Meet Jim Penman from Jim's Group

Welcome to Business Class, a podcast for people wanting to upgrade their thinking, upgrade their learning and upgrade their life. I'm your host, Eugenia Pandorhos, founder of Business Class Collective, best selling author and life coach. If you're an entrepreneur, a startup, or someone who dreams of reaching their full potential, then you're in the right place. You'll feel empowered and inspired to design the life you've always wanted. Let's do this. Hello and welcome to the show. I'm so happy that you're here and I'm so excited to be bringing you my next guest. It's no other than Jim Penman, who is an Australian businessman. He is founder and CEO of the Jim's Group. You know who I'm talking about. The Jim's Group story began in 1982 when Jim founded Jim's Mowing, a one man gardening and law care business. And in 1989, Jim sold his first franchise. Jim's Group is now the largest franchising family in Australia and the largest franchising chain in the southern hemisphere. What you may not know about Jim is that he earned his PhD from La Trobe University. Not only is Jim one of Australia's most iconic entrepreneurs, he's also a respected businessman, a thought leader with global reach and influence. And Dr. Penman's mission is to improve the world around him. Let's get started.

Jim Penman, welcome to the Business Class podcast.

Yeah, good to be here.

Tell me a little bit about yourself, where you were born and raised and your family life.

Well, I hasten to say my mother's Australian and we've lived in Australia for some centuries, but she was actually in England where she met my father after the war. And so I was born there in Worcestershire in England and came out to Australia when I was three. Basically my father didn't like the climate there, so he thought Australia would be better.

Oh, wonderful. Tell me, do you have an earliest memory of your time in Australia?

Listening to the ABC on the radio? I think I used to love children's programs, so I must have been about three or four or something.

Lovely. Jim, you're a lover of history, so tell me about your academic pursuits and the inspiration to create your lawn mowing round.

I was interested from the age of 14 in the rise and fall of civilizations. I wanted to know why empires collapsed, why civilizations collapsed. Somebody gave me a copy of Thucydides, the Peloponnesian War when I was 14 and I read a lot about ancient history, Greek, Roman, this kind of thing. I wanted to find out what happened and why was there a potential for it to happen to us? So I went to university to look at sociology which I thought was the clue. And I decided after a while that was complete rubbish. So I switched to history as a major. And so I spent the next 10 years developing a theory of society based on changes in character which I came to the conclusion eventually had biological roots. So I have this idea that's quite revolutionary in terms of understanding of what's going on. Also the conclusion that we're in a lot of trouble, that we are going the same way as ancient Rome could be reversed. But you need to look at the biology, the neuroscience of the whole thing. Ended up in 1982 I had a very radical thesis which actually got my PhD eventually after a bit of effort, no support and no money and no way to continue it. So I thought all right, well the only thing I can do is to try and become wealthy enough to be able to fund my own research institute in areas like neuroscience and epigenetics and so forth, which is going to be expensive to took my part time lawn mowing business which I used to just to finance my studies and turned it full time in 1980. Two years later I franchised and we now have five and a half thousand franchisees. And I'm now funding a research institute at La Trobe University. We're spending some $3 million a year and getting some really interesting, exciting results.

That's fascinating, Jim, absolutely inspiring. And I think the thing I get from this is we have to look back in order to see forward. Like we have to learn from history, but we've got to be intelligent enough to know that history tells us so much if we're ready to listen to it. Otherwise we're at risk of repeating the same mistakes over and over again. And I think in the climate we're both living in at the moment, we can say that might be happening globally.

There's a lot of concerns with the way the world's going to plummeting fertility is a major problem. You know, across the OECD countries only one country got enough having enough children to replace themselves and that's Israel. Australia is way below. We're about 1.5, 1.6 children per woman. We should be like 2.1 is break even. But Japan's down about 1.1 and South Korea is down to 0.7. They're having only a third as many children. This is a widespread problem. And you can also see issues with attacks on democracy, which I think is a growing Trend and the work ethics declining. It's very, very obvious. If you're in business, Even the last 20 years, people are less involved with work. And you can see this in the attitude too, if you ask people what's important to them. A few decades ago, having a meaningful job that you could get involved with was really important, as was children, family, this kind of thing. You look after young people these days and they go way down. They want security, they want wealth, they want leisure. But we're changing, we're changing and it's very concerning. And you've also got an increase in anxiety, depression, drug addiction, alcoholism, death to despair, suicide. All these things are on the rise. We're going in a very, very bad direction and we need to do something about this.

Jim, what do you think, in your opinion is the root cause of those specific social changes in people's self esteem, self worth, and contributing to something greater than themselves?

Largely it's wealth because it becomes wealthy and commercial. It has a bad effect on character. Part of that, both cause and effect, is the decline in religion and the kind of religious constraints on behavior, things like controlling sexuality at a very young age, these sorts of things has a big effect on temperament. We're doing experiments at the moment which are looking at the way that early sexual activity has on rats, for example. And the indications are that it actually has quite major effects on dopamine receptors. It changes character in a quite drastic way. So the kind of things that religion teaches us to do, which is to be disciplined about such things, we're losing them. And that's changing character. And then you've got a decline in parental discipline, which is all part of the same kind of process.

I read somewhere in schools parents are scared of the teachers, the teachers are scared of the parents, the board is scared of the teachers, the parents and the children. And it kind of comes around in a circle of fear, a fear based mindset, if you like. And the other thing that I read some time ago was the effects of affluenza, of being in an affluent society, but a society that is also decaying at the same time, like mentally, physically and emotionally. How much is enough?

It's going to get worse, Genie. It's going to get worse. That's, that's the whole message. If you look at the youngest generation, look at their attitude, you can track it generation by generation. It's, it's by far worse than it was even a decade or two back. It's going down in a very bad direction. Yes, it is frightening.

You can see it in society, across the board. I mean it's, there's a lot of people who stand out, young people who stand out who have wonderful work ethics and show up and they look after themselves with healthy diets and exercise and hydration. But they seem to be the exception rather than the norm now. Like they're the ones that stand out, the ones that are making very conscious choices about their sleep, about the movement throughout their day.

Yeah, no, you're quite right. And more and more kids are actually, you hear these stories and there's people that we know that actually got a, a child who, a young man who is not working, doesn't do anything, stays in their bedroom, plays video games all day, you know, or porn or these kinds of things too. This is an increasing thing. Started off in Japan with the so called the shut ins, but it's, it's happening everywhere. We know two families very closely where you've got this same problem. It's epidemic. More and more people being off work with disability, so called. How come people are so much sicker than they were decades ago, they just don't want to work. So the government supports them and they just don't. It's terrible. But the thing is, Jean, the one thing that's positive about this is that these things have deep biological roots. They're to do with the changes in the epigenome. It's the way that our genes function, male effects, the environment, turning certain genes on, which shouldn't be on. What we've got now, which we never had before in any time in human history and even just in the past few years, is the potential to do something about this. One of the things we're doing, for example, we know the epigenetic changes associated with this pattern and you can study them by looking at food restriction in rats and other animals too, because they're very similar. The effects of food restriction are to remove certain kinds of demethylates, genes, to use the technical term, it's plugging certain genes, it's doing things to them, it's turning them off. We know what happens when you have food restriction. It actually removes those methylations. So what we can now do is look for treatments that can actually have the opposite effect. And one of the things we're doing, for example, you put brain cells, human brain cells, in tiny little capsules and you can do thousands of them. And then you introduce lots and lots of different drugs with an idea of which ones might be suitable and you look for the epigenetic signature. And then when you've done that now we've just got the first results back from that. We've got about a dozen that look very promising. They can be then used to try it in culture, try it in animals, potentially. They work in people. We just keep on. And then you can actually use things like crispr, for example, where you can actually go into the genes and you can target exactly what you want. You say, I want to go here and I want to make these specific changes. You couldn't do that. There's no time in human history and it's only just in the past year or two that you could even think of doing such a thing. So the technology is advancing so fast that it's actually quite feasible to turn this whole thing around. And all you need to do is provide a treatment that will have these effects even to a limited extent. And it would have phenomenal value because for example, you can go to someone like a drug addict and what it should do is it should actually take away that sort of short term mentality and they become different and they're more likely to recover and then levels of anxiety are going to go down and levels of morale and work ethics going to improve and the ability to think sensibly about the future. It's quite feasible to develop a medical treatment that will be enormously beneficial and possible that would actually, as a byproduct, save society.

That's fascinating. I haven't heard anything quite like it. So this is quite cutting edge. This is your field, isn't it?

Yeah, well, I'm not a neuroscientist but I've got some very, very capable people working for me. I've got a, my, my head researcher has actually been a. He's a, been a full professor. He's worked decades this area. Enormously capable guy was running a program on, on brain cancer and he developed a tremendous team and they're doing just amazing things. There's about eight or ten different experiments being set just in the next few months where we're testing and trialing things and doing all kinds of stuff. It's very exciting.

Yeah. So this is quite different to active choices to change your lifestyle. This is useful.

You can still change your lifestyle, but it's not enough. It can help individuals if you act in a disciplined way. I mean, going to church, controlling your sexual habit. Don't use porn, don't use drugs, don't use all this negative bad stuff. Don't spend your life on video games and social media and all this stuff which is very, very negative in its Effect So you can learn as an individual to some extent to have a better life. And I certainly try and follow these principles, but it's hard, you know, I love chocolate, for example. I mean it's really, really difficult. So you're always tempted to do the easy, the pleasant thing in the short term. To me, Nutella is like, like cocaine. For a cocaine addict. I don't dare have it in the house. My family hides it. So we all have our weaknesses, Jeanne, but you just got to try and struggle. But if this, if I could have this particular thing, oh boy, would I use it. It would be fantastic.

Yes, yes. Nutella, the company that makes Nutella, won't be happy, but you'll be fine. It's an interesting world that we live in and I think you've just explained some incredible research that's happening. We'll watch this space.

I think I've got a book coming out later this year called the Birthright Crisis. The only reason we're waiting actually is because there are so many experiments being done in the next few months that'll really add to the power of it.

Yeah. So the declining birth rate globally, that is an issue because we are not replacing ourselves. And then we have, I suppose in the workplace and we have robots and electronics doing things that people used to do and that's changing. So then our purpose as humans again will change.

There's always going to be role for people, Jenny. It doesn't take it away, it just changes it. But there is more, relatively more need for people who have got discipline and character. You don't have so many sort of assembly line jobs now. You've got to have more people thinking about things. Even the area that I run, which is home services, you know, gardening and cleaning and pest control and dogwash, they're not, they're not rocket science in one sense but they do require somebody with a certain amount of social skills to be able to relate to clients and deal with payment and things. It's not something you could, you could automate. Robots can't even undo dishwashers, much less what we do. You need people who've got willing to do these kinds of jobs, but also to do them in an intelligent and thoughtful way.

Jim, you're the founder of Jim's Mowing Lawn Round that started in it's a.

Full time business 1992 franchise in 1989. Less than half of our franchisees are mowing these days. We've got about 2200 mowing and about five and a half thousand total in Fact, one of these days cleaning is growing much faster. It'll probably be bigger than mowing, actually have more unserviced work in mowing than we do in cleaning. By far, in fact, the hardest one, the worst one, is fencing. I was looking recently and it's just, it's terrible. We've had up to half of our fencing jobs we can't do in some areas because we just can't find the people. People is the shortage to get public. Who is prepared to go out? Who doesn't mind doing a manual physical job, which I personally find quite pleasant. I was doing it 15 years, I didn't mind it at all. But you've also got to have the ability to run a business in a sensible way. So to find people like that is not that easy. And it's just easier to find cleanness because a lot of people are recent immigrants and that's cleaning is natural to them. But mowing lawns and gardening isn't like a quarter million unserviced leads in the past year. We just cannot cope with the demand for our services.

What's the solution to that?

I think people should realize there's a future outside of young people indoctrinated so much these days. You've got to go to university and you've got to become a sort of a white collar and sit with a suit and tie in front of a computer and play with that all day. And that's the only worthwhile life. But it's actually not service industry I think is fantastic. And I don't mean just things like cleaning and gardening, but also plumber or electrician, carpenter. There are brilliant possibilities and you can actually make very good money. We call ourselves the Millionaire Factory because we believe we've created more millionaires than any company in the history of this country. And it's people who come along like Dan Carl. You might have done a lot of videos on him. He's a high school dropout, you know, went to work for McDonald's, bought a lawn mowing franchise with great trepidation when he was in his early 20s. He's now a multi millionaire.

That's fantastic. I love this success story because it shows showing up for work, doing the work, doing it with pride. And there's a way forward, Jim. You turned rejection into redirection when you had someone come into your local area competing with your lawnmower rounds. So can you talk to me about what the mindset was?

I was mowing lawns and I was building up and selling lawn mowing. Rounds. I worked out how to do that and I was doing okay. I had it. I started off the decade with a substantial debt, paid it off, bought a house, doing all right, but I had about a dozen subbies. That was how it was working. And then this company called VIP came in and VIP was a franchise company and they had two based in Adelaide. They came to Melbourne, they had 250 franchisees and they knew what they were doing and I didn't really have a clue. My initial thought, these guys are going to crush me. I just thought, I haven't got a chance. They just know so much. They've got all these resources, they've got a nice office. So I actually rang the state manager and said, I'm Jim Penman, I've got Jim's mowing, which was out there. And he said he knew who I was. And I said, well, look, you know, I don't really want to compete with you guys. You're too, too good for me. What if I just work with you and I help you to build VIP in the state? I'll find clients for you and this kind of stuff. And he said, no, not interested in that. I thought, I better find out about them. So that year, which is 1998, I went to the Franchising Expo, which was in the old exhibition buildings on Exhibition Street. I went up to the sky at the stand, which wasn't the state manager, and I said to him, I'm really interested in your franchise. Can you tell me about it? Not telling him why I wanted to know because I'm not very socially skilled, so if he'd asked me, I probably would have told him the truth. I want to compete with you. So he gave me all this information, told me how it worked, gave me this brochure, and then the state manager came in and said, that's Jim Penman. Don't tell him anything else. They keep me off the stand. But I went away and I thought, okay, all right. This system isn't too bad. There are real benefits to what they're doing. I can understand why you'd want to buy and why you want to stay with it, but I reckon maybe I could do something that would be even better for the franchisees. So I launched. Took me nine months arguing with lawyers. And the biggest problem I had with that was that they kept on telling me things like, you're being too nice, you're giving your franchisees too many rights. And I said, but I want something that I want to join. If I was the franchisee, And I know the things that people don't like about it. They don't like the fact that the franchisor comes in and can grab the clients from people to give to a new franchisee. And they didn't like the fact that there was a limit on earnings. They didn't like the fact there was all kinds of things they didn't like about it. So I thought, no, I wouldn't want to buy that. So I built a system. I spent nine months arguing with lawyers, kept on telling me, being too nice, no, I want something, I want to join. And then in June 1989, I launched, signed my first franchise. Some of my. I had subbies and some people who bought rounds from me in the past. I got them to be my founding. There's about a dozen of those. And I started. Somebody asked me at the time, if it works out, you know, how many you think you might have one day. And I said, look, I don't know, this is just a trial, but maybe if I'm really successful one day I could have a hundred. That's what I told them.

Audience, how many you have?

About five and a half thousand and growing. It was kind of shocking in a way, but I just. Because I was running this little business from originally my basement, it was a very crude thing and I was up against this much more well established competitor. But I had a secret tool, I had a strategy. I used to give a list of my franchisees with their phone numbers to everybody who inquired. And they come to me and they say, why would I buy a buy from you? You're just starting off, you're running your business in your basement. You obviously these guys are successful, they're interstate, they got hundreds of franchisees. You know, why would I buy from you? And I said, well, look, there's some differences in the way we operate. I wouldn't bag them. I just said, there's some differences, but here's a list of my franchisees. I want you to go and ring them as many as possible. I get the total list. This is decades before the code of conduct, the franchising code came in. And then I said, go and get VIPs list. Which was a little bit precious because I knew they wouldn't give the list. And people would go and they'd ring my people and they'd say, why would I buy from you instead of vip? And these guys sold it, not me.

They did amazing.

And they just did. Well, at the end of the first year, I had like 60 and I thought, wow, that's astonishing. And then people started inquiring from Interstate, which I had not expected in the slightest. We're now in three countries. Basically the whole thing was. Our first priority is the welfare of franchisees. If you've seen my email signature, it's on it at the bottom. Our first product welfare franchisee. We are also passionate about customer service. It's important, but it's secondary. We sign only franchisees and franchisors we are convinced will succeed. One thing nobody else did in those days, they didn't screen anybody. But I wasn't going to sign anybody think would have your problems. I used to think about on the road, I get them assessed. If they didn't pass, they can get a franchise. Which sounds very bold. But that's one reason I never thought I'd grow that big. But in fact, what mattered because I chose people carefully and I didn't take people. I didn't think they were going to succeed. And because I did everything possible to help them and support them and advise them and give them work and really Buster, the gut in the beginning I was spending far more money than I was making from the franchise sales. They were. They were happy. We grow and got bigger and I could afford better. It. It became more efficient and it just. It just grew from there. And then people started coming to me and saying, what about doing gyms? Something else like Jim's Cleaning. That won't work. You know, it's a mowing image. And they said it will work. Can't possibly mowing image. What woman want to go out with the gyms brand on her shirt? You know, this guy with the beard and the hat. And eventually they convinced me to give it a go and it did work. Come up to me with other ideas. I get them all the time. Probably at least once a week somebody comes up with some idea. Every few months we launch a new division.

That's wonderful. You know your why and that's important. Your why in life. That's your why in life as in why you get up and do the thing you do. And you did it in a way that you put yourself in the position of the franchisee. And I think that is the standout message here. Build something that you would want to come to.

People mistake things. Actually in the service industry, work isn't the problem. You got good people, you'll find work for them. Finding good people is the really hardest thing. Finding them, holding them, keeping them see. Interesting thing, when I start the franchise, I actually did a whole lot of things to protect franchisees I said, for example, you can build a business to whatever size you want, no limits, territory rights. If a job comes into territory advertising, we must give it to you. But you can work wherever you like. We cannot take regular clients off you without your consent. We cannot take any kind of clients off you without your consent unless the customer complains. So you have an automatic right of renewal. Doesn't matter what, as long as you're compliant, you can renew. Now that was different, radical and the lawyer said that's crazy stuff. You know, this is, who does that? But you know what they actually, what they said is you're going to want to give yourself more power with time. You know, I did the opposite. I set up clause in the contract that gave franchisees the right to change to a different franchise or if they wanted to. No reason needs it, just I want to go. If they're a good French always be accepted, they can vote out their franchise or they can veto changes to their own manual. I've now put a clause in the contract that actually says that the majority share of Jim's group cannot be sold to controlling share cannot be sold to anybody without the written consent of a majority of franchisees. So I'm going to protect my franchisees as far as I can, even after I am gone. So you keep on, you keep on doing things to try and give your franchisees more protection, more power, better service and put them at the core of things. It doesn't mean to say you don't look after customers. I am very fanatical about that. But again, the reason that we look after customer, because I know as a franchisee, if you look after your customers well, you're far more likely to succeed. We've got stats on this. We know people who last longer, who good income, far more likely give great customer service. Plus of course great customer service means that other franchisees benefit. And that's why as our standards have improved by better systems and better automation and automated surveys and all the rest of it, our complaints have gone down, our leads have risen. So we're getting far more leads per our advertising dollar than we used to in the past. And we've got changes coming this year, developments in it over the next few months that I believe will cut complaints in half. So it's going to see even more. We're spending millions of dollars a year on software development to make this happen.

That's fantastic. So you're reinvesting in the, in the business and always tweaking the strategy and how you go forward. Commended yeah, that's right.

It's a different look. It's a different motivation, as you say. It's a why. And I have whys, I have my research project, I have my. My franchisees, and I have my family and. And becoming wealthy. Like Forbes came up to. To interview me last week, and the first question they said to him is, why are you talking to me? I'm not. I'm not wealthy, and it's not even one of my top goals. So he said, I'm more in the. In the charitable side of things. But he's a lovely guy, actually. We had a good talk, but it's not. It's not a goal to me. I mean, you could make changes in gyms which would very quickly double their profit just by putting some extra fees on the stuff. It wouldn't be difficult, but we don't do that kind of stuff.

So this is your why, and this is how you stay motivated, keeping on top of things, keeping the processes and the. And the wheels turning to create the. This business that's gone into three countries, so it's Australia, New Zealand and Canada.

Barely got foothold in Canada. We got 90 franchisees in British Columbia. New Zealand's going really well. New Zealand's better than Australia, actually, because the economy is worse. And that's actually good for us because we can. We've got work, we've got jobs, and people need jobs.

It's about knowing your demographic, isn't it? Knowing about the political and social changes that are in different countries and how it works.

Yeah, well, in a certain sense, Jenny, from a purely selfish business point of view, the best thing for Jim's group will be for the Greens to come to power and then tank the economy and have a massive recession. So we do well. Unless the whole economy is a complete meltdown. I don't vote for my pocketbook. I vote for what I think is best for the country. We do better in recessions than we do in good times.

I want to talk to you about resilience is the key to success. So what tips do you have for our audience about resilience?

Well, having a sense of purpose is very important. You know what you're getting up, as you said before, why am I getting up in the morning? What am I doing with my life? I have a sense of mission, a very powerful, driven sense of mission in terms of what I want to achieve. So that's. In a sense, it makes giving up impossible, but also other things, too. You've got to keep yourself physically and psychologically Healthy, like every morning. And I've got a little room out the back there and I lift weights and I run for a half hour and then I have a cold shower and I keep my weight under control. I weigh 66 kilos, which is a BMI of 22. Now I watch that. I don't let myself get out of weight. And I also have a very healthy personal life. I have a wonderful, wonderful, amazing life. 24 years anniversary coming up this Sunday, actually. 24 years since we met. And we've got four beautiful children and I love her, I'm crazy about it. And I have a great church community or I have friends at church and I'm in contact with my children pretty regularly. So, yeah, you got to look after yourself in the ways that really matter.

I agree, Jim. It's all in. It's in the everyday moments and everyday living that we have active choices as to how we live our life.

Always got to think of what's. What's people. The worst thing people do is they look to the short term, what makes me feel good right now. Whereas really, that's not the answer. What is the best thing that I can do for my life? Like Nutella. I mean, I can. I can get easily pulled astray. I know the power of that stuff. It's just like, you know, I put a spoon and I just keep on going. I can, I can eat. I can go half a jar of Nutella in a sitting. I tell you, I kid you not. You've got to think, okay, just don't have that stuff in the house. Keep the addictive things away, all right? You just got to make those things and you've got to get up and you've got to exercise and you've got to reach out to people and you've got to be active and you can, you know, church comes on Sunday morning sometimes. You don't always feel like going. But no, no, you get up, it's all set, we're off to church. And it's great, it's a great experience, but you don't always feel like doing the things you need to do.

Yeah, yeah. Jeremy, who's your biggest inspiration?

Jesus. Jesus of Nazareth. Seriously, if you ask me, for any one person who is my lodestar, it's him, particularly Jesus of the Gospels, I must say, I think an amazing character. If you looked at my way of thinking about things, the parable that tells is the best guy. And it's not a matter of whether you're the best, it's a matter of what you do with what God's given you. Now I may not be a five star, a five talent person or even a two, maybe I'm a one. But whatever God's given me, I need to use that. I need to be useful. I need to do something worthwhile for my life. John's gospel about Jesus washing his disciples feet, that's a very meaningful and very radical thing. It was an extraordinary thing for a revered rabbi to do. We have no record of anybody saying such a thing because washing feet was a very dirty job. It was for slaves, it was the lower to the low. Occasionally a very revered rabbi, the disciples might wash his feet as a sign of respect. But he washed his disciples feet. And that concept of servant leadership is central to what we do in Gins. We are not there. I'm not the boss, I'm the service provider. You are my clients. I tell them that. And I give my franchisees a training. I give them my direct personal phone number and email address and I tell them again and again. You contact me, you've got a problem, you let me know. I don't care. Daytime, after hours, weekends, whatever. We had one guy ran me on Christmas day just to wish happy Christmas. But they're allowed to, you see, it's like my extended family. So that because I serve them, that's the purpose of my life and I don't mind. In fact it's a wonderful privilege to be able to help people at times and quite often too they give me ideas something's going wrong, why is this happening? So we do something and I just make a decision. We get a car. I'll just give you an example. Recently we had a franchisee who got the contract, had to wait two weeks to start because you're not allowed to sign straight away, which is fair enough. And then at the end of two weeks decided that the entity was wrong. Do you need a new contract? So therefore what by law you have to do is to wait two more weeks. But this guy's quit his job, he's got to try to support his family, he's got no income. So what I said was to the franchisor, start them, just start the franchisee, give them the work, give them the support, sign the contract up to two weeks. Now you could lose out because the guy could not decide not to sign a contract. But that's vanishingly rare anyway, so it's very little risk as against somebody having two weeks of income that they otherwise wouldn't have. I just give that as a tiny example. But there's so many little ways that you can actually help people and understand what's going on and saying, how can we do this better?

They gave them a hand up during that time to make a choice and they wouldn't be without income for two weeks.

Yeah, that's right. Because it's just not real. There's a risk involved. My lawyers actually said to me, you're, you're, you're taking a, a risk by doing this. And I said, well, but it's such a tiny risk and this guy's going to lose two weeks income. I'm not.

And it's a tiny risk for you. It's a humane act of service to him or to her, to that person. And I think that also buys buy in. It shows people what you're about. Just that one act would show people what you're about. So, Jim, you discussed success and what it means to you very loosely in our previous conversation. So I wanted to ask, how did you realize you were successful? What did it feel like or was it elusive?

Well, success isn't a destination, it's a journey. Success is moving in the right direction, but there's no real end to it, is there? I mean, what's success when it comes to franchising? Success is every single one of my franchisees being completely happy, reporting a good income. Okay. Success is every single client having the best possible customer experience. Now those aren't, those aren't achievable goals. It's like, it's like looking at the Southern Cross in the sky and saying, okay, that's the direction of the south. Most of your pole. I want to go there. You don't expect to actually reach that particular star, do you?

So, no, and I think that's the key here, that success is in the everyday. It's in the momentum of achieving your goals in life.

Moving towards your goals. Yes, I think that's the point. Am I doing better than yesterday? That's all you can ask of yourself. I think once you feel you've got to where you need to be, then you're barely mistaken. It's like I often see businesses which believe they're well run. I can't improve, you know, if I'm not doing better, it's because of the public or because of the like. I just give you an example. In one of our early offices, we, we had an office in a row of shops and the anchor tent, little, little side street. And one of the anchor, the anchor tenant was this milk bar open. And I used to go in there quite often because I, you know, I worked there and I lived around the corner. So you go in there to buy your milk and stuff. And he was always complaining about competition being unfair and, you know, losing to the supermarkets and the fact that people wouldn't buy the lunches from him and this kind of stuff in my staff wouldn't. And, you know, I said to him once, well, you know, why don't you ask the staff? Or, you know, and I had, they come down here and they asked for lettuce and you, you don't want to open up something for them. And often I go in there and he had some long conversation with, I was waiting to pay for my milk and he had some long conversation, one of his, with mates, his ethnic mates. And it wasn't up to me to tell him what to do. But the fact was, all he could see was it was unfair. People were unfair to him, but he wasn't looking at what he should be doing. And that's the problem with so many businesses. They're always blaming somebody else because there's always something you can do. Nobody's perfect. Including me. Especially including me. I make mistakes all the time. If I look back six months ago, things I was doing then I thought were. You idiot. What on earth you that for? Why'd you make that mistake? That was stupid, stupid, stupid. Now you know what's ironic? In six months time, I'm going to be looking back on today, on April 17, 2025 and saying the same thing. Why'd you do that for? Come on, what's wrong with you? You got your head red or something? I know that you can always do better.

You can always do better. And it comes back to mindset. So if you've got an abundance mindset, you're going to think of all the reasons why you should do something. If you've got a scarcity mindset, you'll come up with all the excuses why you can't do something. Sums it up, doesn't it? It's about finding the possibilities in the situation instead of complaining and blaming everyone else. Because if you're blaming everyone else, it means you have no agency in your life.

Yes, we can divide franchisees into three groups now they're just notional groups. You got your bronze, so you've got your gold. You got your bronze and you got your lead gold. Franchisee is somebody who's always looking out, how can I improve? How can I do better? They're the future millionaires, the leaders, the franchisors, the Ones who are going to fly. Then you've got your bronze, which is the majority, and they're people who will listen to you. You have to coach them and explain you need to do this. And, yes, bring your client back. And don't wait for two hours. Just do it now and then this is why you lost that job. Try doing this way, whatever. Go through the whole thing, and you coach them and you train them and you talk to them regularly and you run meetings, and they can be helped to succeed. And then you've got your leads. And the leads are the ones that say, no, not my fault. I need to improve anything. I don't need to go and do any marketing. You need to find me more leads. That's your problem. I don't have to do it. You are at fault, or the clients are at fault, or there's so many unreasonable clients, or it's the government's fault or anything else, they'll blame anybody but themselves. And the ironic thing is that these differences have nothing to do with intelligence as such. Some of the worst leads are highly intelligent people, but they're stupid because they just can't see that it's them that's got to change. You can't change the world. You've got to change yourself.

Yes. And it's about knowing what you can do for yourself, how to be accountable, how to look outside or outside of your circle or past your nose and realize that it's up to you. And there are people out there who are very quick to point and say, look, no, I can't do this. Because.

And this reason, it's a matter of learning every day. It's a matter of looking at what you do every day and saying, how can I do this better? Not only do I try and look at what I'm doing every day, but also I do a lot of reading. I read lots and I listen to audiobooks. I probably, on average read or listen to a couple of books a week, plus magazine articles, plus lots of things I'm always doing. Whenever I'm driving or gardening or anything, I do quite a lot of gardening. Are listening to things all the time. It's just all kinds of stuff. It could be business, it could be to do with psychology, it could do science, it could be to do with history, it could be to do with anything. Just constantly learning new stuff. And then amazingly often, something's going, okay, that's. That's an idea. Why don't do it? I do that. Or maybe I could cope with this that particular way.

You're a student of life. You're a student of life and you learn from all different platforms. I'm the same, Jim. I, I love to read and I love to explore new themes and new ideas because I know it will only help me in the end. And you get something new like from someone else's experience, you think you get that little piece of nugget. You think, what can I do with that? You know, it makes you reflect and then strategize and plan and say, oh, the world is full of possibilities.

Yeah. Another side benefit, Jenny. It keeps you young. I turn 73 next month and I tell you what, getting up to go to the toilet sometimes during the night and libido is definitely not what it used to be. I don't difference. I'm full of energy, full of ideas, constantly changing my thinking about things, constantly trying new stuff, just having great fun, very physically energetic, just happy, very happy, very buoyant, very enjoying life. I've got another 20 years to go but Google tells me if you go to these life expecting things, I've got about 20 years to go and I, I've got a lot to do, a lot to do in the next 20 years.

Jim. I can see it, you're exuding it all over the screen. You're just like, I see the sparks flying with your enthusiasm.

I'm not always the easiest person to live with, Jeannie. I have to say I've got a wonderfully happy marriage, but I was divorced three times. Three different women couldn't stand to live with me. So I'm, I am not, I'm not, I'm not any kind of a saint. But Lee is wonderful. She is, she's just glorious. One of the greatest things in life, I think the two greatest meetings of my life, when I met God at the age of 28 and when I met my wife Lee, the age of whatever it was 48 or something.

How did you meet God? Was it a spiritual experience or.

I, I, I was quite militant atheist you might say. And I just got to know people in the Christian Union at La Trobe University just towards the end of my career there. Just got to know them and, and through them I guess you got two other people. It doesn't, doesn't usually spring down on you for, for no reason but they had something.

Yeah, yeah. That's fascinating. Talking about books, was there a book that really shaped your thinking? Standout book like a business book or any other book, a philosophy book?

Well, obviously the Bible, as I said before, is fundamental to the way I think about the world and I think about life. I think there's just so many great books around. I read one book that was very influential was behind the Arches, which is about McDonald's. And I read that right in the early stages. I'm not sure whether it was before I franchised or not, but that was what I knew about franchising in the early days. And McDonald's is absolutely disgusting, unhealthy food, but they're absolutely brilliant company. They're brilliant franchisors. They're just so good at what they do. I admire them enormously, apart from the food, as I said. So that's. That's great. There's. There's a. There's a film called the Founder about Ray Kroc, which is really worth seeing to anybody who's interested in business because. Talks about resilience and all kinds of things about how he did it. There's so many great books, though. See, when you start talking about great books, I'm thinking about science books like Secrets About Success, which is about human cultural evolution, or Dopamine Nation, which is about the way the dopamine function works. Or about, if you like, afterwards I'll send you a copy of my book list. There's all my favorite books down there. Or books about diet or about exercise or those kinds of things. Or things like Atomic Habits or Tiny Habits about how you improve your life, or Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, which is actually the one. If you're interested in selling business, that's the one book I'd recommend to anybody to read. It's by Stephen Covey. Amazing man. Talks about character, doing the right thing in a way that affects you. But it's actually wonderful, wonderful book. That's the trouble. There's so many great books. I mean, if you're talking about general books, I think things like Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared diamond is a fantastic book. Really, really insightful and thoughtful, thinking fast and slow. All kinds of books about psychology. I love books on. I leave a lot on books on happiness and lifestyle and stuff, personal reason. But also it also helps me with my research, is to understand. I've been working on my theory about society. I was thinking about it since I was 14 and I spent 10 years at university. Eight months ago, I came up with an absolutely revolutionary change which made a sense of a whole lot of things I could never understand for all those decades. That was just a few months back and it was from this book, Dopamine Nation, and I suddenly understood it's about dopamine receptors, and this explains that. And that ties things together. I'm always learning new things and it's just this process. There are wonderful, wonderful books, actually. Studentpennman.com, anybody who's interested and just go into that and you can get a newsletter and they can. Copies of my book list with about my favorite 60 or 70 books and what I like about them.

I love that. I love that one of my favorite books is a 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. It's a book I read in my 20s, I think it was, or whenever. But it stuck with me because the lessons in that was like keeping the end in mind, sharpening the store, you know, those sort of strategies. And once you learn that, you realize you're quite in your everyday life. And the other book that impact on me was In Search of Excellence, which had case studies of American organizations, including McDonald's. And that's where I learned in the first instance that McDonald's is in the business of real estate. And it's the franchisees that flip the burgers.

So burger company. It's a real estate company. Yeah.

That was a phenomenal shift in my thinking as a young woman. When I read that, I thought, wow, okay. But that's a strategy.

I tell you something too. When you've read a good book, don't just read it once. I just, just the last few weeks have finished listening again to Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. It was wonderful. And it's clear in my mind there's great books about business, but apart from Stephen Covey, the ones I most recommend are the ones the way that you talk about somebody who's done it. Like this, this books from two of the founders of Netflix, Mark Randolph, he wrote a book called that Will Never Work, which is really beautifully written book, very entertaining, but great message, you know. You know, when they started Netflix delivering DVDs through the mail, they didn't even. It was DVD just come out. They didn't even have a DVD to test it, so they sent it the CD just to test it in the post. It was. It was such an insanely radical idea in those days. And the other one is no Rules Rules by Reed Hastings, the other guy. So many wonderful books around, but there's so many great books about business by people who've done it. I love it.

Yeah, so do I. So inspiring. How do you celebrate your wins? When you're winning in life, when you're celebrating life, how do you celebrate it?

I don't think I exactly Think that way about wins as such. I mean if I. If I win at chess or something I go down to the IT department. I play chess with the guys. So if I win a game for them I'm pretty happy about it because they're pretty good in terms of. In terms of something happening and working well. Well it's just something that happens and you go on to the next thing. What I do is celebrate is like on next Sunday which is 24 years since I met my wife and that's a gigantic win. 24 years she's put up with me. So I celebrate that no end love that sometimes. Sometimes God just decides to bless you. I don't know. I don't think I deserve to. I don't think if I worked for a thousand years, did good works I could ever desert you married to my beautiful wife. That I celebrate. That I really celebrate.

I wish you continued happiness.

I'm a lesson in persistence. I was divorced three times. I couldn't believe it. I just couldn't believe it. But I mean it was. It was awful and I just such a shock. But met Lee and it was. Everything changed. You know we've had some hard times. I mean we don't know what's going on. Well, she's got a very fierce temper and so have I so we. We really, really have a go at each other at times. But I. I'm crazy about it both. But you know what she said? She says. She says I look like Daniel Craig. Now to be fair to my. To be fair to my wife, her. Her vision is not very good. She definitely needs problems with eyesight but it just shows how insanely biased she is. Mind you, she did tell me that Daniel Craig himself came walking to the door to be. Goodbye Jim.

But apart from that so clear resemblance to Daniel Craig. So I'm going to say to your beautiful wife that she doesn't. No need for her to go to spec savers look back. Is there anything that you could have done sooner on your journey with Jims?

Oh my goodness. There's so many things like I told you. Mistake after mistake after mistake. I didn't recognize how good Lee was for. For a long time. Actually she was helping me a lot in the early days. She has been an enormous help but I didn't recognize how good she was and I should have done things differently and appreciated them more and made better use of her. That was a big mistake. I tend to jump into things and go into business. I don't really understand that well and lost a Lot of money doing it. And that's just stupid. Work out what you're good at and stick to that. Just work to improve things instead of thinking, that looks a real great, brilliant, happy idea, I'll go and do that one. Probably my biggest single kind of mistake. I can be awfully lazy at times, too. But, you know, how do you overcome that?

We can all be that way sometimes. Sometimes you need rest and reflection and restoration of our soul. So your advice to other entrepreneurs, what would that be?

Focus every day on what you can do better. It's not the big things. People have this idea, I'm sort of pushing along more law, and suddenly I think, hey, what if I franchise? Wow. Multi millionaire. Doesn't work that way. It's thousands and thousands of little decisions. There's not a day goes by that I look at what I do and say, how can I do it better? And that requires a certain attitude of humility, because you've got to look. Then you've got something you've got to say, hey, I made a mistake. And you've got to say that. I often say it. Yeah. That was a stupid thing to do. Especially to my wife. She's always telling me mistakes. So you've got to be prepared to be humble. I think humility is one of the most underrated virtues in business that could possibly be. And recognize that you need to improve and you can do better and that in every way. There's so many things, and I just say, be very focused on customers. Be very focused on customers and look at them and say, try and stay close to your customers. One of the things that I do, which is a very odd habit, is I actually, if a complaint comes in more than once, if it comes in once, normally it's dealt with by the franchisor. But if it's not dealt with, it comes through again. I get involved and I have a look at it. I may make some fairly drastic sort of statements if it's not fixed very shortly and it gets done. And then I leave a message to the franchisor, this is what you should have done next time and do it faster. But I also know what's going wrong. What sort of things. Are we not doing well enough? I'm also the only person in the business that can delete a formal complaint. So I get those every day and look at them. Why is this happening? So I'm very close to customers. When you consider we take close to a million leads a year, it's quite unusual for a CEO to do that. And the other thing, as I said, because our primary customers actually franchisees, this whole habit of having my franchisees give them a phone number and email address and really encouraging them and supporting them to contact me if they need to. I say it again and again during training. I try and meet every franchisee during training personally, directly, and so they have this confidence to contact me. So staying in touch with your people, not only your customers, in my case, and obviously the franchise worked by franchisees as far as possible with my staff, I wander around the office quite a lot, just talking to people, saying what's going on, Often silly things, nothing much. You might chat about something, but trying stay in contact with my staff. I'm not saying I do it well enough. I don't. And even we look after your suppliers too, because business is not just about the owner making money. That's a terrible attitude. You've got stakeholders, you've got staff, you've got suppliers, you've got. You've got customers. In my case, you've got franchisees and you need to look after everybody. And that's how it works.

If you do it properly, there's lots of moving parts. But I think importantly, you're not going to let your franchisees flounder. And by being available.

I'm not the primary person they normally should talk to their franchisor. There's five and a half thousand rang me every day. I wouldn't cope with it. But most of the franchisors are great and they do tend to, if you ask people sometimes ask me what I'm proud of, having so many franchisees, and I say, not really. The main thing I'm proud of is the fact that most of my franchisors are actually really care about their people in the same way that I do. That is a much bigger achievement because it's very unusual in franchising terms. They adopted this idea that we dare to serve our people, to serve the franchisees, that they are the ones that really have got to be looked after. They're more extreme than I am. They'll actually argue with me that a franchisee should be had their fees suspended because of some reason. And I said, well, it's not really a good enough reason, but they're trying so hard to look after them. To me, sometimes they're a bit soft. But that's a great attitude, though. And during COVID they were just amazing. You know, we couldn't charge. In Victoria, we couldn't charge fees for two months because of the stupid ban. Was so senseless they couldn't work for two months. We weren't charging fees, of course, because. But my franchisors were still ringing their franchisees and talking to them and counseling them and supporting. They weren't getting paid anything. And they totally, totally agreed with that. But they still wanted to be in contact. And I heard franchisees looking after other franchisees and people just caring about each other. That really makes me proud. That's an achievement.

It should, Jim, because that's part of the leadership that you've shown and the relationship you have with your franchise or that they've looked after the franchisees and it shows you. I think Covid also taught us, although there was isolation, physical isolation, there were a lot of people that went out of their way to make sure that people weren't isolated, that they weren't feeling alone. And that was very comforting for a society, I think, to know that people check in, neighbors check in on each other, parents of children and in the workplace.

It was a terrible time. It was an awful time. We had a young man in it, just early twenties, but very promising. He couldn't work in the office for a time because of the lockdown and he committed suicide. And that was a major contributing factor. And the horrifying thing about that is that he was actually coming up to his six month probation period ending and he didn't know whether he was going to be accepted. Now the fact of the matter is he was doing brilliantly well and there was no question about it at all. And you just think back and think, if only I could have told him, but that stupid lockdown hadn't happened, he'd still be alive. I spoke to his mother, wonderful, wonderful lady. And she wasn't. She was sad, but she wasn't bitter about it. She just. It was just terrible. And this young guy, full of promise, just starting out in life, that wasn't. It wasn't like. It wasn't just lockdown. There's other issues. But that was so sad.

And sometimes it can be compounding issues.

Social connection is important to everybody. It's actually something about a business that does actually bring connections together. And people who come together. There are benefits, there are real benefits in being there. Community is so important. We've lost so much of that, Ginny. Compared with a few decades back, people are still so much less connected. They're less friends, they're less part of organizations like churches or 40 groups or trade unions, even. Anything at all that brings people together, we're losing that. We're making us miserable. It's making us sick in our minds.

I love Jim, what you say about the gyms group being a family. You've got that on your website and elsewhere and I think that just encompasses it.

We try to make that happen. Obviously we do. We have a thing called Ask Gym which is run every during training and people sometimes ask me when I talk about my family, it's oh, you know, I'd love to be adopted by you. And I said, well it sense when you sign the franchise contract, you are.

I love that. Run us through a typical day, get.

Up, catch up on my emails. I like to clear my email inbox and do the things that I need to, like complaints and stuff like that. I lift weights, I run for half an hour, have a cold shower, more emails and local stuff. Just answering queries and stuff. I go down to the office. I. I have. Sometimes I just wander around, chat to people. Sometimes I have meetings. I podcast like this one or in person meetings. Not as many as you might think in March, top off at it and have a game of chess with them. Stuff like that. Nothing. I often have a nap in the afternoon. I just find that if I, if I do that, especially if I've got something going on in the evening, I'm much more fresh. So just a short nap is good. And I sort of work from home which is walking from the office. I have an absolutely brilliant situation from that point of view. Nice, nice walk through like bushy environment and open sky and good time for praying too. And then in the evening, usually with Lee, we eat out quite a lot but not expensive places. We ate out last night, Indian restaurant. I think it cost us about 45 bucks for the two of us. Just have a little Indian food and some water and stuff. It's really nice. See my kids quite often. Different meetings with my children. I go and see them or something. I have dinner with them or something of that nature. Every. We have a church group that meets every second Monday. We meet together and discuss and pray together and things like that. I spend time on my farm. I got a small farm up the bush that was really great. I got up there and I can grow quite a few of my own vegetables and Lee cooks and she's a great cook so as well as everything else she can do. So we can have meals which are mainly just straight from the farm like pumpkins and potatoes and all grown myself. And they taste really good too.

Fantastic. Growing with love and harvesting something that you've grown. The flavor is just amazing. Sounds like you have a lovely balance in your life and harmony in your life, and that your. You count your blessings, which is a wonderful place to be.

You got to be aware of things that go right. I think the biggest mistake people can make is they not know that they're fortunate. And that's why my attitudes of prayer matter you always. You thank God for what you've got. You thank God for the food, for your family, for your friends, for you, whatever.

Exactly. Yeah, I. I agree. I think the power of prayer is so profound. I know this personally. I've had my own spiritual experiences that have remained with me and have transformed my life. One of my nieces who was in hospital for nine months, the power of prayer from people close to her, but people that she didn't even know helped her through this challenge. And it's not lost on any of us, the power of prayer. So I understand exactly what you mean with prayer and, and having something greater in your life. I think that creative, universal, you know, deity, God, whatever it is for whoever's listening to us right now.

Do you think it's also really important to be part of a religious community of some kind? It's very hard to do this kind of stuff by yourself. We're weak and fallible. I've got a friend, for example, who's had some problems, and one of the things I've been really trying to get him to go is to do Ramadan properly this year, which unfortunately he didn't. So. But I think whatever religious community you're part of, it's important to be with other believers. I actually have a lot find a lot of common with people of faith of any denomination, whatever your faith background is, then they're the people you should be with, because we need community, we need to support, we need to strengthen each other. We need those bonds. When I talk with other Christians, we immediately got something that's. We've got something in common. It's a bonding force, understanding, way of looking at the world. We speak the same language, we see it in the same way, we understand each other. It's a great experience. And I often do that during training because I make my beliefs quite clear. So people often. We talk about it during training. When I get to meet the. The trainees yourself, are you part of any religious community?

So I'm Greek Orthodox, so our Easter at the moment is the biggest event in our Christian calendar. So yesterday I was baking biscuits with my daughter and all the traditional things. Good Friday and Easter Saturday are the biggest days in our calendar. We have a Friday night procession that we take part in and Saturday night midnight service for the resurrection. So. And we feast after that with family. We have a. A little supper at about 1:00 clock with about. I think this year there might be 20 of us. And then we have a big lunch the next day. We. I think this year is going to be about 50 that.

You've got some wonderful traditions in. In that church. I must say, when my sons would love to marry a girl from that sort of background. He just likes the Orthodox kind of character.

The hymns are beautiful, the chanting is very peaceful. And it takes you on this journey that just, you know, together with the incense and the icons. It's just absolutely beautiful. It's a very beautiful service. Not if anyone, you know, is ever interested in attending one of those services, especially of Easter. It's just something that's remarkable. Absolutely beautiful. So, Jim, we're gonna have one word answers to 22 questions. Okay. What makes you smile?

My wife more than anything.

What's your favorite cuisine?

Indian's pretty good, but lots of other things too.

If you could travel anywhere in the world, where would it be?

Israel.

Do you prefer to text or to call? Do you play musical instruments? Sing or hum?

Well, I sing very badly in church, but you wouldn't want to hear me.

Do you play a sport?

Squashing.

What's your happy place?

Anywhere. Lee is. But my farm is great. Put the farm and Lee together, that's. That's paradise.

What movie would you recommend?

Wolf hall is a series about Thomas Cromwell, but there's so many.

Do you have a favorite song or artist?

God's own fool is a Christian song.

What's your favorite ct?

Well, milk, because I'm in it.

What's your biggest strength?

I'm very creative.

If you could catch up with anyone, living or past, who would that be?

Thucydides. If I can speak the language.

What's your favourite time of day?

Going to bed with my wife.

What's the best holiday you've had?

Just with Lee, with the family. We go down somewhere. At Easter, At Christmas. That was wonderful.

Do you enjoy sweet or savoury?

Both, but sweets pretty much were a problem.

We've heard about Nutella. Do you speak another language?

French. Useless as it is. I. I speak okay.

Is there a cause that you're passionate about?

Well, my research, absolutely.

If you could have three guests, living or past, at your table, who would they be?

I'd like to meet Elon Musk. I'd like to pitch him on my ideas. And Bill Gates too, at the same time, it might be difficult.

And if you're a hashtag, what would you be? Innovator Beautiful Jim, thank you for being on the Business Class Podcast. It's been absolutely thrilling to learn about your story, about what you're passionate about and what lights you up.

Thank you Jeannie. Been pleasure to talk to you. God bless you.

Thank you.

I hope you've enjoyed this interview with Jim. He has shared so much in this podcast. His vulnerabilities, his dreams, his successes, and just how humble he is in achieving what he's achieved in his life, his faith, and so much more. I think it's worth listening to this.

Again and again because you'll get something out of it each time.

It's been an absolute pleasure.

Until next time.

You'Ve been listening to Business Class presented by Eugenia Pantorhos, founder of Business Class Collective. If you haven't yet, go to Apple Podcast. Subscribe, rate and review this podcast, share the love and let your family and friends know. You can follow Business Class Collective on Instagram and Facebook. Join me next time.