The $BILLION CEO on a Mission to Reverse History... Jim Penman from Jim's Group

Are we headed for a complete collapse of society?

We are, yes. More than 300 people have been killed. Anti war protesters have again clashed with police. Society has become wealthy, prosperous, urbanised. Birth rate dropped.

This birth rate has continued to drop.

The Australian birth rates are dropping and then they collapse. The point about my research is that the first time in history we actually can reverse it. I think you have to be fairly obsessed.

Do you think that's a trait that you see in a lot of entrepreneurs?

I am possessive. I mean, there's not a day goes by that I'm not thinking, how can I improve? What can I do better? Just never stop thinking about it.

You pioneered a computer system of your own.

That is dramatic improvement in customer service. Well, to actually achieve that kind of success by advertising, you would have to spend millions of dollars a year.

How have the universities been able to indoctrinate this whole system?

It's a disease of wealthy societies again, that people turn their back somehow. Somebody who sits down with an office with a computer is somehow better than somebody who works outside with their hands. That's completely rubbish.

I wonder where the differences are.

I can tell you the answer. And you may want to excise this particular thing from your podcast. Something very odd happened to me as an adolescent, and that is the one factor more than anything else that drives this peculiar character of mine.

Jim Penman is the founder of the Jim's franchise and an awesome example of what tradies can achieve.

But what you may not know about.

Jim is that he was originally an academic, forced into his mowing business after his peers decided his ideas were way too radical. It's not every day I get to sit down with the founder of an estimated billion dollar company. So although this podcast is based on digital marketing, I did want to know more about Jim and what drives him to succeed. Now, there is a lot that goes into these episodes now, and if you're getting any value out of them, I want you to share this with a mate. This week is Tomo. I know Tom's been hanging out for a bloody awesome podcast, so pause this right now. Give him a cheeky share.

Share it, even if it's not Tom.

Because the more people that find out about this podcast, the more tradies I get to reach and show the next generation how awesome a trade can be. Oh, and did you like the intro?

It was a bit of a ripper, wasn't it?

You know, almost worth a five star review, I reckon.

Almost. Or it is.

Anyway, let's get into it.

Jim, you bloody Legend. Welcome to the podcast. Good to be here. So I did a little bit of preparation before this podcast and I actually found something on the Internet that could potentially rock the very foundations of the Jim's group.

You ready? Go ahead.

Is your name actually Jim?

Well, it is, actually, but my name is David James Penman. I just used my middle name and shorten it to Jim.

When did that happen? How did that happen?

When I left school, I went to work on a farm for a while, took a gap year, and there was a kid about my age called David and she said, oh, call me Jim.

Oh, okay.

So you had two of the same people? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It was quite a small farm and my boss was his father, so we just used to work together. So that was what I said. Well, I kind of like the name Jim. It's very, I don't know, it's, it's, it's rugged, it's Australian. It's, you know, this guy's got dirt under his fingernails and calloused hands. It just, just seemed like a good, good change.

I don't know. I like the name David. It's pretty legendary name as well.

Well, women prefer David. We say David's a nice name, but it's very, it's very civilized.

It is very civilized.

And I don't really want to be civilized all the time.

Now, most people would know you as Jim the business, you know, mowing entrepreneur. But some people may not know that you're actually an academic and a historian. So I want to know who has been your favorite entrepreneur throughout history.

Throughout history.

Throughout history. The whole of history, Jim.

It doesn't make any sense, really. I mean, I mean, if you look at people I admire now, people like Elon Musk and James Dyson, who are great inventors, technologists. I mean, Musk is a very flaky character in many ways, but enormously capable in terms of what he's done with SpaceX. I might. People like that.

Yeah. Is there anybody a little bit earlier on? I know I would probably think of someone like a Nikola Tesla or something like that. More of an inventor. I don't know if he's an entrepreneur as such.

Well, Henry Ford's got to be one of the greatest businessmen of all time. I mean, what he did with the assembly line was extraordinary. He just turned something that had been a privileged toy for the rich, which is the motor car, into something that ordinary people could afford. His own workers could afford to buy a car. He just constantly worked on efficiency. It was an amazing thing. His Plant. You could just put the raw materials one end, all the raw materials, and out at the end of them you come this stream of cars.

Was he the first to pioneer that kind of process, the manufacturing process?

No, not the first to pioneer. That goes back to the, like the 18th century. Talk about Adam Smith and nails and so forth and mass production. But. But he did it extraordinarily well.

Yeah. Yeah. I wanted to touch on your book Epigenetics and Character. Now that book scared the crap out of me for multiple different reasons.

Well, that's. That's nice. That's good to hear. It should be scary.

It's very scary book. Very good book. But it did scare the crap out of me. But I did want to touch on something where you could accurately predict somebody's character based on their upbringing. So I actually put your book into chatgpt and I asked it what would be the typical upbringing of somebody who was a mowing and gardening contractor? And I want to read you out what it spat out. All right. Okay. Your upbringing was likely involved a balance of discipline structure and practical skills development. You were probably raised in an environment that valued hard work, responsibility and independence. Your C traits would have been well developed, enabling you to manage routine and demanding aspects of your work effectively. Is this accurate and is that a reflection on your upbringing?

I think the twist, personally in that sort of thing, I mean, it's meaningless. It could apply to anybody or anything. I mean, seriously, how was my upbringing? Strong willed, parents, quite irritable at times. Very intellectually driven. My father was enormously interested in all kinds of subjects. I didn't get on with him very well when I was growing up. He was a very fierce character. So I don't know how you describe my upbringing. I mean, our parents were great. They were very dedicated and they sacrificed a lot for us. So I appreciate it. And I was very close to them, both of them, until they died.

So was it a disciplined household that you grew up in? I mean, you had three other siblings, Was that right?

Well, pretty disciplined, yeah. Yeah, I think so. There was certain limits and there's what we could do and how we behaved. Yeah, sure.

Yeah.

I don't think most people in those days. Don't forget I grew up in the 50s and 60s and it wasn't just permissible at all. Hangout parenting today. I don't know. Parents were unusual in that respect.

No, probably not. You're probably right.

Yeah.

Well, I did kind of want to touch on your faith as well. So some people would know you as being Christian, but you were actually an atheist. And in your. In your book Epigenetics in Character, you kind of call out the importance of faith and religion in society. Was that a factor in becoming Christian? And then how has it benefited your life?

It was a factor. I was a fairly militant anti Christian for many years. I used to get into trouble. I went to an Anglican school and I used to get into trouble by doing things like challenging lecturers about their beliefs and so forth and putting things up on the notice board I wasn't supposed to put up. I was known as a rabble router. My best friend was suspended for. For a period during the final year and told her stay away from me is a bad influence. So, I mean, that just gives you an idea. But what I was trying to do, what I was trying to understand from the time I was a teenager was why civilizations rise and fall, what causes them to collapse. And when I went to university and started to study that seriously as part of a history degree, I came to the conclusion that the strength of a civilization is based on character. And it's. That character is largely formed by religion.

Interesting.

Religion gets people to be disciplined. It controls sexual behavior. It does things which change character. And what happens when a society collapses is that the wealth and urbanization undermines that character. So that made me a lot more open to Christianity. But to a large extent, what happened is that I was walking through the student union one day and this was at the age of like 28 or so after many years at university. And I just got chatting to a group of people in the Christian Union booth, and I liked them. And I went on a retreat and had this very strong feeling that God spoke to me.

Really? And was there a particular type of Christian faith that you're following currently?

Well, I'm basically evangelical. I go to a Baptist church.

Okay.

But I've done all kinds of things. I've been Seventh Day Adventists. I was Mormon for many years.

Really? You were Mormon as well?

Yeah. Oh, wow. It's a great church, actually. Really, really great. Very strange theologically and in other ways, but the discipline and the sense of community is extraordinary. I loved it.

And how important do you think it is, that discipline side of it for society to currently keep the current society that we have?

It's crucially important. I mean, we're losing it. There's nothing much we can do in normal tens. We just. The forces of urbanization and wealth are just too strong to be resisted. People can fight against it, but it's a losing battle. It's essential, it's necessary. I just think, yeah, you cannot. You cannot turn back the clock. You cannot recreate, you cannot bring back traditional religion. There are certain groups, like the Amish, for example, or Orthodox Jews, who manage to have a strong enough culture to separate themselves from the world. And the Amish are doing very well. When the population is dropping, most areas of the community, they're actually doubling about every. Every idea. 20 years, really. So it's possible to create that kind of character only if you very strictly separate yourself from the wider society, because it's very corrupting. What we're working on is a form of medication or a treatment that will help to reinforce that character.

So this is obviously not unprecedented within history. I mean, civilizations rise and fall all the time.

Yes.

Where do you see currently our civilization? Predominantly in Australia. Where do you see that cycle lying currently?

Well, we're in the stage of very rapid degeneration collapse, no question. And within your lifetime, if not mine, you'll certainly see signs of real problems. And you can see that already the sense of community is framed. The sort of stuff that's going on in America is very alarming challenge to democratic ideals. You get a president who actually tries to defy the results of the election, and that's extraordinary for a Western European society. It's very worrying. And we see all these immense growth in technology and yet productivity is not rising. That's because even though we're getting better with things like computers and so forth, people are losing character, losing ability to work hard, losing that sense of innovation, initiative and so forth. Character is declining quite fast. People don't see it. What they can see is the declining the birth rate, which is getting people alarmed, but they don't see the declining character, but it is happening.

What is the link between a declining birth rate and the declining society, essentially?

Well, it's all part of the same trend. Wealthy urban societies tend to. The birth rate drops and the character drops. You see the same thing in the Roman Empire, for example, Ptolemaic Egypt, or in Han China. You see societies which become wealthy, prosperous, peaceful, urbanized. Birth rate drops and then they collapse. And what usually follows is a period of anarchy and then, you know, the barbarians come in and so forth.

And it would kind of be remiss of us to suggest that that wouldn't have happen as modern as we are. Correct?

Yeah. Well, people think that technology will protect us, but in fact, technology is what's doing it. Because there's the unprecedented wealth of our society, which is so destructive, you Think.

That the disparity between the extreme wealthy and it's being perpetuated by technology.

Well, we're all wealthy. I mean, people in the dole these days suffer from obesity. I mean, that's extraordinary. This is the bottom end of society and they are overweight. That is totally unprecedented in world history. No period of history, not, not the Roman Empire, not anything.

And that was typically. That was something that you touched on in epigenetics and character was you did a study on, on rats where you, you deprive them or you gave them.

Mild starvation, not starvation. It's about, about 25%. Yeah, it's healthy. They actually live longer. We've got rats that are really doing well in old age. So it's a very healthy. But it's, it's just a limit. 25% less than what they like to eat.

And that was what initially was the first thing that alarmed me in the book, because I know that we have an abundance of food in this, in this country or the modern world, you know, and so like you said, it was unprecedented. Where do you think that that is going to eventually lead?

Well, if nothing is done, it'll lead to the collapse of our civilization. You'll simply find the economy going backwards. You'll find states breaking down. You'll find empires invading others and taking over countries. You'll find the end of the nation state, end of democracy. It's a classic civilization collapse we're going through.

That is really scary.

But the point about my research is this, for the first time in history, we actually can understand what's going on and we can reverse it. It's a simple form of medication which people would take because it would help them with issues like drug addiction, alcoholism, make them better parents, make them able to work harder. So if we could develop a treatment that would reverse this whole trend, people would take it, they'd want it, and if they started doing it, then the whole thing can be reversed and we can go to extraordinary new heights.

It seems a little bit contradictory, though. You've got these gatekeepers that have got the majority of the wealth in the world. I just. For me, it felt almost inevitable when you wrote about. Felt very scary at the time.

Well, inequality is a problem too. I certainly believe in that, and I think that's an issue. I think society's become more and more unequal, and I'm very concerned about it. But mind you, in the past it was too. If you look at the Middle Ages, for example, the difference between the nobles and the serfs, or even the 19th century where you have these vast industrialists and the working poor. In fact, the solution has never been more equal than it was say in the 1950s, the decade of my birth.

Really?

Yeah. In terms of wage distribution and so forth, it was extraordinarily equal sort of society.

Interesting. So going from the, almost the fall of a civilization to a period where, you know, where you grew up, which was fairly prosperous, you wrote about a lot of this, your journey with Jim's in your book Every Customer a Fan, which is in my opinion just a must read for any business owner. You don't have to be a service based business or a tradie. It was, it was really good. For those that have been living under a rock and don't know the Jim's brand and what you do, can you just briefly go over the gyms, the Jim's brand and the structure and the current size of the Jim's franchise.

Okay. Well, it started basically as a part time gardening, law, my business, when I was doing my university study and my PhD when I finished and realized I had no prospect of a academic career, which is what I really expected to have because my ideas were far too radical. Then I turned into a full time business and that was in 1982. And then seven years later I franchised and I honestly didn't expect it to do so well. Somebody asked me at the time, how many franchisees might you have one day? And I said, if it goes really well, maybe 100.

That's crazy.

Currently we've got about 5,440 plus different divisions. Yeah. So we're pretty strong in Australia, New Zealand, we've got a few in Canada.

Yeah. So you've got your. I spoke with this with Joel in another podcast, but essentially you've got your divisions, which would be your Jim's mowing, your gym's dog wash and etc. And Jim's jumping Castles, which is one that I always used to like to call out. So it's great.

Have some kind of touches we'd like, actually. All right.

And more recently, Jim's Life coaching. I think I've been seeing a lot of that coming up as well.

Yeah.

So. And then you've got regional divisions, is that correct?

Well, the way our structure works is that you have franchisees who basically do the work and then you have franchisors who are responsible for recruiting and supporting them, like ringing them regularly and answering calls, running meetings and so forth. For about one in four franchisees, Jim's group actually runs the Regional franchises. And then you have a divisional structure. So, like, the mowing division is ours and so is dogwash, but cleaning division is other people. So there's a different kind of. Different kind of roles within the organization.

When is it that Jim's group would jump in and just take over control of a regional division?

Why would you do that? We don't. We don't jump in and take over. We buy the rights, essentially.

Why would you buy the rights? Are they not doing a good enough job or something?

We do about as well as most franchisors in terms of support and growth and so forth. Sometimes franchisors aren't quite as good. But also, I mean, to be pretty blunt, it's a great investment. We buy back the regional franchise rights and it returns something like 25, 30% per annum. And then you get capital gains because they grow. So it's a very, very good investment. So if you've got surplus money, buying back a region rights just makes good sense.

So it is kind of like an arbitrage opportunity. You're looking at something that's with potential for growth and you come in and you give it a bit more and then you. That's quite a big jump, about 20 to 30%.

Well, they're good businesses. Jim's regional franchises are very, very good business. But there are some people we would never want to buy out. There's some people who are absolutely fantastic, like the people who run the clean division. Haydar and Ellie are just brilliant at what they do, and they've actually had tremendous growth and I would never want them to go. Or Bill Coburnoglu, who runs Jim's Laundry. He's also a major cleaning franchisor. These guys are incredible. So you want people in place because they're actually very innovative. We get different ideas, we change ideas. Haydar and Ali will talk about things they're doing and we'll talk about what we're doing. And having great people to bounce things off is a big advantage.

Something that you mentioned in your book. Every customer, a fan, was selling lawn mowing rounds. And I, I want to just clarify for the listeners what exactly that means. And also, I'm curious to know, did you have any backlash from the customers of these mowing rounds as well when you sold them?

No, the customers never objected. What you usually find is we looked after customers well and they said, look, I'm unable to continue, but here's Bill, who can come in and look after you. Customers are happy with that.

Essentially, selling the round is. Is Collating a whole heap of. Of mowing rounds and then you sell them as a group to another mowing.

Yes, look, essentially, okay, starting a business by yourself is quite difficult. Between 90 and 95% of people who buy, who start something like a lawn mowing or a cleaning business will fail in their first year. We know that. That's widely available statistics. If, however, you go in and you bought the rights to customers and they're. And you can. And you can make say $2,000 per week from the beginning, your chances of success are actually very high. Much higher still. That's what I used to do. I used to go out and build customer base. I'd get regular clients together, either myself or some of my subbies, and then we'd sell the rights ongoing and we used to provide some little bit of support ongoing as well.

So did you get a residual off the back of that?

No.

Okay.

That was pre franchise.

You were actually pretty flippant about that in the book. And I just wanted to draw an analogy. That would be like a plumbing contractor getting a whole heap of maybe gas, annual gas checks, and then collating them together and selling on. Selling them to another plumbing contractor. Correct?

Yeah, yeah.

I can't find another instance of a tradie or a contractor doing that. Do you have any other examples of a service being on sold like that?

Well, it's a very common way to go into business, actually. In fact, when we sell it, when a person's got an established business and they want to leave for some reason, they just put their business on the market and the goodwill becomes part of the value. So a typical mowing franchise might go for 20,000, but it's got a good customer base. It might make 30 or 35,000 or more. I mean, some of our franchisees turning over in the million dollars plus a year, and those businesses can be very valuable.

I suppose that's upon exiting a business. But your strategy was you're going to continue to run your mowing business and sell the round itself. I mean, I don't think it's a. Do you think it's a typical thing that the tradies are doing?

Well, you can't do it in divisions in businesses like plumbing, electrical so easily because the work is intermittent. But when you've got regular clients like cleaning, mowing, dog wash, it is a lot easier to do. Look, people don't realize, but it's quite a common strategy. It's a good way to get in the business. I would recommend to anybody, if you want to start A business like that, if you can't get into a franchise, which is obviously from our point of view, the preferred option and we have a very, very good survival rate, something like 88% of our franchisees will still be business at the end of the first year. But if you can't do that, then starting part time or buying an existing business is a really good way to start because it's very difficult to get going. I have a friend who was very skilled electrician. In fact he was the manager in the Domain tunnel. He was in charge of all the people who looked after those lights and so forth. So he's a very capable guy. Tried to start his own electrical business and failed. He just couldn't get enough customers to pay the rent.

New leads are a huge issue for new businesses.

It is, yeah, yeah. In gyms we have a system whereby ideally, if possible, we find an established business, either a want somebody who's exiting or somebody who's splitting a current business which got too large. But if not, we have a system called pay for work guarantee. So if they, they can go out and offer free services and get paid by us for that. And with that and with fairly heavy advertising, we managed to get them off the ground. But getting started is quite difficult. In trade business, is that typically something.

You would prospect for or do businesses approach you and say, I want to exit, is there something that you can do about.

Oh no, we don't sell other people's business, we only sell our own.

Oh, got you.

Okay. Yeah. But if a franchisee wants to exit or a franchise does what we call a split, which is very good because a split's very nice. If you've got, if you're a regular, if you've got a regular mowing customers and you want to build it up and you've got say 130 customers, you say, well, okay, well why don't we split off 65 in this area over here? I can pocket, you know, enough, pay my next three years franchise fees.

Yeah.

Which is pretty nice. And then I've got a more compact business which I can build again. Because most of our franchisees stop asking for work after a while. They get too busy in those kinds of businesses.

So your franchisees are not obliged to actually accept the leads, is that correct?

Oh no, no, no, no, no. They actually put down on the system how much, how much work they want, what areas they're prepared to work in. They've got territory and then they've got local, all areas. What services they want to take is Completely up to them, even what times of day they'll take leaves. So it's absolutely not and typically say for a mowing job might come in, there might be 30 different franchisees who could theoretically take it, but you might only find one or two who actually want the work because they do good work and a system demands they do very good work. If they don't, they get into serious trouble. They tend to get filled up fairly quickly.

And those leads, do you have an average cost per lead? I mean, obviously it will differ depending on the division.

But when you say cost per lead of what?

So for the franchisee to accept the actual lead itself. So if it comes into the system and they go, well, yeah, I want to accept that lead.

Obviously they mostly say it in advance. Oh. Because they have to. They set it up through a system called Gyms Online. So they actually in advance let them know. So when a customer rings up or a customer tries to book online, the system will automatically find the right person to do it. They'll ignore the other 29 who can't do it and just give it to the one person who can.

Got you. Okay, that's interesting. Well, obviously the system that you have of dispersing all of this, you know, these leads to all of your different franchisors was, was a big win for you. But in your book you do lay out a lot of mistakes that you've made, which I appreciate.

I didn't want people to read it and think you have to be some sort of brilliant guru of business who always does everything right because sometimes people are intimidating. I mean, if you look at so many people, you think, wow, that's so brilliant. But I could never do that. I mean, I could never be someone like a Bill Gates or Elon Musk or someone like that. I'm just not at that level.

I mean, you possibly could be. You're explaining yourself really well.

Not quite as successful as they are in financial terms, I can assure you.

What was it that has been, in your opinion, the biggest failure of yours and what did you learn from it?

Well, biggest failure of my life is three failed marriages. To be pretty blunt. I have a terrible history. Obviously I'm an extraordinarily difficult person to live with.

Why? Obviously. Why do you say that?

I'm very, very single minded. I just tend to be unaware of people around me. People would get quite upset and they don't even notice it, especially women. So it was very difficult.

Do you.

But I mean, very 21 years, very happily married now actually 23 is very happily married now. So I, look, I found somebody who's, who put up with me, but do.

You think that's a trait that you see in a lot of entrepreneurs? That single mindedness, that drive for that single purpose?

Yeah, I don't know a lot of entrepreneurs, but apart from my franchisees, who are most. Not as extreme as I am. But I think you have to be fairly obsessed. I mean, I do have a. I do, I am, I am possessive. I mean, there's not a day goes by that I'm not thinking, how can I improve? What can I do better? You know, how can I avoid this mistake? What opportunities are there? Always constantly driven to improve. It's, it's a, it's very obsessional. It's every day of my life, including Christmas Day, every day. I just never stop thinking about it.

Does it ever play on your mind that why can't I turn this thing off?

No, no, I enjoy it.

You enjoy it.

You imagine a computer game which is endlessly fascinating and complex and creative and always challenging and always learning new things and imagine you get paid for playing it. I mean, could you think of a more ideal life?

Yeah, I kind of, I kind of get the same feeling sometimes.

I love what I do. I love it, love it, love it. The idea of retiring to me is just horrifying. I just would not, could not imagine. Unless I'm senile, in which case I probably will hardly know what I'm doing.

How do you feel about the idea of retirement?

I cannot come at it. I just feel that there's so much to do. Look, I'm 72 years old. I'm in near perfect health, which I make sure I keep exercise, diet and so forth. I've probably got another 20 years, really. I've got a lot to do in the next 20 years. A lot to do. And that's the thing that drives me. There's so much I need to get done. Wow.

Well, obviously, you're obviously very dedicated to your craft and what you're doing. There has been reports that you've been reasonably ruthless in your business. And one of those instances was firing your sister. Yes. Can you go into detail about why you fired her and do you actually have any advice for tradies that might be have their family within their business, whether it's their wife or their children?

Yes. Well, what actually happened was that my sister Jill, that I've always been very close to my baby sister, she was in the uk, she was without any financial resources whatsoever. She's not Exactly. A saver and investor type of person. She wanted to come back to Australia and our mother was dying. She's on her last. She was going to go, so she wanted to come back. I wanted to be. She couldn't afford it, so I said, okay, I'll tell you what, I'll give you a job on the basis that I'll advance you all the money for the trip. You know, getting out here, it cost about 20 grand, not much. But the idea is if the job doesn't work out, then, you know, I'll wipe off the debt. So whatever happens, you've got. You've got a job to come to, you've got an immediate income, all your expenses are paid to travel here. That was the idea, which seemed like a very good idea. And she came out and it was very successful from the point of view that she did actually spend time with Mum because I was very close to my mother. But Jew was able to spend a lot of time with her when you last years, which was great. But unfortunately, even though Jew had what seemed to be a very good cv, she was not very good at work. Her co workers just didn't. Didn't appreciate her. She was just. Wasn't efficient. She was lazy. Somebody would give her a job, her boss would give her a job and she'd delegate it back to the manager who gave it to her.

Okay.

I tried moving her to different departments and every time I moved her to try and find her a place, which is what we typically do when somebody doesn't work. So I tried and she was equally disliked in every other section. The problem I've got is this staff's really important part of your business. You can't employ somebody because they're a family member who actually lets everybody else down. It's just insulting to somebody who does a good job. Nepotism can be very, very bad. So in the end I'll let it go and. Well, she's basically never spoken to me since.

Not once, no. And you were quite close to her, you said?

Yeah, I was for many years. I always used to look after her. I had an old car. Just give it to Jill because she couldn't afford to buy a car. I was always doing things, just supporting her. I love my sister. It wasn't. I still do, actually. It's sad, but I don't know if I regret it, really. I mean, I did get her back to Australia. Maybe I shouldn't offer a job, but I couldn't imagine how. I know my sister's smart, actually. She's highly intelligent, at least as smart as me, probably smarter. But she's just got a different character.

A lot of not enough C and maybe promoters and maybe too much V. Yeah, she doesn't.

She obviously has a lower C because one of the big differences is this. I adore children. I've got 10 children and to me they're just the highest, most greatest thing in my whole life, bar none. Well, along with my wife. But Jill, she had one child and she just couldn't stand to be a mother. She just left him with his father's parents and she just couldn't stand it. So she's just totally opposite to me in temperament in that way. So she's, I don't know, she's a modern woman. You know, the important thing is to develop as a human being and follow your desires and live the life that you want to in full freedom. Whereas I, to me.