one as well to sign up to. Cool. Where's Nicole from Dogwash? Is Nicole from Dogwash here? I love this question because it'll put a bit more heat into the room. What do you think about Dan Andrews? That one deepest.

What a disaster. I cannot believe that guy got re elected with a thing. Look at just talking about it. First of all, this is a bloke who stuffed up the lockdown to an extreme degree. Melbourne was the most locked down city in the world. He stuffed up quarantine. We had a mortality rate which is higher than any other state by far. It's about 30% more than new South Wales. So this is a guy who did the worst lockdown, the most damaging lockdown and had the worst result. This guy has run up $200 million in debt, which is by far the worst of any state in the country. And it's close to $100,000 for every household in the state. He was such a disaster. So I said this to Sky News and this lady thought it was very funny. Said Jim, tell us what you really think of this guy.

You seem to be the go to comment. There's always a few people. There's you and a few others who get out with this.

Yeah, no, I'm not a huge fan of Chairman Dan.

It's not a bad thing for us because obviously there's a Murdoch media sort of thing right there. Obviously.

Well, the funny thing about the whole thing was that when I first did it, I was very unpopular, got huge flak. When I first objected to the lockdown, my two of my daughters wouldn't speak to me for months. They were telling their mother they should divorce me. That's how badly they felt about it. And then as time went by and people saw how stupid the whole thing was, it shifted and it's actually been good for us. And eventually my daughters do actually speak to me now, but one of them actually said he thought I was right, which is interesting.

Took a while, but. Yeah, we didn't think it was.

It took a couple of years before.

Absolutely.

And was pretty good.

Guys, you want to come up and ask a question, please feel free to interrupt at any time and ask me.

Yeah, come through.

Good man.

Hi, I'm Bikas from Jim's Bookkeeping, Melbourne. Why do you think he really resigned? Dan Andrews? Oh, my goodness. Well, I know he said that he was just tired of it, but I find that very understanding. This is a guy who loves power to an extreme degree. Why would he voluntarily give it up? I don't know. Maybe there was some scandal underneath. Maybe he thought it couldn't last forever. I don't know what the story is, honestly. Who knows what goes on in that mind of his. Talk about villains. I mean, goodness gracious, I like villains. I'm a big fan of villains. I love Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine and Monty Python from Not Monty Burns, he's a hero of mine. And Green Goblin from Spider Man. I love a good villain, but this guy's too evil. He's over the top. Daniel ENGLISH so my next question should be 200 words long, but do you think Homo sapiens as a species have evolved enough to tackle a hypothetical climate disaster? We don't need evolution, we just need technology. We're quite capable of solving it and we should. We should have things like carbon taxes going on. We should be investing in nuclear power. Modular nuclear reactors are the best chance. You cannot possibly use current technology like wind turbines and solar panels. They won't cut it. They're too intermittent. There's not enough storage. And wind turbines have got so many problems with the environment. You have to clear koala habitat and it just can't be done. We can solve this problem and we should solve it. It's important. Having said that, I have to say some of the theory is overblown. That you look at it in the late Cretaceous, for example, that's about 80 million years ago. You had dinosaurs wandering in forests on the South Pole. It was still a very fertile kind of planet. The problem with climate change is not so much that the Earth becomes uninhabitable, it's is that the change is going to be really, really painful. If you imagine what's going to happen when half of Bangladesh is underwater because of the rising sea levels, that kind of problem. So yeah, I think we can, and we should solve it and we can do it with our own genes. But I don't think actually people need to evolve genetically. I think we do need better epigenetics. We need to change character. We need to develop character. It's more enterprising, it's more creative. I think we can do that. And that's the solution to our problems. I think that genetically people have all the abilities we need. We just need to be able to bring them out. Is it possible in modern economics, capitalistic economics with individualistic characteristics? Yes. Well, because what's a better system? Look at communism, it's been disastrous. You look at the mess that Soviet Union got into, you know, heavy pollution, you know, really, really, really bad. And you can't honestly say China's doing any better. They're building coal powered coal plants quicker than anybody. Their emissions are going through the roof so what's the alternative? I think the only countries that have actually shown an ability to come to grips with it are the capitalist ones or more capitalists. Yeah. I don't think socialism is the answer. Socialism doesn't work. It just doesn't produce good societies. Yeah. So I think that's why I asked if we as individuals are smart enough or evolved enough to take this as species wise. I don't think we lack brains. I think we lack character. Intelligence has much less to do with success than you might think. The best estimate is, is your Success is about 4%. 4% to do with your intelligence and 96% to do with character. People worry too much about intelligence. This idea, you're super smart, therefore you can do anything. Intelligence is some of the most damaging people in the world are quite smart. And some of the most productive are not smart at all. You know, someone like Charles Darwin, one of the greatest scientists of all time, probably very average intelligence. He was considered to be very, very average by his tutors. His father thought he was a dullard. And this is a great creative genius. So, yeah, I think we focus too much on brains. Character is what counts because we can't change our genes, we can't change him. Suddenly become smarter. I don't care about existence. I said you can learn and you can use your intelligence, but you can change your character. And when you look at a book like Atomic Habits and learn how to be disciplined and how to eat better and how to exercise better and how to live better and how to be a better person, that kind of stuff is where you can change the world. Much more important than genes.

Good questions. You want to go back?

Thanks.

We've got a lot of questions and comments online, which is fantastic as well. We'll get to them as well.

Definitely get the prize.

Yes, that's a good one. Mark them down. But come up, guys, and ask a question if you want as well. I just want to get through a few quickly online as well. So Dwayne's gone. How's the beer line going? So the beer sold out. It was in the Herald sun and the Age National News on channel 10. The creepers trying to shut it down. So it was sold out. Now we give them away as promos because we can't technically sell them online. We're not allowed to because we don't have the appropriate liquor license, which wasn't very smart. But they did sell out initially, the runs, and we're looking at maybe doing one again in the summer with the same mob. But A different can so we don't get threatening legal letters from Coopers. Couple more online as well. Let me go to one here.

We challenge them to a taste test to see which is the better beer. But they. They chickened out. They were. They went up for that.

They weren't too happy when we listed.

This is a craft beer as opposed to these mass market artificial type beers that people like. Cooper.

Yeah, don't send us nasty liquor.

But I'm not drinking. I never tasted it so I wouldn't know. But they tell me it's great and.

We'Ll leave it as well. Go in front line from Michael Collins which is pretty relevant. Will Jim's looking to an internal finance system. You are by far the best franchise opportunity in Australia but out of reach for everyday Aussies who want to get on board. Especially if you don't own security such as House.

Yeah, we are, we are. We are talking to various parties right now about finance options. Several of them at the moment. We think it's a great deal. One of the reasons we think it's a great deal is because our attrition rate is actually quite low. Like as I said to you guys this morning, I think or yesterday morning, whereas the great majority of normal service businesses fell in the first year, 88% of our franchisees last at least one year. And of those that go out last, a lot of them sell or they're still financial.

The problem we have is the lenders can't understand financing a territory. They can finance equipment and stuff and tools and physical things but it's the actual franchise territory.

We can show them stats. Jim's franchise is actually a pretty good investment. I mean you can get money, you can borrow money against your income with the job and yet you could be fired tomorrow. You could become redundant. There's no certainty of that. So a Jim's franchise is actually a very good. But trying to convince lenders of this. They're very.

I say they can all do it initially.

They're very stuck in their ways. It's very annoying but good question.

But we're trying to get scenarios with that as well. But if you've got a question guys, please feel free to jump up and interrupt. Don't have to wait for us here. Where's Jason from Scratch and Den? Is he here? Jump up, come up. Jason, you go first and then gentleman behind him. Jason Hawker from Scratch and Dent.

Yeah, Jason, just a question that's probably on the tip of many people's tongues is coffee.

Why is there no Jim's coffee as.

Yet, or is there a plan to come about that?

I mean, I'm sure it'd be quite a popular one. Good question.

You mean you're talking about coffee, like in selling coffee? Yeah. We're not really into product. One of the things we've Mobile Coffee now on Mobile Coffee. Mobile coffee is simply because we haven't had person to drive it. If you look at the divisions that we have in gyms, there's very little to do with the actual product or service. It's all to do with the person driving it. So why has laundry taken off so incredibly? Two and a half years, like close to 100 franchisees. Why? Bill Coppologlou, Great leader. Great leader, great guy. You look at pool care, was a pool care guy around today, going nowhere until Brett Blair took over. And then it becomes successful dogwash, going nowhere until Sharon Connell took over and now it's quadrupled in size. So we come across somebody tomorrow who's got the drive and the entrepreneurial ability and we'll make Jimmy's Coffee all over the country. Yeah, I guess that would be people. We need people. I always said there might be people. Quite likely within their training group this week, 120 people. There'll be one odd people or more person who might start a new gyms division, which could be a fantastic success.

Would you like to tell them how they can start a new division? Because mobile McCoffee actually was live at one stage and there's a van and so they're actually ready to go that way.

Starting a division is actually not difficult. It costs less than a franchise. All we ask for, we have a fee, ongoing fee of $4,000 a month, first six months in advance. And you can get that back easily by selling franchises. So in a set and then we rent it to you and then after you have. The aim is to achieve 30 franchises within three years, at which time you own the division. So it's a really easy thing to do. We just got to find the right people. We've got several of our franchisees and franchisors currently in the process starting new divisions like beauty massage, all kinds of ones.

There's a few concrete stuff. Yeah, yeah.

A whole lot of new divisions coming out. It's just people.

And the way you do it is email jims.net or call him up. That's it. That's simple. Yeah. So if you're ready to go and you like what you do and you want to do Mobile Coffee, for example, that one's not a Bad one because there's a website ready, there's all that info kit and all that sort of stuff. Ready for that one? Ready to go. So, yeah, might be hearing from you. Jump up to this one.

G', day, guys.

Mark Peters from Test and Tag. My question's a history one.

Oh, you're Mark. I am Mark, you're the one.

I am. I've asked a few questions, but I'll just far off too tonight. My first question is, because I know you love your history, is that if you had to compare yourself to someone from antiquity, that is a historical figure from ancient Greece or Rome, who would you be and why? Great question.

That is a great question. Obviously I relate to the scientists more than Archimedes, people like that or Thales of Miletus, those kind of people who had new ideas, more than the philosophers as such. Great.

My second question is for tonight is what do you think your contribution has been to our national Australian identity as the quintessential Australian battler?

I don't. I've had a huge effect on national identity at all. But I think to a certain extent what I've done is speak out for ordinary people, especially ordinary working people, and given a voice because in the past there was no one to speak for independent contractors. And one of the things about the lockdown is that Andrew's just completely ignored. You know, the thing that really struck me about his announcement, you know, first of all, they send out a message from Department of Health and Human Services saying independent contractors can work. He gets up, let's take a minute, like on a Saturday. He gets up on press conference on Wednesday and he says, you can't have your houses cleaned or your lawns mowed. Now that's interesting. First of all, he's directly contradicting his own department, which of course then had to change to fit what he wanted. But the second thing he was only thinking about the affluent elites, inner suburban woke those kind of people. He wasn't thinking about the people who were actually being thrown out of work. He couldn't care less. There wasn't on his mind. I do think the kind of fuss that we made at that time might have told people, hey, working Australians have a voice. Not just the union movement too. Small businesses do.

Yeah, last question from me, Jim. How do you want to be remembered.

In years to come as a scientist? Actually, through this, if anything at all, as a scientist.

Thank you, guys.

Thank you.

Great questions there, Mark. Well, there's other things we can say is obviously remember to. Obviously the. The logo's so synonymous now. You've got Bunnings, you've got like a Dan Murphy's.

Has that changed national character? I don't know. I think in a lot of ways national character's gone backwards. You know, you read about what we were like, say 80 years ago during Tobruk. There's a wonderful book called Tobruk by Peter Fitzsimon. Just talking about that incredible disregard for authority. I mean, we Australians were a real larrikin people. We just would not put up with it. The spineless weakness that's been shown during this epidemic is just horrifying. I think our national character's gone down. It's about time we got some guts back. And you know, excuse me, but to the man, really, we're too passive in the face of authority. We should not accept stupid directions.

The next one here I've got is from Abdullah from car detailing.

Is he here?

I'll read that real quick. Are you a PlayStation or Xbox guy? You play games?

PC?

PC?

Neither usually very old games like Rise of Rome and age of Empires 2 and this kind of stuff too.

We've got one here from. Is Jaman here from Cleaning? Jaman? I'll read out there. 1. What advice can you give for the cleaning division? Or what advice maybe can you give for a new cleaning franchisee?

The same as every other division. Just look at what you're doing. Be fanatical about customers and always look to improve what you do. Talk to your franchisor regularly, go to meetings regularly, talk to other franchises, keep on learning. It's exactly the same project. Doesn't matter if it's cleaning, doesn't matter if it's mowing, doesn't matter. It's pest control test and tag. Good operators are the ones that keep on learning.

Cool. And we've got one here from Ting from Laundry. Ting from Laundry here. Already out. Guys, if you want to jump up and ask a question. Oh, awesome. Cool. Ting, you got a couple here, so please say them both. Go for it. I'll read them. Can you remember any? How about I give them to you?

Here you go. Here you go.

Come, come. I'll give you.

Come over and show yourself.

I'll give you one. There we go.

Here you are.

That was your one and you did two. Here's another one too. There we go.

Thank you.

Hi, Jim, this is Ting from James Laundry. I'm coming from Adelaide, so just go.

First question is, when you being in failure situation, what do you think to keep yourself continuing and persisting? When I'm in A what situation? Failure situation. How do I keep my. I look back and I say, okay, what have I learned? I've made really, really, really bad mistakes. Even quite recently, as late as the end of last year, made some very serious mistakes. I look at it and say, okay, that's great. Look, it's like what Edison said when he failed, you know, the thousandth time to make a light bulb. He said, don't you feel a failure? He said, no, I'm just one step closer to finding out the real solution. We come up with ideas all the time. You're always improving it. You look at it. Okay, mistake.

Great.

Learn the lesson. I don't actually get too discouraged. My wife says I like one of those, you know, like one of those plastic dummies with a weight in the middle and you just lock it down and it springs back. I just can't be. I can't be defeated. I just. You can't be defeated if you don't give up. Good question. Do you think of to give up in any chance? No, no. It's not in my nature to give up. I've always had a mission. This book is. My research project was something that I did in my 20s. I believe it can change the world in a fundamental way and there's no possible way I would ever give that up. As long as I'm breathing, I will never give that up. We're now spending several million dollars a year, which is far, far more than we live off on research projects to try and make that into a reality. Never give up. Don't you give up too?

No.

My next question, where did you find your inspiration when you started your own business? Well, it wasn't so much inspiration, it was the desire to keep on eating. I basically finished a PhD, had no academic career, had no prospect of anything else. And all I had is a part time gardening business that I used to run as a student. And I just made it because it's something I knew how to do. I just kept on growing and extending and learning that. Making lots of bad mistakes. I wasn't inspired at the time, but I love what I do. Businesses are really fun. That's one thing. It's just really, really fun. It's like an immensely complicated, challenging computer game with multiple levels. And you get paid for playing it isn't that it's really a buzz. I love what I do. I don't like holidays actually. I really find them hard to cope with. Christmas and New Year. I'm at a loss. What are you supposed to do? I don't like holidays. I work seven days a week. Not full on all the time. I just enjoy it so much.

My last question, if you get have a chance, go back 20 years ago.

What would you do to make things better? The first thing, I would never go back more than 14 years because my youngest son is 14 years old. And I would never make any change that would undo any of my children. But there are many things I've done wrong. Going into business I don't understand. I got a psychology institute going. Isn that was a very bad idea. It cost me a lot of money. It was a distraction from the research project. I started the trade exchange. Shouldn't have done that. Didn't know what I was doing. Started to run a factory making fiberglass trailer. Didn't know it. Shouldn't know what I was doing. I should have hired better people much earlier on. Like I've got a great CFO now, but for a long time we went along trying to recruit internally. I should have hired more high level experts to help me with the business. That's just a few of them. There's many more I should have involved, invested more in technology. I should have got better forms of technology. Got better advice on the forms of technology. Would have been so far in advance. Yeah, that's just off the tip of my tongue. I make more mistakes than most people do in 10 lifetimes. But I'm always trying different stuff. Thank you.

Good question. A lot of in the books as well. So that book everyone gets as well, that's always in there. Your book's also on Audible as well. So if you want to listen to the book actually that you've got that's on Audible. And also with this thing as well, I will mention it, it can be quite a difficult read. So if you go to YouTube, type in biohistory, you'll see some videos on.

Explain it fairly well.

Yeah, good questions. Thank you very much. You got a question guys? Please feel free to jump up as well. Awesome.

Oh hi Jim. Chris from Jim's Bathrooms and Resurfacing in Wollongong. What's your advice? Or to like hire Because I've never had an employee or anything like that. I'm a bit sort of worried about putting someone on or how to go about it. And what's your sort of advice like with hiring and maybe firing? Okay, first learn your trade. Get your hourly rate to a lie level. I mean you got to make at least 60 bucks an hour to be able to which you actually your, your division. You probably Will resurfacing is very, very. Yeah, lucrative. You make a lot of money, then what you've got to do is to keep trying people, even Dan. And Dan has many advantages over other people because he's worked at McDonald's, but even he had went to a lot of people to find the ones he wanted and he found great employees in the end. So you've got to be persistent. Don't give up. Try somebody that don't work out. Try somebody else. Try somebody else. Learn to look. What to look for, what kind of people, what kind of character can you work with? What do you want? Just keep on being persistent. Look after your employees well, really well. Pay them not the minimum, pay them well and treat them well. Buy them lunch, treat them decently, have fun with them, this kind of thing. Be a good boss and just be persistent. If you keep on going and you keep on learning, you will eventually do it. That's the biggest challenge to anybody growing a business. Most people in gyms could employ people if they wish to the great majority, because there's enough work. It's always finding good people and keeping them. That's the hard part. Good question. Thanks.

As new as division bathrooms resurfacing, I think it's 10 franchisees now already, which is really good.

Yes.

And you're going to be in a massive TV show. So there's a show called Space Invaders and Channel nine.

Yeah, Franchise I've seen.

Yeah, we did a big brand thing and bathrooms, they make very, very, very good money.

You know, you make a thousand bucks a day too. It's one of the best earning divisions.

But they guys do renovations, lots of work.

And then you did renovations in the bathrooms as well too now.

Yeah, that show will come out February and bathrooms is heavily featured in that. So it's a good, good time to get in that division. You will be very busy after that.

My last franchise, they had a home show.

They did.

And then the day after that, the leads just went through the roof.

Yeah. So Space Invaders. Yeah, it's great. Space Invaders, we do it for the whole group. So there's multiple divisions. So Marlin will be there. There's actually a dog wash thing for the Space Invaders. There's bathrooms, there's handyman, there's all these different things. And we find that it helps just get awareness out there as well with that one as well. Cool. Good question. Anyone got a question? Guys, feel free to come up to the mic. I've got one here. Another one from Josiah. He's not here. Says this Is a good one, though. What is the most outrageous Jim's Fake business you've come across? So I presume people would have seen stickers and stuff that. Unofficial stickers. What was your favorite one?

Jim's Hitmen. Yeah.

What's going on? Jim's Hitman. Right.

They actually did a show for that. They had uniforms made up with a white top and little black handgun.

That was a long, long time ago. But what do you think about the whole. All the memes and stuff?

Oh, it's all fun. It's great. It's all publicity. I mean, social media is so powerful, so effective for us. It's just incredible. And this guy's Joel. He's done an amazing job. You spray things out there and just some of it sticks. You never know what's going to work, do you?

Well, we don't. We've got a video from five years ago which people would be familiar with. That video that went out for five years ago went viral. A lot of memes of that. And we're doing something.

You can't tell, actually. You can spend a lot of money doing some lab presentation. Nothing happens. And you do some little interview with a handheld phone and pooh just goes through the roof.

We have done that quite a bit. We have people ask questions on TikTok or whatever. We just put a phone in your face. Hey, Jim, what do you think? No production or whatever might get 200,000 views.

They often like to ask me things without any preparation, so I can get.

Yeah, no, it needs to be genuine. Because the problem with franchising is it lacks a lot of transparency. So I don't know if anyone here has looked at other franchises, but how did you find the information online for other franchises? It wasn't probably over much, I presume. Whereas with us, you can go to us. There's thousands of things, Jim talking about very careful.

They tend to be very careful what they say. Very carefully prepared presentations and, you know, nice shots and people with sun shining and all the rest of it. It's very different. What we do is very chaotic and very messy, but it's very effective. It is very real.

Yeah, we do have a place where we have really good stuff, like the produced stuff, which is fine, but we do have a lot of genuine, authentic stuff behind the scenes on the phone. We find that, you know, one of these jokes from this thing we do. Jim does a joke. Jim's got a lot of jokes. This New Zealand joke got like 1.6 million views or something. Right. So, yeah, we never Know I showed.

This to people tonight.

Oh, did you?

Yeah, I told some. Oh, there you go.

Cool. I've got a question, guys. Feel free to come up. What is your favorite color? Jim from Nicole from Dog Wash. Favourite colour? I don't know.

Obviously black. Black. I wear black. Can you not wear black?

Black. Black. Yeah. I should have picked black. I should have picked black.

Whenever I play games with my kids, I always choose black. And they used to say, daddy, why do you like black so much? It's a horrible color. I love black. The color of evil. The color of. The color of Darth Vader. The color of Emperor Palpatines. Ro love black. Yes.

Hello, I'm Anita. I came from Brisbane Laundry.

Yes, I can see. Very colorful.

The first question is, I want to know the love story about you and your wife.

Oh, well, okay. All right. I was single, not very happy about it. Being dumped on my third wife. And I was talking to a. I decided to make it a business and just go a lot of dates, which I think is important if you want to get married. You got to date. Date, dates. I went a lot and lots of dates. And then there was a lady working for me in the office, Chinese lady. And she heard I was interested. She said, I know some people, so some ladies. So the first person she wanted to introduce was Lee. She spent three days persuading Lee to even meet me. She was very reluctant because Lee knew what businessmen were like. They're all sort of, you know, fancy cars and houses, lots of mistresses and stuff. That's Chinese way. Eventually she did meet me, I felt. So we were engaged in 13 days and married in seven weeks. I was completely off my. Off the planet. Crazy about it. I still am after 22 years. So there you are, short story.

Okay, the second one is, what's your.

Dream when you were a little boy? When I was a boy, I was crazy about dinosaurs when I was a kid.

Dinosaur.

Oh, I love dinosaurs. I was a real dinosaur. I had little plastic dinosaurs. I was always. I used to make up stories of intergalactic empires run by dinosaurs. My favorite dinosaur was the Triceratops. Loved Triceratops.

So you bought a lot of dinosaur.

When you have money? I bought a real dinosaur. Whenever I watch Jurassic park with my kids, I always say the same thing. I said I would build Jurassic park if I could. I say, oh, dad, not that again.

The next one is the biggest one. The biggest regret in your life. You think?

I can't regret anything. I can't forget my children. So it's always Recent look, just business decisions that I've made were bad decisions like I was talking about before. I just wish I knew. I wish I understood more about technology, about running a business. Look, I'm 71. It's taken me so long to learn even the basics of running a business. And I'll look back in a year's time and I say, you idiot, when you were a year ago, you were doing such stupid things. You should have known better. I just find so many bad things wrong. But I don't regret my marriages, I don't regret my children. You can't. Even though they didn't turn out very well. I got great kids.

What's your next life goal? Not related about your business?

Let's just do with this. It's my research that is my life's mission. That really is, that is my everyday concern.

Okay.

And it's exciting and it's meaningful and I just really, really want to see it through to show that we can change the world in a very fundamental way.

Good questions. Thanks for those. Jump up if you've got a question.

Hi, Jim. Manny from Jim's Cleaning. I've got a question. A lot of scientists are atheists and you yourself once described yourself as agnostic in your book. And I was just wondering what was it that made you a believer?

Good question. I like that one.

Yeah. I had a spiritual hunger, I suppose I just couldn't believe. And then I ran across a bunch of people that I got to like and God spoke to me through them, I guess. And it was just amazing, a miracle. It was just a change, complete change of life. I went right turned around. Was it most exciting, amazing time becoming a Christian. Did that influence you in business at.

All, do you think?

Yeah, yeah. If you look at the way Jim's works, I don't talk about in the book, but if you look at the principles behind it, the, the kind of ethics, the service principle, that's very profoundly Christian ethics. It really wouldn't be Jim's without that basis because. And you make decisions all the time. And it's a very simple decision. You do the right thing or the thing that's going to make you the most money. And you have to choose to do the right thing. Strangely enough, it's almost always the best financial decision in the long run. And you know, sometimes you've got to be very hard too. When franchisees or franchisors don't do the right thing, it's tough. I had a franchisee just today. Contact me. He rang me up Ex franchisee wants to come back and I spoke to him because I wasn't. I was just across here in the training and then I got back and I saw he'd been terminated for poor service and I said to him, nobody's going to give you a franchise. Normally we'd welcome a departing Franciscan but they often do come back. But in this case, no, you can't because he was warned again and again, warning letters, breach notices, kept on getting complaints and in the end he. We just couldn't stick with him. So you've got to be very tough at the same time I'm not always nice. I can be very bad tempered, I can be very angry, I can be impatient. I'm not a perfect person by any means but you've got to try and do the will of God. You've got to try and do what's the right thing, even if it's difficult.

We've done a few discussions of this. There's a lot of podcasts with Jim where he talks about his faith and how he applies to business in a bit more detail. We argue about it. We have a few debates as well about sort of stuff. So if you're interested in that stuff, go to our YouTube channel, type in Jim Penman, Christianity, religion and that stuff will come up if you want to hear a bit more in depth.

I've a great believer in faith in general actually. I'm not as one eyed about, I mean Jesus is my saviour and he's my guru you might say but I was one of the people I was having dinner with who were in Krishna consciousness. Are you here? That's right, yeah. So we're talking about their beliefs and their religion and what they do and the Shahada and stuff. It's very impressive. Often talk with Muslims and Sikhs in these training groups and we tend to think very similarly. I've got a lot more in common with somebody of faith, even a very different faith than I would. I get on very well with Jews too, religious Jews a lot in common. So we're kind of. People of faith are a minority in this country these days but we. It's great and I have to say there's a bit of pitch for it. People with a religious commitment with the faith based community tend to be a lot happier than those who aren't. So it actually works quite well as a way of life.

Good question. There we go. Come up.

Following on from that Jim. I'm Chris by the way from here who has a support for my friend in the Laundry services, looking at getting up and going. I think you've already answered my first question that your friend has in terms of what inspires you and motivates you to continue every day in this business considering it's so successful already because you.

Love it so much.

Continuing on from the conversation before, in terms of your love of reading books, have you ever read a book by the author L. Ron Hubbard? And if so, what did you think of him? I've read some of his science fiction books. I think they're probably better than some of them were. I'm not a fan. Okay. This is a guy who sold a religion. It's so obviously made up. I have enormous respect for different faiths. Judaism, Sikhism, Krishna consciousness, Islam, Hinduism. But this is a made up religion. The guy actually talked about inventing a religion. He made it before it ever happened. He designed it, he built it. There's no way this is a genuine guy.

Jim's very honest, so I hope he's not offending him.

No, not at all. But I was interested to see what he thought because he said he liked reading books. Yes. And I know he has poetry. I used to be very, very keen on site fiction when I was younger. I read must have read thousands of sightseeing books. So I read some of his books. Yeah. Okay. And that's in a context. I've never read anything religious because it doesn't appeal to me.

Okay, good question. We never had that one before. Jim, that's a unique one.

You said you'd want to be known as a scientist and I believe that he had that sort of interest too. So he wanted to be. He wanted to be known as a scientist. That is true. That's why they call it Christian Science. Yeah, but it's not Christian. It's not science.

Okay, good stuff. Good question. Sorry, really good question.

But that's very unique. You haven't offended me at all.

Very unique question.

That's okay. Thank you. Very different.

That's a very different one. That's a challenging one. I like that. Gone on this religious tangent. Yeah, it's an interesting one to these sorts of things.

Go for it. My name is Michael Hill. I'm helping my assisting my wife who's doing laundry following on from the. The last couple of questions. And Jim, your interpretation of life after death.

Geez. All the hard hitting ones tonight. Isn't it fair nickname?

Well, Jesus said that we live forever with him, so I guess that's where I'll be at. Having said that, I enjoy my present life a Great deal. I'm no hurry to get there. Understand, Understand. But I mean, and what you're saying about all religions, it's sort of the. For want of a better word, just using the Ten Commandments as a life guide or having many things there are good to live by with or without religion. Just have those as your guide, I think. But it was more or less, it's all right to say we're going to die and we all got our own sort of, I suppose, ideas, but it's more or less, what do you think? What happens to us and where do. Well, first of all, we don't know because even the Bible, if you take that as an authoritative source, says many different things. So there does seem to be a. Certainly a message that something's going to happen, but it's not even clear. You know, sometimes you see, you know, there's this sort of. There's a physical resurrection of the dead. Sometimes there's a sort of like, it's a spirit spiritual thing. So we don't even really know. We're just told that there is some sort of ongoing existence. That's all you can really say. And I frankly, I can't understand the mind of God and I don't really know. What I do understand, though, is that there's a way to live in this world right now. And I believe from my own point of view that the Bible is the maker's manual and that we follow the principles in that, then we'll lead the best life we can for ourselves and for other people, too. That's what I believe in. I think other things like what happens after death, exactly. What's going to the future, Jesus come back. Those kind of things, they concern me a lot less because they don't deal with the practical of the real here and now. Yep. All right, thank you.

Good question.

Good question. Very interesting question. I hope you feeling more positive these days, Michael, after you've been with us a couple of days. He said he has a struggle to be positive and he's working on it. Is that right?

We've got a positive man right here. Jim's a very positive individual. Come up and ask questions.

Hello, I'm Erin Dogwash. And continuing on in this kind of topic, I guess I'm really interested in your perspective on diversity within religion. Diversity in what sense? Well, within the sense of, I guess some church's perspective on the place of the LGBTQI community within the church.

Tough question.

Yes.

Sorry to throw that. My marking hat's going like this.

I think there is room for diversity of faiths and a diversity of views. Okay. My views are. I hesitate to say this in public, even though I'm a Baptist. For example, I would say that a loving, monogamous and faithful same sex couple being married is probably a better form of relationship and more acceptable to God than, than say an unfaithful heterosexual relationship. Can I put it that way? And that is not doctrine of my church. It's just how I feel about it. And I've known some people who are wonderful same sex individuals and they have deep and loving bonds. It's not what necessarily the Bible says, but that's my view. But then again, if somebody believes that it's wrong, then that's their right to believe in them. I wouldn't attack the tradition. And in those senses you have people who are same sex attracted, who struggle all their lives to be chaste because they believe it's God's will. And I respect that deeply. Thank you.

Tough question. Gee whiz, that's a tough one. Very transparent.

Hi again. Angela from bookkeeping.

So I am a positive, glasses half.

Full kind of gal.

So my question is if someone would play you in a movie, the movie of your life.

What? Which actor, either past, present or yet, would you want to play you? Well, I'd like Pierce Brosnan to pay me.

Too unrealistic. He's too good looking. G. He's too good looking for you.

Listen, what's the point of being played by somebody as ugly as me? I'd like to be played by somebody who's really good looking and I reckon Pierce Brosnan. Definitely. Ok, thank you. Looks nothing like me. Nothing at all.

Well, at our lunch we did merge your two images together with the AI photo which yourself and people.

Yeah, we had a thing with. That was fun putting it together. Yeah. Come.

Go for it. Ask your question.

Hi Jim, I'm Lena from Jim's Cleaning from Sydney. So just I have a question. So because we are like a franchisees.

Absolutely. You have faced some difficult at the beginning of your journey.

So what difficults did you like face at the beginning in your.

During your journey and how you dealt.

With that, with those difficulties? Actually when you read my book, because you got a copy of my book from the course, you'll feel there were some very tough times at the beginning. I was very, very close to going under deeply in debt, just struggling to pay my bills. At the end of the month it was a very close thing. And I've been through some very tough times since then, largely because of Mistakes that I've made, I could never give up. And again, it's to do with this project. I knew I had to succeed. I had to be able to produce it. Even though it seemed insanely unlikely that somebody who has no useful skills and no money and no assets and deeply in debt could ever fund a multimillion dollar research foundation, I knew I had to do it. It was the mission that God gave me and there was just no way I could possibly not succeed at that. I've never really wanted love, personal possessions. My boots are from Kmart. So are my trousers too. I. I live pretty simply on the whole, but I had this passion for my mission. You can't give up. You can't be defeated when you don't give up. Correct. One more question and it's the last question. How old you were when you start mowing business? Well, since I was 8. I started doing gardening when I was 8 years old. I did it for most of my childhood. I did it guarding. When I left school in about 1970, I would have been about 22 or 23. I wanted to buy a car because I thought it would help me with girls which was complete frail. You didn't help me at all. So to pay the loan for the car, I bought a lawnmower, an orange machine called a Pope. That was my first mower. All right, thank you so much.

Good question. One quick question online, Jim, I want to react. Is David Tunes in all the time. David McDonald, great guy. He says, Jim, if we get rid of cash, this is an interesting one. Should the tax rate be lower or higher? That's his question asking for personal accounting advice.

I think the tax rate should not be so much lower or higher, but change. What we should be doing is taxing land, property, unimproved property value because it's a very fair tax. If you own a multi million dollar mansion, you can afford to pay more if you, if you don't like it. It's block dimension that has the benefit too of pushing people who are sitting on large acreages and so forth to subdivide them. So it makes housing more affordable, which is the big challenge of our time. So I would favor a very heavy land tax which could be up to 5% of the value of the land, give a minimum allowance per person so that about half of us will pay nothing. So people who can afford to businesses would pay more. And when you've got the money from that, which would be a lot of money, then you use the proceeds to reduce the level of Income tax. And people who get less than about 80 grand a year should not be paying tax at all, in my view.

He's going to follow up. Do we tax farmers as a follow up? Should you tax farmers?

I would give them an exemption up to a certain level. So the family farms. Yes. We wouldn't tax them. You wouldn't put a land tax on them. You get them an allowance. But big commercial enterprises. Yes, absolutely. I think, I think family farm farmers are actually some of the psychologically healthiest parts of the population. I think it's something we need more farmers. I'd rather see more small farms than more agribusinesses with.

We do have a lot of farms, but a lot of them get bought out from overseas. Yeah, they do dairy farms, like from people from Holland.

And I don't like it. It's soulless. I remember actually once I had to. I was trying to get something to the Alexander Shire. So I went to speak to a whole lot of people who were the shire councillors. And I love the cockies. They're the best. They just. They're just good people. But the only one I didn't like was a lawyer. So there you are.

A lot of good questions tonight, guys. If you want to ask one more question, please feel free to come up. Yep, go for it. Yep.

Tom Reynolds from Adelaide. I do blind shutters and awnings.

Just started. You probably heard this before.

This is all I've ever been taught as growing up. So they say the great Australian dream, buying a house, right? Yep. So I don't think that's most people's dreams these days, considering the current situation. So what would you think would be. Apart from not having that as a great Australian name, what would be the great Australian dream? More based on personal aspirations? I think buying a house is a great idea and I think one of the great shameful things about our society is that we've said set up zoning regulations and other problems to make it impossible for people to buy the house. I think that's awful. People should be able to buy a house relatively cheaply or a basic build and they should be able to pay it off as fast as possible. And when you've done that and you're secure and you've got a home base, then you can afford to spend on things that really matter, like your family. Because. Because family, community is the most important stuff. Piling up moral positions is not going to make you happy and it's not good for you or society. So I'd say, yeah, get a house. Make it affordable, get it paid off and then focus on things that matter like kids, marriages. Yeah, even buying franchise might be the new Australian dream.

Possibly being freedom and giving the boss.

It's not for everybody but it's a good option for those who can do it because what you've got is especially you've got a genuinely good income. Our franchisees on average make well over this Australian income. You've got a flexible lifestyle. You can do things like pick up your kids from school if you want to, you can go to sporting events. You're not stuck. You don't have to travel an hour to get into the city. You control your own life. You can actually work more, make more money, you can work less and have more time with your family, which is the single biggest thing people say long term about what's been good about it. It's time with family. There's a saying that goes, no other success can compensate for failure in the home. And I really believe in that. Yeah, a basic house doesn't have to be a mansion, doesn't have to be huge, doesn't have to be impressive place for living in, affordable, paid off and then focus on family and that's what matters. I've got no respect for the piling up of wealth for its own sake. I've become rich because I needed to.

We've got a fact. We've actually got a National nine news story tomorrow with a French honest story about this sort of stuff about what's the new Aussie dream. And a lot of it's about leaving the corporate world and actually starting a business. So Jim's Dog Wash is actually going to be on that tomorrow on nine New Sydney, I think that one. So good.

I have one more out of the.

You did. I got it right on the top here. This one you can ask me. You remember it? Yeah. I'll rephrase a little bit one day.

Could I possibly own one of every.

Franchise of the gyms?

You could, but you wouldn't want to because you're better focusing on a single division and making that really, really, really successful. There's no benefit from start. You can actually take work cross divisionally anyway. So if there's unserviceable division, you can actually arrange, change your insurance, get your skills up and you can cover it. So it's very rare for any individual to own more than one division in more than one franchise and it's usually somebody who's got a very big business, like you've got someone like Bill Cobaglu now He's got mowing. He's got. Sorry, he's got cleaning. He's actually looking at buying into mowing with partnership with us Laundry and laundry. But he's a franchisor. He's got like several hundred franchisees.

There are a couple of franchisees who have seen it. There's a guy in Queensland, Jeffrey, who's got a really good mowing business and he got a bit bored. So he's doing fencing as well now. So he's done it that way as well. But yeah, sometimes in cleaning they might buy the carpet cleaning franchise and stuff like that. So.

Yeah, similar skill set.

Yeah, similar skill set, yeah. It's not. You very rarely see something that's completely left field, like a. A mowing guy owns a conveyancing franchise.

I mean, you want to get really.

Good at your expertise.

I guess that's it. You don't want to try and, you know, you're not God or Superman. You can't like, you know, have a hand in every pie and also focus on it. Also because of our fee system, because there's a single base fee, it's actually much better to have like three, say, cleaning vans on the road than have one mowing, one cleaning, one dog watch. Because you've actually got. You're paying three fixed fees, whereas if you have all in one, you've got only paying one.

True.

Yeah.

You own Jim's Monopoly. You can get eight divisions in there, though. Hi, my name is Maria from Cleaning, Jim's Cleaning. We are in Sydney. Maroubra. If someone. Maroubra. Yeah.

I love reading.

I like. I love this book that. It's called Think and Grow Rate Napoleon Hill. And he says about visualization and you.

Have to write what do you believe.

Or what you want to become in the future? Just wondering if at some stage you did it or if you still doing it. He thinks you have to write, I don't know. I want to become a multimillionaire in that day. I want to win this sort of money, you know, this amount of money. So what do you think about that?

Well, my direction in life has been very clear for the last 50 years. So it's always been to do with my research. So it's not, I would say, interesting study that was done. They asked people what they wanted to achieve in life. This is like university graduates. And there were some that had. I want to become wealthy, I want to become powerful. And some that said, I want to serve and I want to actually make some good in the world. Now the interesting thing is, when they followed up later, they found that both groups had achieved to a large extent, what they went for. But those who'd actually asked for, aimed for doing some good in the world were actually a lot happier. So I think there's truth in that. But I think it's also important what you wish for. And I don't think piling up money for its own sake is much of an aim of life. I think it's a pathetic way to waste your life. I have a close friend whose brother, who was actually a lot richer than I am, you know, worth tens of millions of dollars, committed suicide because his family life was so messed up. That's very close to home. Wealth alone is not. Is not meaningful.

Yeah. I have another question. I'm a millennial, I think. I believe, and I want to have children.

But what would you say to those.

Ones who don't want to because they say that the world is not a nice place anymore? What do you think about that?

I think having and rearing good children is one of the best contributions you can make to the world, honestly.