The Business of Success: Jim Penman on Franchising, AI, and the Future of Work

Okay, now do you want to do a. I do.

I want to ask you all kinds of different questions. So I'm one of those people. I just love to get to know people and I just believe the more I talk to older, wiser people that are successful, the better opportunity I have in my own life. So I want to know a little bit of everything about you. And I've done a little bit of research. Obviously, you know, you're the founder to Jim's Mowing and Jim's group, which has expanded into industry after industry successfully. You've expanded into multiple countries. In the back of my head, on my way here, I was like, why is he not in the United States? I said, he's either planning it or something. And so it may be in your future. And I think it might be later this year.

We hope to be in Florida. Look, with us with most things it's the right people, the opportunities are there. We're actually a few kilometers cycle. We're in Vancouver, so we're not too far from the boundary, from the border, but right people.

Are you planning on moving all industries there or are we just starting off with Jim's mowing?

We just start with probably mowing. Okay. Dog wash is probably an early one we'll go to as well. That's a good division.

I noticed those outside all the dog wash trucks. And when I first saw the dog wash training center, I said, oh, that's another one of another little industries in. And then I walked up and I saw all the trucks and I said, oh, there must be some money in this because there's a lot of dog.

Wash trucks over here, 220 of them. So it's one of our, not the biggest division, but one of the larger ones here and it's growing quite fast.

What is your next largest growing division?

Aftermarket's cleaning.

Cleaning.

Okay.

And honestly, I got a bunch of questions. I'm gonna pretend like I'm just a regular guy who lives here in Australia. I'm interested in a franchise. How does your system work? Do I have to pick one franchise?

Yeah.

Okay. I pick one franchise, I focus on that. And then can you tell me more about how your. Your guys system works? I saw some of your videos the other day and you guys were talking about paying for leads. I believe it was, yeah.

And we have a system. There's an upfront fee.

Yeah.

Which is typically getting in could be anything, 20, 25,000 with equipment, that kind of level, depending on division. We have an ongoing fee which is a base fee. Plus a fee for every lead provided. And we do it that way because even though our base fee, a simple fee, is simpler, what we find is that by making the base fee lower, putting a lead fee on, we actually get better customer service because franchisees don't tend to want to pay for a lead that they don't follow up. So we actually found a lot less customer complaints. It also means that franchisees who don't need a lot of work don't pay less. And those who have big businesses turning over a million bucks a year or whatever, they pay a bit more. And the average franchisee turns over a bit under $3,000 a week. So it's, roughly speaking, on average, about 6% of turnover.

Yeah, that's, in my opinion, low, because in the United States we see franchise fees that are ridiculously high and buy in. Anybody curious? I looked up McDonald's. Last time I looked up McDonald's, it was about two and a half million dollars for a piece of paper that didn't include anything. That didn't include any of the food you needed to buy, the land, the building, anything. And so to hear numbers that low, it's.

Well, it's a service franchise, so it's obviously going to be cheaper. It's a first business for people. But the point is, we have franchisees turning over millions of dollars a year. It's not. There's no upper limit on it, but it's a very easy way to get into business. It is.

I think you're right. It is a great easy way to get into business. What's the next step for somebody in business, in your opinion, then if that's an easy way to get into business, what should they take for their next step? Would it be to expand? How does somebody expand and grow within your franchise?

There's no limit to growth. You pay the same fees, base fee, and the same leave fees. Whether you're turning over $100,000 a year or $2 million a year, it's the same thing. So we actually allow and encourage franchisees to grow. So, for example, it's very easy to grow your business because you can turn your leads on and off. Most franchisees are switched off. They take enough leads to keep themselves busy and then they switch off. But they can choose specifically where they want leads. So they set themselves on the system. So they only take leads in this area. Or, for example, some of your franchisees might say, I like landscaping jobs, so I'll take landscaping from this area, but mine from this area, or even not at All. So what it means is that if somebody wants to put on workers, it's relatively easy because all they need to do is to get flat out put on a worker, open up the tap, get more leads coming in. If the guy's not available for work, they just, they just shut it down again. So it's very easy to build a major business in gyms compared with doing as independent. He's also got opportunities to become a franchisor or launch a new division. So one of our mowing franchisees just recently started Jim's Driving School. A successful mowing franchisee, South Australia. Good customer service, record good earnings. So obviously Mount Point, if you're good business, like the industry is now going very, very well, or somebody in the cleaning industry division started laundry, it was about four years ago. It's now got 150 odd franchisees. So you get people who just come forward and they say, okay, I'm happy to mow lawns or clean or wash dogs for a living. And others will say, I'd like to do a bit more than that. I'd like to employ people. I'd like to build my business, become a franchisor, start a new division. We call ourselves Millionaire Factory. We reckon we've created more millionaires than any company in the history of this company in this country.

Yeah, I believe it. I mean, everything that I've seen so far, for lack of a better term, mentorship. It seems like you guys have a lot of mentorship where anytime that a franchisee is going to bump their head, they have the opportunity to reach out to you guys and be like, hey, what? How do I navigate my way through this issue or that issue? And myself as a small business owner, it's, it's the little things that are so annoying. It's the government sending me a letter and telling me I have to fill out some paperwork. It's those little things that kind of bog you down. And I find that as I'm mentoring other small business owners, I find that it's the number one thing that actually either stops their business dead in the water. Like, they just get freaked out. They don't know what to do, they don't know how to respond to some of those letters. And I find that mentorship, their ability to just reach out to somebody, make the situation a little bit calmer.

What we do is we ask our franchisors to ring the franchisees regularly too. Not just to wait for their calls, but to keep our relationship going. So ring them initially, every week, ongoing, at least. Every month and just ring them up, how's it going? Any issues, any problems, just keep relationship going. That way, if a franchisee has a problem, they've got someone to talk to about it, because often they'll have an issue. They don't know you've got a solution, something's going wrong. Like, say they're not collecting debts very well, okay? And they might just think that's, that's normal. And then your franchisor says, well, you're doing this, are you doing that? Somebody with experience can help them because most franchisors, people have actually got experience of that particular trade. And then you have your regular meetings, which we hold about every six weeks so that you can come and you can learn from other franchisees too, and build connections, because social connection is very much part of it.

And they're all local meetings as well, aren't they? So they're almost like has to be local, cancel shire type.

Sometimes they can be. Some meetings can be held by Zoom remotely these days, but generally speaking, we prefer them to come together, meet together regularly and have a meal together sometimes too. Usually that's best.

I absolutely agree. I think that the emotional deposits that you're able to build with somebody and the open communication, when people feel comfortable talking to each other, they're more likely to discuss those problems, those issues, and to be able to overcome them.

If one of the biggest. One thing we didn't understand really is the need for relationship of community. In actual fact, most people don't fail in business because they don't know how to do something technically. They fail because they make a business mistake. They don't give good customer service or they get demoralized or they get depressed or they don't follow up customers, those kind of things. And you've got to have an ongoing relationship with them intensively. It's a tough role. But one franchisor can look after 50 franchisees and you couldn't look after 50 workers with the same level. So it's actually feasible, but you've got to do it cost effectively. But frequent phone calls, regular meetings is very important.

What else would you say is a top priority for maintaining relationships?

Well, you've got to care about your franchisees. It's got to be a genuine care. We have contracts that are very franchisee friendly. For example, franchisees have territory rights that are absolute. If a job comes into their territory, they must get it. But they're not limited. They can actually work anywhere they like. They can pick up jobs from referrals anywhere Our franchisees, we cannot take customers, often without their consent. As you come in some systems, they can sell their rights to customers. We can't take them. They can move to a different franchisor or a different division if they wish to. Their own franchise has no say so. That means they have to be treated like clients. Franchisees can actually vote out their own franchisor, force them to sell, in other words, which does happen occasionally. So franchisor is not really looking after franchisees. Well, then they can make the decision. They say, we're not happy with you. We go through the rest render process. They get three months to win the confidence back, otherwise they have to sell out. Very radical.

I like that, I like that. I love that. I do, I do. Okay, explain what a franchisor though is for me just a little bit more. Because in my head I'm envisioning almost like a guy who's in charge of the division of dog washer. The guy who's in charge of this.

Well, it's the different levels of franchisor. We are the national franchisor. We also have a divisional role, which means you're cartoon now for most franchisees, that's us too. But some divisions like cleaning are quite separate. And then you have the franchisor role, the regional franchisor. They're the ones that look after the franchisees directly. They're the ones that phone them, that run the meetings, that handle the day to day inquiries, and they're the ones that recruit them too. And you have the franchisees and.

That'S not a hired position, is it?

No, these are all. We own certain divisions and regions ourselves and we actually have paid managers, but most of them actually own their own business and they're mostly successful franchisees.

So is that almost a volunteer role for them, where they've chosen to take that on as an extra part of their business?

Oh, they get paid.

Okay.

They're good businesses. If you had 100 franchisees in the business, they'd be worth, you know, one and a half, $2 million to buy if you wanted to buy into that.

Yeah.

So it's because there's a good income.

Okay.

And it's because you can work from home and you're dealing on a regular basis. The people that you generally get on with very well. It's very rewarding. You're acting as a coach, as a business mentor, you're helping people to be successful. It's quite a popular role. A lot of franchisees would like to become franchisors, but of Course, the opportunities are limited because the franchisors, they don't like to move on. They mostly stay because you can get to a stage where you can't build Francis anymore. But you can always give advice. Yep, yep. About how to build a fence or how to deal with a difficult client.

My background is turf management and landscaping, so I've had a landscaping business for 20 years and same sort of deal. I've moved into this line more because my body can only take so much. It was time to find something a little bit easier on the body.

So I can completely understand where the mind. You know, the majority of our franchisees in their 70s, still working a mowing, guys. And we've got one bloke just finished, got past his 80th birthday and they do very well. So it's not universal. Yeah. I personally, I'm in my 70s and I really enjoy gardening. I've got a big, big veggie patch at my. My farm and I love to go out there and dig potatoes and planting tomatoes and all kinds of things. I really love it. Mowing the lawn with a push bar, actually. So. Keeps you young.

Yep, it does. You have to find something to do.

Yeah.

Okay. What else can I pick your brain about? I'm so curious. Let's dive into more controversial stuff. How about politics? Can we talk politics?

Yeah, you can. Okay.

What's your thoughts on Trump?

Very, very concerned about him in some ways, I think we all are. The fact that he tried to overturn the results of a previous election, a bit of a worry in pardoning all the rioters and stuff. We're not crazy about that. At the same time, he's doing some really interesting things. The settlement in Gaza seems to be largely limited just by the threat of him getting involved, which is, I think, big, positive. But that's a horrible conflict. He can settle Ukraine too, as he suggested that he might. Someone needs to knock kids together and say, okay, let's make a treaty there. And I'm very interested in what he's doing with Doge. Department of Government Efficiency with musk. I know what you think about that, but we have terrible problems with bureaucracy and red tape in this country. This is just as bad as you. Governments are strangling us and actually there's no better example of the malign effects of government than the taxi industry, which was a government sanctioned monopoly that you had these. You had the same system, didn't you? You have the same system in America. Sorry, sorry. Yes. I say it again, you have the same system with the taxi. You only have a certain amount of taxis and you have to buy the. The right to occupy taxi. Is that what you had in America now? We had that anyway in Australia.

Wait, what is it?

You basically buy an area and you can only have so many taxis in the area.

Yeah, sorry, like an Uber.

But well. Oh, yes, yes. And it depends like cities. An example is like New York. You can only have so many taxis. And here's the. I'll break it down even crazier. Hot dog stands. You can only have so many hot dog stands.

Yes.

You know what a hot dog stand license is worth in New York?

Crazy.

But 400, 500,000. A million dollars a year.

Yeah.

And the actual license, probably only $20. But once you get it, you sit on it year after year and subcontract it down.

They've done a lot of tests in America because there's so many different regulations to government. Professions like cosmetology, people do cosmetics and stuff, all kinds of things. There's regulations and they found a really consistent effect. When you have more regulation, you have higher prices and worse service. That's absolutely consistent. And the same thing with taxis. When they broke the taxi monopolies, we got lower prices and. And better service by far. And many people use it. So government regulation red tape is a horror.

Yeah. A lot of times in my opinion, when we see red tape like that, it's because somebody had a friend and they found some way to get an advantage.

Well, they basically used by interest groups, industry interest groups to control access to profession and it puts the prices up and the service down. There's so many areas that are just terrible. The other thing I'm really government overreach is in zoning. We've got spiraling costs of housing all over the place. People can't afford to buy houses where they're stuck with these massive mortgages or they pay sky high rents if they can play. You've got growing homelessness. All because the government restricts the supply of housing. And they said you can't subdivide land. And whenever you relax the zoning regulations, an example of that would be somewhere like Texas or Dallas, something like that, or Minneapolis. You actually get housing prices of only a fraction of what they are. Places like San Francisco. We really got to change that because it's so unfair that some people get richer and richer from owning property, which admittedly I do too, because we own a lot of property, but most people can't afford to buy a house or get stuck with these terrible mortgages and that's just government. Government regulations just making everybody worse off. Just an amazing thing. We pay high taxes for governments to actually give us worse services at a higher price. Is that a good use of our money? I'd rather not pay the money in the first place and have better services at a lower price. Zoning is a huge area. We need to. Need to improve. It's just got completely out of control. There's too many NIMBYs, actually, Australia, we call them bananas. Build absolutely nothing anywhere near anyone. You heard that one?

No, I've never heard that one. Yeah, with zoning in the United States, commercially, obviously, it's one world, but residentially, I always say that I won't be in certain areas, I won't be in. In an incorporated township because I don't want zoning to have a say on my property. I want to go far enough out in the country that if there is a zoning department, he shows up and just goes, hey, for safety reasons, you should do it like this. Have a great day. Versus in the city, you could build a fence. This perfectly beautiful fence everybody loves.

Nope.

They'll show up, start handing you fine after, fine after fine, until you change it to what they want. And it's. It's sad.

We have that in our area. I live on the Moynton Peninsula, and we live in what's called the Woodlands Estate in Mount Eliza. And they have fence regulations and they have their own committee. It's kind of like they're in a body corporate.

But we're not.

We're on larger.

It's larger firms. And this state, Victoria, is the worst too. It's got the. It's got the highest debt per capita in the country. Had the worst lockdown in Covid. We had the highest death per capita from COVID It's got the highest business regulation. It's the worst state for doing business in the whole of the commonwealth. It's just a shockingly run state.

More taxes. More taxes.

Yeah. Highest taxes, most debt, worst, worst actual public services.

I heard that they are currently about ready to expand on public transportation that nobody wants.

Is that true?

I heard that they keep raising. This is just what I heard in a car ride the other day. And they were basically saying that, yeah, the taxes keep going up. These idiots don't have a clue what they're doing. They're blowing money and trying to send it to some kind of union thing.

Oh, the unions are out of control in Victoria.

That's what they were saying.

Because they fund the labor party, which has been in power for so many years that they can't do anything. You know, there's a road just down here in Swansea Road. We just had the same road where it's going for over a year. And you go there and there's virtually nobody ever done anything with it. It's just so incompetent. Virtually nobody's ever working on it. But yet. But you've got traffic snarls for the last year. It's just crazy what they've done.

I think the transport thing that you're talking about is that east tram that's there just for like a very short trip for uni students or something.

Maybe something like that.

Through Glenway? Is there one going through Glenway or something?

I think so. It's a lunatic system. I can't believe how much this is. The thing about Trump, he's a dangerous guy, but he's doing some interesting things. He's also got rid of a lot of the diversity, all those consultants. I'll tell you one way that Victoria leads the Commonwealth in Australia is in number of high paid diversity consultants. Oh, and they are the world champions at that. People pay ridiculous salaries to enforce stupid rules and principles to make sure that you don't get the best person for the best job. Victorian government takes the cake. But. So I love, I love some of the stuff that Trump's doing.

I gotta say, it's definitely exciting. Obviously, like you said, it's a little nervous because we never have a clue what necessarily might happen. We might be looking at war tomorrow morning. But at the same time, we view him as an opportunity to shake it up and to hopefully get rid of some of that red tape. Hopefully figure out who are these real crooked people in our government that have been there for decades. And when we look at politicians that are voting on policy and their investment profile is changing right. As they vote, make that vote.

With money in politics too. The way that the sheer expense of running elections and the power of the drug industries and so forth and advertising, a lot of things I admire about America. But your health system is terrible.

Yeah.

Twice as much as a share of GDP as any other country and, and no better effects than anywhere else. In that sense, we would. We don't admire you, I must say.

No, no, it's, it's fine. I know that my other half, she struggled a lot with our insurance because it's so different and for me, like, I'm used to it and so like, I have an answer for every issue that she runs into. But to put things into perspective, we just had a child. $63,000 is what that was on paper without insurance. But with insurance, it was good. We have good insurance and it's probably $500.

Yeah.

But if you can imagine, like, we have people that like, only make 20, 30, $40,000 a year. And in Ohio, your average income per household is only 65,000. You just paid your entire salary for a whole year just to have a child born. You know, it wasn't like we had anything crazy or go wrong or something like that. And when I look at things like that, I go, something's broken. Or I look at like the idea of I just picked up an anti inflammatory for my shoulder here, $12. I walked into a chemist and just told him what I needed. He asked me a couple questions, grabbed a box and said, $12. Awesome. That same thing. I need a prescription. So I have to go to my doctor. I have to pay the doctor to pay a copay, go to the pharmacy, get with a prescription. And if I were to pay for that same thing out of pocke pocket here, it was $12. There, it's actually $400. And that's. The drug companies blow our minds. It doesn't make any sense at all. Because we will sell drugs in Canada and Mexico for dollars, but in the US they'll want 2, $3,000 a month for that same drug. And that to me makes absolutely no sense. Or our hospital. I'll buy 100 Tylenol. This.

What's Tylenol?

Nurofin.

Yeah. No, it's a pain. It's a pain. Yeah.

Basically, real simple. They're headaches, right? You buy a hundred of those things for $5. You go to the hospital, the ER, they'll charge you 20, 30, $40 for a single pill. And it's just. That's broken. That to me is a broken system. And I'm not the guy to necessarily be the one who should be fixing that. But at the same time, I definitely can look at it and say, it's not right.

I don't know how you can fix it, actually. You know, Americans are amazing people. So enterprising. So done so much good in the world. But you've got an appalling system of government in some ways. I tell you what, we would not want that in Australia.

No, no, we don't want that.

I absolutely agree. What do you think about. Because we're on Trump, what do you think about how he was talking with. Was it Panama or Colombia with his deportees?

Well, that was pretty good, actually.

I thought it was swift and fast and to the point.

He said 25% tariff. They changed their mind. I mean, they have to take their own citizens, take them back. What are you talking about?

That's what I said, is how are you going to be a leader of a country and deny your own citizens? That's a horrible leader. He shouldn't be in power of anything at all. You. You can't. That's. You don't do that. Not to your own people.

Yeah. Yes. I don't know. I think his move against illegal immigration is pretty. Pretty sensible, too. You got the problem here, too. We're very strict about boats and stuff. Unfortunately, we've got a big moat around us, so it makes it hard to get here. But all the same, when you have a lot of people from impoverished countries coming in, what it does is it pushes the wage rate down, which, if you're a wealthy doctor or somebody who wants to employ an illegal person as a nanny for your kids, it's probably pretty good. But if you're talking about ordinary people who are trying to compete for jobs, it's a very bad thing to have too many unskilled workers from poor countries without good standards. Getting educated people, entrepreneurs and stuff's fantastic. We do that very well, but we don't need the impoverished refugees. And that's. I think Trump's doing some very sensible things. What strikes me, though, the best way to do it would be to simply make it harder on employers to employ people who are illegal. That's the one place where you can actually do something, because all they have to do is to make sure to confirm in some way that anybody that you employ is legally allowed to work in America, and that wouldn't be that difficult to do. And if you actually cut off the work for the illegals, you'd push the wages up for workers and other people would deport themselves because they couldn't find anything to do.

How would you suggest we do that?

Social Security numbers?

We do that and we have an i9 form, but you've got to have them checked.

They've got to be confirmed.

Nobody ever looks at the paperwork.

That's what they don't do. Confirm it. That's one area where the government needs to do a bit more rather than less. And also certain fines and so forth and consequences if you're found to employ somebody who's illegal. And some system where people could report somebody, which workers would do. Because if you're. If you're a worker having your wage undercut by an illegal immigrant, you should have the right to be able to DOB in the business concern and say this person's employing illegal people and then that government that gets hit with some massive fine, maybe they disallow any tax deduction for your illegal workers. I don't know how they do it, but that is the way to do it. Actually, physically taking the military in to put people out of the country is not going to work very well, but the government could actually do something about making it really difficult and dangerous to employ illegal workers, and that would have a big impact.

Yeah, I would agree with that. And I think you're right, because we do have a form very specifically for this. It's called 99 form. And basically checks do they have.

But they don't. Right.

But I never have gotten a phone call from the government to check or to look. And I don't turn that paperwork into anybody. And if I'm supposed to, I'm unaware that I'm supposed to be turning it in.

Yeah, that is. That is. There are ways to do it. There are sensible ways to do it. You don't need to put up with that.

Many years ago, I lived in America and got a INS card. It was a piece of cardboard with print out of my number, and that's what I had to carry around with me. I'm like just a piece of paper.

My Social Security card is literally just piece of paper.

Yeah.

It's disintegrating.

How do you control that?

Trump's also done some good thing too. One of the things you say is women are women. If you've got xx, you're a woman. I really like that. I find it very offensive. I don't really mind a person transitioning, but I don't think a man who transitions to be a woman should be allowed to compete in boxing or weightlifting. We're basically exxonmo got no chance at all because they didn't go through a male puberty. I also don't think biologically intact males should be allowed to go into women's bathrooms or women's refuges just because they say they're a woman. I think we should stop recognizing transgender rights to the extent that they actually inflict risk or difficulties or loss on women who are xx. Now what he's done is, to me, is completely acceptable and reasonable. And I think most people would support it. Yeah.

I find that while in the United States we have extreme liberalism over in California and New York, the mass majority of the country, they're too busy working their job and paying their bills to really care what anybody else is doing, but they do care about safety. They care about their children. And most of them don't want a grown man walking into the girl's restroom. And it's like, I have a daughter.

Yeah.

You know, I don't want that necessarily.

I think there's a backlash coming. I think more people are seeing how stupid this sort of thing is, and it's moving. We have a little bit happening in Australia, too, like with the referendum. I don't know if you know about that, but the referendum, they wanted Aboriginals to have a voice, to be able to sort of at every level. And that was supported by all the Labor Party, by the business elites, by the intellectual elites, all the top people said. And they put masses of money into it. And they said, no, you ignorant plebs, this is what we should do. And 60% of the population said, no, we are not interested in this garbage. And I can tell you, even what we've got now is caused a problem. There was a site in Giftsland. We were looking for a tourist venture. Now, this is a venture where you could put up cabins, you could have employment, you can track. Tourism can't be done. Why? Because of all the problems with overlays and permissions and everything else just makes it too difficult. It will never be done. There are people who are not being employed, and there's jobs not being created in this country right now because of what they're doing. To make it even worse, there was a whole extra layer of delays. They tried that in Western Australia with the Aboriginals. They had laws that actually gave them rights, and they just slowed things down. And there was blackmail. You give us a half million dollars or you can't do this, this kind of stuff. And then they actually repealed it because it was so outrageous. And they want to do that, put that in the constitution. That just. It's gone too far. It really has.

If I'm not mistaken, it was giving them extra. It was giving them extra powers, extra authority. Okay. Yeah. And in my opinion, they could slow things down.

That's what happens, too. A lot of the time. You don't need to stop people doing things completely. You just need to make it so difficult and expensive that you can't do it. And my wife's a builder, for example, and one of the things she does is she buys up blocks and puts. Takes the house down and puts four or five units in place, which is good stuff, nice houses and more affordable and everything else. But the amount of regulations and the difficulties of getting Permits and stuff. And the way they make it so hard for them, it just massively pushes up the price of housing and makes housing less available. So government works and works and works and works to try and make housing unaffordable. You know, if you really want your kids not to be able to afford to buy a house, well, this is the right government for you. They'll make sure they never have enough money or if they do, they'll be crippled with them mortgage forever or they can't rent a house. It's just terrible. And you can see it. San Francisco is a perfect example of it. It's gone wild. This is run by so called progressive, it's got the highest rate of homelessness in the country. People are just dying in the streets because they can't afford to buy houses. These are environmentalists who say that we're so much in favor of the environment. What we want is to have all the police and the gardeners. Everybody else have to travel two hours to work every day and two hours home because we're going to make it impossible to afford to buy a house in San Francisco. And by traveling every one of these millions of cars traveling for 2 hours, 4 hours extras a day, we will therefore prefer the environment. Well, don't you understand that using a car isn't actually the best thing? When people could live where they work, it'd be so much better for the environment. Everybody else, it's just lunatic what's going on. It is.

And I like to say I can kind of predict a few things. And I hate to say it, but when people start moving from California to Texas, I kind of saw it coming because you can only deal with so much before you go, okay, my taxes are in California. Nearly 50% of your income. You know, it's outrageous. The cost of a house is through the roof. Your average person could never afford it in their lifetime. It's just beyond comprehension for them to work a job, make enough money and be able to afford a home ever. And then you look at Texas and you go, oh, what's the average cost of a home? And you can buy a very nice large house on a big property for 1, 200, $300,000, brand new. And all you got to do is just go outside of where they're trying to control everything. And New York, same thing as San Diego versus I grew up in Ohio. It's, it's fairly country. I grew up on the east side of Cincinnati, so a couple million people live there. But at the same time you could grab A home growing up for as cheap as 20, 30 thousand dollars and fix it. And don't get me wrong, it's not a nice home, but you can fix it up and live in it. Nowadays, I have not seen one that's under 200. Really? That is not. You know, if it's under 200, you probably want to tear the whole thing down and start over. And your average home is probably a half million or more, which I know is still way below what the homes are here.

You're not to find something under a million dollars.

The irony of it is the faulty was switched so much. But it used to be that the left was in favour of the working person. It's against the rich now. The left is the champion of the educated elites. They just love it. Because if you're a multimillionaire living in a gated community with big lawns and freedom and no peasants and slobs and lots of people anywhere near you, that's perfect. Oh, they can come in and do the gardening, maybe, but not live there. I mean, that's what they want. Like during the lockdowns here, it was the inner suburban elites, the professionals and stuff. Yeah, let's lock everybody down. It was the poor sods who were mowing lawns and cleaning houses for a living who got crippled by it. And they weren't ever concerned. The government did not care. Actually, our premier got up in public and said, you know, you can't get your lawns, motor houses cleaned. So all he's concerned with is the people who get the work done for them, the wealthy supporters. What about 100,000 plus Victorians thrown out of work because they. Because independent contractors were considered to be a danger to public health, even though council gardeners could do the same jobs. Exactly. In groups. And there were no danger to public health. It was just so. It's so elitist. And I don't. Look, I don't blame people for supporting Trump, I really don't. I think the utter contempt the elites have for Ordney Goole these days is. I like Vance, actually. I tell you what, I don't know what your thoughts are about him, but I read Hillbilly Elegy years ago, read it again recently and saw the film and stuff, and I like the guy. I think he's got good values and he understands working people in a way that very few elite politicians do.

I just sent him a letter. Hopefully we're going to interview him soon. He's from where I'm from.

Well, Tommy's got a Big fan in Australia.

I will.

Yeah. He's a good guy. And he's also a family man. He believes in families. I think he's a good man. I actually, I was happy about Trump winning the election because of Vance, because let's face it, Trump's an old guy and he's got a. He's overweight and he's. People don't like him very much. He could get assassinated. I don't know whether he'll even do at his term. But then you've got Vance there and I think Vance is the kind of person you want in leadership.

Yep.

I admire him greatly.

Do you know Vance's story at all?

Only a little bit of it, yes.

So, grew up in Ohio, little, Little place called Middletown. Definitely was low income. I don't remember his parents being in the story much.

No, they're from. It's called Hillbilly because his, his parents come from West Virginia or Kentucky, somewhere like that. Very poor people from the Appalachians. So he used to spend his sons there. So is that culture that he's part of and the dysfunctional working class culture and he understands that very well. But he managed to. He joined the Marines and then from.

That he went to law school, went.

To Yale Law, which is big elite, and then gone to the scent and everything else. So he's. He's just a real rags of riches story. But he hasn't lost his roots. He hasn't. He doesn't join the elites. Yep. I remember, you know, when he was Hillary Clinton talking about bitter people hanging on to God and guns or fly over country or this kind of contempt the elites have for ordinary working people. I find that really offensive.

Yeah, it's never made sense.

I like societies to look after the needy. I think that's a good thing. But I think what the left does is just the opposite. They are the worst. They are the worst creators of inequality. They create poverty.

I feel like they do it under a disguise of being helpful too.

Yeah. For example, you know, talking about defunding the police and stuff. And this is a big thing. The lefty intellectual elites, they say, oh, let's defund the police. But I'll tell you what, the poor black people in the townships, the last thing they want is no police because they're the ones that suffer, not the elites. They're in the protective gated community. So it's all to spout this idealistic stuff, but you're not really considering the people who are being hurt by everything you say. They really. Yeah. I don't know. I don't like Trump as an individual. I think he's very flaky and not got strong moral standards. But some of the things he stands for I really like.

Didn't he say he was going to take over Greenland? Something like that on his cards, isn't.

It that he wants to get on?

Well, look, since it makes sense, can I just point to telling you that if you have there's only 56,000 Greenlanders. All right, what if you go to them and say, okay, you can each have a million bucks if you join America now you're an ordinary person living in a fairly you've got a million bucks, you're set for life. But to the US $56 billion isn't that much to pay for a country with all the resources of Greenland. I don't see why that kind of deal can't be made. I don't think invading it's a good idea, but buying it from the inhabitants might make perfectly good sense.

I could see that worked out. I don't think Denmark would be happy.

No, they wouldn't. But.

We don't worry about that.

It's up to the Greenlanders to make that decision. I don't. They could if they could decide. What's also funny is he likes Canada to become the 51st state. But the interesting thing about that is, of course, if you put all the provinces in, you get what, 12 Democratic voting states joining the America.

So this is actually something that is a little bit controversial in the United States. We do have several territories that don't have a say in our government. They have a representation, but they don't have a vote. Forgive me, I'm going to throw out some names like Puerto Rico, but I could be absolutely wrong.

D.C. doesn't have. Doesn't have senators either, do they? No, they don't.

You're right. They have no representation either. DC itself because every state wanted the capital in their region and so it's a lot like your guys's capital.

Yeah, I see. Takes, I think. Yeah. Yep.

So it's segregated all its own. I don't think they have any local taxes or anything there. So there are some convenient things about living there, but.

Yes, well, interesting idea. I don't think the Canadians are going to come to that one. And I don't think they're going to get invaded either somehow.

But still, no, Americans would never be okay with us invading countries for that kind of reason.

But buying Greenland makes sense, I reckon.

Yeah, we're definitely comfortable offer making offers to Buy other countries. And if Canada took a vote and.

Was like, yeah, most America got bought. I mean, Louisiana Purchase, that was one of the greatest humanity when they bought most of what's now the US From France during Napoleonic Wars. And then obviously buying Alaska from Russia. From Russia, which was originally called Seward's Folly because it was such a stupid thing to spend $2 million on Alaska.

2 million for all of Alaska. I think in both of those deals, we were under a dollar per acre.

Oh, very, very good. Very good deal. And then, of course, the other one, which was. Which was the Mexican War, when they took over all of California and California takes all the rest of it. That was a. That was not bought, but it was a good deal that turned out for the country.

Yeah. And he's. He's fighting with Panama over the Panama Canal right now. Yeah, I mean, that thing was the country of Panama was backed by the United States during the revolution because the other countries that owned the region at the time wouldn't negotiate with us. And so eventually we just backed the rebels, made a new country, and eventually.

Took it off Colombia, wasn't it?

Yeah, it was Colombia. Colombia wouldn't work with us on some. Some kind of deal. And so we backed the rebels and made a new country. And I think it was. I don't remember whether it was the Panama, the Panamanians or the Colombians that worked with the French to originally build the Panama Canal. And it took 20 years and 20,000 lives, and they failed. And they eventually hired the United States. They just didn't want to pay the United States what they wanted paid. But eventually they hired the United States, and I think it was done in eight years. And we had a deal in place with them until the 70s where we eventually handed it over because it was. The relationship was kind of falling apart. They didn't like the fact that we had that much power in their country and they were only being paid 250,000 a year for rights to it or something.

I think actually trying to take the canal back would be problematic. One thing, it's very, very easy for people who don't like it locally to all kinds of things to disrupt it. You just need to block a few locks and you can close the whole thing down. I really don't think it's sensible.

I don't think it's sensible either. But I do think that they need to put a new agreement in place to maintain the relationships that we have there. And it's the same thing with the Suez Canal. A lot of people don't know this. The United States ships, we go first. Not like our cruise ships, our military ships, all our, if we have huge, huge cargo ships, they all cut the line. And it's because of the money they put into building it and maintaining it. And it was the same kind of relationship down on the Panama Canal.

Actually it was the British and French who did the Suez Canal, not them.

I know, but eventually they lost it and it was taken back.

But the Americans made them stop. They forced them to let it go. They were prepared to fight for it with Israel. Israel, Britain and France were on the same side and America just stepped in and said, nah, nah, let the Egyptians have it. So maybe that's why they liked, probably they like the eggs over there.

What else can we pick your brain about? Actually, since we're talking politics, that's a good one because we're talking about Canada or I'm sorry, Greenland and Denmark. One of the weird things when I came here that I didn't know was if I'm not mistaken, you guys are still underneath the British crown, right?

Yeah.

And how does that sit?

Well, theoretically King Charles is a head of state, which is pretty ludicrous, but still. Yeah, but tell me the reason behind it is he has no power at all.

That's what I've been told.

It's pretty much completely ceremonial. The Governor General gets, gets picked by basically the Prime Minister. So it has no power. It's about as opposite from an American presence you can possibly do now. I actually, we did a referendum years ago about it becoming a republic.

Yep, I remember.

And I was actually in favor of it. But it's a matter of how you choose the president. What we don't want is a president that's got too much independent power, which would happen if you elect the president like you do in America or France or those kind of countries that gives them an independent power base. The other suggestion, which is from Malcolm Turnbull and the one I supported, is chosen by a two thirds majority of Parliament. House of Parliament sitting jointly, that's what. Because that way it becomes totally non political. The biggest problem with. One of the problems with American politics is that you basically, you got independence too early. So basically what you decided to do is elect the king because in 18th century England the king had enormous powers. No English.

You're right, yeah. They were debating having a king back then too.

No English government in the 18th century ever lost an election because whoever the king was in favor of, they could actually make sure that they got, they got their, they got Parliament supporting them. So when America was set up, all the executive power was set up with the. This elected king, who was called a President. And so what you then have is you've got three centres of power. You've got to get. You've got to get elect, you've got to get through the House of Representatives and, and the Senate and the President. And the Executive was with the President, which means it's really hard to get anything passed because you've got three people to get through. Whereas in a Westminster system like ours, or in Britain, the leader of the controlling house in lower Parliament actually is the Executive. So you've only got to get through the upper house. So you've only got. Which is why America tends to get ruled by the Supreme Court, who makes all kinds of weird decisions. Like they see rights to abortion and everything else in the Constitution, which was never put there. So they reinterpret the corporate constitution to do things that any other normal country would be able to do through Parliament. And that's why, yeah, you've got a terrible system of government from that point of view, as in so many ways. And having Trump is magnifying the power of the presidency so greatly.

So growing up, we always would have said that the President only has two powers and what he's doing right now is enacting a third power, an executive order. It's more so emergencies that they use these for, and they haven't really been heavily used throughout our history. Throughout our history. What the President has the two powers. He has the power to say no when we, the representatives, make the laws, they write up laws, they all vote on them, goes through the judicial, which is the Supreme Court, to make sure it's legal or acceptable. And they would go to him to sign it off and say, yes, I'm enacting that into a federal law. But he only has the power to say, no, I won't, or yes, I will.

But controlling executives gives him an enormous amount of power because he basically points the people, with the Senate's approval, to run the bureaucracy. So all the regulations, which control is far more important than most people, than laws themselves, that's actually controlled by the Executive, which is controlled by the President, which is why the President can have so much power. And the one thing we don't need in Australia is something like that, which is why I said that our system with Westminster is better. And if you can't have that, then it's probably better just to keep the King, even though it's ridiculous to have some Pommy Aristocrat as head of state when it really is.

Yeah, but like you guys were saying, it's almost ceremonial at that point, you know, Definitely.

Is this nothing in there apart from people like them or they hate them and they don't. Yeah.

It is ridiculous in this day and age, I must say, to have a. I mean, let's face it. The only reason Charles is there is because a thousand years ago, some thug of an ancestor decided to storm sure at Hastings and conquer the country from the existing people. I mean, really needs to reccend it. That's how he has decided. Which is not exactly the most normal way to most modern way to choose a head of state.

Definitely not. So, okay, pushing forward, moving into like technology. Because we were talking about technology earlier, before we started the cameras. What's your thought on what we're doing with space exploration? And we're talking about Elon Musk and I mean, right now I think he has owns half the satellites that are up there. I want to say yesterday I looked at it and he has almost 10,000 satellites.

Elon Musk is amazing, I must say. I mean, he's obviously pretty flaky from of view. Again, a bit like Trump, I suppose. But as a technologist, he is an extraordinary man. I presumably read Walter Isaacson also, which is a great biography. And also the lift up, I think the most recent one about SpaceX itself. It's just staggering what he's achieved. He's turned the whole thing from this expensive cost plus stuff to really competitive. If you read about what he does on the assembly, if you haven't read Liftoff, that's a really, really great book about that. He just goes in the assembly line and just looks at everything they do and says, why do you do this? Take that away, take that away. And then he takes it away until something breaks and says, why using this? $10,000, whatever. Why don't we use one that's cost $200 that you can use for cars? Why can't you do this? Give it a try. He just keeps on pushing it through and he's reduced space price to a fraction. I admire the guy, actually. I really do. I think if anybody's going to get us to Mars, he will. What he's done is extraordinary. He's brought the cost of spaceflight down to a fraction. And being able to catch rockets. You see that?

Oh, have you seen those videos?

The robot grabbing it and bringing it down.

It just catches it. What an amazing video is that.

That was really cool.

What great technology. And they Used to throw these things away and now not only reuse them, but actually catch them.

Before he opened it, he actually went to Russia and talked to Putin and tried buying rockets. He was just going to buy rockets for SpaceX in the beginning and Putin told him he was a child. No, he said, basically, you're on a differently, you know, on a lower level and go away. And he came back to the United States and started building.

If anybody deserves to be the richest man in the world, it's him. I tell you what, I enormously admire the guy. He's actually one of my kind people too. He's very much in favor of. He's concerned about the birth rate, I think is a crippling problem. Across the world, populations are, except for Israel, all wealthy countries are actually way below replacement fertility. And Musk is concerned about that. And he's obviously in his own family. He's leading by example, isn't he? But he is smart enough to know it's a big, big issue for the world. So I do admire the guy. I can see his weaknesses. But what he's achieved in technology is extraordinary.

No, I think you're absolutely right. And I do think that it's absolutely extraordinary what he's achieved. I think that beyond what he's already achieved, I think that one of the biggest things that has really happened just by him existing, he's inspired so many people. You know what I mean? There's so many people that go, ah, he did it. He, like, he's, he's a smart guy, he's enthusiastic, he's driven and he's got money now. But at the same time, you look at it and you go, okay, you know, I got a vision. I can see this, I can see that. He had a vision. He can see this, he can see that. And you see other people following suit and going after their dreams. And I think we were talking about it earlier, you were talking about how Americans have a way to market and sell and that you guys are amazing at inventing things. And Americans, they do, they have this weird tenacity that we'll risk it all. We will. I have gone all in multiple times in my life. Where I go, it might not work, but you know what? I've been completely broke before and I've rebuilt before and I think this is a great idea. Let's go sell some robotic mowers. I'm going to be poor for a year or two. It's going to be slow, but it'll take off.

Technology is exciting. It really is. I think the potential is absolutely magnificent. Whether it's robotic mowers or spaceflight, it's great stuff. We have seen massive changes in gyms over the years by using technology to do things like improve customer service, automated sending out of surveys to clients and so forth. Surveying franchisees about service for franchisors, those kind of things. And then feeding that system back into software. We spend millions of dollars a year on software development in this country, in this company. And it's the best way of achieving great results.

Best way to streamline things.

Yeah, yeah.

Technology and software. To me it's when I go to businesses that are thriving, that's what I see from the older generation. Generation a little bit older than me. They have the software in place and it allowed one person to sit down and accomplish. I'll give you an example. Landscapers. A lot of times they have those big giant whiteboard with where everybody's gonna drive today and this and that, the other versus Nowadays a lot of people are using softwares like Aspire where one person can sit down in the office, drink her coffee and organize all that. And it goes out to everybody's phone. They no longer have to look at the board, write it back down in their notebook. It's already digitally in their hand. They can show up for their morning meeting, get their stuff and then hit the road.

And it's going to get better with AI too.

Oh yeah, let's talk about AI.

Dramatic and stuff. You see the latest news about what it's called Deep seat. The Chinese. Yeah, Chinese company that's now got something as good as chat GPT but tiny fraction of the cost.

They stole chips from the US the H1 1 hundreds. They're worth 250000 a piece. And China still was it 50000 of them.

Chinese are so good at doing things. I must say AI is just another example. But what they do with, with solar panels and electric cars, they just, they just beat the world. They really do. They are the best in the United States.

We don't view it like that. I gotta be honest, most of the stuff coming from China is lower end stuff. Last time I bought solar panels to do a job, a side job definitely wasn't the right metal and those solar panels definitely were taken down away.

We don't make solar panels here. We just get Chinese stuff and they seem to work fine. I've got them on my house, they're here, they're at my farm, everywhere. Which Chinese solar panels on how long do they last? 25 years. Yeah.

That's good. That's a, that's a. That's a good top line solar.

No, the shop we get here is, is quite good quality. We've actually got a division called Jim's Energy which actually goes out and organizes them. It's actually very good financially speaking. It's great because like my house, I've got a. I've got an electric car now. I bought it just over two years ago. It's cost me 150 bucks in repairs so far. Oh, that's new tires too. But it's all run by sunshine. Just. It just shines on the roof during the day. Only charge it during the day. So I'm driving my car on sunlight. It's a fantastic deal. And the solar panels do last. They don't significantly degrade within 25 years. And it's getting better all the time. Batteries are obviously the other big thing we're talking about with you. Improvement in batteries is, is the number one technology. Solar panels are all very good. If we could get batteries to be anything like as good as the solar panels, then all over the place. I would dearly like take this all place off the grid.

Yeah.

Batteries that you never needed to actually have a big connection. Because everybody is such a mad greenie bound here. Every time they get a storm, they crash the power lines. We've got a generator to look after them. But I'd much rather just do pure electric. The whole thing electric and down the track a bit. Won't be too long. We will have that done. It'll completely be electric, all batteries. No. No grid connection needed.

Yeah. I've always said I want to build a house that's off the grid.

Yeah.

And I have one of my customers, he's a little famous on social media. He was a contractor who kind of got fed up with society. Saved up enough money to buy 100 acres out in the middle of Nowhere, West Virginia. And he put a camper out there. He said I'm done, I'll build a house little by little. And he runs his entire property off solar panels. And I gotta be honest, his story is a lot like yours. About 25 years connected over to the car batteries. And I think his spin for his gas is only like 150 in diesel a year just to make up for like some snow days where it's extra cold and he doesn't have the extra power and the batteries to run because of overcast skies.

Yeah. If you worry about China controlling these things, I know that you Americans are actually trying to make more of your own, even subsidizing the manufacturers and so forth. But the thing of it is I'd much rather have be dependent on solar panels from another country than to be dependent on oil from another country. Because you can't cut off the sunlight, but you can cut off the supply of oil and that can cost and go through the roof anytime, whereas the sunlight is just coming.

Yeah, we need a lot more renewable things.

From the point of view of security, from the point of view of the economy, I think it's the way to go. I don't think we need to destroy the economy and shut down all the coal mines and stuff prematurely.

But I heard you guys were talking about touching nuclear power here.

Yeah, well Duttons leader of the opposition. Duttons talking about now it's the first time it's very sensible. If you're going to have zero carbon power, nuclear is the way to go. It's actually very. If you can start getting away from zoning regulations and stuff and to make it make it cheap and have modular reaction like reactor like they're making in China, it's actually a very practical thing. Australia is one of the best countries in the world to do nuclear because we're a very stable landmass. It's as stable as you can. Earthquakes, typhoons, tsunamis, we just don't have a problem with that kind of stuff. So very stable continent. We've got plenty of land which is not very much used, a lot of desert land and so forth. And we've got lots of uranium. So you couldn't have a better country more suited to a nuclear power than Australia. It's lunatic. We don't have it.

Yeah, but we have people that like to protest over anything and everything and they don't want anything around their house but they want to make the most of everything that they can get. But they don't want an extra of their house. So it doesn't matter.

That's the whole issue with anything, isn't it? Yeah, but sometimes you've got to say the good of the community comes first. We've got too much saved to people who live locally and not too much. It's like people who want to live in green leafy suburbs with big, big acreages. Well, that's what they want. But from the point of view of the population as a whole, we should have more dense cities which are more livable and more affordable and we don't get so many problems with homeless. The same exact issue sometimes the issues of the needs of the community need to go against local interests. But nuclear power we definitely should be doing. Whether we'll ever get it, I don't know because it's a long term thing. Our governments change periodically as yours do. So if you only have one side of politics wanting it and the other doesn't, one will start it and the other will shut it down. Like we had a tunnel that was supposed to link the Eastern Freeway to the airport here, which is a real problem. And the previous liberal government spent a billion dollars in getting it ready. And the labor government comes in and says, chuck it away, it's only money. They decide not to have it. So you've got to have consistency in government to get things through. That's why nuclear is a problem. But there's a lot of problems with wind power and so forth too. You get people ejecting to. And the environmentalists are often the ones that are most up at arms about the turbines, you know, killing the eagles and stuff. So it's not easy.

I think the biggest problem they have with the turbines is the blades. They don't biodegrade very well and so. And they have to be replaced after it's not too many years. It's like every four years, five years, you have to put new blades on them. And so they have entire graveyards that it's just hundreds and hundreds of those blades. And they're not going to biodegrade, they're going to be there for hundreds of years.

Yeah, I don't think that's the case here with, with how often they need to be changed. But I could be wrong with that.

I, I don't know, I'm throwing a number out there. It might be 10 years, something. I just know that, I've seen the photos and the videos and yeah, I know that. I know that we have a lot of resistance on it because we have a lot of those up in Chicago, Northern Indiana in fact. Actually the first time I ran into them, I'm driving down the highway in the middle of the night and we're heading towards an airport and I think I see the airport, you know, the long Runway light. But I look up and I've been driving for a good 20, 30 minutes and I'm still just seeing rows of lights. And what it was was rows of those as far as the eye could see across all the farmland on both sides. And it's just, you know, the safety lights on them.

Yeah. What you don't recognize too is that in terms of safety, nuclear is extremely safe. The actual deaths per kilowatt of wind power is, is very high because they're quite dangerous. You've got to put them up in places and so forth. Coal mining obviously isn't safe either. But nuclear power's got a tremendously good safety record in terms of deaths. I mean even Three Mile island, nobody died from that.

I don't believe. So they're actually talking about reopening that right now.

That's right.

It was just in the news last week that there is a company looking to buy that land and turn it back on.

Even in Fukushima, the apart from building a nuclear power plant near the sea in an earthquake prone sort of country, that was a fairly ballsy thing to do, if you could put it that way. But nobody actually died from the actual radiation or anything. It was just the people who had to move from there that was the problem. Some of them died. But it's got a very good safety record. It really has. And we should be considering it for sure.

I think between like if I look at all the energy sources and this is just my own opinion, you know, I could be lacking all kinds of knowledge on the subject. But when I look at it, I look at solar as viable. I look we have a couple different systems for the ocean that take advantage of. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I looked at that and I said okay, that's doable as long as we don't make it too dense and do the whole, you know, we can't do the whole.

Well, there's limited, there's limited areas. The same thing with hydro. Hydro and tidal are both very good systems. Also geothermal like these in Iceland, there are some good systems around, but they're limited in where you can put them only because so many dams, you've only got so many tidal estuaries.

I use geo, my parents use geothermal on their farm and I got to be honest, cut their bills for heating and air conditioning and half. And in the United States we run air conditioning. It's here I run into home after home and it's very like hit or miss, some other air conditioning is on. Actually on the drive here the news was talking about all the schools not really having air conditioning. And I didn't have air conditioning in my school. I was growing up but by fifth grade pretty much every school would have had it. But our geothermal, instantly, it's more level, it's more consistent, it's. We can walk up and change a thermostat on the normal systems and it'll change really fast. Geothermals going to change very slowly. But the cost of it is probably 60% less than what we were paying.

A big hold and just got the.

Yeah, yeah, we, we dig. I want to say their system is a couple miles into the ground. Two, two, three miles into the ground.

Cost a fortune.

Yeah, but what happened was a subsidy, some kind of tax subsidy. And so what we did, I think they paid about 32,000 for the system. And it's basically drill giant hole into the yard a couple miles in, run tubing down and we fill it up with a special chemical solution and then we have a pump in the house and just the traditional H vac system.

Is this in Ohio?

Yeah, this is in Ohio and this is on my parents farm.

We've got a bit of advantage here though because we get pretty good sunlight year round. So solar panels are very cost effective. I don't think they go to that extent. Whereas in the middle of winter in Ohio you're not going to wreck but of sunlight.

Yeah, we try solar panels in Ohio but it's as soon as you hit winter you're going to reduce drastically. And we're right at that cusp where it's almost not worth doing. So 20 years ago, yeah, solar panels existed but in Ohio you weren't going to do them. And now, yes, I do see solar panels running homes. I have plenty of customers that, yeah, they're hooked up to the grid but they're running their entire house off their.

It's always base level baseload power. The difficulty thing about the wind and the sun is that it's, it's more intermittent here. We're actually pretty well off for sun because even on overcast day it's still, there's still, it's coming down. So it's not as extreme. But even here you know, you've got your base power which is something like things like gas for example, or coal or nuclear. But you can have, you can have it all the time.

Yeah, this is a little bit of a joke but one of the things I've always said about solar because the United States best solar is going to be southwest Texas, New Mexico, places like that. And I always said Mexico is a great place. If they would just put up a ton of solar panels and then throw a cord across the border. I said they would fix a lot of the problems around that area. California always has a power shortage.

Yeah, well cool.

We'll take Mexico right out of poverty, throw a power line across the cord, the border will fix both sides like.

California would have, would have also especially in southern California. Like Los Angeles would have potential because basically it's built in the desert. You hard to get any rain there.

They have potential. But the problem goes right back to what we were talking about earlier. It's the government. Too much red tape. They are just flat out screwing themselves. It's not the population, it's not the people. It's not the opportunity. It's the government. It is the government there is disastrous. It's. We look at it and we go, did they really? Like in San Francisco, you can steal and not. You're not going to go to jail. You can walk into a store and just take whatever you want.

Like that here, though, isn't it?

They're not allowed to do. We're not as bad as.

No, no. Definitely not that level.

But do that in Texas, you ain't walking out of the store, you're gonna get shot, and they're gonna drag you into the back room and have a nice long conversation with you. But it's. It's definitely a little weird, though.

But what.

What else can we cover? What else can I ask you? Decisions, decisions, Right? You got any questions?

No, no. This is all. This is all you. I'm just here to.

Oh, okay.

To God through.

And what advice would you give a younger gym. Somebody who's like, what advice would you give me, a young business person? I'm in business in the United States, and to me, I view myself as a business person. I've never been a landscaper. I cut grass when I was 12 years old for money. But I would say I'm more of a business person. And what advice would you give me? Trying to navigate through the government. All the. The issues with. With hiring people, training them, trying to get the them developed. And personally, in my system, I'm not too far away from what you're doing. I don't do a franchise. I do a license. And it's similar. I'm just jumping through loopholes on another contract, but it's really similar as in, I want to get them up and going and let them kind of run their own world.

I think there's a. I still think business is a good option. I really do. I look at people who go work for these large corporations and stuff, and it freaks me out. You got to go and live in a city. You get paid very high salary, but you've got to work ridiculous hours. You've got no time for a family or anything else. And I don't think any job that takes away the potential family life is worth living. And then You've got to actually dress the part and you've got to spend a lot of money on all this stuff to show that you're rich and successful. So I think it's a terrible style life. I like the service industry. I really do. I just think it's an option where anybody can come in. You don't need education. One of our top franchisors actually never finished high school. He dropped out when he was 16, became a franchisee, was very successful, turned over close to a million bucks a year, became a franchise, or here's the guy looking at going to America. So service industry is a brilliant opportunity. And you. There's a wonderful book, one of my favorite books, called the Millionaire Next Door, which is about American millionaires. And it talks about. There are actually people like you and me much more than they are, like the tech wizards. People who've actually started off in a basic service business, don't have high standards of. I never even owned a new car until I was about 70 years old because I just battered. Old Rex was good enough for me. And I still buy my clothes from, you know, Kmart and stuff. So you don't have to dress up. You don't have to show how rich you are. You can have a life where it's compatible with family. Because I don't think any business is worth it. Any job is worth it if you don't have time for your kids or if you don't have time to have kids in the first place. That's a big thing of mine. I've got 10 children, so I really know what I'm talking about.

Congratulations. On that note.

I started having them when I was. When I was an impoverished, deeply indebted gardening contractor. So I just think what's important in life, and I don't think making more and more money is. But I think business could be a really great way to have a great balance in life. How many kids you got right now?

I just had my first.

You told me.

Yeah, I know. And actually, it's funny because I want a huge family. I've always been like, I want a bunch of kids. And she knows that. She knows I want a bunch of kids. And it's funny that you mentioned family because, like, when I was younger, I was probably about 23. I'm 36 now. When I was about 23, I ended up coming to five priorities in my life in order I listed them out. And it was because I couldn't be successful unless I took business out of the number one position. And started raising other things up.

Yes.

Yeah, Yeah. I literally. I was chasing the money so much. I wanted the success. It didn't matter. I was working 80 hours a week for two, three, four years. It didn't matter. It didn't matter that I knew the answer for this, that the other. As soon as I put family above business and my personal health above that and my spiritual relationship above that, instantly everything else just started falling in line and like, my life was much more comfortable. I went from fighting tooth and nail and I'm just paying my bills to life became easy and I felt so much more confident about myself. And it's like when I go hang out with my daughter, I just sit there and I look at her and I'm just like, the whole world disappears.

You're quite right.

I don't care about it.

You know, one of the saddest things happening in the modern world is people's priorities are changing. If you look at young people today, answering questions about priorities in the past, family life, having work that's meaningful, that's really worth doing, community, sense of purpose. All the things came up quite high these days. Money, status, leisure, security, not danger of being fired. Way, way, way more important that priorities. And people are coming more miserable as a result of it because they're losing. What makes people happy is not having the biggest bank account. It's not having the fanciest car, the biggest house, the most expensive holiday. It's having good relationships, having being married, having a good relationship, church, things like that. Community involvement, Very, very big positive. Just having proper values. It's a purpose in your life that's not just accumulating money. Yeah.

I went through with having a landscape business for 20 years and, and had my 1520 staff and got to a point where I literally looked at the end of a cliff and decided whether I was still going to be here or not, because I felt like all I was doing was making everyone else happy. The banker balance was amazing, but I wasn't there. And shutting that down and re evaluating everything over 12 to 24 months and now going into something where it's my family. And I do believe that Covid in some ways was a positive because I think that's changed a lot of people. They are a little bit more present in their families than that where it was, you know, now we can work from home and do things like that. So as much as there's negatives in, in both sides, I think, yeah, the whole family orientation makes you so, so much better. And then money and Everything else, it revolves around that.

But it's got to serve that you're quite right, too. My newest version of my book is called no Other Success, which is one we intend to launch in the States. And it's short for no other success can compensate for failure in the home. And that's what I firmly believe. And it says no other success because being a successful parent is at least as important as anything you can possibly achieve in your life. And if you're a failure. If I had two kids, one of whom was never earned more than minimum income, but was a great parent, had great kids. Another kid who became a billionaire but had no kids, or they were wastrels or useless. I tell you what. Which I would think is the most successful. Definitely the first.

Yeah. When I was younger, I actually worked in a nursing home. I worked in the kitchen. Nursing home. And I'd take this big old thing of all the trays and lunches out, for every lunch and dinner and breakfast and walking around for two years, I'd go, hey, what's your greatest accomplishment in life? And I'd ask him a couple basic questions. And for two and a half years, the answer was always the same. Their greatest life accomplishment was their children.

Yeah.

Except for once.

Really? Yep. Yeah. What was the ones.

I followed it up with. Do you have kids? And he said no.

Yeah.

He was the only person who ever said anything other than his children. And he just didn't have that as an option.

Yeah, we've lost track really badly. We've become corrupted by the wealth and the individualism and the competitive society to value the wrong things. And it's making us miserable. And you can see that in statistics. The levels of suicide going up, drugs and despair, alcohol, drug overdose. You know, us coming down for the first time in like more than a century, actually, people are living less because people are killing themselves with these sort of things because they're so miserable. Something badly wrong with our society. And we're not having children anymore. We're not having enough to replace ourselves. There's something wrong with our priorities. It's not making for happiness. It does the opposite. People have this idea that the more you have, the more money you have, the more expensive stuff you can buy, you're happier. All the research shows it's not the case.

It's. Honestly, it's one of the things I see, like when I come here is this culture and community is a. A lot better than the United States when it comes down to how you guys socially interact with each other. Even just like the simple place, like grabbing a coffee in the morning. You guys are a lot nicer and a lot more comfortable in that interaction than I see Americans doing. And if I'm not mistaken, you moved back when you started having your family. You're like, you're like, I'm not raising kids in the United States. And you came back here for a while.

I was lucky enough to have the experience of, on and off of four and a half years in America, but I think bringing up kids in that Australia, we're very, very lucky in Australia. How we can do that.

And then talking about your book again, where, where can I find it? Where is it available? Where will it be available?

Well, you can always get on Amazon when it comes out, but I don't know.

Okay, that's what I wanted. I want to know. It's on Amazon.

It'll be on Amazon. It will be on Amazon.

And what's it called again?

The business book is called no Other Success.

No Other Success.

No Other Success.

And what's your previous book?

It's a sort of an earlier version, the same one, but this has got a lot more stories about franchisees in it. It's called things like Every Customer a fan, those kind of things too. But that's more just released internally. This one is really developed for public use, I suppose, speak to the public. But I'm also writing another book which is coming out at the end of the year called the Baby Bust, which will probably be a lot bigger. And that's about all the declining birth rates across the world and what's why they're happening, what can be done about it.

Now, did you write these or did Chat gtp?

Yeah, no, I write them all.

Okay, good, good.

Just make up at 5 o' clock in the morning and finding time. But yeah, you have. You got to write things yourself.

I'm writing a child a children's book right now. I threw it on my schedule every Wednesday night. I'm gonna work on writing a children's book. I don't know why I wanted to add that to my. My stuff to do.

This book is hard, actually, but you gotta, you gotta set yourself a target. The way I do it is you've got to spend at least five minutes a day. Now, once I, once I get into it, you just say the same thing. Once again, it's easy to continue, but it's very hard to settle down to it. So minimum of five minutes a day, which is lately more than like five hours, but still.

Well, I've said a Little bit. I think you've said about 30, 40 minutes aside every Wednesday. And I'm in the beginning, I'm just. I'm literally just setting up the paper. I'm just setting up a big piece of paper and I'm just going to dive in and start writing the story. I already have the title in my head. I did some reviewing and I'm like, I can't believe this. This is going to work out.

What's your book about?

It's actually. I'll give you the title, the Big Red House and the Little Red Hen.

Okay.

My daughter's a redhead, so it's just going to be a cute little kids book. Just something for her to read and we'll see whether I get it published online or not.

My mother wrote a book about it when I was a kid. I was called David. My new name's David James. I used my middle name. So she had this book, David and the Dinosaurs. Yeah, she never published it or anything, but she used to read it to us and show us the pictures and stuff.

Maybe you should publish it.

Don't know if I've got a copy of it. I was always crazy about dinosaurs when I was a kid. So she wrote story about David who went to live with the dinosaurs.

Yeah, I like it.

Yeah, kids books are good. Good, good project.

We'll see. You'll have to follow up with me next year and see whether I actually followed through and finished it. I always like to ask you a couple last minute questions because we've been sitting down for a little while and I don't want to take up all your time. If you were. Because I'm not from here. If you were to make a suggestion of some kind of food to try here. What is your favorite Australian dish that you're like, matt, you have to go try this or this is the restaurant you need to go try. Because every Australian knows this.

We don't have.

Please.

I say vegemite.

I have vegemite in my house.

We don't really have a national cuisine in this country. Unless you're in for witchy grubs. Also Aboriginal fare. No.

What's your favorite go to dish then?

I have to say my wife's cooking is pretty amazing. She is Chinese and she just knows how to put vegetables together into a dish, which is beyond belief. I'm actually in my farm. I get quite a lot of stuff like silverbeet and potatoes and tomatoes and good stuff like that. And she can just make them the most amazing. And you can't buy it anywhere. You don't get invited to our place. And she'll cook for you. That's me, I'm afraid. But no restaurant that. That equals that. Yeah, but we tend to be ethnic food a lot. Like there's a pretty good Japanese restaurant, an Indian restaurant not too far from here. So we go to those kind of things.

I can relate to you on that level. Victoria hates American food because it's so processed. And so she started cooking at home and she only buys what I would describe as high end food, like really nice cheeses. You guys probably call this normal food, but in the United States it'd be nicer stuff. And so we've honestly, we've gotten to the point that we don't really eat out. We eat out when we come here and when we travel. But like, even pizza, we quit ordering pizza because she can make it better. So it's. It's definitely worse.

Well, I'm. I'm 72 years old and I've got a lot to achieve in the next 20 years, so I can't afford to be in bad health. Exercise and eating well. And Lee is a brilliant cook and is very healthy at the same time. Lots of fruit, too. Cherries are very nice right now. Yeah.

Well, going on with what you just said, what are your plans in the next 20 years? What are your goals?

Well, obviously I like to keep on working with Jim's crude. My aim is never numbers. I would like to see customer service improve, which means the complaints continue to go down as they have done for the last 30 years, and also better service to franchisees. So that's my business goals. My biggest personal goals will be in terms of my research project. I'm presently funding a research project into the. Basically into the science of human personality. Why people are happy and why they have children and why they don't. Why their values change and looking in terms of dopamine receptors and so forth. So I've got a research program we're currently funding at Trobe University, which is something over $3 million a year that we're spending on basic scientific research to actually. And then this book that I'm writing, the Baby Bust, is about that research and the results from it and what it means for society. That's my primary goal. And of course, I love my family and my grandchildren coming along. I'm going to have a number six very shortly, so that's going good.

Congrats.

They all live locally? Do they all live within?

My oldest son actually lives in Taiwan at the Moment with his wife. We're trying really hard to persuade him to commute to Australia.

Yeah, okay.

Because she said she's Taiwanese, but. Yeah, I've got a very busy plate. I can't afford to slow down. Yeah, a lot of things to do. Yeah.

Great way to keep the mind ticking.

Yeah, that's right. Stay young.

Yep.

All right, I got two more questions. One, who would be, in your opinion, the next person I should sit down and talk to in business? One or two people. Who is it that you. Because you were talking about like musk earlier and how you idolize him? Who, in your opinion, is somebody else that I should sit down and pick their brain and find out what their opinions on everything are.

If you can get to see them. Gabby and his Pronger Leboids. They did catch the decade. What is it? It's a system that was set up in Melbourne. I just know them. Basically. They set up in Melbourne to put up great specials for buying. They used to buy bolt lots of TVs and stuff and then sell them through special deal sites. I just admired them as entrepreneurs. They're both terrific people. Just have a look at Catch of the Decca. You'll find them there and you get in contact with them. If you can't get in touch with them directly, I can give you access to Gabby. So they're a great pair. I admire them very much. I'd love to get them involved in gyms if I could. But they're the only other Melbourne entrepreneurs that I know that are particularly. There's a lot of people within my company that are excellent people. People like Dan Cull, he's the guy I was telling you about before. He's looking at going to America, but it's only worth talking to him.

I definitely want to talk to him. 100% example how somebody with.

No, see, this is a guy. You're a high school dropout. You're considered to be garbage, basically in this society. And then he's in his early 20s, he goes and buys a lawn mowing franchise with great trepidation. And he's now. Amazing guy. Amazing. Just showing what's possible. That's a great example of the service industry. Also people like Haydar Hussain, who runs the cleaning division too. He's an amazing entrepreneur. In some ways. He streets better than I am. So internally I could point to some very, very impressive people. Probably Joel might have other ideas too. Okay. Because he does a lot of interviews.

Okay. I can reach out to him. I'll reach out to him via email afterwards. And we'll plan it all out. And then just drawing a blank on my next question. I was running through so many questions as you were answering. I was like, let's see. With knowing that you guys are going touching into the United States and with us talking about robotic mowers and all the technology that's growing, do you think that it's logical for companies like ours and yours to exist in the extreme long term? No. I'm gonna give you an example. I'll just paint the picture for you. I work with around Husqvarna. I sell Husqvarna products. They're a 300 year old company, Fortune 500 and they're not afraid to throw their lawyers around. I've seen it enough times that I go, oh yeah, yeah, they will totally cut people out of deals. They'll do this, they'll do that. And I sit down, I go, maybe I should just manufacture my own. So do you think that companies, 40 years from now, will his company exist? Would Jim's mowing exist? Or are we better off focusing on evolving and owning manufacturing to get the services done? Because we were talking earlier, with all the technological advancements, they're projecting to lose 600,000 jobs in the United States over the next 10 years to automation alone. And I look at that and I go, is it worth it?

Making stuff is always a bit dicey though, because you're competing against the Chinese and others who are so good at it and works on such scale. I really think the opportunity, the edges are better. The service industry or the kind of thing you're doing working with other people, if you work out a way to buy stuff like mowers would say long life, for example. That'd be if you can work out a way to build that kind of thing successfully, we'd certainly work with you on that one. But there's many opportunities as far as the long term is concerned. It's really a case of I think it's a city P that so many people build businesses just to sell them off. I've actually got an arrangement. I don't want gyms to be taken over by any other company. The one thing I most fear is if I'm no longer able to protect my franchisee, somebody will come in, buy it out probably for a good sum and then they'll just rip money off. Franchises in all kinds of ways wouldn't be difficult. That really concerns me.

This is actually something I wanted to ask you. It was on my list that I'd forgotten.

Well, the Way I've got it set up, I'm setting up a family trust which is to take over the company when I'm no longer able to run it. My children will get certain kind of help with housing. Nothing like trust fund kids. Basically the money will go into scientific research. That's the way it's set up to do it. But my children and gymnast people and research will sort of be in control. But there's a clause in the order of our new franchise government that says that the majority share of gyms, the controlling share of gyms cannot be sold without the written consent of a majority of franchisees, which was strongly against the advice of everybody that I know said depressed evaluation. And I said, well that's good because I don't want to be sold. So I wanted on and going. I've got some fantastic kids and potential in laws too. So I'm hoping, I'm doing everything I can to make sure that in 30, 40, 50 years time this company will still be around and still stand for something which is, which is the interest of franchisees above all. That's my biggest aim. Now whether that works, I can't really tell. Though of course, if in the next 20 years or so they develop rejuvenation treatments for such as the fact that I actually can keep on living for indefinitely, I will certainly be first in.

The queue to that get you some stem cells and make this happen.

I follow the research very avidly. Anything that's about anti aging I'm really interested in. So if it comes to possibility, I am front of the queue, that's for sure. With my wife too.

Honestly, that's the answer that you gave. It makes me really, really happy. It's a good answer. And I honestly, I've done something similar like I'm tiny, tiny scale compared to you guys. But in my head I didn't want to build it just to watch all my guys disappear and struggle. And so the way I wrote out my contract was if anything happens to me, automatically the top, I think it's the top five people are now board members.

Yes.

And then life insurance policy kicks in. They get a little bonus money to help helps make it through the first so many months. And then we have one silent person watching and if they decide to do crooked things, this, that the other, he can step in, stop and transfer money over the family.

What about, what about in the family? Your daughter's a bit young to take over yet, but haven't you intend to have more children?

Yes, definitely. Yeah, it'll depend on what they want, but I wouldn't be giving them anything that I wouldn't be offering a licensee just because the way I view the licensee, I want. I want to mentor them and I want them to be wildly successful. And I don't think that I can take my child and give them a head start or a specialty position, but I do.