The best #ASKJIM Q & A according to our CEO and Founder, Jim Penman and Joel Kleber

Welcome, everyone, to another Ask gym on a very cold night. It's really, really cold, so hope it hasn't been too cold for everyone in the lecture theater. We've got the heaters pumping as well, so we've got a really nice group of people in today as well. What I'm just going to do first, though, is a bit of housekeeping before we get into this gentleman's question over here, which is fantastic. He's first up. So what I want to start with first, though, is this Jim's Local Heroes promotion, which we're doing. So maybe you want to tell the audience here and people online as well, who don't know about it yet, what we're doing for Local Heroes.

We are gone out in the community and we're asking people who are unsung heroes, people who've done great things that nobody's ever heard of, or also people who are in significant need themselves, that are caring for a lot of others and so forth. And we're doing a competition and any winners, anybody who wins this competition, who comes forward, we then go and provide. What's $10,000?

Nah, 2,000 for this one.

$2,000?

A bit too much. A bit too much.

Well, actually, we started off doing like 10,000, but then it was 20, actually. Yeah, with 20,000. But then we figured rather than having just a few minutes, let's have lots and lots of winners winning $2,000 worth of services. But $2,000 is still pretty good. I mean, you can get your lawns mowed, your house cleaned for months on end.

Absolutely. Dog groom for you, all that sort of stuff. So what we do is every week on the Jims.net website, you can nominate yourself or a family member or someone in your community. Every week we're going to be giving away two grand for Australia. And we don't forget about New Zealand. So people might go, what about New Zealand? We're doing New Zealand, but for $500 a week. So, Jims Co NZ, you go to the website, you nominate. Then every week on our Facebook page, I think Thursday, Friday, we're going to do it, we're going to nominate and let people know there. So I backed up two of our first winners here. So these people will get $2,000 worth of services each. I just want to read out first their nominations because this is what it's about, right? So this person is Jordana Smith and she's nominating her husband, but basically she's gone here. Jason dedicates his days to transforming lives as an employment Community development coordinator for Canberra's local area coordinators. He creates impactful programs that empower people living with disabilities to sustain ongoing employment, fostering independence and opportunity. By night, Jason is a whirlwind of energy. He has three kids and he juggles numerous sporting activities. And he leads the Blind Cricket act as the president, coach and all around cornerstone. So under their leadership he's basically gone from dissolution to being financial stability for the Blind Cricket Club in act and now they're going in the National Cricket Club Cricket Inclusion Championship for the first time. And that's all due to Jason's vision. So that's what we're talking about there. So well done, Jason. Two K's worth of services coming to you and your family. And the other winner here was nominated by Rose Darling. And this is for Leanne Lawrence. So someone who's not related, which is great. And it's basically Leanne is a hero in Port Adelaide. She organizes grocery giveaways and cooking for 90 people each Friday morning at the Community Help and Togetherness Organisation, which is called Chats for the homeless who are doing it tough and lonely. This takes a huge amount of her retirement time along with being on the board. It'd be amazing to have her dog windows and house cleaned. So there we go. So that's two. So every single week all you need to do is go to gyms.net nominate if you're in Australia and if you're in New Zealand Gyms Co NZ. Then every single week 2 grams coming their way and then $500 for New Zealand. Does everyone here know someone who they could nominate for something like this? You can nominate yourself if you want as well. We've had people do that. It's fine. And you only need to nominate once and we do get your nominations as well. So we actually have had some people who nominate themselves who do deserve it, but after these ones we've just gone with someone else. That's Local Heroes promotion. So well done to these guys. We'll be in touch. And every week we're going to do that gym on our Facebook page. So it's a good initiative from the Gyms group that the franchisors and the franchisees allow to happen.

It's really amazing to see how many people out there are helping others so selflessly. You know, people who have passed retirement age or who have got disabilities themselves who just give their time and their effort to others. It's just very heartening, very moving. Absolutely.

So let's go for the first question. So you're going to start with the name and your division.

You're from Ryan Be South Australia Mowing. Good evening, Mr. Dr. Penman, I should say. Absolute pleasure.

Hey.

So we've got Jim's Mowing, we've got Jim's everything. Can you live in the coffee snob of the world? Where's Jim's Coffee?

We actually did have mobile cafe. Mobile cafe at one stage. But divisions work basically according to leadership. We'd do it again. This is like a coffee van that also had snacks and stuff. We just had somebody starting it up.

Just.

They didn't really have what it took. But if you're interested, not you mind, we'll leave that down. Don't want to take over coffee and mowing. But if anybody's interested in starting up a new division, we have a great system. These days it only costs about 25 grand to get in and that's the first six months. Fees in advance. It's a rental. So somebody starts a new division, they basically rent the rights and their task is to get 30 franchises within three years. At which stage we give them the business and that's already going.

And we've got about how many people it did it. Bathrooms do it. Yeah. Remedial maps.

Got a whole stack of divisions actually started off by somebody. Could be somebody. Often they're franchisees from gyms or franchisors. Sometimes they're outsiders who just come along and start a new division. So Jim's Coffee ready to go.

We just need the right person and one other one. Just with your bio history. Spent part of the last 20 years in laboratories doing research and testing and analysis and that. So very different. Licking rocks and stuff for a living. So a little bit different, but man of science. So with your bio history, how recent are you going in history to compare? Like now that we can travel around the world so quickly and get food around the other side of the world to try and prevent, you know, shortage of food impacting us as a society.

Well, it's very relevant to the current day. If you look at something like the Trump phenomenon in America and all the disruption that's caused, you can understand that in terms of biohistory patterns or understand why, for example, so much of our society is in decline, why we're losing community, why the birth rate's fallen so low, all those kind of things. They're all to do with patterns of behaviour. And biohistory also gives predictions about the future. And I have to say, they're not particularly healthy in terms of the future of our Society. But if we understood the science, the epigenetics behind it, we could reverse it. We could help people to live much better lives. Science is the key. And most of the profits from Jim's group, in fact, at least 80% of the profits actually go to this research foundation. We only live off a very small minority of it. That's unreal.

Good on you. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much for asking that one as well. Guys, come up. Who's next up to ask him a question? Can't. Phil, I still see you lurking there. You want to ask something? Something's on your mind. Next one.

Hello.

King Jim from the Jim's land. My question is, you have a picture on the shirt.

I was wondering, why did you shave your beard?

This one here?

No, that one.

The green one. Oh, the actual logo.

Yep. Yeah, yeah, that's right. Okay. Nothing complicated. You're a man. You'll understand when I say this. I was young. My fiance liked beards. I grew a beard. Later on, I found myself single. Not to my own choice. My beard was going grey. When you were single, you did not want to look any older than you are, so I shaved it off. All we do men is to impress you women. Is that right? That's right.

Pure vanity.

Fair enough.

We had a few questions about your beard. So do you keep the beard at home in the jar? He doesn't, but I keep.

But.

But I keep it in my pocket. And I always get Jim to put on just so you can see the logo. I know I put it on there. Yeah, it's pretty clean. It's all right. It just stays in the office.

It's not too far off the color it used to be. Actually very.

We got it pretty matched pretty well. Then there's the hat as well. So you can see the logo representation.

Is that right?

Yeah, that's right. That's spot on.

I don't. It's more itchy than the real thing, so I'd like to wear it long term.

But there we go. Good question. Thank you for that one.

If you want to look where the logo comes from, by the way, if you. Good. Jim Penman Images, you'll see a picture of me with the beard against the old trailer. Logo comes from that picture.

Go for it.

Sammy, you've got a question?

No, I thought. I haven't done this for a while, so I thought I'd come and say, you know Sam Robertson. Jim's building inspection's been here for 10 years, so know a bit about you, Jim. But I Want to ask the question because I know it's close to your heart. As franchisors, we're often dealing with the business side of things, but also the mental side of things. With franchisees and making sure they're healthy physically and mentally. What is your emphasis on physical and mental health as a person running a business, and how much do you think that affects your performance and your way of life as a franchisee?

Yeah, that is everything. I'm actually in the process of writing a book to be called something like Health and Happiness Handbook. And it's all about the principles of happy healthy living, which has an overlap. So things like good diet, eating lots of vegetables and fruits, keeping weight as much as you can, which if you're actually working outside in the field, doing a healthy job is easy to do. Exercise, very important, time spent out of doors, contact with nature, strong social relations, that strong community, which can be partly a gym's community to your local meetings and stuff, but also family, friends, church, mosque, whatever group you belong to. And obviously don't do damaging things like smoking or taking drugs and so forth. So there's a principle behind happiness and health which people can learn, and usually it involves doing the things that you think you should do rather than things you want to do. You might feel like vegging in front of the computer and eating snacks, but what you really should do is get up and go for a run, for example, or volunteer for the community like some of these wonderful people that we've been hearing about. And actually, if you look to people like that, you probably find they're pretty happy. People who actually serve others tend to be a lot happier than those who live selfish lives. You've got to have a sense of purpose in your life. There's a principle, and I read a lot of this stuff and I've experienced it in my own life. But mental and physical health can be achieved. You just got to know how to do it. The one thing we have found is that endless search for more money is a very poor way to achieve happiness, particularly if you spend it on things like having a fancier car or a bigger house. Those kinds of things, which are status goods, really don't bring more than a brief surge of satisfaction and then it just dies away. But if you invest in other people, if you spend time with people, if you do things for other people, that's a way of creating a lot more lasting happiness.

Well said.

That's a trick question. Put that one down. Sam would have just everything anyway, wouldn't you? True, true.

Good question. Thanks for that, Sam. If you've got a question guys, feel free to come up to the microphone and ask Jim and interrupt.

Mind you, Sam pretty much knows all that, don't you? But it's good questions too. I appreciate it.

I know that you have a farm and you like to grow your own vegetables and things like that. And I was wondering if there was any sort of principles you follow like permaculture or anything like that, organic growing techniques or anything.

Effectively what we do is permaculture. We don't use any fertilizers, any chemical fertilizers. We use manure and stuff like that and weeds, recycling and just digging. We've got about 250 acres we're planting to. It's like a food forest. Trees of nuts and fruit and all kinds of things like that. And veggie patches.

Yeah, I'm doing the same thing on my hundred acres.

Good on you. Yeah, that's good. We need more of this. A lot of farming is very destructive to the soil. This monoculture thing where you grow the same crops and then you have pests and then you spray, you spray pesticides which kill pests which also are bad for pollinating insects like bees. And also you use chemical fertilizers which get a flush of growth but they kill the microorganisms in the soil. And one of the things people should be very much aware of is we are damaging our environment so much by these bad monoculture factory farming kinds of systems. And we're mining the planet and it's a really bad thing. There are sustainable way to do all this stuff. I'll tell you something too nitro. You recognize this? The stuff you grow yourself in your own way, on your own tastes better, doesn't it?

Yeah, 100%.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Great question.

Thank you.

Put that on the list.

I'll put on the list. What was your name? Sorry? Was it Daniel or Daniel? Daniel. Yes, good question.

Jim's building inspection.

Guys, I started well.

There are Sterling.

Good selection, smart division. Come up and ask a question. Go for it.

Ok. Jim, Ben from going to carpet cleaning, bit of a less serious question with Star Wars. How do you feel about the new stuff compared to the old stuff?

No good, sorry. I love New Hope, Empire Strikes Back. I like the prequels. I sense apart from those, I've not seen much of Star Wars. That gets me excited.

It's probably a good choice if I'm being honest.

Yeah, I think nobody's had the touch that George Locus did. I reckon the Story cycle is really interesting. The whole thing, and it's one of the greatest twists of all time is when Luke finds out that Darth Vader is his father. I mean, who expected that? It's just magnificent. And then how Anakin becomes the dark side of the Force. And then my all time hero in Star wars, which of course is Emperor Palpatine, how he becomes galactic emperor. I mean, that's a model for all of us, isn't it? Sure.

I can see you've been trying to model him.

Yeah, actually, if you see it in the training session, you know, the Jim's empire needs you with me as Darth Vader. Pretty good.

No worries at all. Can see you trying to model the emperor a lot. Have a good one, Jim.

He's a good guy in franchising. He's not a bad guy in franchising.

It's all good. I have a thing about villains. I love villains.

All right.

They're underrated. Like Monty Burns in the Simpsons. Monty Burns is one of my absolute favorite characters. Excellent. Gotta like the bad guys.

Same hairstyle as well. You sort of look a bit like Mr.

I'm looking more like him every day. As the hair receives and the age comes off.

We did a video clip if you're excellent and side by side, we had a few comments about the similarity.

But to you, if you put this. This thing up like this and like this and I look a bit like.

Palpitating, you can start doing the old lasers out of the hands and stuff. Yeah, exactly. Hi, I'm Frankie from mowing. Just wondering like you started off in mowing, do you still mow your own lawn or.

I do up at the farm actually. Yeah. Got it around the house. You know what kind of mower I use? You want to guess? Push mechanical mower that pushes it dries on its own way. No, no power. Only human power. It's really quite fun. Yeah.

So you still do do it, which.

Is ironic, isn't it? Yeah. I'm responsible for more mowing power mowers than anyone else in the country. And I personally use a old style push mower. The same one I used to mow my lawns, our lawns with when I was a kid. One of my jobs as a kid, growing the family lawns with this push mower that always gets stuck in the branches and leaves and it's always jabbing up. But it's good, good exercise.

You can give it that. A guy's mowing franchise either. I'll push mower. You could be the first one to try it, first one off of the service.

I don't think it'd be very commercial, actually.

Very tough. A lot of pushing. Guys, got a question? Please feel free to come up to the mic and ask. You go for it. Just interrupt us.

Hi, Jim. I'm Nitika from Laundry Services. Starting the new one.

Yes.

With my husband Rohit. So I've got a bit of an imaginative one. So if this world was coming to an end and you had the last 24 hours, what would you be doing in your last 24 hours?

Getting my family to the deepest hole possible. Because, frankly, I would not give up, no matter what the situation you say, you know, the war is coming to an end. And I'm a big, big fan of apocalypse stories, this kind of thing. Yeah, I don't. I would never. I will never give up. I would never say die. I would get my family to the safest, deepest hole possible to survive anything. Anybody see that Netflix film Greenland? Ever see that one? It's good. It's good. You got to watch it. And there's this huge, massive solar flare which is going to kill 99.99% of humanity. And these people are just desperately trying to get to this refuge in Greenland to survive. It's underground refuge. And that's how I think about it. I would think about how to survive and how my family could survive and those close to me. And let's face it, there could be problems coming in the world ahead. I don't think the world is quite as safe and secure as people think. I think people should learn to do things like grow their own food and be prepared and have food storage and those kind of things because things could get much worse. And you've got to protect your family. Nothing else matters in the end. Money doesn't matter, does it? Family matters.

Great.

Very good question. We haven't had that one before. Jim.

Very love it. I love it.

Very practical answer as well from you put it. Yeah, I've got it down. I've got it down. I've got it.

That's a good question.

If you've got a question, guys, feel free to come up and ask Jim here as well. Just interrupt us and go for it.

Hello, my name is Kelly Choi. I'm from Brisbane.

Okay.

I have a few questions.

Right.

So I don't know your age, but.

We should have played the guessing game. That's all.

Right.

No, no.

When or what age you want to retire?

Okay, well, if you go on the Internet, you put in all your details you actually ask it. They ask you for your weight, your current age, your health, exercise, diet, smoking, Are you still working? There's a whole lot of questions you can ask. I'm interested in determine how long you're likely to live. Well, I have about the maximum possible life health span you could possibly have. Based on everything, I'm probably going to lead to some like my early to mid-90s and when I'm dead, I'll retire. Okay. Probably. Yeah, probably. In actual fact, this guy here is going to make a.

Is going to make a AI gym with Hollywood.

AI Gym. There'll be heaps of him so. Because by that time there'll be so much of me online that you won't even need to have a real gym to answer these questions.

Exactly right. We can just feed you all the video content we do and all your emails.

So he intends to immortalize me digitally. But mind you, let me tell you something. If medical science comes up with ways to extend lifespan, I'll be first in the que. Okay.

Okay. It is. If you are bankrupt, your company is a broke, like a bankrupt, then how very first thing what you want to do?

Well, I start arguing with whoever made me bankrupt. I'm not going to take it lying down. What's going on? All right, who's going to get me out of this? Who can I talk to you? Never. Never. You got to keep on fighting. It's like, it's like, like the apocalypse question. You don't accept anything. I don't care what anybody says. You keep on fighting. And one of the things that's most characteristic about me is that I am very, very resilient. Doesn't matter what goes wrong. I'll always work out a way to deal with it. Always.

You're saying you're going to build again, you're going to make work.

Sometimes somehow I'll get out of it. Sometimes I'll find investors. I'll do something to find someone to pull me out of it. And we will keep going. I have to say, though, it is extremely unlikely for the simple reason that we actually at JIMS has very little debt. We're a very, very solid, secure company. We never ever bet the farm. We never take gambles. We've got a really big cash. Our actual total debt is less than our annual profit. So we're actually in an extremely strong financial position and I intend to keep it that way. So the chance of humans going bankruptcy, apart from the end of the world, in which case that hardly matters anyway, is pretty well zero. Yeah.

Very good question.

Original one.

We've never had that one either.

I like it too. You can put that one down.

I write down bankrupt underscore.

That's my last ketchup. So my one is a good ketchup.

Very good one.

Very good one. It's original. We've never had it before.

No, it's good. I like questions nobody's ever asked.

It's a bit tricky one. So you jump up, go for it.

Hello, Jim. My name's Bill. Jim, have you were mentioning permaculture before? Have you ever thought of Jim's permaculture? If so, why hasn't it up and running? Is it just a little bit hard to convey that to the masses? That permaculture. That permaculture is a good option to have even in a small suburban backyard?

Okay. Your problem is going to be with that, that you've got territory rights. And permaculture would overlap too much with mowing, because mowing people have the right to gardening and we can't breach contract. Now, I would love to see a permaculture movement within the mowing division. I'd be very happy if people start digging up their lawns. Honestly, from Jim's mowing, that's pretty strange. But I would reckon if our guys can go out instead of manicuring lawns, they can actually dig them up and plant organic vegetables and help people to grow their own food. That, to me, would be a much better option. I mean, lawns aren't particularly environmentally great. Especially when you spray fertilizers and stuff on them. They're not fantastic. I'd much rather people had a lot more food growing or even just flowers and native shrubs and this kind of thing too. So I'd love to do it, actually. But you've got to have franchisees who want to do it. At the moment. We don't really have anybody who's into that kind of stuff. If we did, we promote it, we would promote it. Good question. Very good question.

I kind of am, but I just didn't know how to bridge the subject, that's all.

So what, Jujun, are you mowing? You're mowing?

Yeah, but I am a. We have a veggie garden home. And I've done other things for people to not. Not complete. Not completely sustainable. But I like the native grasses rather than a manufactured lawn. Having said that, I do have a manufactured lawn, a manicured lawn at home. But I know exactly what you mean about having native wildflowers in a footpath.

But the challenge for you is to look, do that for your clients, and if you do, we'll support you. Actually, in fact, we'd love to do it. And Joel will do a video of what you're doing, and you'll showcase your talents, and we'll promote that around and present it. You could be Jim's Permaculture, but it's part of the mowing division.

Actually, perhaps what I could do is a reel of my verge at the moment, which is a manicured lawn, and some months later, I plant it, and it becomes a little wild. And then come spring, summer, it'll be about this tall with pink and yellow.

Flowers, all that sort of stuff. How would that look?

Is that real?

Absolutely.

Why not?

We'd love you to do it, actually. Look, I don't know if you realize this, but sometimes people see things like that. Trailers driving around with Jim's Landscaping or Jim's Gutter Clearing. They're all mowing franchisees. It's just a different brand. Or you've seen Jim's Lawn Mowing and Garden Care.

Yes.

So they're alternative brands, but they all legally belong to the mowing division. Now, if you wanted to be Jim's Permaculture, you can actually have uniforms. You can have stationary, you can have your trailer signed with it, and you can do that and specialize and do nothing else, and you can train others to do it.

What will happen?

The point of it is, if you do it and if you do some presents and demonstrations, we will support you and we will promote it out there, and there'd be definitely some interest. And then instead of mowing a lawn for 80 bucks or whatever, you might be able to go in and do a job for 12, $4,000. There are some franchisees who just do nothing but landscaping. You could be the permaculture guy, and that could be a spread. I'd love you to do it. Really? Seriously. Keep in touch with me. Let me know what you're doing.

Thank you.

Do the pictures. Where. Whereabouts do you live?

I'm in Burwood, actually.

In Burwood. So actually it's very close. We can actually, you could use your place as a demonstration, and we could send a team down to Cameron to show what you can talk about it and talk about the principle.

My front yard's very interesting in itself. I've got cascading. It's like the sort of hanging downs of Babylon, things like that. But we've got fruits and veggies and grasses and a whole fruit section with 11 fruit trees. Because we're the first of three townhouses.

Yes.

And I've organized myself and the Chinese chap at the back. We are co tendering that sort of orchard.

Excellent.

You know, really good north facing light because it's on the southern side because it's east, west. And yeah, it's probably worth having a.

Look, you know, look, you keep in touch with me. Do it as a demonstration unit. Come to me. We'll do a video of what you're doing and we'll promote it. We'll even do things like Google searches and so forth to get you on. We'll do Facebook. We'll do all kinds of things to support. We'd love to do it. We really would.

My son especially is into it more than myself, so.

Yeah, your son can do it as well. I mean, your business can be as big as you like. Yeah, sure. You could have a team working on it. You could have multiple teams. You could be perfect. Why not?

There we go. New division on air. You're working on something as well, I think as we're. So you've just finished, Actually, I will. So we're going to interrupt this Jim. So he's actually a man of many, many talents, this gentleman. Is it William or Bill? What do you prefer?

Bill.

Bill.

All right, so Bill's an illustrator as well. I asked him to do a picture of you whilst you're up here. So let's pull that on.

On here. All right. That's what I look like.

Show that to the camera. Nice little sketch there as well.

Can you zoom in?

We're going to zoom in that. Yeah. All right. Shout to that one there.

That one there. Okay.

And there's another one with you sitting down, I think.

Two. Gee, where's two?

Well, that's me again. That's a good call. All right. They were. That camera.

Yeah.

Okay.

You said it's gonna be sitting down.

That was the one.

Very talented.

We'll rip them out and I'll put them into the office and we'll have them on the wall there. That's really good, Bill. Thank you very much for that as well. We'll get Jim, Dave and sign it maybe, or something like that.

No, you should have signed. You're the author. You're the art.

You already have.

Signs you already have. Could be worth something there. We have. I think that's a man of many times.

I was a commercial illustrator before.

I should remember that. Yeah.

Jim's Permaculture and Graphic Design. How does that sound? Jim's Permaculture and graphic design. Hold on.

That's a fantastic bill. Cool. Next question. Anyone got a question? Guys, come up. Just come up to the microphone. Waiting there. Go for it.

That's also a brilliant question.

Oh, it is.

We've got too many.

We've got a lot actually tonight.

Hi, Jim, I'm Tom, I'm from Cairns.

How are you enjoying our nice, bracing, cool weather in Melbourne? Isn't it great? We're tough in Melbourne, we really are. Lots of plenty of hair on our chest. Except for the women, of course. Yeah.

My question is, since that you've expanded and you've really grown, just curiosity, who's the next gym if you're not around? Well, have you got that all sorted out or you've got somebody lined up or.

As I was explaining to some people at dinner tonight, Jim's group has a family trust called by a family trust. It has three beneficiaries. One is my research foundation, which is most of it, and another is my children. So actually two benefits if you look at that way. The plan is we're setting up a family trust deed. So in my absence or incapacity, there's going to be a board of directors which will include most likely four of my children, two of representing people representing Jim's Group franchisees, franchisor staff and one representing the research foundation. And they as a group will work together to appoint the management of the company. So that's basically the idea. We also plan to put a clause in the contract that says that the majority control of Jim's Group cannot be sold to anybody without the written consent of a majority of franchisees. Because the thing that I fear the most is that somebody will buy this company and they will rip it off blind as people like Rital Fu Group have done. That is my worst nightmare because they could do terrible, terrible damage, make a lot of money in the short term it could double and be tripled your profits but destroy so many lives. And that's the thing I fear the most.

Yeah, that's.

Well, I know a few of us.

Have been talking about that. So that's why this.

My children are actually, I think, pretty decent bunch and some of them especially, I think could move into management roles but also there's no particular benefit to them because apart from a bit of help with family and houses and children and stuff, they don't get the money. It's not like it's going to be trust funds for them. So they've got no huge interest in seeing a massive profit because I don't get any benefit from it. So I hope that that will put in a situation where the next generation will allow it to continue to flourish and look after franchisees.

Thank you.

Very good question.

Good question.

Good question. Guys, feel free to come up to the microphone as ask Jim.

Hey, Jim Lachlan from Mowing. My son Jordan. As a Christian, I'm really into servant leadership and I know you are. So much so that I talked about it at an interview once and they really didn't have much of a clue about what I was talking about. So I guess what my question to you is, how do you articulate servant leadership in a non Christian way, if that makes sense, or to people that aren't necessarily Christian?

Well, most people in gyms aren't a lot of Christians, a lot of Buddhists, a lot of Muslims, a lot of Sikhs. We share many faiths. So I don't think you have to be a Christian to believe in servant leadership. How you articulate it. Look, it's an emotional thing more than anything else. It's what you care about, what you want out of life. If your whole aim in life is to serve yourself and become wealthy and powerful, well, you're not really, not really hitting the goal, are you? But if you're the kind of person that deeply cares about the people that you work for, that you serve, which is us supporting everybody and the franchisor supporting the franchisees and the franchisees helping and supporting each other, if you have that sort of culture and you express it by example, that when you've got a franchisor who cares about franchisees, you tend to find that flows through the franchisees care about each other and the established people will help the new ones and support and mentor them. And I think Jim's has a very powerful culture that way. We had a guy, and I've said this often, but there's a guy called Brian Duckett who came to one of our national conferences in Queensland, which was franchisors only at that stage. And he said he had never seen. He'd been involved in dozens of, literally dozens of different franchises over the years and he'd never seen any franchise with the culture that we have, which is very, very franchisees focused. And you hear that all the time. You know, during the, during the lockdown, as an example, Green Acres in New Zealand did the scummiest thing imaginable. Their franchisees were forbidden by law to work and Greenacres was still charging them fees. Now in Australia, if anybody suggests that that should happen, they will be put into a loony bin because everybody would know it's. Nobody suggested such a thing. But not only that, but my franchisors actually would make excuses to their friends. They say it's difficult than they work because of this and this restriction, therefore I shouldn't charge them fees. And I said, well, they still can work. So in a sense they were being more warm hearted than I was. And you often find that. You often find franchisors in gyms that are very, very pushing from a franchisee point of view. It's a cultural thing. It really is. People come to induction training and they learn a certain way of thinking about the world and they tend to pick it up. It's really striking. People often ask me, they say, are you proud of having more than 5,000 franchisees? And I say, well, what makes me much more proud than that is every time I hear a story about a franchisor who looks after a franchisee, goes above and beyond, every time I hear such things, that makes me proud.

Yeah, well, thanks for your example.

Thanks.

Very good question. We appreciate it.

The book is also very good, actually, the one you've been given. And there's a new version coming out to be called no Other Success, which is short for the statement no Other Success Concomitant Value in the Home, which actually is a lot more about the crystal franchisees and the kind of people they are and how much their family means to them and why they're doing things to support their family. So it's getting away from simply monetary success to real success, which is successful as an individual, as a servant of the community, as a father, as a mother. That's the real success.

Good question. If you've got a question, guys, feel free to come up. Got plenty of time. Just jump up anytime.

Cool.

Thank you very much. Hello, Jim. I'm Eddie from Brisbane for Bookkeeping. I just have one question. What plan do you have for adding any more divisions in the coming years? Apart from the 54 that we already have?

I don't really have a plan as such. You know, most divisions come to us because somebody steps up and says, I want to do it. There may be people in this room today who actually come to me. Somebody comes up to me down the track of it, maybe six months, a year, two years, and says, I really think this should work. Might be something we've never even heard of, I never even thought of. But then I look at that person and I ask the questions. First of all, I'm going to say, what's Your customer service rating. Secondly, how much money are you making? I like to see you making at least a couple of hundred thousand dollars a year. I like to see you successful, in other words. And if I see that, by all means, start a new division. It's not very expensive to start a new division costs really no more than buying a franchise. In fact less than some. So it's not difficult. The hardest thing is not the ideas, is finding the right person. We have a lot of things in mind. The only division we really love to start is Jim's Vending Machines. We really want to do that because it's such a great business and it's very good. You get a lot of franchisees who are fantastic franchisees, things like mowing and so forth. And they get a bit physically past it, but they've still got really good minds, good customer service experience and stuff. Vending machine. Something you can do and you can really do well when you can't necessarily push a lawnmower around or build fences anymore. So maybe you one day, who knows.

What about gyms? Fishing? Fishing?

Yeah, Jim's fishing very hard if you want to know a division. Because one of the things you got to understand about gyms is we don't make a lot of money per franchisee. So you've got to have about 20 franchisees in a region to have a reasonable income for a franchisor full time. So you want to look at bulk divisions. So if you. Yeah, you gotta have something. If you put it into a Google search and you see a whole lot of paid ads going for it, that's like a good division for us. We want divisions which got potential for mass. Ideally we'd like every division to have at least 100 franchisees.

Okay, thank you. Good division to join around tax time as well. Bookkeeping. So I know they've got Jim's tax a part of it. So helping a few people for your division.

Hi, Jim. Susannah. My husband is starting a fencing franchise soon in Perth. So maybe if you can share with us. I'm very interested in your evolution. How was Jim when you were 20? Maybe 30, 50, senior, 70s share a little bit.

Have you changed through the years?

Yeah, I changed a lot. Well, at the age of 20 I was a militant atheist. Okay. I used to argue with Christians. At the end of 28 I became one and I switched sides completely. So that was a huge difference. Everything changed dramatically. My whole life took on a different meaning and purpose. I don't know. I went to university when the age of 19 or so trying to understand the reason for the rise and fall of civilizations. During my 20s I figured out there was forces behind it and that I wanted to pursue that as a topic of research. And I had understood it to be to do with biology. And then around the age of 30, I found myself at a dead end with no possibility of an academic career. So I decided to turn my part time student lawn mowing business into a full time business. And around the age of 40 I would just started gyms as a franchise. That was in 1914. No, sorry, 1989. And with the idea maybe I'd have 100 franchisees one day. She said that to somebody when they asked. And then just keep on growing and keep on expanding and keep on changing. You go from business as you go through the hardest thing is to actually find as you grow in business. The hardest thing is to is to step up and find people who can do the things that you used to do. Life just gets better. I've had along the way 10 children. I've got three grandchildren with two more on the way. And that's a huge part of my legacy. See you change all the time. Even over the past two years, I've changed my ideas and my views on a lot of things. I'm very changeable. I read multiple, I read two to three books a week.