Jim's Group CEO, Jim Penman on his early years in business with Joel Kleber

Hi everyone, my name is Joel Cleaver from Jim's group and we're here for chapter two of the Jim's book discussion with Jim himself. I'm going to go a lot more in detail behind the book and ask some questions. So we hope you enjoyed chapter one and make sure you subscribe or comment like the content and let us know how it's going. So Jim the Accidental Gardener is the title of chapter two. However, that title is a little bit misleading because there's a lot of university. It starts when you actually finish high school. And you said with jubilation, you're done with high school.

Absolutely. Greatest day of my life. Not quite the greatest day. One of the greatest days of my life, actually seeing I'll never have to go back to school again. I did not like school.

Now after that, you did a gap year, which I don't think a lot of people know. Do you want to talk about that?

Well, the first thing I did is I went on and worked on a farm in Western Australia for four months.

Now, when you say farm, where in WA is a pretty big place about.

100 miles north of Perth.

North of Perth, Right.

So it was a place called Wailabing.

Okay. Yep.

And it was a woollen wheat farm. And yeah, I was just doing everything around the farm, which was, you know, I used to ride a horse a bit, I herded stock, we got involved in drenching and just cleared paddocks of rocks, helped with fence mending, all kinds of stuff like that. It was just a really. Actually it was a really fun job. Paid $18 per week plus keep. So it wasn't exactly lucrative. Biggest problem was very lonely. I foolishly didn't take enough books there. I remember reading the cardboard boxes. I'd read the signs on it. I was so desperate for reading because I was such an avid reader. And then I got. My mother sent me some books. But it was very, very isolating even for an introvert like me. But very fun job.

And something else interesting happened during that time, which is where you got your name. It's all about that.

Yes. Well, the guy I worked with, it was a number of brothers and a sister who were there on the farm. And the guy worked with a bloke about 40 and he had a son about my age called David. So I said, a bit confusing, so call me Jim.

Call you Jim. So there we go. There's the origin of the name Jim.

Basically that it was kind of. Because it was. It was a way of breaking out of home too David to me, had a sort of a. I don't know what you call it name. But Jim was macho, you know, suited.

What you were doing at the time, wasn't you on a horseback. You were doing a lot of farm work, all that sort of stuff. Maybe, yeah.

Well, I was just wanting to break with the past. It was just being. Jim is very Australian, very bit rugged, bit masculine. And you're kind of trying to break out and become that kind of guy instead of being. Because I was a nerdy bookworm. So it was the magic thing.

It's almost like you used it as a time to sort of maybe would you say, reinvent yourself, like your image almost, in a way.

Well, at least internally, yeah. It was my middle name, you see, But I could have shortened David to Dave. That would have been also pretty Aussie. But Dave had a sort of a.

No, no, Dave's mowing. It just doesn't work.

Had a sort of a daggy sound to it somehow. Daggy Dave. So I used to call him Dave Dougie Dave at school sometimes. I wasn't always that popular. So, yeah, Jim just come across all right and a different name. So, yeah, I just adopted it. My. My mother was a bit taken aback by the whole thing. She still called me David till the day she died, of course.

Just refused to call you Jim.

No, no, she didn't refuse. She'd get used to it. My mum wasn't. Wasn't stubborn, but she, you know, you've called somebody David since they were, you know, born. So she always. But I said, that's okay, Mum. And I used to elderly. My relatives tend to call me David too, so I don't mind.

Well, it's a good choice of name you made there, Jim. And it's one of the most popular names. Franchising. Yeah.

Well, I certainly didn't expect anything like this, that's for sure.

So you were there for around four months, so off. So why was it such a short time to do that sort of work? It's pretty tough. It can be a bit of a culture shock when you came from Melbourne. But for only four months?

No, it was just good. I liked it. I mean, it was just. I like working. I like the outdoors. Always liked the outdoors and, you know, just doing stuff. I learned to drive, to ride to. Sorry, to drive. My father gave me a few lessons before I went away, but I drove every day on the farm. Of course, by the time I came back up, it was easy. There's no 120 hours in those days. So I just went and got my license almost straight away. So it was a really, really interesting time and a lot of respect for farmers. I just think that's a. They're great people. It's a great lifestyle. It's very tough, but they're amazingly resourceful, they're amazingly capable. They do so many different jobs. They were just really impressive people.

You said it was a sheep and a wheat farm. Was it?

Yeah.

Did you ever shearer sheep or.

No? No, because they had the shearers come in, right. I was staying in the shearers quarters actually.

Okay. Would have been some rough folks in there.

Not when they were there actually because when they came in they'd take the whole thing up and. And I just went and stayed with this guy that I was working with in his house which was just across the road and stuff. But the shearers came in, they were pretty rough lot. Mattresses get a bit stained because some of them would get drunk and they wouldn't, you know, cover the toilet in the night and stuff of that nature. I remember some very inventive swear words coming out of their shearing shed during the shearing time.

I can imagine they're very hard. They're very hard man shearers.

They're a tough crew.

They are very tough crew. Very, very tough crew.

So.

So you're there for around four months and after you came back to Melbourne. So you've come back to Melbourne, you've gone right, what am I going to do? What job? What was your first job when you came back to Melbourne?

Well, I saw this really good looking sounding ad for to be the assistant to the manager of an international company. So that sounds pretty good. I had a go at that one and I applied and I found it was selling encyclopedias.

Yeah, that's not bad. Why I suck you in without this job.

So actually the first time I saw that I thought I don't want that. But then after a while when I wasn't finding anything, I said okay, I'll give it a go. So I went out and I spent two weeks trying to sell encyclopedias door to door, which was. I was a complete and utter failure at. I was absolutely miserably bad at it and it was an awful job. Very, very hard to get knocked back. So not much for a natural salesperson. That's something that convinced me right from an early stage. I had another go at doing something similar actually. I was selling on the phone trying to sell people on painting, a painting service. But I just at that time was reading Exodus by Leon Uris, which exposed me for the first time to the horrors of the Holocaust. And I got so depressed and upset by that. I was just in a terrible funk. I remember wandering around the house, just in a daze, listening to this appalling story, reading this appalling story, and I just lost the job. I couldn't cope. It's the only time in my life I've just completely fallen apart emotionally.

Now, during that time when you were doing the encyclopedia, you also gardening still? You're doing a couple of lawns here and there?

No, I wasn't actually. Okay, I wasn't at all. I had gardened up to the time I was about 14 when we left Adelaide. And then we went to Sydney for a year and I was three years in Melbourne. I hadn't done any gardening in that time. So what. What I actually did after this experience is I thought I'd try doing some gardening, start a gardening business. So I got a poster, sort of a note, and I asked the local hardware store if I could put it in his window. And it was rather large, actually. He said, you really should bring me something smaller. So I put it in the window at a place like when the door was shut, there was nothing inside. So he did that. And I got about three customers come out of that. And I was charging like $1.50 an hour, which, when you're making 80 bucks a week, seems quite decent money. And so I just. I didn't take off to any great degree. But again, I like gardening, you see. I just like being outsourced. I always have that. So that was kind of a beginning. But that wasn't going to make me a living and I really didn't have any strong sense. So I actually applied for. Actually I applied to join the post office, but as soon as I heard I was interested in going to university, they said, well, no, not really. We take you happily, but not with that, not intending to stick around. And then I applied to join public service and I went to work for the Department of Civil Aviation for about six months, which was very enlightening.

Yeah, I found it quite interesting because I was reading it again last night after Alan Brighton, making me notes, and it was. I think you were once told to look busy whilst the inspector was coming, then the rest of the time you could slack off. And you just had this utter disdain for everyone slacking off in the office all the time and you had nothing to do.

And I used to find it very, very annoying and demoralizing. I had, like, half my time occupied by Remotely. And I wasn't that efficient in those days anyway in terms of the work I had to do. And you know, and then I was working one day a week helping the guy did the publications and they said, I want to promote this guy. So we want to make you a full time assistant. You gotta be joking. I'm gonna have to do. Anyway, it was just, it was so slack, it was so lazy. It was so you could do absolutely nothing and you just keep your job forever. It really taught me what public administration is like. I remember talking to a guy who was a minister in the Whitlam government later about the situation and what I experienced. He said, as far as I knew, everybody was flat out all the time. And I said, well, you wouldn't really know, would you?

And is that was that important experience for you in regards to how you run your company today, do you think?

Well, I knew I didn't want to run my company like the public service, that's for sure.

But I mean, but I mean in terms of like you want everyone, like you're like you have people that have just had a lot of life now.

It just makes sense. I just found it offensive. I'm not the kind of person that wants to slacken off and just do nothing. I mean, I don't work hard really, but I work very ferociously. I work very concentrated. You know yourself, if you want something done written, I'll usually have it written in an hour or two. I just do it. So I just have that habit of mind of wanting to be productive and do things in the most efficient way possible. I want to look at my emails, I look at doing this one, then this one, this one. Don't read things twice and just be totally efficient. It just offended me to be in a situation where you, you know, even if you dawdled, you wouldn't take up half your time. And I just saw the wastefulness of it, the stupidity of the systems. I reckon every job I did with a bit of automation could have been done in about 10 minutes. It was just a whole week. It was just crazy.

Now you came to that job with that attitude. Whether that attitude developed, you reckon, was it something you learned from your parents or was it just something you reckon innate in you?

Or I don't know, I don't know, maybe my parents, maybe, maybe whatever. It's just part of me, I just can't. No matter what I do, I have to do it in the most efficient way possible. Even when I'm doing the dishwasher, you know, I always have. In a situation where I can sort of take the glasses and pivot on my heel and put them in the. Like that, so I don't waste. Don't waste a second. I just always think that way. I just. I'm not hard working 100 hours a week, but I just always have to be efficient in what I do. I don't know where these things come.

From, but it's almost like you've got a fascination for process improvement in a way, don't you?

I just. Yeah, yeah, you can. You can phrase it however you like. I just always. I've just been like that. Actually. When I look back on my career in the civil. In the public service, I wasn't that inventive anyway. I was just trying to. Following procedures and stuff and quite limited in my thinking. I look back now, what I was doing, I would have. If I had my current personality and knowledge and I was doing that kind of thing. Not that I can't work public service, of course. I would be in the worst pain imaginable. I'd be telling all the people in charge, this is hopeless. This is inefficient. This isn't the right way to do it. I wouldn't have gone to public service.

Now we'll move on to 1971. Now he started university at Latrobe. We're doing sociology, which I found quite interesting because when they. In the book, Katherine interviewed a lot of people who just presumed you went to Melbourne University or something like that.

Yeah, where I got in, I could have gotten to anything. My VCE was quite reasonable. I don't know, we don't do any numbers in those days, but I got some pretty good moats. Yeah, I was totally clueless, as is the case throughout my life. Well, for example, I thought, I want to understand what my purpose in going to university was, was to understand human society. I wanted to know why civilizations rise and particularly why they fall. So I thought, okay, what's the business? What's the field of study that deals with that? That's sociology. Must be sociology. It's the study of society. This is what I'm interested in doing. But the stupid thing about it was, first of all, I hadn't any idea what sociologists did. And I'd read a huge amount of history and stuff, but I knew nothing about sociology. And when I got to La Trobe and discovered what an absolute lot of codswalloping garbage this whole thing was, I thought, these people haven't got a clue. There's nothing scientific and systematic. It's just bland ideology dressed up in fancy words. There's nothing a system about this at all. There's no evidence behind it. It's theory in the absence of any sort of data. I was absolutely horrified when I actually discovered what I'd done. What I hadn't also realized too is that there's an assorted thing I probably would have gotten a lot better at Melbourne because I would be more in match people who were my peers and I was just. It was just a really.

Was a frustrating, very frustrating time.

Yeah, I got. I sort of. I got very negative actually. Every. They do these things where you had to write a critique of a work of sociology and I would just write the most scathing reviews of this thing. And I'm amazed they put up with me actually. I suppose you don't get expelled in those days, unlike today, if you say bad things about China, they'll kick you out of university. But in those days they were very tolerant of me. So I can remember, I don't know if that's in the book, but one of my lecturers or tutors had actually put some remarks, comments on one of my pieces of writing which I disagreed with. And I was making comments like the fact that Marx is wrong because empirically it doesn't work out. And he says something like, well, Marx isn't empirical, he's a dialectical. So to me it made no sense. You have to think scientifically, you have to think of a theory and you know, that fits the evidence because I was very influenced by physics that I studied in high school and that sort of thing. So you have to have a theory which is the evidence and you test it. And sociology was nothing, there was nothing of that sort of thinking at all. So I remember going into this guy and just telling him at some length why he was completely and utterly wrong. And in a fairly forceful fashion. I mean politely, I don't swear or anything like that. But one of my friends went in afterwards and he said this guy looked shell shocked. Never heard anything like this.

Yeah, there's quite a few parts I wrote like three or four points down here where you're not arguing with him but you're having debates with him and stuff like that, and rocking up to the start of the year and saying I'm not going to come to your lectures, just do the essays, whatever it was.

Well, that was beginning my last year, my third year. Yes, I just said I don't want to again. You see, they were very tolerant of me, which is nice there's some great people there, too, like Inga Clendin, who was. I think she was in Mesoamerican history. I used to go and talk to her in this kind of stuff. I think she appreciated my passion.

Well, they must have known. That's probably the reason why they put up with it. They must have known, look, this bloke's real passionate, real smart about this sort of stuff. We're gonna.

I was also pretty capable. I knew a lot of stuff and I'd read very widely. Compared with the typical student in sociology or history, which I moved into pretty shortly, I was obviously pretty vast sort of student. I remember in my first year Economics, the lecturer there was a professor there said we ought to do honours and stuff, because he could see that I had that drive and that ability, that I was totally tactless. I think anybody who'd know me in those days, I had no sense. I still don't really. I still say stupid things all the time, but in those days I was completely Gorman in terms of saying anything to anybody without any sense of how it would come across.

That's quite a funny comment in there, which I think you might think it's awkward, but I think a lot of people make these mistakes when you're about, there's a pregnant lady or something, or. She wasn't pregnant.

No, she wasn't pregnant. That was the point. I just said, are you pregnant? She was most offended. But, I mean, that's just.

I.

Often I'm walking along with Lee or something and I go, ooh, like that. What are you doing? Nothing. And I'm thinking about some stupid and embarrassing thing I might have done decades ago. I just did so much dumb stuff.

I think a lot of people do that, though. I think it's just only.

I think I do. No, Joel, I do more than most. I have no. There's nothing. Verbal diary just comes out. It's got no controls on it. I'm a thousand times better than I used to be. You have no idea what I used do to. To be like. At least says it all the time. You've got no sense of control, no sense of. No sense of what people are going to think about what you say.

Well, during that. Well, during that time back at uni, I want to talk about now, I found something quite interesting because obviously, from talking last week, your father was quite. You know, your family did quite well, but you refused support from him totally, which is still probably the complete opposite. Most kids these days who go to uni, they expect Their parents to pay for res. Give them some money every week, get him a car sort of stuff. So why was, why was, why during that time did you refuse financial support?

Well, for one thing it was easy. I had what in those days was called a Commonwealth Scholarship, so all my fees were paid.

Ah, lucky man.

Yes.

No, hexed it.

And shortly after that the Whitlam government got in anyway because that was, you know, I went to University in 1971 so. So the. They cancelled the fees anyway, so I had no, no, no fees to pay. So all they had to do was to live and frankly I was doing my gardening and stuff like that and I applied as being. I had some savings from the year I was off work in my gap year. So I just basically managed to work out a way to be independent. I didn't just want to take money from my parents, that's all. I just wanted to be independent. There's a bit of a stiffness between me and my father, I suppose, but just that sense of pride. I would do things like, you know, they'd offer to drive me to the swimming pool and stuff and I said, no, I'll walk. And I'd walk quite long distances. I wouldn't ask anybody for a lift. Very, very independent from a quite young age. Just proud, stiff neck, difficult, obnoxious, you know.

But what I found quite interesting is in your first few months you stayed at, was it Menzies College? You were there at Latrobe? Yeah, Menzies College. Cousin who did, who stayed at Menzies College.

Yeah. Room 670.

You remember the number as well.

670, yeah. The guy down the road, he had 666 and they used to call it sex, sex, sex because of all the stuff that used to go on.

Well, I was just going to get onto that now. It's quite a very social time for you. You went to parties, you even had drank a bit of booze. Didn't like it very much though.

No, I think my whole life I've probably had alcoholic drinks about 15 times. It wouldn't have been. Wouldn't be much.

Well, do you look back following that time because you went from, you know, it's probably a very social time. It's very, very.

I come from a one sex school, so I only had boys except towards the end I did school plays and some of the girls from the local, the sister school were there, which was really quite amazing. And then in my gap year there wasn't much either because I was on a farm and I Wasn't much engaged with anybody. So all these girls were. There was very exciting. It was very wonderful. So I went absolutely crazy for a while. Really not crazy? No, not crazy in any absolute sense. Sense. Didn't actually. My first couple of terms of university, I didn't really do very much except just have a good time and did my basic work. But that was so easy and just socialized. I remember there was a middle. The girls wing, there was a girls and boys wing were separate. In the girls wing, there were three floors and I knew every single one of the girls. In the girls wing. I was going to say hello. I just. I just got most social time in my whole life.

So hang on to that. So he says you're visiting a lot. So what do you mean? You just went to the. Knock on the door and said hello?

Yeah, people do that all the time. Yeah, you just get to know people. I was just oddly social in a way I've never been before or since.

I find that quite interesting. That's why I'm asking about it, because you clearly say a lot of the times you're not social or anything like that, but during this time you're the complete opposite.

But I like girls, you see. So it was kind of. It was the. Always that way with me. When I'm single, I'm very interested in girls.

I think a lot of blokes are, so we can. We can rely on that one.

My whole relationships change if I'm happily married. My relationships tend to be male. I've got like my male. My life group, totally male. No women allowed. I just put on a fake beard so that to me it suits me. But when I'm single, I'm just interested in girls. That was the thing. There was a. I think I mentioned Marilyn. I love. I really like.

Yes, you did. Yep. The dairy farmer.

So that was kind of. She was just one of the girls who lived on that floor. She had a couple of friends that I knew very well and I used to hang out a lot. I even tried to drink coffee, actually, because that's all about all I had. But it was. Never liked it. It's just disgusting.

And during this time, I read as well, you had an afro and you walked around barefoot, which I found quite.

I couldn't imagine.

I was trying to picture in my head with you with an afro. There was a comment in here that you walked around the campus, had a bit of an afro and it's barefoot. This might be an incorrect comment from the look on your face.

No, no, no. I don't remember about the barefoot thing. I used to walk around in shirt and shorts in the middle of winter and I just run outside. So I don't think I was barefoot. I don't remember about that part. But certainly, yeah, I had an afro. I just let my hair grow. It came very, very frizzy. We didn't know it now because literally nothing left, but it was just sort of very frizzy inside. I used to actually have a headband, like a yellowy headband, but put around it so I. I would look very different. Ever.

Did you have a big beard at that time then, or. No beard.

No beard.

No beard.

No beard. No, I was. I was just. Just with this young kid with his afro sort of thing.

And I found it quite interesting as well, because the greeting stuff, it's. It's just interesting because you obviously comment. You quite often say it's hard. You've had to learn over the years to do various greetings and stuff like that. And whereas with this time, you just naturally really social gravitated towards it and I sort of had a great time. Was that something that persisted for the remaining time of uni or was it something that died off a bit or.

Oh, no, no, it died. Yeah, it died very fast. But it was just those first two terms. And then this girl, like Marilyn, got herself a boyfriend and that just completely crushed me.

So you sort of went back in sort of a bit of depression or something like that. I think you sang in here.

Yeah, I had a terrible, terrible two weeks when I was just sitting there thinking I should smash up the furniture or something like that. Just. I couldn't feel any worse. It was just awful. And then I think I described what happened, didn't I? I had these ideas that had been floating around in my mind and I just started to write them down. This idea called social energy, very completely nothing about it is what I would agree with now, nothing at all. But it was just my first systematic attempt to think about society and how it could work and. And what could happen and so forth. And I showed that there was this elderly academic who was actually living on top of Menzies College and he had this vast library. But they said they left him there because they gave him this free flat because he would wheel his library to the university when he died. But there was a few of us there and I used to visit him. I showed him this thing and can't remember what he said about it, actually, but that was beginning of my way of thinking and what I was Then doing so it was shortly after I got my first really serious girlfriend too. So that obviously changed my social. But I started really focusing on these ideas. And then as I was doing history I would apply historical reasoning and look at fluctuations, particularly demographic. Because I was interested in biology too. It wasn't just history, it was by history. But I realized that history had the evidence that sociology didn't. So that's why history was obviously interest to me and I was interested in. Because I had this biological viewpoint. I was also interested in demography, population growth, birth rates, death rates, those kind of things too because they were sort of scientific and objective and you could see certain kinds of patterns and there's certain kinds of behavior that correlates with. Like in 18th century Japan where the demographic and the social things and the political systems correlate with each other. So I looked at these and used this to develop this very primitive ideas too. So I became very. Yeah, cut my hair short. Became known as a narc I think.

Yeah, I had that down right here because I think that's quite funny. Some girls thought you were a narc because.

Well, yeah, because Menzies College was pretty, you know, we're talking about a sort of a third level university and it was very lefty.

Apologies to anyone at Latrobe. Apologies to anyone who goes to Latrobe. I've been out to Menzie College. I had a cousin who did a couple of terms there.

Well, it's just not where you get the most rigorously academic people amongst the students. I suppose you'd say they were sort of a fun loving crowd. I think I remember this lady, this girl said to me, hey, you know Jim, you don't drink and you don't smoke and don't take dope and you don't have sex. What's that? Enjoy in life. Why don't you want to be happy? And I just thinking, well, if that's all you've got in life, how can you be happy? Because it just didn't make any sense.

Because that comment is quite important because that's in the book. It's associated with your philosophy on life. Right. So that's the blurb which is under it and you say there's three things, three aspects linked to happiness which was community, purpose and relationships. Was that thinking developed around that time or how did you. Why was that?

I just knew you had to live for a purpose. I couldn't imagine a life just lived to be enjoying. Now maybe I come close to that in my first two years. First two Terms, But I just had to live for something. I had to have a meaning and purpose to my life. I had to have a direction. I had to achieve something. Not financially or anything, just in terms of something worthwhile. I had no sense, of course, of becoming wealthy or anything. Just didn't cross my mind.

So care to talk about that, though? Because your philosophy in life, you said that. You point out that the three aspects is obviously not money, but you say, I think it's community, purpose and relationships, in that order. So how do you.

No, I didn't say that order.

Okay, so there's one, two, three things mentioned, which is community, purpose, and relationships.

Well, to me, purpose comes first. It's the reason you live. I live for a purpose. My purpose is defined in terms of my research project, first of all, my family and gyms, looking after my people and my tribe. That's kind of purposes, first of all. But when you're talking about happiness, I mean, if you gave me a choice, you know, are you going to live a purposeful, productive life but be unhappy or a life without purpose and be happy? If that was possible, I'd choose the first without any hesitation, because it just isn't. Being happy isn't important in itself. It's a product of doing the right thing, not a reason for doing it.

Okay, so during that time of uni, so uni's done, you had an honours year, and in the honors year, you're still. During this whole time, you're still doing a bit of gardening and mowing on the side.

Yeah, yeah, well, see. Yeah, that's right. What happened was that the. Yeah, I was just doing my $1.50 an hour gardening. I had kept two of my clients, and then after a while I thought I'd try, you know, go for broke and see if I could earn more. And so I put it down. I raised my rate to 3 bucks an hour, and I had raised it to $2 an hour. And then I raised it to $3 an hour. And then I put some leaflets out and then people were in these little yellow. I got these little yellow strips done in the university union. There's, you know, I just messed up, cut them up and put these little things with three bucks an hour, and people just. This is so cheap. So cheap. I was, I was stunned at that. I thought, wow, this is. This is something. I can earn a lot more money than this. And, and, and after that, just grab the car.

Yeah, so I want to talk about that because at the time you're cycling to people's houses still. And using their mower. Right. Was that during that time?

Yeah, I wasn't actually mowing the lawns, but it was mostly just gardening. But I was cycling. Yeah. Using their stuff.

So you're cycling to their house. And after a while you thought, I want the Kingswood. So you went and got the locket alone for the Kingswood because you thought it'd help you with the business and girls as well.

No, no, don't help me with the girls business.

Only the girls. Not business enough. So buying a car to impress the girls.

Trying to.

I thought most blokes try and do sometimes.

This was after I had my girlfriend, which was a. Yeah, that was for 18 months. That was a very serious relationship. But just. Yeah, but then after that I was very lonely and down after that, still working away. And so I thought maybe I'd be more impressive to girls if I had a car. So that's why I wanted to buy a car. And basically, yeah, I thought if I can, to pay for the car. I got a loan from the bank. There's a branch of the bank in the university. So I got a loan from the bank to pay for the car, to pay off the car. I thought I'd better try and make a bit of money. So I thought then, okay, what if I charge by the job? So I thought most lawns, five dollars, which, when you're charging three bucks an hour to do a lawn for five bucks, which is half an hour's work, sounded pretty good to me. You know, you could make 10 bucks an hour, which was huge. But bear in mind those days you could buy a house for 30, 30,000. So it's in proportion. So that was good. So I used to. And then because of course I had the car, I got a trailer and an old mower. And not an old mower, it's a new mower, but just a basic mower. And I just started an edging wheel and stuff and I just started charging five bucks an hour. And I didn't find it difficult to get. I most used leaflets in those days, just around the neighborhood and paid surprisingly well. So it was not difficult for me to not only support myself, but also to save up some money.

What colour was the Kingswood? How long did you have it for?

Well, it was white originally, but it got very grubby because I never washed it.

And you're telling me, I think you said last week. And I assumed that you actually ripped out the back seats to get more rubbish into it.

Well, it wasn't which probably explains why we didn't do very well with girls anyway. But I found that was hopeless tasks. Yeah, I just, I just, it was just an old car. I still had that well into my full time years. I must have owned that car for, you know, close to 10 years or about, about that time. By the which time it was second hand. In the beginning it wasn't worth very much. I think it cost me about sixteen hundred dollars. Something of that nature.

Yeah, I think it was sixteen hundred. Yeah.

And eventually I, I just junked it because it was just completely battered and worn out and, and decrepit. But I always think old cars are a great deal. You know, I used to look at what the, what the RACV said it costs you to run a car. And all the depreciation, the interest and the insurance and all the rest of it cost me almost nothing to run a car because it's got no value, it doesn't appreciate, you don't have to insure it except against damage to other people. So it's a cheap thing to have.

And we'll talk about as well. You did mention quickly the trailer on the mail, but the mail you bought was around $200. And you were quoted in the book saying it was the scariest business decision off your career at the time. Why was that?

Well, it was a lot of money. You got to understand I'm making three bucks an hour at my gardening, so the idea I could make $10 an hour was pretty exciting. But then to have to go out and spend $200 and buy a lawnmower was a lot. So what mole was it?

What typed you remember?

It was a pope.

A pope.

Orange.

Orange. Bright orange pope.

Yeah, that's right. So, yeah, it's kind of surprising to me, you know, I just, I just, I didn't. I undervalued myself. I didn't understand how because by that time I'd been doing things for a while and I had this kind of perfectionism, this wanting to do things really, really well. So I get that that stood me quite well. But it was, it was odd that I could make so much money. I was surprised people would pay so much to get their lawns mowed.

What was the comparative rates? Did you know anyone's else rates in the area at that time or do you have nothing to compare to?

I did no market research at all. That's why, that's why I ended up charging so little for so long. I had no idea. When I did this three bucks an hour thing, I thought oh, go for broke. People are like, oh, you're so cheap. I'm cheap. Three bucks an hour. That's 50% of what I was charging beforehand. They still think it's cheap, which is what gave me the idea of mowing lawns. But it was because.

We'll touch on this again. Because something you were doing just as time in the book as well, which makes sense. During that time, you're always looking at how to improve your work in terms of the lines, the grass, all that sort of stuff. During that time is when you applied all that stuff, what you were saying before, right to your work. You get you quicker, faster.

I always did.

Yeah.

I always had the attitude that whatever I do, I try and do it efficiently and well. And that obviously developed in my mowing business. I was always trying to just do it quicker and better. It's got to be clean. I just had to be perfect. I just had this unreasonable obsession. I never even thought about it in terms of clients. It wasn't really so much. If I do a better job, I'll get more clients or they'll stay with me or I can charge more. I never thought that. Well, I just thought, I have to do it well. It's the Mr. Tapley thing. I just had to be. It just has to be the best job I can do in the quickest time. No matter what I did, I always wanted to think that, what are some.

Tips you can maybe give to someone real quickly about that time? What are some things that you can still remember from that time ago? What are some things that you were doing well?

You do the job well for the sake of the job. You just aim to amaze and delight the client. That's really the biggest single thing. People put money first. That's the big danger. They think, how can I maximize my income? It's not the wrong question. How can you maximize your satisfaction of your customers and make them really delighted with you? And if you do that, you will work out a way to make money from it. But if you don't have that attitude, then you can't. And that's the thing. Because I was charging too little, I didn't even know. But what I discovered was that I found it incredibly easy to find work and incredibly easy to keep clients. And people would refer me. I just kept on getting more and more work. And as I gradually put my prices up, I had no problem. I just got more and more money, far more than I could ever dreamt possible. I had no comprehension. I mean, jeepers creepers, If I'd known how much money you could make mowing lawns, I would have gone into it in my gap year and made a fortune. I mean, I just didn't know.

And during this time as well, not only the approach, just satisfying the customer, but one quote that stood out to me was, you're saying, I think in your 20 years of doing it, you didn't turn up for a job only twice that you could recall, which I think is quite astounding. 20 years of all those clients, then twice. Liam rock up.

I can remember I made a mistake in my books and I felt so terrible, really anguished, guilty to let my client down. It's an extreme emotional reaction that I have to poor service. It's just beyond reason.

And this forms part of our complaint system, or your complaint system to this day, which didn't turn up obviously is one of the categories for the client.

I go through complaints every day. It's one of my major jobs. I go through all the low rank surveys and look at what happened and why and then I communicate with the franchisee. Why did this happen? What could we do about it? And that's what I mean. Makes me think of software and so forth and better systems and stuff. It drives me all the time though today I apply that as much to franchisees as I do. Why are my franchisees not happy? What can I make them? Delighted. It's a deep seated emotional drive for me and it's totally beyond money. Money comes out of it, that's good, but always the service comes first, which is, I think it's a good attitude. I find the people who are best at something, they're best because they love what they do. Like yourself. You know, like you have this passion for social media and for marketing. You just do it because you love it. And I can tell that, which is why you do well at gyms. Whereas somebody who comes in who just wants to make a lot of money doesn't do nearly as well.

I want to touch on about now with the end of the honours. So the honours is done. Trying to skip ahead of you, but the end of your honours. But you had enough clients to sell around, which is quite, which is quite pitiful because we have things in gyms called splits, which is a bunch of clients you can sell, but the first time you sold around, how did that come about? How'd you work that up?

Well, I just knew from in the age newspaper they had these classified sections and I got the idea of selling a business because I was so good at Finding clients, you see, and happy clients and stuff, which was a bit difficult emotionally because your clients got to become your friends. So that was a bit tough.

Yeah. How'd that go with that? Because that's quite interesting point because you do get quite attached. People get quite attached to their clients. So how did you go after transitioning them off to someone else?

I just used to do it. It was a matter of business and you know, I supporting myself completely and I knew I was going to have a long Ph.D. so I just, I needed some money and I did it and it wasn't difficult. Yeah, I just put advertisement in. Somebody came up and I sold the business to them.

And you used part of that money with some more money to buy your first house as well?

Yeah, the house in Eltham. $33,000 just turned right from the pub. Yeah, I got a small inheritance to my grandparents but mostly with my lawnmowing money and of course that was. Got the deposit and then I just, I just, I just paid for it. I was very close to money, always have been actually. Very, very. I'm very reckless in business but I've been in personal spending. I'm extremely scum. So it was not difficult for me to save money because I've got this business that I'm doing well that I'm making pretty good money for a student, I mean and you know, just weekends and stuff, that was all. And then I sold this business and I had all this cash so I bought a house which wasn't difficult really.

How much per week as a student were you making back then? Just so I can try to project it for inflation. What are we worth in today's dollars?

Well, I don't know. As I said, as I said even from the beginning I was making probably close to about 10 bucks an hour.

Because you could you doing eight hour days or were you doing four hour days or what were you, what were you doing back then?

I don't even remember. But when you live on so little as I did, it mounts up quite fast. I just, you see, I don't drink, I didn't drink, I didn't smoke, didn't take drugs, didn't have a girlfriend. So what do you do with your money? I used to go to the local market and I buy, you know, the cheapest possible price of everything. I was just always just naturally very, very close with personal spending.

And you still do that, don't you? So you'd go for a home brand or the generic brand over.

I find it quite offensive to buy anything But a home brand. I'll go into the shop and I'll look for toothpaste. I don't have a home brand. I won't buy it.

Really? You're black and gold? Well, if black and gold are home brands watching, you know, give a sponsorship to Jim, he's your poster boy for it. So what I was gonna say, at your house as well, you were known for having barbecues all the time. I know you love barbecues still to this day, but I think it was. Someone used to go out with a bean bag or something. I don't know, they said a bean bag in the book, but even when it was raining, used to cook outside all the time.

Yeah. The bean bag was waterproof. I put it over my head and I'd put the barbecue. Every night I'd have a barbecue. Yeah, Yeah. I just. In my place at Eltham, I had this big. It's quite a big block, actually, because it was only a very small house and there was a trench. I hit my barbecue, which was the same sort of brick thing that my father used to do. His was concrete. Mine always just piled up bricks and go across the top. And I used to love cooking on a barbecue. I loved the outdoors. Even at night, in the rain, I would be out with my barbecue. Yes.

And you still do it, don't you, at your home?

Yeah.

Not in the rain, but in there.

Oh, yeah. I still had barbecues. It was my son, actually, when. During the lockdown. We had barbecues at the. Every day.

What's your specialty?

Well, actually, these days I'm mainly vegetarian, but we have. The only thing I really love on the barbecue is little schnitzels you get from Woolworths. Pepper schnitzels, which have got a four star rating. So they're quite healthy. So I have one of those and slice of bread and tomatoes and corn, roasted corn and a bit of fruit and stuff. So it's. Yeah, that's. Yeah, it's reasonably healthy, I suppose.

And you like the wood fire one? You don't have a gas one or anything?

It's a fire one, never gas. The taste is quite different. I used to have my staff across one time to have barbecue in my front yard and they put a gas cooker on and then I was cooking with the. Because they thought we wouldn't have enough. And I was cooking there and people tasted it. There's no comparison. This stuff on the fire is so much better.

It's a big industry now, the barbecues. There's TV shows, they're called Grill Masters and stuff like that in America. They have massive festivals here if you're ever interested in that sort of stuff.

Well, my barbecuing is very primitive. It's always got to be wood, it's got to be open, open flame. But you get smoke.

Yeah, the smoke.

You got to have the smoke getting into it. It's just the taste is ambrosia to me. There's really. There's nothing better than a nice barbecue. Very, very simple, very. But just the atmosphere, just the outdoors. Love the outdoors.

I want to touch it now as well. After that was during your. So you're doing your honours. When you had the house, did you buy the house when you were just about to start your honours or is that.

I don't remember when I exactly bought it. Yeah.

So does that house still exist? Have you driven past it since or.

90 Pitt street, you know, look, if you.

90 Pitt street, there we go down the road from the pub. So after your honours you embarked on your PhD in history. So that was a quite exciting time for you. I know we were just talking before. The lovely lady who helped you out with that.

Well, Jim Phillip was good. I knew her in my third year and she. And then when I wanted to go to honours, she said, Jim, you can. But you can't do what you did last year. You've got to actually tend the courses. This is a condition. I said, all right, okay, well, I will come and do. I will come and do the lectures. Yeah, I will come and. I don't know what they were lectures, but you had to do them. I had to follow the coursework properly like I did do in the previous year. But June, she was good. She's a lovely lady. And when I got to the end of my. I had this honest thesis which was. By that time I'd been developing quite a lot in terms of looking at different periods of history and applying every study I did. I actually applied the lessons to this research and I just gradually changed the thing. So I got this very. For an honest thesis, it went for about double what it should have because I put an appendix on. Because I had to put it all in. And they said it's like without the appendix this thing makes no sense. But of course that was. I just had to do. You're in that a certain length. So I had an appendix which is almost this long. They complained that it was without the appendix, it made no sense. But then I couldn't have put it all into the main thing, it was too big. And then June, they said to me actually, well look, if you want to do your PhD, you really should stay here because you'll get more latitude than you would at another university. I'm not going to let you do your own thing like you have here. Which was probably pretty sensible. I mean I don't dark on the tribe. They were very tolerant of this very weirdly, wildly unorthodox thinker who was zero personal skills. So I would tell anybody anything, exactly what I thought of them. Not rudely, but academics, professors. I always used to say I couldn't comprehend other people think they're so governed by who thinks something. I said, I don't care if there's a room full of professors telling me that I'm wrong. If you can't tell me the reason that I'm wrong, I'm not interested. But if a 10 year old kid comes up and said, okay, here's some evidence that shows that you're wrong because it doesn't fit your theory, then I'm interested. I don't understand how people think differently to that. So as I said, I was wildly unorthodox. My thinking was already completely out of the, out of the academic mainstream, especially for a history degree. It was just nowhere near what anybody else was doing. And they just advised me, you know, you better stay here. So I just did. I didn't even consider anywhere else really. But they were, they were good and there were some lovely people there. People like June, she was wonderful. And get cleaned in. People who were. I used to go and talk to academics at times and I don't want to be down on my old university. I've got a lot of.

Has La Trobe ever like. Because I know a lot of universities do inspiring alumni type of stuff. Have they ever approached you or anything like that?

No.

Well, if you are watching La Trobe, Jim went to La Trobe. He's giving you some kind words.

I don't know. I think my particular version of understanding academia might upset a lot of people, especially on the left these days. It's very empirical rather than ideologically driven.

What was your reaction? What was the reaction for your PhD during the time? What do people think about your ideas, especially the academics? What do they think about it?

Well, they didn't comprehend them.

They didn't comprehend them. Right.

June was.

Even when you showed evidence or even you showed the thinking behind the process or they couldn't comprehend it still, it's.

Just not the way people think in history departments in history. History doesn't work that way. History Is, you know, okay, what did the Second World War talk about? Here's about six plausible reasons and here's the evidence for them. And therefore that's the reason for the First World War. First World War. Here's all kinds of reasons, here's the evidence for them. And then they do a plausible narrative and they go in and they go and look at the research and they go into the primary sources and stuff and work out what actually happened and who said what and this kind of thing. So it's a very. I'm not decrying it, it's important because all my own research was built on that kind of thinking. But it's not the way I think about things when I was thinking about what's in common, you know, the Chinese Han Dynasty collapsed in towards the 3rd century, 2nd century AD the Roman Empire collapsed. Why? What's the commonality? What have they got in common? Why do populations rise in certain periods and drop in others? Why does the birth rate change the way it does? What's in common? You know, why did the birth rate drop in the 15th century or 14th century and also drop again in the late 17th century? What's the common pattern? And what theory can you have that covers all of history? So I wasn't just interested in one period. I wanted to know, like I was always interested in the broader variety of things like East Asian, ancient history, pre Columbian American. I wanted the biggest because I wanted something that would apply to all of history where historians don't think that way. They think I've got to explain the Second World War, but I want to understand war, war itself. Why do wars take place and then look at patterns? Why do so many wars take place? Pairs of wars take place about a generation apart, happens again and again. Chinese history, first and Second World War. It's again and again, why does that happen? And asking these questions and trying to find a theory that explained everything, not just why the Roman Empire collapsed, but why the Eastern Roman Empire didn't collapse. That was fascinating to me. What's the difference? If it's all to do with politics and economics, what's the difference? Why would there be such a huge difference? Why one goes down in 410 or thereabouts and the other one lasts til 453. What's the difference? That kind of thinking is incredibly alien to somebody who's a historian. It's like you're speaking Sanskrit to them. They just can't think in those terms. And June was wonderful and she would try and give me some guidance but it was totally outside of her mental universe. She was the loveliest lady, she really was. But she just couldn't really not. You couldn't grasp it. There's nothing complicated in the way complicated words or massive equations. It was just a way of thinking was so an historical.

And do you find that like. Let's skip forward to the present. Do you find that to this day, like obviously you've got a lot of interest in this, in biohistory. Now I know you've been approached to do talks and stuff like that. Do you find it. This takes time for something like an idea like that to sort of get absorbed over time and then it's sort of.

Most people can't think in those terms. Look, okay, in my view, my research is world breaking. It's intellectual breakthrough which completely changed the world. I mean, you know, look at things like problems of poverty and stuff like that. I mean I. I could tell you what you're supposed to do to cure poverty and it would be a rounding error on the aid budget. It would be incredibly simple. You just have to look at the epigenetics of human behavior and motivation and you do something like a vaccination program, mental illness, all these kinds of issues that are so big. Crime, drug addiction, all these things. That's really simple. So it's completely revolutionary. Weird thinking and things like learning cycles, which when you look at them are so obvious. You see these cycles all through European history, Chinese history, they've got all these points in common. It's so obvious to me. So why isn't it obvious to anybody else? Why doesn't anybody. Because people just can't think that way. Because their minds, when it comes to physics or chemistry, it's out there somehow. You can think about it objectively and clearly. When it comes to human society, we're so embedded in it, we cannot. Most people cannot think outside normal ways of looking at things. They just can't do it. It's just unnatural. Now very few people can pick it up and they love it. My son Andrew, fortunately, praise God is one of them. And there are other people who can. People who come from a scientific background tend to find it somewhat easier because they're used to thinking in terms of. I remember I showed a draft of my book to Professor Parolini who was doing the research work in those days. He said, you know, this makes sense. It was very matter of fact because he's used to thinking in terms of evolutionary biology. So this is the Ugnus body applied to history. Of course it should work that way. But people who are involved in sociology, history, so called social sciences, which nothing scientific about them, they just can't think in those terms. It's difficult. You've got to sort of lift yourself out of your mind. And it's easy for me because I'm a total maverick. I just naturally think different to everybody else and everything.

Well, you had a couple of interviews. You had one interview with that Steven bloke who had like 100,000 views which says people are, you know, over time, sort of. It still keeps going and going slowly. People are getting absorbed with the content.

There are people who accept tends to fit better with a more right wing sort of viewpoint because it's less, I don't know, I wouldn't say they're less ideological. I wouldn't necessarily try myself as particularly right wing in practice. But people who think in those terms tend to be more able to understand what I'm talking about. Because you're talking about things like the decline of the West. Well, to a person with a right wing viewpoint, that kind of makes emotional sense. Whereas a person with a left wing viewpoint, they say, well no, no, no, you know, you just can't think in those terms.

I gotcha. And during that time as well, was that when you. Because you're militant atheist as well? Up until I think like lateish 20s maybe or 27. 27, yeah. So was that, were you at university still then at the time doing that? Yeah, because it was these ideas which then fought would not force you, but you sort of then changed your thinking. Right?

Well, I started off, I started off being very, very left, lefty, you know, like all in favor of sex, being free and all the rest of it. I didn't actually act that way very much because I was too introverted and nerdy and socially awkward and the rest of it. And when I started researching and looking at the reasons for the collapse of civilizations and what caused civilization to rise and prosper and stuff, I recognized that traditional thinking, Christian, Jewish values, whatever, actually have a lot of point to them because they change character in a way that creates the temperament that allows solidarity to flourish.

So when you were looking at the material that was the evidence that you needed to then change. So you used that as evidence to change your belief.

It's interesting stuff too. A lot of things around, like the Kinsey Report, which is very interesting to me. This is written in the late 40s about these large scale surveys. And Alfred Kinsey was somebody who basically believed sex was the more the better. But there was Statistics in there that said something completely different. One of the most interesting ones, it says that the single best predictor of whether you're going to be successful in life is how many nocturnal emissions you have as a teenager. Now, he didn't put it that way, right? He just put it as a correlation. But there was a massive, massive, massive correlation. The more nocturnal emissions you have, the more likely you are to go further in education, the more money you're going to make. Very powerful correlations, which I put in my books. And that was kind of, you know, people say, well, the whole thing about sex is just a weird thing. You like, of course you should, but that's not what Kinsey's the guy who wrote the book on why the sexual revolution should happen. But his own statistics actually said the opposite. They said, there's a point to this. So it was from that kind of evidence that I was looking at and what I tend to do when I read a book. Most people, when they read a book, they tend to look at the, the viewpoint of the writer. And as the first thing, I just looked at the evidence and I would often completely write out the view of the writer. Margaret Mead's another example too. I love Margaret Mead because of the way that she describes societies. Books like Sex and Temperament and Free Permanent Societies and Coming of Age in New Guinea. They're fantastic sources and they were a source of a lot of my thinking in the early days. But I had no, no agreement to talk with the way Margaret Mead thinks about these things and her interpretation of them. I took her evidence and just completely cast aside, almost unaware of what she thinks. So that's just the way my mind works. I look for the evidence. I'm not interested in your theory. I want to know what's the evidence for your theory. If the evidence doesn't fit your theory garbage, go for the evidence.

Yeah, well, it's quite a formative time because all that, let's say mid to late 20s, 20s, that's when the whole passion, it's the bio history, that's where it's all formulating. You're getting your ideas down in a form and that's sort of what's driven you moving forward for the next, you know, until we are to this day. So I think it's a quite important chapter in the book, so I recommend anyone to read it. So we'll leave it there for this week. Jim, the Axle of Daniel Garden. Lots to unpack there, so make sure you subscribe. And obviously every Wednesday night we have asked Jim as well. We can ask him any question you'd like to know. Hopefully we can get a few of these copies to get you to sign and sell online as well. We trying to do that. You can also get every customer raving fan for free, which can actually download it on our website for free, which is an audiobook or you can actually get a signed version as well if you want for a small fee. So thanks for that, Jim. We'll leave that there for this week.

All right. It's difficult. You've got to sort of lift yourself out of your mind. And it's easy for me because I'm a total maverick. I just naturally think different to everybody else in everything.

Well, you had a couple of interviews. You had one interview with that Steven bloke who had like 100,000 views, which. So people are, you know, over time, you know, it's sort of, it still keeps going and going slowly. People are getting absorbed with the content.

There are people who accept. Tends to fit better with a more right wing sort of viewpoint.

Right.

Because it's, it's less. I don't know, I wouldn't say they're less ideological. I wouldn't necessarily try myself as particularly right wing in practice. But people who think in those terms tend to be more able to understand what I'm talking about. Because you're talking about things like the decline of the West. Well, to person with a right wing viewpoint that kind of makes emotional sense, whereas to a person with a left wing viewpoint they say, well, no, no, no, you know, you just can't think in those terms.

I get you. And during that time as well, was that when you. Because you're militant atheist as well? Up until I think like ladies 20s maybe or 27. 27, yeah. So was that. Were you at university still then at the time doing that? Because it was these ideas which then not force you, but you sort of then changed your thinking. Right. You went from being a military.

Well, I started off being very, very lefty. You know, like all in favour of sex, being free and all the rest of it. I didn't actually act that way very much because I was too introverted and nerdy and socially awkward and the rest of it. And when I started researching and looking at the reasons for the collapse of civilizations and what caused civilization to rise and prosperity and stuff, I recognize that traditional thinking, Christian, Jewish values, whatever, actually have a lot of point to them because they change character in a way that creates the temperament that allows Sylvesters to flourish.

So when you were looking at the Material that was the evidence that you needed to then change. So you used that as evidence to change your belief.

It's interesting stuff too. A lot of things around, like the Kinsey Report, which, which is very interesting to me. This is written in the late 40s about these large scale surveys. And Alfred Kinsey was somebody who basically believed sex was the more the better. But there was statistics in there that said something completely different. One of the most interesting ones, it says that the single best predictor of whether you're going to be successful in life is how many nocturnal emissions you have as a teenager. Now, he didn't put it that way, right? He just put it as a correlation. But there was a massive, massive, massive correlation. The more nocturnal emissions you have, the more likely you are to go further in education, the more money you're going to make. Very powerful correlations, which I put in my books. And that was kind of, you know, people say, well, the whole thing about sex is just to everything you like, of course you should. But that's not what Kinsey's the guy who wrote the book on why the sex revolution should happen. But his own statistics actually said the opposite. They said, there's a point to this. So it was from that kind of evidence that I was looking at and what I tend to do when I read a book. Most people, when they read a book, they tend to look at the viewpoint of the writer. And as the first thing, I just looked at the evidence and I would often completely write out the view of the writer. Margaret Mead's another example too. I love Margaret Mead because of the way that she describes societies. Books like sex and 10 permanent and three permanent societies and Coming of Age in New guinea, they're fantast.