JIM'S GROUP CEO Spills His Secrets to Achieving the BEST Life and Business

So welcome to another Ask Jim. So it's another training week, Jim, and we start of spring, which is fantastic. It's a really good time for most divisions, so it is too.

Work's starting to pick up.

Work starting to pick up. Absolutely. So a bit of a different location tonight, so we're just waiting for people to filter on through as well. So if you're not sure of Ask Jim, people watching online leave a question and a comment. We'll get to those as well, as we always do. And then people in the audience here, which our new franchisees can get priority with asking Jim a question. So first off, Jim, let's just talk about the local heroes, which people might not know, but we've got our two winners there.

Yes.

So do you want to tell people about the local heroes first of all?

All right, this is for New Zealand Local Heroes winner, which is Mark, who gets $500 worth of Jim's services. Nominated by Jan. Mark is a humble, selfless individual who dedicates his life to helping others. Despite living on a modest income, he spends most of his time doing community work. Isn't that amazing? Most of his time, even though his income isn't so good, supporting struggling businesses who feeding the homeless and even saving lives. So he never seeks recognition. His commitment has been lifelong, earning him a runner up spot for Alt Clandra of the Year for his youth charity work. However, his own home has suffered, especially after breaking his back a few years ago. He can no longer fix his deteriorating conservatory or complete a drainage project. While Mark would never ask for help, some handyman services will be a tremendous encouragement for this quiet hero who has given so much to others. Isn't that amazing? Isn't that a great story?

So for those who have so many.

Wonderful people around, well, for those who.

Don'T know, we do a thing called Jim's Local Heroes where every week we give someone two grand worth of service from Australia in this case or $500 in New Zealand.

500.

So he's in Auckland because we've got handyman.

He's in Auckland. So they're going to really help. Help easy.

So if you want to nominate someone, head to jims.net or the gyms.co.nz website. Nominate anyone you like. Every week we give away 2k and $500. The next one's the Australian winner.

Jim's Australia local hero winner, Graham McMurty, nominated by Diane McMurtry for $2,000 worth of gym services. It's not a matter of them being better than New Zealand it's just because Australia's bigger, we've got more money for it.

That's actually right.

My husband Graham is a true local hero. Eleven years ago, our daughter Hannah was tragically killed in a car crash, a loss that forever changed our lives. But instead of retreating into grief, Graham chose to passionately share the vital message of road safety. He speaks at schools, early childhood centres and to the public, both in person and via Zoom. Graham also dedicates his time to supporting first responders and other fathers who have faced similar devastating losses. Beyond this, he volunteers in the community, helping with school programs and community breakfasts. Despite everything, Graham has also become my full time carer after I suffered a stroke following Hannah's passing. Through it all, he remains kind, caring and supportive. However, many things around our home need urgent attention that Graham is physically unable to address. Please, Jim, we need your help. Graham truly reserves this recognition for all that he does well. We're really happy to provide $2,000 worth of any of our services to Graham.

There you go. So, Graham, two crazy worth of your services coming your way. I'll make contact with you soon as well. And if you do, leave an entry for the Local Heroes, which is on our website. You can do this right now. Local Heroes on the New Zealand or the Australian Gyms Group website. Please leave a bit of detail. Some people put submissions go, I deserve it because I'm poor or something like that. And that's it. Give us a little bit of detail about why you deserve it or who you're nominating.

So amazing people who are in such need themselves are the ones that do give so much to help others.

It's hard to pick. It's hard to pick. We obviously did it on three. Aw. We've got a lot of entries as well, so we do take them seriously. We do read them as well. So it's very hard to choose every week, but we do choose some really deserving people like we've got there. Cool. So we've got a few more people coming in now, which is fantastic. So let's kick off our shim. So we have a keen questioner over there, which is great.

Yes.

Come up and ask Jim a question anytime. Anything you like.

Hi, Jim, I'm Paul from Sydney. I'm Mowing. My question is Coon Cheese got forced legally to change their name. If you ever got forced to change Jim's Mowing name, what would you call nothing offensive about Jim's. Thank you very much. I know that. I didn't think there was anything offensive about Trees either. But, you know, like, that's another story, isn't it? Using gyms as a derogatory term for some racial group or other. I suppose we would have a problem, wouldn't we? But it'd be very hard. Someone named Jim might have an offense. I don't know. Well, as long as we kept the logo, the actual beard and the hat thing, which obviously was me. I suppose we could call it something else and call it Tim's Mowing or Jimbo's Mowing or.

There is a Tim's moan going around.

You're for competition. But no. Yeah, Coon was a problem, wasn't it? It wasn't. It had to have a different meaning. That word.

Not a good one. Nice stickler of a question to start with, that one.

Not an easy one.

Change the name, too. What did they change the name to?

Cheers.

Cheer.

Cheers. Cheer.

Cheers.

Was it?

Yeah. Okay, come.

Okay.

Jim, Eugene here from Cleaning. This is a bit of a controversial one and something to do with marriage and bit of marriage advice, I guess. Looking for. What do you think of the phrase happy wife, happy life? Okay. Well, you're asking somebody who's been divorced three times. So as a marriage counsellor, I'm not necessarily the first person you should be asking about that. But having said that, there's nothing more important in life than a happy marriage. It actually counts a lot more. I do a lot of research on happiness and having a happy family life is actually a bigger indicator of happiness than having a whole lot of money. Especially if you don't spend it. You spend it just for status and display. I don't think there's anything more important. And look, my. Bombed out three times. I'm obviously extremely difficult man to live with, no question. And 23 years ago, I was introduced to this lady Lee, and I fell crazy in luck with her on the first night we met. And it hasn't changed. I still adore her. Totally. So she's just a wonderful person. She's a very giving person. She just thinks of other people all the time. She's a great mother, she's a great wife, she's a great friend. She's just a wonderful person. So sometimes God just blesses you. So I can't claim much. I can't claim much credit for it. She actually finds me so difficult. The only way she can cope with me is by saying, this guy's got Asperger's. He's autistic. That's why he doesn't notice things. So that's not Very good advice.

Is it?

No, but it is. Find an amazing wife.

Yeah.

That's very encouraging. Thank you. Having said that, let me tell you, my beautiful wife is incredibly loving and passionate. She also has a really ferocious temper and I doubt most men could cope with her as well as I do, but she's glorious. I adore her completely. That's awesome. Thank you. Thank you.

Good question. Thanks for that one.

Great question. I'm going to put that down as one of my favourites already. I love that one.

Jafar, come up. Hey, Jim, it's Clint from mowing. With 505, five and a half thousand franchisees all around the world, how do you stay so calm and seems like you just got a level head all the time?

I have a very strong sense of mission in what I do. I don't believe in living for money. And that may seem strange because the only reason you listen to me is because I'm rich. I mean, let's face it, if I was some impoverished homeless guy, you wouldn't be saying, who is this guy? I'm not going to listen to him. But the fact of the matter is, I've never seen money as the most important thing. The only reason I really want money is to run my research program. And I also have a sense of mission for that. I have a sense of mission for my franchisees. So my life is driven by purpose and my family. Those are the three things that matter to me. And if you keep. This is the kind of. This is what God's asked me to do. Money is a gift from God, to be used for what he wants us to use. It's not for something for pride, it's not for luxury, it's not for personal dormant status. It's for using for good purposes. And I think that sense of mission, that sense of purpose centers me a lot because I see in perspective, you know, we've had some difficult things happening. We've had some problems with Dogwatch. We've had some articles in news.com and I'm bringing attention to them too. But I mean, I think they're unfairly unpleasant, they're distorted. They're talking about people who aren't making money. Even though our own independent surveys show that 86% of our franchisees in dogwash make good or satisfactory income, the great majority are doing well. So that's quite upsetting in a way, in a sense. But, you know, what do I say about that? It's in God's hands. Yeah. He'll take care of it. I don't have to worry about it. We just do what we need to do and he will look after us and we always got to do what's right.

Yeah. Okay. And also I heard that you, you like to stay fit. What, what type of exercises and activities you like to do?

Every morning, half an hour on the treadmill and weightlifting.

Yeah.

And at the weekend I go to my farm and I dig potatoes and vegetables. I got this vast vegetable garden as big as this, twice the size of this room. I've got beach ones. I go in there and dig and dig potatoes and plant things and weed and I just love that. I got really filthy fingertails because they never get clean. I just love, I love the outdoors. I love being in contact with nature. It's the best thing. Which is why something like mowing is such a great division for me. I mean, I'm not saying it suit everybody, but I love being a gardener. I love being a mowing contractor because I love that kind of thing. I think it's a pity, you know, people don't recognize this passion we have for. You've got to be a manager. You got to sit in front of a computer all day and that's kind of like what a good life is about. But the happiest people don't tend to be bankers and lawyers. They tend to come fairly far down. People like people who work physically with their hands on the whole, tend to be happier than those who work indoors, which is really interesting.

I'm going to try to go to.

The gym early in the morning if you. Yeah, I want to come down.

Well, you can work off some of the food you need. Very good, isn't it? All right, thanks, Jim.

We do have Jimmy Jim on site, so you've got Jim at home as well, which you got in your.

There. You got Jim's gym.

Yes. Yeah, we do.

I've got my gym at home in my. In a little. In the backyard. And I go there and I go and have a cold shower afterwards too. You got to bask under the cold water. So exercise, cold is really good for you. That's also a matter of morale too. If you keep your body healthy, then your mind is more active. You know, exercise is a better antidepressant by far than anything on the market. It's really. If you could bottle what exercise does for you, you'd make trillions of dollars. But you can't. You gotta get there and do the hard work.

Yeah, that's right. I think you could outlift Jim though, from the. And the look of how good you are. Probably got me covered. Who's got a question for Jim? Just come up and ask him. Anyone, Just come up and ask him. Just interrupt us. It's for you guys to ask them anything you like on camera. Personal history, science, life. Hi, Jim.

Mark from Mowing, Just a question. When you first started out, did you ever think you would get this big with Jim's group? No, not at all. When I first started out as a franchisee, bear in mind, I was up against a competitor that had 250 franchisees. It didn't even occur to me that I could draw a level with them. Somebody actually asked me when I just launched. He said, how big do you think it might be? And I said, look, if it works well, I don't know, it's a new venture. If it works well, one day we could have as many as 100. That's what I actually said at the time. I had no idea. Even after the first couple of years, I really didn't understand how big it would be. If you'd have told me we were going to have 5,500 French. I said, come on, you dream. What are you smoking? I mean, what's. Really. It would have seemed extraordinary. Are you thinking of going anywhere else in the world or just staying to the countries? Yes. Hopefully in a year's time we'll be in Florida as our beach head. We've got Dan Carl. You're going to hear from him tomorrow morning.

Yes, tomorrow.

Yeah, tomorrow. Fantastic guy. Great story. This is a high school dropout who bought a Ming franchise with great trepidation in his early 20s. He's now one of the top franchisors in Tunic group. I've seen quite a few stories. Well, he's. He's really keen to go in and be a pioneer. Pioneer into the States. Yeah, he's definitely the one. I think I have five and a half thousand in Australia. You imagine doing the same thing in America. You'd have 60,000. Yeah, you'd be.

Nice jumper as well. So just. Boss, we've got you on there. Can you just turn around real quickly so we get on camera? Jim's on the back.

Cool.

Very cool. That's nice.

Good man.

Thanks for buying that. Good question. Guys, feel free to come up and ask Jim even. I've got all your questions here. It's better if you ask Jim on the microphone.

Yeah, great.

Just come up, interrupt us. It's for you. Ask anything you like. Anyone who asks Jim a question gets a prize at the end. So It's a really easy way to get some merch up here.

Hi, Jim. Mick from Queensland in the Raleigh. If you. Sorry, if.

If there was a movie about your.

Life, who would play who? And you got to choose the actor.

Who would you choose?

I would pick someone like. What's the James Bond?

Pierce Brosnan. You think?

No, not Pierce Brosnan. The newer. What's his name?

Daniel Craig.

Daniel Craig, yeah. I would. Daniel Craig, definitely. You know the biggest advantage? He looks nothing like me. He's far better looking, good looking than me. But then they had to find someone incredibly gorgeous and beautiful to. To play my wife. And that would be impossible because nobody's as gorgeous as her.

So rounding points.

Is she watching? Does she watch this? She does.

Daniel Craig.

Daniel Craig can make a great gym, don't you reckon? Put him on a beard. You wouldn't. I was going with Tom Hanks.

Uncanny resemble.

Uncanny resemblers. I'm as ugly as sin. And he's so good looking. I don't really like James Bond very much. I don't like men who sort of play around with women. But. But he's just a great character.

Good question. If you've got a question, guys, feel free. Come up, ask Jim up here. Just come up and ask him. Go for it. Ask him another jumper, which is great talking.

I know how great.

Fantastic looks. Good. They're fantastic. Talking about looks, my father in law.

Is a spitting image of you.

Can I show you a photo, please?

It's, it's. You can. My commiseration.

You should hold up to the camera as well so people in there can see. So there's a camera right there.

Can you, can you see? Can you see that?

I don't know if you can see it.

Yeah, yeah.

Right, let's have a look.

Have a look. So that, that's Ken Young. All right. Okay. I know that photo might not very good, but in real life, his charisma, the way he talks, everything. So you've got a long, long lost brother.

A long lost brother.

Long lost brother.

There we go. Look out. That's a good one. We'll do a clip of that. A long lost brother.

He's aged very well, I must say. Age, Ken. I asked my, asked my wife actually, she said what if you could do a. Because she continues to look like she's 25, which is a bit. I look like a grandpa. I actually went to the hospital when we had our last son and they said, your daughter in law is in that room. I said, no, I'm the husband. She's like 17 years younger than me, but she seems about 40 years younger. But I asked her what would happen if I could be rejuvenated and look as young as she looks, and she said no. Well, all the girls would be hitting on you. Which shows the extreme bias you've got to me, if somebody thinks I'm good looking, she's really besotted, that's for sure.

There you go. We'll put that up on. There's a clip and we'll see what people think. With that one online, we'll run a poll. Ken would love that too, for sure. If you've got a question, guys, feel free to come up and ask Jim as well.

Just come up.

Don't put your hand up. Just come and interrupt us. Go for it. Whip through them. We get you to write about here only if no one's got a question, then we read them out. But we prefer if you just come up to the microphone and ask Jim anything you like. You get a prize at the end.

Got some great prizes here. You got beer, you got hats, you got Monopoly, you got so.

Good evening, Jim. I have a two question for you.

Yes.

So is it necessary to buy public liability insurance from you? Or we can buy from anywhere else as well.

It must be from us. The reason for that is we don't. It's the only thing we require people to buy from us. One of the most profound principles at Jim's is that we don't. Third line in force. We don't want a situation where you have to buy from us when there's a better deal elsewhere. That to me is appalling. Having said that, our public risk policy is the best. There is no way in the world anybody has as good as that in terms of a deal. You can get it for just mowing lawns, but you can't get it for everything we need to do. But there's one simple reason. If you buy a public risk policy from anybody else, you can pay for it. A month later, you go back and cancel it. We would never know. Two weeks after that, you have an accident, you knock a kid's eye out, you're sued for $5 million. Guess who gets hit with it? We do. And that would hurt every franchisee in Jim's group. It would really put the company at risk. So to protect the company against major losses, we insist you do it through us. Because then if you do that, if you cancel your insurance, we know, we say pay your insurance or you will not stay as a franchisee because we will not put the company at risk. That's the only reason we do it.

Okay, so that means we have to buy from you guys, from Jims.

You do need to. But it is a very good deal we have. People come to us and say I've got a bearded deal. Say a mowing guy comes, I can get a beard deal for somebody else. And we have a look and he said, yes, that's right, you're covered for mowing. You're not covered for gardening, rubbish removal, gutter clearing, anything else. You're not covered for any of those folks. Just mine. That's why it's cheaper. So if you actually do gardening and you dig up and you break somebody's pipe and you've got a hundred thousand dollar damage bill, you're covered. If you use the cheaper policy, you are stuffed. You're most likely bankrupt. So it's very important that you get the proper insurance.

Yeah.

What division are going to be doing mowing? Oh, you're in mine.

All the more reason. Check it out. Yeah. When you have a look at it, ask around, see if you can get a public risk policy and make sure it covers something. And I guarantee you won't.

Okay, I will. And my, the second question is like when I was searching for a franchise, especially the moving one, I did some research.

Yes.

So I research is like there is a one suburb and territory is like 50km away from where I live. And when I write enough Google reviews, the reviews was very bad, you know, so everyone on that reviews was saying don't buy Jim's franchise because their staff is rude. Even on the call center like last week, that Victoria, there's a girl who's her name is Victoria. She wrote a huge, huge review on that thing. It's like a Jim's Penrith moving page. And she said you guys charge her three times in a row. So my question is like I went to her and I did my job and somehow she charged three times. Somehow. So who going to refund that money I have to return or the gems? Because I think she will call you straight away, not me.

Okay, let me tell you, if the job is done poorly, we will fix it. No matter what happens, the franchisee has the option of going back. If the franchisee can't or won't, we will fix it. We will pay for it. We'll charge the franchisee, we'll pay for them, what we call the warranty fund. If the franchisee leaves, then we cancel the debt. So the client will always be fixed for a Poor job. However, a client being charged three times the standard price, no way. We are not cheap as chips. We are the quality. We guarantee our job. We are fully insured. We are police checked. We'll do whatever's necessary to make sure a client is looked after, but often will charge more. I don't feel a client saying, and I see these reviews myself because I check through, I do all the, I check through all the poor surveys every, every day, I check through them all. And I don't think the charging treble is a bad thing. It shows to me that somebody's actually making good money because let's face it, we're in business to make franchisees well off. That's our top priority now. We look after clients because we want to have lots and lots of clients who prepare to pay good money. But ultimately the aim is to have you making a great income. And I don't mind if you are busy. I want you to charge high and you will be. You're going mowing guy.

Yeah.

You're going into spring, you're going to get busy. By December most mowing leaves will go unserviced. Well, why not go in and do a sixty dollar job normally? Why don't you charge 150 bucks for it?

Yeah, for sure.

Because you don't mind losing it and you won't get upset. We will never have a go at you for charging too much. We will have a go at you if you don't do the job well. So you charge 150 bucks if you like, but do a fantastic job and if you miss something, you're going to go back and fix it.

So having said that, if for suppose that review was a fake, will it affect the franchisee? How you will judge whether it's a fake or a real review?

Well, you're talking about Google my business reviews.

Yes, yes, totally that reviews because like a normal person when someone rides at Jim's moving near me so they're gonna be first business and when I will be see like it's going to be only three stars and I'll review.

What suburb is that in?

It was a Jim Penrith.

Yeah, I'll have a look at that. So this one's going on that is extraordinarily poor. We have our own internal ratings.

I'm asking what if she's lying? What if? So how you gonna judge too much.

About than a Google rating? If it's a gym's rating you can actually challenge it. Like for example, if it's clear that the client is being completely unreasonable. Like they're saying the job is terrible because you didn't scrub the walls of the house in a baked cake clean. But that wasn't in the quote. Now if it's clearly shown that the franchisee has done the right thing, our own ratings would take care of it. But our ratings are actually better than the Google rating too. I trust them completely. If I want to get a job done, I check out own ratings. I wouldn't dream of going to Google ratings because they're too easy to manipulate. You just get all the people, your friends to go and put good ratings. They're very phony honestly.

So it won't affect the franchisee?

Not the GMB rating, no. But you can actually report reviews. So if you actually go to that person's name, for example, there's three dots next to them, you click it, it actually says report. There's false. If you have a couple of people do that besides yourself from a different IP address, for example, Google generally takes it down. So you can actually report the review or the franchisor can get access and actually leave a detailed comment. So which is good for transparency as well. So that's.

I'm going to check on that actually to see what's going on with that guy. We shouldn't have a three star rating. That's extremely unusual. Most of our franchises are very.

Yeah, when I was searching and there was the first franchise I saw and yes it affect me but when I talked to Dan. Yeah he just told me each and everything was happening so I was convinced.

Yeah, I think if you generally check you'll find most people have very good reviews. You will find one division that actually tends to have a lot of bad reviews is Jim's Fencing. But most of the views are the fact that we can't do the job because at some times 60% of our fencing jobs go unserviced at lease and people don't like that. So they'll give a bad view because you can't do the job.

Too busy to give it quite a bit.

And that's not from our point of view a negative. It's actually a sign that we're successful and we have a huge demand. We're actually looking at setting up our own. We're going to start setting up our own fencing franchise run from head office because there's so much work available and it's so lucrative.

But yeah, thank you.

Thank you Jim. Very specific.

Yeah, very.

Well check it out. We've got a question come up and go for it got a few comments online too, Jim, which we'll get to answer this question as well, I reckon.

Yes. Hey, Jim, my name's Nathan, I'm from Jim's Pool Care and we're just wondering. We know that Jim's is such a great brand and you've got such. One of the good things that help people identify us is our uniforms and how good we look out there in the field. And we just wanted to know when you're going to be introducing budgie smugglers.

As the mandatory kit for the pool boys.

Somebody was telling me today that somebody down Ben style. Who is that? Is that person around here? This, this lady from, from Banstel I was talking to at lunchtime. She said that there was a local gyms, a lady who was doing it and she used to mow lawns in her bikini. She was really bronzed and had a great figure. So she was very famous in Bansdale. And I said, that is not approved uniform. Well, I'll be your first if you ever introduce them.

So you're going to wipe that complaint, Jim, if someone makes a complaint for not in uniform, are you going to wipe that complaint?

Like you're going to be at the front or the back? Yeah, both.

Both, yeah.

When I. When I was mowing lawns, I tell you, in the hot weather, sometimes you'd look at the pool and you think, jeep, it be nice to jump into those. Jump in. I can mow around. Not allowed to do it. But yeah, we should add, we should.

Add jocks to the merch range though. Why not? Jim's jocks. Someone said Jim, Jim's jocks.

How about that? Who'd buy Jim's jocks put on the back?

Awesome.

Yeah, there, there's gone. You got to mark up the back there. Sweet.

No, thank you. I'll have to do it. Cool. It's a good way to do your first Facebook post is to put yourself in there. Smugglers and introduction to the area.

Yeah, yeah. I'm Kim, you can do work stops.

Cool.

Thank you.

Good idea. Very good idea.

Yeah.

Might have to do it.

Yeah. I'm Shiraz from Sydney Gym. What does a day in a life of gym look like? I get up, I drive my son to school, which is 20, 25 minutes away, and we have a chat, which is great because I keep in touch with my son, drive home, listen to a talking book, then I usually get on the computer, start doing emails and stuff. I do all the things like I check all the bad surveys, I get delete request surveys. I have a run as soon as I can. I do my half hour run exercise, cold shower and just keep on more emails. Wander down to the office. I usually do a wander around, I check the call center, I see how they're ranking. I want to see that we're getting jobs done. If it's over like 30 seconds of wait, what's going on? Why is happening? I just go and chat to people, don't I? I might drop in on Joel, hey, what's going on with his advertising campaign or social media and stuff. Then go back and do some more emails, have meetings. Maybe a new division could be coming up. That was my next question. How do you determine the need for a new division?

Good question.

Well, the need's probably fairly obvious. It's find the person to run it that's hard. So we've wanted to do driving school for example for a long time. Driving school is a fantastic business for us. It's because one of the things about gyms but strange our key demographic is 15 to 25. Now don't ask me why not come from but somehow that 15, 25 demographic, especially girls for some reason lovers on social media. So this is a fantastic opportunity for us to do driving school. We've wanted to do it for years, we just never had the right person. And then Lance as a party comes on earlier sheer this is successful mowing franchisee. Great franchisee, great income, great customer service, very helpful. He's a trainer, he's done all the right things. And he says I want to drive in school. We say yes, go for it. So that just started first of August. We've already got like five people already. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The question was for Jim. Is it a data based decision, modeling based decision or is it just. I feel that it's going to be okay. Look, we go for. First of all we like service businesses. We're not very good at things like we had many years ago. We tried Jim's. Jim's, you know, like we called it beach house. Yeah, we're not good because we don't understand it very well. Unfortunately people who invested really didn't do very well at all. Including my wife I might say. So that's we understand service business doesn't really matter whether it's it or pest control or it doesn't matter all people. Where people ring for a service that we've got to go about and operate, that's the kind of thing we're good at. We look for a service that can make at least 70 bucks an hour. For an average operator, we're not interested in doing something that can. You can only make 40 bucks an hour. That's not our kind of thing at all. So we want a good hourly rate and we also look for a business that's got reasonable scale. Now we had somebody come up with a business idea for cleaning wooden chimneys of wood stoves. The trouble with that is it's a good business but it's too little because one of the things, our franchise fees are quite modest. They don't necessarily seem modest but they average only about 6% of turnover. So you have to have a number to have a decent regional franchise. You need at least 20 franchisees and then you can focus. So we want something that can grow. We. We'd like to see a division which has got the capacity for at least 100 franchisees, preferably more. Got it. So that's the kinds of things we look for. Something that's a service industry, something with a good hourly rate for an average operator, not the top one, but the average. And something which is big enough to have good numbers. And which franchise, in your opinion, has got the most room to take more franchisees in. Right now we're at. There's more work. I know you mentioned fencing. Is there any other? Well, actually most of our divisions have surplus of work. Probably the ones with the most surplus work will be fencing and dog wash. Dog wash has unlimited. We've got 270 odd franchise using dogwash. We could have 2000 and we wouldn't even touch the market. People are booked out months in advance. In fact, the advertising budget is so badly underspent that we've shouted all the dogwash franchisees to a conference fully paid in Queensland because we can't spend on advertising because they're so busy. So Dogwash has extraordinary potential for work, but also. But mowing too. Mowing. You know, we're coming into spring, we're going to knock back probably by December. We're knocking back three quarters of the leads that are coming from mowing. Cleaning could do very, very well. Most divisions. The only ones we struggle a bit to find work would be laundry is doing very well but it does take a while to build. That could be a lot bigger but it's harder it bookkeeping. Those are divisions where you have to really struggle to find work at times in the beginning. Now most of them still make decent income but it's harder. But the manual work ones like fencing, handyman, mowing, cleaning trees, essentially unlimited work. Thank you so much. Appreciate coming.

Have you got an idea for a new division. I could see you thinking about that. I might come up with one. It's not as hard as what people think. People literally the way it comes is they send Jim. Well, they send Jim a message on Instagram, then we filter. It all comes to LinkedIn or Facebook page or something like that, and we send it to Jim and then that's it. There's a zoom call. They see if it's appropriate and that's pretty much the way it goes. It's not as hard as what people think about.

No.

What's the cost for them? Maybe a new division. Do you want to sell people just to.

It's about. Basically what we ask for is the first six months fees in advance, which is 25 grand, but no ingoing price. It's a rental. And then you've got to pay a few thousand dollars. Actually, a new division costs no more than a typical mowing or cleaning franchise. It's actually a very. But it's because we've got the best people. But what you do is you rent the division. You don't actually buy it, you rent it. And your challenges are divisional and that could be anybody here. You could have very well have somebody in training this week who will eventually go and start a new division. You've got to hit 30 franchisees within three years. Somehow, if you do that, it's yours, we give it to you and then you can sell it, you can do whatever you like with it.

So lance, it took 18 months. So Lance started as a franchisee. It's a good video for Lance Online, you did five grand in the hole and made a lot of money after 18 months and then went into a new division. So it can be quite quick.

Our top franchisees, we've got an enormous amount of entrepreneurial talent in gyms because you start with the service business, you can show yourself the way that people like Lance do. So then they show themselves, they show their ability. As I said, income, customer service, helpfulness training, those kinds of things. If we. Somebody with those kind of things, if we see you with that kind of thing and you come up with an idea, it's very easy. You send me an email, we get an appointment, you come and see us. Or you do it by Zoom. If it looks good, do your research, talk to other people, you can go along to. We have a divisional training like divisional conferences. Every six months you can go to one of those, talk to the other divisionals, ring them up, do your inquiry when you're ready to go ahead we book you in for franchisor training which is every quarter because you've already done a franchisee training, that's a three day course and you get going.

Yeah. Interested to see what your idea is.

You never know in this room here there could be a Jim's division coming up. Somebody's going to run a multi million dollar business one day. You just don't know because I mean look, Bill Cobanogli started Haider who runs the clean division now. He's got over a thousand franchisees in his groups. He started, he was actually came to us, he was a cleaner, he was actually cleaning toilets, washing floors and he came to us, he's now obscenely successful.

He says his phrases. I went from cleaning to cleaning up. The last question.

So does this mean Jim's is Jim's a call center or is Jim's a franchisee? Jim's is everything. What is it? Every everything is. Everything is Jim's. The call center is part of it. The IT system, the franchisees are part of it. The franchisors are part of it. The manuals, the contracts, it's all the same process, the same system. Joel's part of it. My staff, staff are just as important as anybody else. As whole disfranchisees. It's the people that make it. Great, great. Thank you. Hello, my name is Shirin and franchisee laundry and first I came here to overcome some of my fears because it's really hard for me to talk in front of people. Oh beautiful. You get up at the microphone. Well done. And I have a question, I just want to know what is your advice for new franchiser who sometimes giving up and you know they don't have any job or if it's difficult, you've got to follow the system. You've got to give great service. People who fail tend to be those who give poor service. Not always. But the other thing is we have this system called pay for work guarantee where you actually go and offer free services. And now if you do that and your service is good, you will not fail. I don't know of any case in any current division which has ever failed to find enough work. And what's going to happen after one month I'm going to write you a letter and I'm going to ask how you're going and I'm going to specifically for pay for work guarantee and I'm going to challenge you on that. And if you're not making your pay per work guarantee level which can be anything from $1,000 to $2,500 per week. Then I would challenge you to do it and we'll teach you how to do it. We've got great videos that Joel's done about things like using Facebook, like the local heroes type idea where you can go in the community and offer your own free services and you get great reviews. There's lots of ways of doing it. We're very good at that. You've got to follow the system. Talk to your franchisor, receive their calls, ring them up, ring me up, contact me, ask anybody for help. Follow the system, go to the meetings. If you do that, your chances of success are extremely good. If you don't follow the system, you could be in trouble. Yeah. And one more question. I just want to know what is the best business book you read recently? I think you said the best business book. Yes. It's not a business book as such, but I've just finished a book called Tiny Habits. Tiny Habits? Tiny Habits. I have a mother. You heard of that? Yeah, it's like Atomic habits, but it's very minuscule and it talks about things like how you can develop habits of whatever you want to do, whether it's tidying up your house or whatever, doing something at work. If you can develop really good habits and get into a habit of doing things, it's easy to succeed. Habits is just doing the right thing. It's having a habit that says, when I get a call from a client, I will follow them up straight away. I will turn up on time. If I don't actually, if I'm running late, I will approach the client. You've got to develop habits of thought and activity and if you can do that, you'll be successful. So I would say the best business books you could ever read are those that help you to become a more disciplined and more habit filled person. That's a very good question. I read or listen to probably on average at least two books a week. I'm always listening to talking books and always got great ideas coming into my mind. That's good.

If you got a really good, really good question. If you go to Jim Penman's website, JimPeman.com Jim's got a book recommendation list on it, which is huge. So you can see what he reads on there.

It keeps on growing, doesn't it?

It does. I get it up there quite big. It does get updated.

Hi, Jim, my name's Lou, I'm from Albury. We've got a mowing franchise we've just purchased. I suppose my Question is, you seem very determined and focused. Were you born that way or has there been life experience that's taught you to develop your businesses and your ideologies, you know, in the way you have? Yeah. Let me tell you, I am a lot less capable than you might think. I'm actually very poor doing a lot of things. I have basically fairly poor personal skills. I've had to develop what I do with great difficulty. I don't read people very well. I don't remember faces very well. By nature, I'm not particularly hard working. I can easily goof off. I don't watch myself. You can see stories in this book about that. Not a great manager. I think what you do is you look at where your strengths are and you try and develop them and you employ people to fill your gas.

You employ people who are good.

There's no way in the world I could do Joel's job. I couldn't do it 1% as well as he did. That's pretty smart, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, it's good. You've got to find great people to do what you're not good at. And most of us, nobody's got everything. In fact, somebody who's good at everything is at a disadvantage because they try and do everything, whereas I really know I'm hopeless. I wouldn't even try to do social media because I know I could never be good at it. It's just. Just not my area. So I find somebody who can.

Jim's got a good social media. He's always posting stuff as well.

He doesn't.

Yeah.

This is a secret.

It's Jim. It's Jim.

I don't actually read the social media.

He gets the benefits of it. He gets all the awareness and the new.

I put the input in.

Yes. We do all the videos, all the short form videos.

I do the videos. I'll answer things, but it's not my strength. Yeah. And we've all got to recognize we're all. We're all imperfect. We've all got weaknesses and look to what your strengths are. You said you were from a legal background. Sorry? Legal. Legal background, yes. So you've got some good experience in that kind of area. You might find you've got great schools. I think your husband is in linear finance. Is that right? We're at dinner. Yeah, that's right.