The Jim Penman Story

So today I'm lucky enough to be joined by Jim's Group CEO and founder Jim Penman, who is a well known entrepreneur and franchising icon in Australia. And we're going to run through a whole bunch of questions today about the Jim's Group, him as a business owner and also his personal life as well. So let's start the Jim's Group side of the story. Jim. And the first question is what is the story behind starting Jim's? How and why did you start it?

Well, I never intended to be in business at all. I went to University in 1971 intending to uncover the reasons for the rise and fall of civilizations and gardening. And then lawn mowing was my part time student job. And when I got to the end of my PhD in 1982, I realised I had no prospect of an academic career. So I turned my part time mowing business into a full time job.

And how did the name Jim's Group come about?

But it was me, it was Jim's Mowing. So I used to, when I was putting leaflets around in the neighborhood, I would put Jim's Mowing on it because it was Jim Mowing. And I used to put a picture of myself on the leaflet.

And how did, and how and when did you branch into the other services beyond Jim's Mowing happened?

We had a good franchising system that worked for mowing and we thought the same kind of system would work for other divisions like cleaning, same structure, the same fee system and so forth. But we thought the gym's mowing would be. It's a man, you know, it's a guy with the beard and the hat. That's my gardening hat that I'm wearing. So I thought that that's not really going to work for cleaning. So we decided to use a different name which was Sunlight S U N L I T E And we did a little logo with sprays and stuff and tried it, sold a couple of franchises, couldn't find the work. Eventually I gave him the money back. And then somebody came to me and said, what about Jim's Cleaning? And I said well no, that's obvious, that's a gardening image. What if it's a woman? You wouldn't want to have a guy with a beard and a hat wear that logo. And he said I think it'll work. And I said well I don't think so. And he said well I'll give it a try, I'll go in with you. So we gave it a try and it worked. The Actual name somehow went from mowing to cleaning and people recognised the brand and they liked it. So after that we started other ones like Dog Wash, which is now got about 250 franchisees. We tried Handyman and a whole lot of other divisions, eventually more than 40.

And how is the Jim's Group structured for people who don't know?

Well, I'm the national franchisor, Jim's Group, my company, which I completely own. We also have regional franchises and we also had franchisors look after divisions. So in some cases that's actually us, that's Jim's Group. Other case, most of the time they're.

Individual people and tell the story behind how the first franchisee contract came about. What did the attorneys think? What was the initial feedback did you get from the potential franchisees?

What inspired me to franchise was that another company which was based in Adelaide came to Melbourne and they really quite terrified me. I thought these guys would crush me. They had 250 franchisees and I had a few subbies at that stage, so I wasn't very advanced. I actually tried to join them initially and so try to help them to grow, but they wouldn't have that. So I decided to try and do it independently. So I actually crashed their expo. They had a standard next post. I went in and went up to the stand and asked them what I was about. They told me about and stuff and then they kicked me off the stand when the manager discovered who I was. But I thought, hang on, I could compete with these guys, maybe not beat them, but at least survive. I needed to franchise. But. So how do we get a contract? That was pretty hard. I didn't know anything about contracts. I got hold of a copy of their contract and I thought I didn't like it because it was too biased towards the franchisor and I wanted a system that would be very favorable to franchisees, something that I want to sign myself. So I went to see some lawyers and I said, can you draft me a contract with these things in it? And they really just didn't know what to do. They kept on complaining that I was trying to give too much to the franchisees, too much power, too many rights. Eventually, it took me two lawyers and nine months to get a contract I was satisfied with. And then I signed my first franchisee in June 1989.

And I was going to say, now, how do you feel about overtime for yourself and your employees?

I'm not a real ferociously hard worker. I work strange hours, but I take time off. I Drive my son to school, pick him up. I have a very flexible lifetime, so I don't exactly know how many hours a week I work, probably about 40 overall. But as far as employee is concerned, look, it's great if people care about their jobs, but quite frankly, quite often I'll say go home. Dear family, I read about these companies, these startups where people were ridiculous like 80, 100 hours and they don't see their families. That's wrong to me. I don't want my staff doing that. So if I find somebody working excessive hours, I'll tell them to cut it out, go home. And if I write an email, which I often do after hours, they don't have to respond till the next working day.

And how is Jim's different from other Australian franchise chains and systems?

Our system is based on giving franchisees very strong rights that exist in no other franchise in the world, anywhere. For example, our franchisees are guaranteed any leads to come into their territory, but they can work wherever they wish. The only thing they can't do is door knock someone else's territory. They can build their business as big as they like. They can have as many employees as they wish. There's no limit. We've got franchisees turning over in the millions of dollars a year. They pay the same base fee as anyone else. We give our franchisees a right. They own the right to their goodwill. Now, if they want to sell the rights to somebody else or do what we call a split, they can do that. That's entirely up to them. But they own the right client. Any client that's dealt with one franchisee ever belongs to that client, the right to belong to that client. Our franchisees can do extraordinary things too. They can. For example, they can move to a different franchisor. If there's a different franchisor in the same city, they can move, or even different division, they can just move across. That's their right. Their own franchisor has no say, which is a real powerful incentive to get franchisors to look after franchisees. They can vote out their own franchisor. This has just happened in the last couple of months. We're one of the franchisors. The franchisees didn't. They were doing a good job. We run a referendum, confidential. Franchisors moving on. They have to sell their business. Also, we give our franchisees the right to veto changes to their own manuals. So if we've got a change to the manual want to do, we put it out in the newsletter and there's a clause that says this is the vote, this is what we want to do. If they object, they need to write back in and say usually they're happy with that, but there's been two occasions when they actually didn't like it so they knocked it back so we couldn't do it.

Because I just want to point out for people as well, you were one of the initial hall of Fame members in the Franchising Council of Australia hall of Fame. And I would say the system you've got is the complete opposite to every other person that would be in the hall of Fame or any other system that that exists in Australia. Now why do you. Where does this franchisee focus just urge come from? Because it goes in the face of what typical people would understand about franchising in terms of the percentage of revenue, all that sort of thing. So where does that come from?

A lot of it's got to do with Christian ethics. The idea from John's Gospel of Jesus washing his disciples feet. It's servant leadership. To me, my biggest focus in business is the success of my franchisees. That always takes precedence. One of the interesting things is though we're extremely well known, we've got 5,000 plus franchisees in Australia, New Zealand and Canada. The actual profit's nothing like what you'd expect from a normal franchise. So we make good money. I mean I'm not poor, but nothing like somebody could come in with a financial goal. They could probably double or triple the income fairly shortly if they wanted to. But for me I'm very comfortable with income. It does the things I want and I really want my franchisees to be successful. One of the things that most concerns me is after I've gone, I've probably got lived another 20 years and I certainly don't tend to retire. I want to make sure as far as possible that franchisees are protected against somebody coming in and ripping them off.

And what do you look for then in a franchisee? What makes a good gyms franchisee?

We can help most people to run their own business successfully. We have a fairly good success rate. Figures show that if you go into a service business like cleaning or gardening, your chance of being in business after the first year, 5 and 10%. With us it's about 88% most recent figures. So about 12% will leave for one reason or another. So we're quite successful, but not universally so. So first of all what we do is we screen fairly carefully in terms of putting somebody out on the road. We get an established franchisee to look at them and to say is this person successful? Do they have a good sense of customer service? We look at certain, there's certain red flags. For example, if you've got somebody who's young, say early 20s, parents buying the business, that's an absolute no. Any franchisor who would put on a person like that would be faced with non renewal of their contract. It's an appalling thing because there's virtually no chance they succeed. We also look for things like curiosity. We look for somebody who asks questions, who comes with a list of questions is ideal. Who's done their research, who's checked us out on social media, who's talked to other franchisees. And then we put franchisees through a training process too. So we look at them and they come to our head office and I ask the staff, the staff who look after the meals and so forth, anybody behaving badly, anybody, anything they're doing. So most people that we help can be successful but we really try hard to look for that minority. We just haven't got what it takes.

And how has your role in the Jims group evolved over the years?

I take a very hands on attitude. One of my major job is actually keeping in touch with individual franchisees. I have very competent managers to handle things like pr, social media, marketing, the general management of the company, finance, hr. My biggest single role is probably just individually be in contact with franchisees. So every franchisee in Jim's group, every single one has my direct phone number, direct email address. If they contact me, I respond to them within, usually within a very few hours, always some day. I'm always available to talk to anybody about anything, any concerns, any issues not being treated right, change the system, I want to know about it. I get very closely involved with complaints. I'm actually the only person that can actually delete complaints, which is a very important part of our system. So if a franchisee has got a reason why the complaint is unfair and they can prove they did everything right, like the client said, they didn't ring and they said yes, I rang within two hours and I texted the client, did everything reasonable, I would delete it. Or if I did the wrong thing, if they satisfy the client in the end. So I deal with those kinds of issues. If a client has a significant problem, something gone really badly with the job and the franchisor hasn't fixed it, then I'll get involved and I'll sit on it until the client is satisfied. So it doesn't matter what happens, doesn't matter how big the problem is, how bad it is, we've had problems over $100,000. I will make sure that client is looked after.

Just make it clear for people watching. So just to confirm, every single franchisee who comes through our training, which is more than 1,000 every year, including the existing ones and finished ones, has your personal mobile number, they have your personal email address. And you, as the business owner, will get involved in customer complaints every single day.

Absolutely right. Every single day. I deal with franchisees directly, I deal with customers directly and I find that incredibly useful. First up, I'm not particularly great as a manager. I have people much better at me doing all these other areas. But I have a passion for my franchisees and for their business. And one of the great things about hearing from franchises is directly I can know what's going wrong. You know, why is this person not being looked after? What's wrong with the system? How can we improve the it? And that's the best way to find out.

The great thing about it might go in the face of what people might be reading in management books and stuff and have all that middle management type of tier thing, but having that direct source of feedback, you make changes. I think we should ask you this. How many changes have you made to the Jim script which have come directly straight from a franchisee phoning you up or emailed directly to you as the CEO?

Thousands. You couldn't count them. There's very rarely a month go by that I wouldn't change at least something in the system and probably more often like once a week. We just keep on changing things. Every feedback that I get, I look at it now. Sometimes the feedback's unreasonable. Franchisees will complain about complaints and they should. We shouldn't be doing it. Upsetting me. We stick to that. But so often there's a real reason behind it. You know, just as an example, we have a system in Australia where the we have a franchising code which means that you have to hold the contract for two weeks. Now you have a situation where somebody's held the contract for two weeks and they're ready to start and then we find out there's something wrong with their contract, like they need a different entity. Now they're faced with the prospect of being two more weeks without an income. So what I would simply say put them on a system, get them started, get them some work and in two weeks time we'll sign the contract. That's the kind of thing I do all the time.

And can you also share with people. Your management style. Cause I think it goes. It'd be complete opposite to what maybe people might think a traditional CEO does of a normal. Of a massive company. Right. So do you want to just maybe tell people, how do you manage the actual business?

Well, at the head office, we only have about 100 people working direct. That's including the call centre. What I do is I just walk around. So every day I'll go into the call centre, I'll have a look at the figures, I'll look at the delay. We're very concerned about delay. The absolute most we should be delaying is 30 seconds on average during the day. If it goes beyond that, what's happening? How can we change it? Chat to the girls there, talk to them. How are they going to. And then I just go into different departments, just talk to people. Like, for example, with yourself. When you came in a certain role, you went to work in insurance. And I used to go around to insurance and I'd chat with you about how it was going and you had ideas about websites and stuff. And as a result of that, you actually reported to a much higher level in the company and the same thing happened elsewhere. Another one of our managers started in a very little level position and she's done extraordinarily well. So I find that actually talking individually to staff members directly, now I talk to the managers too, but I also like to talk directly to staff members and staff members know they can contact me directly. So I try to have a bit of a relationship with everybody so they know they can come to me.

Another story I remember I would love for you to share was in insurance, sometimes of claims, you'd have a franchisee, he would call you up about a claim. We have an insurance brokerage here in house. And then you would literally have the franchisee on the mobile phone, you'd be talking to him and say, hang on. And you walk across to the insurance manager's desk and say, what's going on with this guy? Right to him at his desk.

People have trouble getting through to some department. We have a rule, actually, it says if a department doesn't respond to a franchisee within 24 hours, business days, they can claim $100.

You don't want to be on the end of that.

So they come to me. If they can't get through, they can't get an answer. I take it down and I say, what's. Can we do something about this? What's the issue? Why aren't we sorting this out? So it gets happened very Very quickly.

Now, we're going to go into some business owner type questions for business owners who will be watching this. So what advice would you give to someone who wants to start a business?

It's very difficult to start a business full time and I'm talking about service business, which I understand extremely well. The great majority fail. My general advice is this. If you can start with an established operation of some kind, it makes it a lot more likely. Now that means a good franchise system, and I'm not saying that's the only one in the world that's good. But there are decent franchise systems around. Check them out very carefully, talk to many people as possible in the system, check it out. That's one way to do it. You can sometimes buy a roster of clients. Now, before the franchise, what I used to do was I set people up in business. I would build up a roster of regular mowing clients in those days. And that means when a person started, they had at least a beginning income and we provide a certain amount of training in the field and so forth. So they had a start. And the other thing I would recommend is if that's not possible, start part time. That's essentially what I did. I started, I've been mine, I've been gardening since I was 8 years old. I had garden jobs as a kid. I started a business in 1971 just before I went to university, got a few gardening clients, got into lawn mowing, used to do it at the sort of the weekends and so forth. And it was good because it was my student job. But by the time I came to going full time, 1989, I knew what I was doing, I knew what the equipment was, I knew how to use it properly, I know how to travel, I know how to keep records. I understood the business, so starting full time wasn't that difficult.

So what does your typical workday look like now? Maybe do you want to run through people your routine from, let's say morning to the end of the day?

How does it look? Well, I start off on emails. One of the things I'm very strong on is answering or looking at all my emails and I would get well over 100 a day. I actually check my spam. I don't trust Stanfielders because often my franchise want to reach me and I get sent to spam. I don't know why they think it's spam. I don't trust a spam footer. So I check everything that comes in. If it's like obvious spam, I just get rid of it, flick it very fast. I deal with each session in turn. I do something with it, sort it out, answer it, delete the complaint, hire the franchisee, pass it to somebody who needs it. I do something with that. If it's a new inquiry to their business, I will also deal with that. Look at it something we want something new division, whatever. I can look at that. So a lot of emails. I then actually what I would normally do is I would have some exercise. I normally run on the treadmill half an hour and I also do weightlifting and so exercise. Sometimes I play racquetball with you. That's my day exercise every day, really vigorous exercise because that's so important to keep your mind clear. Then I would actually tend to walk around the office. I'd go and talk to different departments. I would just chat to various people about what's going on, how are you going, how's the call centre going, how many inquiries we had in for this particular job, how's this process going? And then I have meetings. I would talk with prospective, new divisions, I would talk with doing a video presentation of some kind of. I do a lot of podcasts, I meet with all kinds of people. We don't have a lot of internal meetings at gyms, but we often talk informally. So I'll wander down to national office there at five o' clock and we just chew the fat and talk about. And we often decide new ventures like that. So it's kind of informal. And then within that, I'm taking my son to school, I'm picking him up from school and lives a fair way away. So it's sort of back and forth and quite frankly, look, I often have a nap in the afternoon. I find that's very helpful. I might be answering emails at 9, 10 o' clock at night or the weekends, but it's very flexible lifestyle, so I can take time off when I want to, actually. But one of the big things I say is I don't work extraordinary hours. I'm really. I'd rather I was a bit more hard working, but I'm not a workaholic. But I'm very keen on working efficiently, which is why being rested is important. So if I've got something on an evening especially, I really want to have a knack to make sure my mind is really sharp and clear. Because you can spend five minutes clearly thinking about a problem. It's better than five hours slogging away because then you look at it and say, why are we doing it this way? Why can't we improve it. And the whole process is this. And this is to do with the single key to business success, in my view, more than anything else, is you look at your business every day and you say, how can I improve? And you're never, ever, ever going to be good enough. If you think you're good enough, then one thing you are definitely not. So I'm constantly driven to improve. So my everyday business life is a combination of conversations and meetings and emails and writing up stuff, but every day the same thing. What's happening here? How can we do it better?

And what role does family play in business success?

To have a secure family is absolutely crucial in my view. I was pathetic at business before I got married. I was really awful. I was lazy, I was ill disciplined. I actually got myself into trouble, I got myself deeply into debt. And then at the end of 1982, when I started this, I was just newly married. I had a wife who was a student, needed to support her and very soon children came along. You have your rent, later your mortgage, you have to pay your bills. I find married people actually a lot better because they've got responsibilities. We saw the same thing with franchisees. Franchisees who are married, who are steady with families to support, are much more likely to succeed than those who are single.

I was going to say, with such a diverse company. What is your opinion on the topic of Focus as an individual and as a business owner? So how do you maybe focus your day? Because obviously you're getting pulled in a lot of different directions and business owners will get pulled in different directions as well. How do you decide maybe what to focus on and how do you sharpen that focus?

There's a very simple motto that lies behind everything we do. Our first priority is the welfare of franchisees. And after that we're also passionate about customer service. So you look at what we're doing, what is the one thing that I can do most that can be of benefit to my franchisees? What do I need to focus on now? A lot of the time, things people come to me with are things that I have to deal with. Somebody else might be much better at handling it than me, which is actually most things really, because I'm not all that good at doing most things. I'm not particularly good at finance, I'm not good at management, I'm not good at social media. And these aren't my skills. So in a sense I have one goal. How can I make my franchisees successful? Ideally make them raving fans. And then I just look at Everything I've got to do and say what's going to help this the most? And if it's something that somebody else can do as well as me, which is most things, I pass it to them.

So let's say, let's put this now back to a business owner's perspective. Who is maybe their customers, their priority? Would you just say it's exactly the same advice, but you just substitute the customer in for a franchisee?

Yeah. As a business owner, the one thing I would ask anybody to do is to actually spend time relating directly to customers. Look, we get best part of a million leads a year. I personally engage with customers who've got issues. It's not only important because it helps you to understand you can fix a particular problem with a customer, but then you can look at it and say, well, why has the customer got problems? Then you look at the basic structure of organization. My strong advice to any business owner is get involved in the grassroots as much as possible. There's a tendency, I think, people often get engaged with the management thing, running meetings and so forth and talking to their immediate subordinates or their department heads or whoever it is. And I'm a great believer in knowing what's going on because if you just listen to people. There's a wonderful old British comedy called yes Minister, yes Prime Minister. And the minister is the one you sort of engage with. He's always getting into problems. And one of the problems is he doesn't actually know what's going on. He has to deal everything through these senior advisors. And I think a business owner needs to go right deep into the organization to know exactly what's going on because most people just don't know. Another example, not from a business, but from government. I took a gap year after I left university, went work for a federal government department and it was the worst and most slack organization you could possibly imagine. I wasn't particularly efficient in those days, but my job that I had took only about half my time. And we were always told to look busy. Whenever a big wig came in, we'd have to look busy. But I remember talking with a. Sometime later with somebody who'd been a federal minister at that time. And as far as he was concerned, everybody was flat out all the time. The fact that he just didn't know and the minister in my department and the head would not have known what was going on because they didn't look so work at depth. And I find that all the time if you actually look at what people are really doing and why they're doing it. You find a whole lot of inefficiencies that are going on.

What is your view on wealth?

Wealth is something given to us by God to use for good purpose. I believe that when you run a business there are a number of stakeholders. As the owner of the business, whether it's yourself or the owners you're managing for, that's an important. And if you don't actually make enough money to make a profit, the business isn't going to work. But other stakeholders are staff, customers, in our case franchisees, very strongly. So. So I believe there's multiple stakeholders. I really dislike the kind of view that simply says we're in it just for the sake of profits because that kind of short term thinking is really disastrous. Now, in terms of money, people have very wrong ideas about the value of wealth in creating happiness. Now, for example, if you haven't got enough to live on, less than say the average income, which in Australia is about $75,000 a year, and if you're struggling to pay your bills, you really can't be happy. And that's a bad situation. Now, once you get past average income, wealth matters surprisingly little. But what does matter is what you do with it. So for example, the worst way to spend money, this is not just my opinion, this is from scientific research, from study being done. Status goods, you have a newer, flashier car, a bigger house, a more expensive holiday. These kind of things give people a very short term boost, but long term they make no difference at all to life satisfaction. Whereas money spent on relationships, on experiences, time spent with friends, with family, far more useful. But the number one thing that I've found, and this is certainly from literature, the best thing you can do with money is to give it away to a cause with which you are directly involved. Which in my case is things like my church and my research foundation where I involved on a regular ongoing bassist. And this is not just this is happiness, this is what makes people happy. And I think so actually what's good for us is what's also good for society as well. I don't believe in spending money on seeing status. And I think people who think that they have more money and they can buy more stuff, they'll be happy, they're fooling themselves. There's a lot of very wealthy people commit suicide or are absolutely miserable in their lives because they. I don't believe in spending money on seeing status. And I think people who think that they have more money and they can buy more stuff, they'll be happy they are fooling themselves. There's a lot of very wealthy people commit suicide or are absolutely miserable in their lives because they think of money in the wrong way. I personally believe in living quite simply. My clothes are basically apart from my uniforms, they come from Kmart. I wear my clothes until they've got holes in them. My only big extravagance will be books and fruit. Okay, Live very simply. In fact, I never owned a new car until 18 months ago, and I'm 72 years old, never owned a new. And that's only because I want to go electric, because I believe in electric. So I think a simple life is better. And, you know, people are surprised to see me shopping in the supermarket just like anybody else. And I look for the cheaper goods because I. My wife complains. He says I should use the branded stuff. I always look at the bottom. Okay, what's the shop brand? What's the cheapest? So I'm always looking at that and I switch off lights and stuff, try to live simply. But the thing about this too, the great thing about this, you do things that are worthwhile in your life. But also what they have discovered too is that, is that there's certain things about money that do make you unhappy. And one of them is debt. The more debt you have, the less likely you are to be happy. And debt isn't a matter of how much money you've got, it's how much money you actually spend compared to what you earn. So if you're always living within your means, you keep your debt low, keep it modest. Our debt as a company is very low. It's like the equivalent of, you know, six months income. It's very, very low. So I'd like, I like that sense of security and steadiness and you don't have to worry about it. That's. That's life satisfaction.

Now, going into, you mentioned your routine before, which is, goes into this question about what are you, what are your thoughts on discipline overall?

Discipline in general, self discipline is really crucial to everything. The secret of a successful happy life is in doing the things that you should do over things that you might right now feel feel is the most comfortable and pleasant thing to do. So, for example, exercise. All right, you might not always want to exercise, but I exercise every day, rigorously, carefully. I do not miss, I mean, I might miss about five times a year because I'm sick or something like that, but it's very, very rare. I wouldn't do exercise. Same with eating now, eating nice, fatty, sweet food. I enjoy Chocolate much as anybody else. It feels good short term. In the long term, what does. Expands your waistline. I have a. I have a diet which is lots of vegetables and fruit and nuts. And I enjoy my food very much. Don't stick myself in terms of good quality food, but try to avoid the bad stuff. I maintain a body mass index of 22, so I like to be healthy. I feel really good. I feel it's great to be healthy. And again, you've got to make decisions that are better in the long term. And the same thing with family too. Spending time. You got time to make an effort to have a date with your wife. I mean, I'm married 23 years. I've got a gorgeous wife. I love her dearly. Sometimes you've got to make an effort, say let's go on a date or spending time with my kids. Or sometimes I'll deliberately set up social situations where I can actually get to meet people and form friendship groups and so forth. You've got to take an effort. Sometimes it's a bit scary to do that, but you've got to actually move forward. Being active in my church. So all of these things is doing things that you don't necessarily immediately feel like for the sake of the future and not be too focused on happiness as such. Think of what's right, what's the best thing to do and strengthen up. If you do that, happiness tends to come out of it, which is certainly my experience.

And going to the next question as well, sort of flows into this. What is your view on consistency then?

You've got to be very consistent about habits of mind. One of the problems people have with dieting, and that's something often discussed with because people so often are overweight these days, is they'll go in something like a crash diet, a juice diet, and they'll eat almost nothing for weeks and they'll lose a few kilos and they can't stick to it and they go off and that's just. And then they go back to their previous weight. Often they gain more. So you've got to be consistent. It's not just a case of doing something for a while. You've got to do it for life. And if I say, got a friend of mine who's thinking of going on a crash diet, I said don't do it if you can't change your diet permanently. If you're not prepared to do that permanently, then don't do it at all. Stay with your current weight. Don't yo yo diet. Same thing. With exercise, it's consistency. It doesn't matter. You don't have to. With something like exercise, you don't have to be heroic. You don't have to be running marathons. You have to think about what's possible, make it pleasant, make it interesting. I find one of the best things for exercise is I have a screen and I watch Netflix and I have a program that I'm watching while I'm running, while I'm exercising, which makes it easier to continue. I also have a rule too, then, in general, I don't watch whatever that is until my exercise. So I'm looking forward to it next time. Oh, what's happening with this? I was watching a film this morning and I got to a certain stage, okay, this is interesting. I'm not going to touch it until my next time on the treadmill. So use that kind of tricks of the trade. There's a wonderful book, Atomic Habits, which just shows the very things make it doing the right thing, easy, make it pleasant. Like, for example, okay, I have a weakness for food. I love Nutella, I really do. You give me half a half a jar of Nutella and I can eat the whole thing.

So just interrupted. Nutella is like a chocolate hazelnut.

Chocolate hazelnut, but big in Australia. I don't know whether you put it in the States, but it's delicious stuff. I mean, to me, it's like. It's like I've never had crack cocaine, but I can imagine it's got a.

Similar kind of very addictive quality.

Very addictive quality. Okay, how do I cope with that? We don't have it in the house, thank you very much. And if my family buys it for their own purposes, and I try to encourage them not to, for the same kind of reasons, hide it away from me so I can't see it. All right. So you make it easier to do the right thing. There's other nice things about Atomic Habits. It's a fantastic book. I'm a great believer in books, too. You have books that constantly. I love talking books. Whenever I'm driving, doing anything, I'll listen to a talking book and say with them about discipline and health and so forth and ideas. And so you're constantly getting these ideas in your mind. You're just going to make it easy for yourself to live the good life.

Going to the next question then here. What is your view on then? Determination. So the determination. So to get to be a successful business person like you have, you would have had a lot of setbacks over the years. And you would have had to be very determined to get to where you are. So how, what, what is your view? Maybe determination, resilience, this sort of, this sort of thing.

To my mind, you've got to have a purpose in life. I don't think becoming rich is a particularly good purpose from my point of view that I have always had my research institute, that was my goal. Even when I was impoverished, deeply indebted student, I knew I wanted to have enough money to be able to fund. And I spend several million dollars a year now on research that's always been under. I can't, I can't not do that. If you've got anything worthwhile, if you've got a family visa, report that. That's part determination. I am very resilient. I cope very well with downturn things going wrong remarkably well in most people's views. And a lot of that is being healthy too. So exercise, proper diet, enough sleep, those are really important things to maintain your well being. If you, if you're frazzing yourself out with overwork or you're too stressed or you, you're not going to be at your best. And I also, I also practice an attitude of thankfulness as a Christian. I thank God and we do that regularly. When you pray before meals, you're thanking God for all the blessings that, that he's given you. I find that positive attitude, being aware of the good things. So something's gone wrong over here. Yes, we've got a bit of a financial crisis, but then again got a wonderful marriage, my kids are really going well. You know, this is a really interesting project over here and even though we've made a terrible mistake here, I know the problem. If you've got anything worthwhile, if you go to a family visit, report, that's part of determination now. So I'm going to make sure it doesn't happen again. So you're always looking at the positive side, being very aware of your failures, but always bringing out the positive, the good side of whatever's happened.

I was going to say here as well. How do you know when a business venture isn't going to work out? So, you know, maybe do you want to talk about some of your failures in the past or what's some advice around for business owners? When did you know they weren't going to work out?

The big mistake I tend to make, and I've made very many mistakes in my career, the biggest mistake that I tend to make is going into areas that I don't understand. You look at Things from the outside like a trade exchange or a factory to make fiberglass trailers or psychology institute. There's a number of things that I've gone into which I really shouldn't and they've all got the same factor. When I do with something that I understand and know, like Jim's, expand it to a different division, different system, I tend to do very well. When I try and work out something that I don't know particularly well, then you tend to fail. I guess my problem with all of these things, I tend to persist too long. You have to look at it coldly and hard. Sunk cost fallacy is one of the worst things. I put so much money into it, I don't want to have a waste. No, what you got to look at, is it likely to work now? Is this something that we're good at? And if it's not, you just gotta get rid of it, drop it, get out of it as best you can and just write it off and learn from the experience as.

Follow up question for this, for this part is it's a good one. How did. Well, how do you know when to stop pursuing something that isn't working? Is it purely a financial thing or is it purely that you just got it wrong? Or when is there a. What moment in time during that do you know when to stop pursuing it?

You just have to look at it realistically as if it's a business that you've not been in already. You see, if I knew what I know now, would I have gotten this in the first place? So you just got to look at it and say this is not my strength. We are not making money out of this. There is too many problems we didn't understand we were getting into. You've just simply got to look at it hard and cold and, and say what are we good at? And also where are our resources being best spent? And if I know that putting more resource into this area has a very marginal effect, but I can actually get the same resources of time and money and put into something else, I'm far more likely to be successful. Look, it's a very hard thing because you get emotionally attached to a business and you look at it and you put so much into it, you just got to be very cold and hard and say is it something that we're good at? And if it's not, you just got to drop it.

Because it can be hard. Because we talked about the question about determination and resilience before. And if you've that determined as you have been over your Business journey. It can be very hard to know that line between keep pursuing, keep pursuing or then when to stop it.

There's a couple of wonderful books about business. There's many books I'd like to recommend, but James Collins. They did some studies of, of successful business long term, much bigger than gyms, but large businesses like. And they tried to look at what was the secret of their success, why these businesses were so successful long term. And one of the things they found was that these businesses were very different. They were extremely different in terms of their ideology and their beliefs. And it was for a long time they couldn't figure out anything they had in common. And then there was one thing that came out. Each of these businesses had a culture, very powerful culture, which was shared very widely from the CEO to the mailroom. And people who came into that company tended to adopt the culture or they'd get spat out, they'd either get fired or they'd quit. But everything else changed, everything else changed. They were massively change prone, but they didn't change their basic idea. So persistence in a business like mine, like Jim's, is saying, what is my core? What is my real major thing I'm after? And that is success in my franchisees more than anything else. Great customer service staff, being happy and satisfied. You look at the actual core, things that you run about and then you look at everything else, how that relates to that. And you never give up on your core. You're always driving for your core. Everything else is peripheral.

That's some good advice there. This one here. What advice do you have for business owners who've had success but are struggling to grow their company more?

It's very difficult to go past a certain stage. So you have a leap from being, say, an employee to being a business owner. Now that's hard in itself. In a system like ours, it's a lot easier. Most people do succeed, but it's still an effort. Some people just aren't suited to jump into that. Then you get individual business owners. Probably at least half of our franchises would just be working by themselves. Then you've got to get to a situation where you employ other people and that's a level of difficulty. But because you've got to actually learn to hire people, you've got to supervise them, you've got to encourage them, you've got to train them, you've got all kinds of things. So that gets to the next stage and then you get to the next stage beyond that, which is where you're not directly doing things you have managers to do things for yourself and that's stage harder. That's something I've really struggled with over the years. Takes me a long time to find really competent managers. I'm not necessarily good at picking people. So you've got to jump to that stage where you have it. Some people just don't have what it takes to go beyond a certain stage. So I think it's a matter of self awareness. What are you good at? There's a lot of people who are very good at running a business where they're direct, in control manager who can't get to the next stage. In fact, most people who can run successful small businesses can't actually go beyond that. You've got to be very aware of your own strengths. You've got to be aware of what you like to do and want to do. And sometimes it's actually better to step back and say this is my level, this is what I'm good at and not try to do something beyond it. But the real clue in anything at all is this. People work incredibly hard. I've seen people work ridiculously crazy hours on their business, but they don't think about what they do. And so the key is to be endlessly self critical. We have a situation, we have a way of looking at people in gyms. We classify franchisees. We have gold, we have bronze, we have lead. Gold. Franchise is somebody who probably should be successful even as independent. This is somebody who's got the potential to employ people, to grow, to do amazing things, a lot of that. We probably created more multimillionaires than any company in Australia. So you've got somebody like that. They always come out with ideas, they're looking at what they're doing. They're endlessly so critical. What if I do this? How can I do this? How can I change that? How can I improve that? They're constantly driven. Majority of our franchisees, what I call bronze, which is people who don't necessarily do that as a matter of course, but they will listen. So if you train them, if you talk to them, we like to talk to our franchisees regularly, at least monthly, ideally weekly. What are you doing, how you're doing it? What about this? What about trying that? What about upselling? What about asking for referrals? What about improving efficiency? What about better equipment? What about cutting costs? So you're helping them to understand how things better. And then there's a group we call the lead, which is fortunately a very small minority, maybe 5% who just won't listen and you'll tell them okay. They say I'm short of work, for example. And you'll say okay, what you need to do is this, you need to do some self marking this. And you need to this, you need to do this. And you need to be over quoting a bit, you know, oh no, no, give me more leads. But I want you to do that. No, no, no, this. How can I do this? How can I change that? How can I improve that? They're constantly driven, majority, you got it. It's your fault. You got to give me more leads. That's your job, give me more leads. They don't listen to what you say and they're the ones that tend to fail and they're not necessarily stupid, but they're looking at themselves and they're saying of our franchisees, what I call bronze, which is people who don't necessarily do that as a matter of course, but they will listen. So if you train them, if you talk to them, we like to talk to our franchise regularly, at least monthly, ideally weekly. What are you doing, how you're doing it? What about this? I have to be in the right, I cannot be in the wrong in any way. So this endless process of self criticism, look at yourself. Always assume that you can do much, much, much better. And if you look at your business and you think you're doing as well as it can be done, well, you are wrong. You can always improve. And the thing I find striking again and again when I talk to business owners is that they are completely delusional about how good they are. They do not understand how poor their customer service is, how poor their systems are. So it's very, very important. In terms of success, I would. What about trying that? What about upselling? What about asking for referrals? What about improving efficiency? What about better equipment? What about cutting costs? So you're helping them to understand how things better. And then there's a group we call the lead, which is fortunately a very small minority, maybe 5% who just won't listen. And you'll tell them okay. They say I'm short of work, for example. And you'll say okay, what you need to do, strongly emphasize, learn, keep on learning, keep on reading. Talking books are fantastic. If you are driving around and I'm talking the service to industry again or even if you're doing work, if you are listening to something which is really good. I love self motivation books. I like things like atomic habits, like exercise, like expectation. There's a lot of books around that talk about psychology and so forth. There's also business stories. I like success stories. People like Mark Randolph, one I made not too long ago, was one of the founders of Netflix that will never work. Or Reed Hastings did one too. Or people like James Dyson or Elon Musk or Steve Jobs or anybody. I read dozens and dozens of books about business. I particularly want to know who is this? You need to do some self marking this and you need to. This, you need to do this and you need to. You're over quoting a bit. Oh no, no. Give me more leads. But I want you to do that. No, no, no, you got it. It's your fault. You got to give me more leads. That's your job. Give me more leads. They don't listen to what you, what individual people did, how they cope with it. And if you keep on listening to people all the time, you constantly got these really powerful mentors speaking into your mind. You say, and they're the ones that tend to fail. And they're not necessarily stupid, but they're looking at themselves and they're saying I. And then, and you just pick up ideas. Now you might listen to a talking book which takes, I don't know, 10 hours to listen to. I listen to it one and a half speed and you get one idea that is a fantastically useful 10 hours because that one idea might improve your business efficiency by 1%. So instead of turning over a hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year, suddenly you're turning over 15. 15. An extra 15 a year. And that's very good return on investment. And then you another 1%. They have to be in the right. I cannot be in the wrong in any way. So 2% here and half percent there. You keep on just constantly drooling down, learning, talk to people, talk to people about listening to podcasts, this endless process of self criticism. Look at yourself. Always assume that you can do much, much, much better. And if you look at your business and you think you're doing as well as it can be done, well, you are wrong. You can always improve. And the thing I find striking, anybody that you know, get advice from people, talk to your customers, talk to your staff, talk to anybody. Constantly looking at how can I improve?

And when you refer to talking books, I just clarify people. You mean, you mean audiobooks. And it's on audible. So audible, you're one of their. I always have to say I don't know what the stats are. You'd be. But you'd be right up there to a point where they sent you A lot of free credits and that's something that they normally don't do. Which, which means you're a very, very good user and probably one of the top users on the platform.

I, I think I'll be up there in the top fraction of a percentage.

Well, how many audio books do you listen to that in maybe a week.

Then again when I talk to business owners is that they are completely delusional about how good they are. They do not.

Roughly how many did you get through?

I would probably on average read or listen to two books a week.

Two full ones a week.

Yeah, yeah. But sometimes I'll start off and not finish it. But not always about business though. I'm listening to an audiobook now which is about Neanderthal DNA. It was an amazing book. Really, really fascinating how they look to get the DNA from Neanderthal bones which I can remember this being talked about. So he's talking about how he did it and the different, different techniques and the personal life behind it. Understand how poor their customer service is, how poor their systems are. So it's very, very important in terms of success. I would. That's just amazing. And another book called I've just finished called the Secrets of our Success which is about, about evolutionary human evolution and how we developed our ability. Strongly emphasize exercise, learn, keep on learning, keep on reading to learn and to form cultures and so forth. So it's not all about business.

Yeah, because it's a trait that you always see with really successful people. They read a lot of, they listen to audiobooks a lot. And a lot of people when they do their New Year's resolution will go I'm going to listen, I'm going to read 100 books this year. And most people obviously don't do it but you've been doing that consistently for a very, very long time.

Yeah, well I don't listen to a lot of music actually. I'm only used to listen to is when going to church with my wife we listen to Christian music. But apart from that, if I'm driving like I'll drive my son to school and I'll talk to him on the way and he's a great kid. He's 14 years old and talking books are fantastic. If you are driving around and I'm talking the service industry again with amazing conversations. He's just got a very active mind or even if you're doing work, if you are listening to something which is really good. I love self motivation books. I like things like atomic habits, like, like exercise, like expectation. There's a lot of books around that talk about psychology and so forth. There's also but on the way back talking books. If I'm taking a walk talking books. I'm gardening. I spend a lot of time gardening, talking books. I've always, always got something in my mind going on. If I wake in the night sometimes I do because I don't always sleep because it's a hollow I I'm reading rereading spqr. It's about Rome. It's talking about Cicero and his personal life right now. I was doing that this morning. So just constantly new things coming all the time. And I talk about this with friends. As you know yourself. I'm always talking about books and recommending books and sometimes if I like a book I'll bring buy a few copies and bring it to the library and give it to my managers and say, okay, read this. This is so good. It doesn't an effect. It really does.

Absolutely. And I was going to say now then let's go.

So business stories. I like success stories. People like Mark Randolph Other question here.

About regrets, business regrets and how other business owners could learn from do you have any business regrets you want to share? Maybe some learnings that other people could take away from it One, I mean.

Not too long ago, which one of the founders Netflix that will never work or Reed Hastings? My own books are actually pretty good in terms of that because I want to people like James Dyson or Elon Musk or Steve Jobs or do talk about my failures a lot. I think there's a tendency sometimes people to present themselves as being somehow infallible. I believe it's important to share your weaknesses to show that you're not anybody. I read dozens and dozens of books about business. I particularly want to know not good at everything. In fact, a lot of things I'm very bad at a lot of done a very lot of foolish things. I regret a lot. I don't regret any decision I made more than 14 years ago because if I lived my life differently and there's some very, very silly things before that, then my children wouldn't be the same. So that's an absolute requirement. I would not do anything ever to change what individual people did, how they cope with it. And if you keep on listening to people all the time, my kids are but we all make mistakes. But that's how you learn. And in fact, if you're not making mistakes, one thing's for sure, you're not actually going anywhere because you're not trying anything new. And to my mind, what really counts, it's not not making mistakes. The worst is not to try new things anytime. You constantly got these really powerful mentors speaking into your mind and then, and you just pick up ideas. Now you might listen to a talking book which takes, I don't know, 10 hours to listen to. I listen to it one and a half speed and you get one idea. If you try new things. One, my experience is this, you have. I have a lot of ideas. I swear my mind, I'm very fertile with ideas. Okay. Now most of my ideas are pretty crappy. But if you, if you try something and it doesn't work, it hasn't cost you very much, it's no great loss. But then you do two stupid crappy things and then you try one that is a fantastically useful 10 hours because that one idea might improve your business thing. And suddenly you've got something that you can expand on. Like we're talking about it. Just, just yesterday this idea I came up with about how we approach to find more work for some of our franchisees in New Zealand and we just. You talk about. And then as I said this morning, early on we give it a sufficiency by 1%. So instead of turning over $150,000 a year, try see what happens. And let's look at it and see if we can change it, adjust it. Will it work? If it does work, how can you do it better? So just constantly experiment. Do not suddenly turning over an extra fifteen hundred dollars a year. Not be afraid to fail. But there's only one thing. My father, My father wasn't an entrepreneur, he was an engineer. Good one. But he had a very strong saying I remember you need and that's very good return on investment. And then you another 1%. And to never gamble what you can't afford to lose. So if you make a small investment of time and, or money and it fails, it's no big deal. You never bet the company on it. But it's a tiny things the little experiments. When I was mowing lawns, I was mowing lawns about 15 years as a contractor and I can remember 2% here and a half percent there. You keep on just constantly drilling down, learning vividly. Right at the end of my mowing career, I was still working out a way to save a half second coming out a tree. So you never stop learning, you never stop experimenting, you're never good enough. But you've got to try new stuff. And don't be afraid to fail. We all fail the Most successful people are the people that fail on the bus because they keep on trying things. Someone like Elon Musk talk to people, talk to people about, listen to podcasts. I mean, he's a, he's, he's a flake in many ways, but he's a brilliant technology. Anybody that, you know, get advice from people, talk to your customers, talk to your staff, talk to anybody. Constantly looking at how can I improve?

And when you refer to talking, just.

And one of the things too, that recent book, I think Walter Isaacson about him is very, very good about all the things that he does and they actually make a practice. He goes into an assembly line and he says, take this away, don't do that, do less of that, and just keeps on. And he expects it not to work all the time, but he keeps on trying different things. And what he's done with SpaceX in particular is extraordinary. He's actually reduced the cost of space launches to a fraction of what they used to be by this iterative process.

Try, try to clarify, people. You mean audiobooks? And it's on audible. So audible, you're one of their.

Try, fail, fail, fail, and then just keep on learning and keep on trying. Another person I really admire is James Dyson, who's the English industrialist and I think his first.

I would have to say, I don't know what the stats are, but you'd be right up there to a point where they sent you a lot of free credits.

The vacuum cleaner, the one he did, which is a brilliant vacuum cleaner, terrific stuff.

The bag of second.

Yeah, yeah, that's right. With the Cyclone, the thing like that. Something like over a thousand.

And that's something that they normally don't do, which, which means you're a very, very good user and probably one of the top users on the platform.

I, I think I'll be up there in the top fraction of them.

Well, how many audiobooks do you listen to then? In maybe a week durations, he just.

Kept on trying new stuff until he got something that worked. That, that is, that is the practice to me. Constantly experiment, try, don't be afraid to fail. In fact, great, I've failed again. That's fantastic. It's like Thomas Edison said when he was trying all these, all these systems, he tried for years to get a. Efficient.

Roughly how many did you get through?

I would probably on average read or listen to light bulb and somebody said, you failed again. He said, no, I'm that much closer to success because I know what's not going to work. And the event, he did it, that's what you got to do.

All reference to people as well. Head to your website, download the PDF of your book, which you make freely available. Also your book is also on Audible, which is every customer a raving fan. So you can get that on Audible and listen to your own version of it as well.

Two books a week.

Two full ones a week.

Yeah, yeah. But sometimes I'll start off and not.

Finish it all in there. So it's a really good one to download. Now the follow up question, I do have you sort of covered this before though, but we want to give some more specific advice around. This one is about dealing with discouragement and if so, how do you manage it?

But not always about business though. I'm listening to a audiobook now which is about Neanderthal DNA. It's an amazing book really.

If not, what tips do you have for those who do? Because it can get people quite down. If they're a business owner, then they can get discouraged. And what would your sort of advice be for them?

Peer group is very important. One thing we did not understand launching the franchise back in 1989 is how important it is to be with other people who are going through similar experiences. Really fascinating how they look to get the DNA from Neanderthal bones, which I can remember this being talked about. So he's talking about how he did it and the different techniques and the personal life behind it. I would suggest to anybody who's in business, find your peer group. Now this could be, let's just amazing. There are another book called, I've just finished called the Secrets of Our Success, which is about. About evolutionary human evolution and how we developed our ability. An industry association like lawmaker contractors in Australia, they have their own association, part of that or you can be a part of a business group or a business networking group or anything. Find people who are going through the same sort of process to learn and to form cultures and so forth. So it's not all about business.

Yeah, because it's a trait that you're.

Going through and learn from them and you'll find anything that you've been through, somebody else has been. And most people are quite willing to share. They really. People are fundamentally cooperative and we certainly find that within gyms. But I think in the broader community it's very.

See with really successful people, they read a lot or they listen to audiobooks a lot. And of people, when they do their New Year's new important.

But in terms of motivation, again, talking.

New Year's resolution Will go, I'm going to listen. I'm going to read 100 books this year. And most people obviously don't do it, but you've been doing that consistently for a very, very long time.

Yeah, well, I don't listen to a lot of music, actually. I mean, books, good stuff. Read about people who've been successful and learn from them and you'll see they had their trials, too. So you can learn how to. How you what. What have they gone through? What can you learn from the most successful people? People often ask if I have a mentor. I don't really have any specific mentors, but I have, in a sense, hundreds of really great mentors who are sharing everything through this medium. So talking books, podcasts is fantastic, but also in terms of discouragement, it's. You've got to listen to, as me going to church with my wife, we listen to Christian music. But apart from that, if I'm driving, have the rest of your life in balance, which means really important things. Family, social relations in general, exercise, sleep. Like, I'll drive my son to school and I'll talk to him on the way. And he's a great kid. He's 14 years old, eating right, all the different things. Not indulging in things like alcohol, being under. Very moderate. I don't drink at all. But amazing conversations. He's just very active mind, Very, very moderate. Alcohol obviously needs to say anything like. But on the way back, talking books. If I'm taking a walk, talking books, I'm guarding drugs of any kind, like marijuana, anything like that. It's absolutely terrible idea. So you look after your body, you look after your health, both physical and mental, and then you'll find that discouragement is less of a problem.

That's a really good, really good way to look at it. Now, what advice do you have for business owners who need to fire someone and aren't sure how or when to do it?

I spend a lot of time gardening, talking books. I've always, always got something in my mind going on and if I wake up. If you want to fire somebody. In Australia, we have fairly draconian processes. We have to have three written warnings, properly documented, proper meeting to describe. Let a person get on with it. I think it's only fair to give a person a chance to improve if they're doing poorly the night. Sometimes I do because I don't always sleep. I'm rereading spqr. It's about the rhyme about Rome. Talking about Cicero and his personal life right now. I was doing that this morning so just constantly new things coming all the time But I do think in the end we all serve the business. Now I had a situation where my sister and my sister. I was very fond of my sister. I love my sister. Okay offered her a job. It was a way to get her back from the UK where she was living. So I said I'd give her a job and I'd pay for all her moving expenses and if the job didn't work out and I talk about this with friends as you know yourself I'm always talking about books and recommending books then you know I would write off the debt so she at least come back to Australia because my mother was dying so I wanted her to be together with my mother. My mum loves Jill too so I did that. It did not work out and we tried a number of things. We tried moving her different department to apartment department department. It didn't work. And sometimes if I like a book I'll bring a buy a few copies and bring it into the library and give it to my managers and say okay read this. This is so good. It does have an effect. It really does.

Absolutely. And I was going to say now then let's go on to this other question here about regrets business regrets and how other business owners could learn from. Do you have.

The co workers were saying this Jill is not good. So in the end I had to let it go and that was hard and she's my sister but. But I can't. I can't let down my other staff. If you've got a staff member who's not pulling their weight you have a responsibility not only the company but to the. The fellow staff members. You've got to look after them as well. You can't be seen to be favourite. You can't. You can't let emotional considerations come and we all serve the company including myself.

And I'd like if you have any business with which you want to share maybe some learnings that other people could take away from it to think about.

It got to the stage where I was a damage to the company that I should step down and it's just like time like Henry Ford for example. Now Henry Ford was a brilliant businessman in his day what he did my own books are actually pretty good in terms of that because in the 1920s to make mass production extraordinary man but towards the end of his life he hung on far too long and he damaged forward enormously immeasurably by hanging on. So everybody, every staff member including myself we all Serve the company. We've all got to recognize that sometimes a person needs to go and that maybe they can be brilliant at something else. And I'm pleased to say Jill found a job very, very shortly afterwards and very properly employed and that suited her. But what, what she was doing for us, that didn't suit her.

The last question in this business owner series of questions here. What motivates you as a business owner still and how do you find your motivation? Still on tough days.

My motivation? You talk about my failures a lot. I think there's a tendency sometimes people to present themselves as being somehow infallible. I believe it's important to share your weaknesses to show that your nomination is. I've got three major motivations in my life, not necessarily in this order. I have my research institute which is an all encompassing passion for me. Something that I want to achieve, something I think can immeasurably help the human race. I have a responsibility to my family. Good at everything. In fact a lot of things I'm very bad at a lot of done a very, a lot of to provide for them and support them. And my kids have got to say they've got 10 children. Foolish things. And they get in a stage where they deem to buy houses. That's very difficult in this day and age. So I'm helping them with that and helping them with having children. They're never going to be trust fund kids, but just a bit of assistance and I have a responsibility to the people in my business. I have responsibility to my franchisees, to my staff and to my customers. Emotionally speaking, franchisees and staff would I regret a lot. I don't regret any decision I made more than 14 years ago because if I live my life differently come first because I know them. So that's my motivation in a sense. I would not want to let people down. And if something goes wrong, wrong if say a particular franchisee is doing poorly, I feel that I actually find that quite distressing and that's a very strong driving force. You know, why is this person not succeeding? What could we. And there's some very, very silly things before that. Then my children wouldn't be the same. So that's do different. What more can we do now switching.

Gears up a bit now we're going to go talk about family and the personal side which you've alluded to a little bit in the questions before. But we'll go into a bit more now. Do you want to start off with telling the viewers about your family?

Okay. I have 10 children. I'm very proud of them. I love my kids. I think an absolute requirement. I would not do anything ever to change what my kids are. But we all make mistakes. But that's how you learn. It's one of the greatest achievements of my life. On the whole, my kids have turned out pretty well. And in fact, if you're not making mistakes, one thing's for sure, you're not actually going anywhere because you're not trying any. I'm proud of him. I've got three grandchildren, two more on the way. And it's wonderful. It's a sense of purpose to my life and it's a sense of enormous joy. Now I haven't. I have a very checkered cripple new and to my mind, what really counts. It's not rare. As somebody who's a practicing Christian, it's pretty hard to say. I've been divorced three times and there's got to be something wrong with somebody where three different women can't understand to live with him. All right? So I wouldn't want to lay myself open as any form of ideal person. And I really admire people who have one not making mistakes. The worst is not to try new things and they married to for life. What I can say is I've been married to my current wife for 23 years and I am absolutely crazy about her and strangely enough, vice versa too. So we're really, really, really passionate, close, sometimes very argumentative. We both very fiery. But I absolutely adore her. And you try new things. One my experience is this. I have a lot of ideas. It's in my mind. I'm very fertile with ideas. Okay. Now most of them seriously. I mean she's in. She's like 55 years old. To me, she's more gorgeous than anybody I see on E. Full star on tv, which I'm probably a little bit biased. So family is everything. It just really is. There's a wonderful saying that goes no other success can compensate for failure in the home. I absolutely believe in that. I look at somebody who's got fabulously rich but never had time to look after their kids or even to have kids. To me, they're a failure. I don't care how much money they've got. I don't care how many billions they've got. If you haven't. If you're not successful in your home, you really are a failure. And yet I know people who are. My ideas are pretty crappy, but if you try something would never be considered successful in the eyes of the world. But they're great fathers or their great mothers or they're great members of their church or their community. To me, these people are successful in the way that really matters.

Now, what role does music play in your life? You mentioned a little bit of music before. Does music play a role in your life?

Very little, actually. If I got something to listen to, I'll listen to a talking book. I like. Church is good. I mean, and it doesn't work. It hasn't cost you very much. It's no great. We have a very lively church service where you go and we sing choruses and songs together and that's a uplifting experience. Makes you feel closer to God and driving to and from church. We usually play Christian music. So I do like that. But in general, I'm much more oriented towards spoken word.

And what does a typical day outside of work look like for you?

Great loss. But then you do two stupid crappy things and then you try one when.

You'Re not here in the office or you're working from home. What does it look like for you?

And suddenly you've got something that you can expand on. Like we're talking about. Well, I don't really have a day outside work very much. I really try not to work on Sunday. I like to keep the Sabbath, but really, I just can't do it. I just cannot. I cannot not do it. It's too difficult. So on Sabbath, just yesterday, this idea I came up with about how we approach to find more work for some of Sunday, we'll go to church in the morning. Normally we have friends at church that we have. You can have lunch with afterwards, go home, might have a nap, exercise. Obviously, even on a Sunday, we'll do it first thing in the morning and then I'll just jump on and start doing email. Our franchisees in New Zealand and we just. You talk about. And then as I said this morning earlier on, give it a try. Just various things, you know, I shouldn't, but I just, I try, but I just can't not, not work seven days a week. It's just not possible. I hate holidays. I really do. I find it really difficult to take time off. We did. I took my family on a cruise around New Zealand few years back. It was. Oh, I was counting the hours. By the end of that time I can take about four or five try. Let's see what happens and let's look at it and see if we can change it, adjust it. Will it work? If it does, Especially with my family around me. But I just cannot cope with holidays. I really can't. How's work? How can you do it better? So just constantly experiment. Do not. They're just not nice.

Let's go to this question here about what is the basis of your research and what is bio history? Okay.

Actually, can I go back?

Yeah, of course.

What I like to do. I do work quite a lot. Not be afraid to fail. But there's only one thing. My father, my father wasn't an entrepreneur. I enjoy social life. I have, I have. Because I have so many kids, just even spending a little bit of time with each of them is just very, very joyful. I, I like gardening actually. It's my favorite jobs. It's ironic. Engineer. Good one. But he had a very strong saying. I remember. You know actually somebody. I haven't actually professionally mowed lawns for a long time. But one of my best things I've got. I've got a small farm outside of Melbourne and I go out there and I never gamble what you can't afford to lose. So if you make a small investment of time and, or money and it fails, it's no big deal. Vegetables, I've got a big potato patch. So quite sometimes a lot of my food I eat is actually from my own farm. I got cheap chickens. It's all very free range and they're healthy and got some eggs from their chicken. Ever bet the company on it? But it's a tiny things, the little experiments with chickens and stuff. So I really like that. Just walking around on my farm and looking at things, that's. That's really a fun kind of exercise. I have to say I like computer games far too much. Try not to waste too much time on it. But I do spend more time than I honestly, I was mowing lawns, I was mowing lawns about 15 years as a contractor and I can remember I actually, I actually tended to like games which are short. So if I'm actually working for a while I'm going to take a break and I play some simple game which might take me 10 minutes and then I can go back to it, that kind of thing. Or maybe read for a bit of something of that nature.

So what type of games do you like? Because there is a similar sort of theme with the games.

I tend to like strategic type games vividly. Right at the end of my mowing career I was still working out a way to save a half second coming out a tree. So you never stop learning, you never stop experimenting. There's a simple version of risk that's called Conquest that I played. That's a very short game. It's just conquering an area and, you know, making decisions and stuff. And then games like Age of Empires, those kinds of games, or Civilization, I played a lot of those in the past, those sorts of things. I don't go in for the first person shooter or sometimes simple games like a word game are never good enough. But you've got to try new stuff and don't be afraid to fail. We all fail. The most successful people are the people that fail the most because they keep on trying things. Someone like Elon Musk, like a version of Scrabble or one where you calculate falling blocks and stuff. I do that kind of thing too.

And we'll go back to the farm real quickly just for people to know that that gardening time or when you're in the farm is really important for you from a thinking perspective.

Yes.

So you're not just there, you know, you're thinking. You've got audio books in your ear. You're really used. That's a really important part of what you do as a business owner is.

I mean, he's a. He's. He's a flake in many ways, but he's a brilliant technologist. And one of the things too, that recent book, I think, Walter Isaacson about.

Him, to actually think about what you're doing as opposed to working in it all the time you've got that time to do.

I spend a lot of time thinking about business and about life in general. Too often just. I mean, I'm. Sometimes I listen to a talking book. Sometimes I'm not. I'm just. I'm just there. But yes, just going through my mind, what's going on, what can you do? Often, often just very, very good about all the things that he does. And they actually make a practice. He. Half an hour of clear thinking is better than hours and hours of slogging. You just got to think of what you're doing and why. And then you get an idea. You know, when we come down the office in the evening, we talk about things. Why are we doing this? What if I do this? And suddenly you've got a whole new direction, which is really amazing. So thinking time is very important. It's the whole principle. He goes into an assembly line and he says, you got to. You've got to work on your business, not in your business. Now, I'm very, very big on that. But one of my great strengths in business is that the fact that I'm not Particularly good at doing most things. I'm not a very good manager and I'm not good with figures and I'm not good with a lot of other things. So I can easily find people who are far better at these take this away, don't do that, do less of that and just keeps on and he expects it not to work all the time but he keeps on trying different things things and. And what he's done with SpaceX in between me. So then my job is. Is to look at my business overall and think particular is extraordinary. He's actually reduced the cost of of how can I improve it. And I have a fairly creative kind of mind so I'm very good at spinning up ideas many of them crappy but sometimes very good.

But do you think being. Is there something about being in the outdoors then in that with those in the garden? Do you think you get better quality thinking time there as a space launches.

To a fraction of what they used to be by this iterative process.

Try try post other places or doesn't really matter.

I think it's good for the soul. I really do. Look, there's various things that we know that are good for mood good for which haven't positive mind exercise is one Working being outside, you know, bright light is very good for you in the middle of the day and contact with nature is very good for you. Try fail, fail, fail and then just keep on learning and keep on trying. Another person I really admire is James Dyson who's the English industrialist and I think his first year too well gardening got all three of those and I'm also at the same time keeping my mind active with a talking book. So that's another sort of. So there's a whole stack of. I actually think gardening is probably one of the best jobs ever because you're doing so much good stuff. At the same time I do notice actually since I've been. I mean had my farm which is about the vacuum cleaner, the one he did which is a brilliant vacuum cleaner, terrific stuff. Seven years now and spent a lot of time there. But my mood and my thinking is so much better than it used to be. It's always been pretty good but particularly.

In recent years the change of tact a little bit here. What is the basis of your research? You've mentioned your research bag of second year.

Yeah, that's right. With the cyclone thing like that. Something like over a thousand in this interview.

A lot. And what is biohistory? So do you want to explain that.

For people operations he just Kept on trying new stuff until he got something that worked that, that is. I went to university to try and work out the reason for the rise. That is the practice to me constantly experiment, try, don't be afraid to fail. Innocent for the civilization. That was my fundamental question. I was very interested in ancient Greece and Rome in particular. And when I was a teenager I was reading a lot of books about that kind of subject. I actually started off reading Thucydides, the Peloponnesian War when I was 14 and that was the start of it. So I had this question, went to university to try and understand, understand how society works, started studying sociology, decided that was complete rubbish, switched to history and I started to look at common patterns. And I was very interested in the sort of a. I had a feeling there's biology in there somewhere because I read books like Desmond Morris's the Naked Ape when I was in fact great. I've failed again. That's fantastic. It's like Thomas Edison said. I was 15, so I had a few feeling that biology was in there. And I started looking at patterns, particularly to do with demography, to do with population growth and decline and so forth. And as I looked to it, I came to the conclusion that what really matters in history is not the movements of great men or even impersonal ideas, or it's the character of individual people. But when he was trying all these, all these systems, he tried for years to get a efficient light bulb. And somebody said, you failed again. He said, no, I'm that much closer to success because I know it's changes in character. When you get a change in character, make people more hard working, more enterprising, more able to cooperate in larger groups, have strong impersonal loyalties to things like laws and institutions, you tend to get a stable success society. And when you lose that, it tends to decline. And what I came to the conclusion was that what's actually happened is that there are certain biological patterns, evolved patterns that were evolved to adapt populations to limited food versus unlimited food. And these psychological patterns associated with limited food actually fit us for civilization. And the way they're created is through food shortage itself is a help. But there are cultural systems, particularly religions, that drive it in the same way. So for example, an extreme example would be Christianity. Now Christianity does a whole lot of things that actually limit sexual behavior, for example, which is one of the ways that you can almost fool your body in thinking it's short of food. So by having monogamy, for example. Monogamy is a very strange way of organizing society. It's very unusual. Most societies have never been in the world even today are not monogamous. There are systems like monogamy for example which restricts men sick. Well it's not going to work in the event he did it. That's what you've got to do.

All reference to people as well. Head to your website, download the PDF of your book which you make fairly available. Also your book is also on Audible which is every customer a raving fan. So you can get that on Audible and listen to your own version of it as well. It's all in there. So it's a really good one to download. Now the follow up question I do have you sort of covered this before though. But we want to give some more specific advice around this one is about dealing with discouragement and if so how do you manage it?

If your behaviour and also gets them to focus on one wife and on their family bringing up their family. This has a similar effect to food restriction patterns of fasting for example things like Sabbath keeping. These. The Jewish ritual law is probably an extreme example of that. Anything that controls your behavior in a very strict and limited if not what.

Tips do you have for those who do? Because it can get people quite down. If they're a business owner then they can get discouraged. And what would you sort of advice be for them?

Pivot tends to create this character. So that was my conclusion from my research that you have a biological pattern which is group is very important. One thing we did not understand launching the franchise back in 1989 is how. How important it is to be with other people who are going through similar experiences. I would suggest to anybody who's in business find your peer group. Now this could be an industry association like lawmaker contractors in Australia. They have their own association part of that. Or you can be a part of a business group or a business networking group or anything. Find people who are going through the same sort of process as evolved to adapt animals to a food limited environment which we've hijacked as a mechanism to change character in a way that's suited to civilization. And the problem with that is that when you get wealth, extreme wealth and urbanization that tends to break down. And that's why civilizations collapse. So at that time I didn't know what was driving this what was causing what was really changing. I thought maybe something to do with the brain, the brain function. Now in subsequent years I kept up with literature. I used to actually go off anytime I had time. I would go off to university Meet up in the biomedical library. And this kind of thing I would constantly thinking about it. And then the field of epigenetics comes. And epigenetics was the clue to what I was seeing. And for those who don't understand what epigenetics is, the best way to consider a gene, a genome, it's like a series of taps and they're spitting out a protein. So you get a whole series of genes and they say okay, produce this protein, spit it out. And that protein, which could be rna, could be anything else, goes and does something. That's what happens. So that's built into your genome. Now what people have come to realize, scientists come to realize in recent decades, is that that can be influenced by changes which are called epigenetic changes. And what they essentially do is as a result of life experience or that you're going through and learn from them. And you'll find anything that you've been through, somebody else has been. And most people are quite willing to share they really people fundamental experience of your parents, grandparents, or even further back. They turn off alternately cooperative and we certainly find that within gyms. But I think in the broader community it's very these taps on or off and that affects the way they function. So the even though our genetic inheritance is fixed and human beings are very uniform genetically much important. But in terms of motivation, again talking is much more so than say chimpanzees or gorillas. So we're very similar books. Good stuff. Read about people who've been successful and learn from them and you'll see they had their trials. But the influence of the environment, which is largely driven by culture as well as by obviously poverty and wealth, actually affects the epigenome, affects character. So what we're trying to do in the research project is figuring out exactly what change to take turn so you can learn how you what have they got in place to create this kind of food shortage kind of mechanism through what can you learn from the most successful people? People often ask if I have a mentor, I don't really have any specific mentors. And then work out a way to reverse engineer it. And if we could do that, what you would have immediately is probably a very powerful way of dealing with problems like drug addiction and alcoholism, which to do with very short term thinking by helping people to think long term. But in the end what it would do is it help individuals to be more successful, better parents, better at their work, more likely to get skills, less likely to get into trouble with the law, less likely to get addicted to substances. And that would also affect the rest.

Of society from the audience as well. They see this thing online. There's a term which sometimes comes up with it because people don't understand the difference between them, which is eugenics and epigenetics. So do you want to outline the difference between both?

Yeah. Eugenics is a fairly nasty idea. Born in, actually in England, people like Francis Dalton about the idea that some people were genetically better than others. So the key to success is to have genetically better people. Now, that's most. It was quite widespread early last century. The Nazis particularly, their ideology was vile. And that was based on this. This eugenic idea that certain people are genetically superior to others and other people to inferior, which is complete rubbish because people are genetically extremely similar. Doesn't matter whether you're a European or aboriginal or Native American or Eskimo. Doesn't matter. But I have, in a sense, hundreds of really great mentors who are sharing everything. What you are, genetically speaking, we are astonishingly similar as a people. So eugenics is a very nasty idea. I do not hold for it. Epigenetics, even though it starts with an E, is totally the opposite idea. It's the idea that what matters is your environment to do with your culture, to do with the way you behaved, the way your parents behaved, and it's the element which doesn't depend on your genes.

Now, just going back to, why was that question to you so important back when you're 14 through this medium?

So talking books, podcasts is fantastic, but also in terms of discouragement, you've got to have the rest of your life in balance, which means really important things. Family.

Why was that question? Because that's driven your life's work, like Jim's group exists because you needed, you know, funds to fund this research from a very young age. So why was it that question that you had some. Your life's work and your passion's been about what is it in particular.

What matters in life, what is important to anybody. I saw fairly early on there were things going on in our society that mirrored what happened to other civilizations, like social relations in general. Exercise, sleep, ancient rhyme. And it's a pretty nasty experience. We enjoy exceptional wealth. We enjoy technology. You know, I've got 10 children. You know, how many children were born to me, to my wives? 10. They're all alive now. That is astonishing. Even in the wealthiest of the past, at least half the children would die before they grew up. Then you have modern dentistry and you have the ability to. You have sanitation, you have Eating right, all the different things. Not indulging in things like alcohol. Beyond a very moderate. I don't drink at all. But very, very moderate alcohol obviously needs to say anything, like, so many great advantages. You've got a situation where for the first time ever in human history, most people can be well fed, most people have a chance for a decent life. Hasn't happened quite yet, but it's getting better. That is a wonderful, wonderful achievement. I'm not decrying the problems of the modern world. There are many. But that is an amazing achievement. I do not want us to lose that I do not want to lose as a human being, as an Australian and as a parent. I do not want my children to be growing up and getting old and having their children in the world, which is going downhill. I can't think of anything more powerful and more important than that as a goal in life.

And to end on the last question, and a lighter note, what hobbies do you enjoy? You've mentioned a lot of different stuff and people can probably learn from that. But just to summarize, what hobbies do you enjoy outside of work?

Well, reading is probably my biggest hobby.

Listening to the audiobooks.

Yeah. Yeah. And that's not. That's not mostly about business. That's all kinds of things. I'm constantly getting great ideas. I find that the most exciting, thrilling thing. There are so many drugs of any kind, like, like marijuana, anything like that. It's absolutely terrible. I eat great books. I love reading books, I love listening to books, I love talking about books. I have a group that meets every second Monday. We all meet at a restaurant and we just discuss everything. The next book we actually discussed next time is Atomic Habits. Last one was Bad Therapy. So I love Ideas. Idea. So you look after your body, you look after your health, both physical and mental, and then you'll find that discouragement is less of a problem.

That's a really good, really good way to look at it. Now, what advice do you have for business owners who need to fire someone and aren't sure how or when to.

Do it if you want to fire somebody. In Australia, we have fairly draconian processes. We have to have three written warnings, properly documented, proper meeting to describe. Let a person find that fascinating. Talk about ideas. I talk about it with my kids because they're fairly bright. That's positive. Gardening, great hobby. I think it's almost the best there is in terms of mood. It's grow your own food, it's exercise, it's outdoors, contact with nature. I just like walking in nature and get on with it. I think it's only fair to give a person the chance to improve if they're doing poorly. But I do think in the end we all serve the business. Now I had a situation where my sister and my sister. I was very fond of my sister too. I just love the bush, just the great outdoors. Contact with life is really enjoyable. Also like computer games far too much. My sister, okay, offered her a job. It was a way to get her back from the UK where she was living. So I must say I don't look at social media. I find that too trivial. Quite, quite honestly we use social media very well but I have somebody who I said I'd give her a job and I'd pay for all her moving expenses and if it did, job didn't work out, looks after for me and does a great job. So I don't need to get involved with that. I don't need to see the negativity.

No, you get the benefit of it. You get to. We get to put all the content out there. You don't have to say anything else with it. I will say that's our last question in this in depth interview. So thank you very much for your time today Jim. You know, hopefully the US audience is.

Then, you know I would write off the debt so she at least come back to Australia because my mother was dying so I wanted her to be together with my mother. My mum loves Jill too so I did that. It did not work out and we.

Found a little bit more about you and they can head to jimpeman.com and also follow you on social media. The Jim Penman and we post a lot of this type of content and short clips and advice. So thank you once again for your time.

Tried a number of things. We tried moving her different department to apartment to department. It didn't work out. The co workers were saying this Jill is not good. So in the end I had to let her go and that was hard and she's my sister but I can't let down my other staff. If you've got a staff member who's not pulling their weight you have a responsibility not only to the company but to the fellow staff members. You've got to look after them as well. You can't be seen to be favourite. You can't let emotional considerations come and we all serve the company, including myself and I'd like to think if I got to the stage where I was a damage to the company that I should step down and this Is like time, Like Henry Ford, for example. Now, Henry Ford was a big brilliant businessman in his day. What he did in the 1920s to make mass production. Extraordinary man. But towards the end of his life, he hung on far too long and he damaged Ford enormously, immeasurably, by hanging on. So everybody, every staff member, including myself, we all serve the company. We've all got to recognize that sometimes a person needs to go and that maybe they can be brilliant at something else. And I'm pleased to say Jill found a job very, very shortly afterwards and very properly employed and that suited her. But what she was doing for us just didn't suit her.

The last question in this business owner series of questions here. What motivates you as a business owner still? And how do you find your motivation? Still on tough days?

My motivation is I've got three major motivations in my life, not necessarily in this order. I have my research institute, which is an all encompassing passion for me, something that I want to achieve, something I think can immeasurably help the human race. I have a responsibility to my family to provide for them and support them. And my kids have got, so they've got 10 children and they get in a stage where they didn't buy houses. That's very difficult in this day and age. So I'm helping them with that and helping them with having children. They're never going to be trust fund kids, but just a bit of assistance. And I have a responsibility to the people in my business. I have responsibility to my franchisees, to my staff and to my customers. Emotionally speaking, franchisees and staff would come first because I know them. So that's my motivation in a sense. I would not want to let people down. And if something goes bad, wrong, if, say, a particular franchisee is doing poorly, I feel that I actually find that quite distressing. And that's a very strong driving force. You know, why is this person not succeeding? What could we do different? What more can we do?

Now switching gears up a bit now we're going to go talk about family and the personal side, which you've alluded to a little bit in the questions before, but we'll go into a bit more now. Do you want to start off with telling the viewers about your family?

Okay. I have 10 children. I'm very proud of them. I love my kids. I think it's one of the greatest achievements of my life. On the whole. My kids have turned out pretty well. I'm proud of them. I've got three grandchildren, two more on the way. And it's wonderful. It's a sense of purpose to my life, and it's a sense of enormous joy. Now, I haven't have a very checkered career as somebody who's a practicing Christian. It's pretty hard to say. I've been divorced three times, and there's got to be something wrong with somebody with three different women, can't stand to live with him. All right? So I wouldn't want to lay myself open as any form of ideal person. And I really admire people who have one person they married to for life. What I can say is I've been married to my current wife for 23 years, and I am absolutely crazy about her. And strange enough, vice versa, too. So we're really, really, really passionate, close, sometimes very argumentative. We're both very fiery. But I absolutely adore her. And seriously, I mean, she's like 55 years old for me. She's more gorgeous than anybody I see on E. Full star on tv, which I'm probably a little bit biased. So family is everything. It just really is. There's a wonderful saying that goes, no other success can compensate for failure in the home. I absolutely believe in that. I look at somebody who's got fabulously rich but never had time to look after their kids or even to have kids. To me, they're a failure. I don't care how much money they've got. I don't care how many billions they've got. If you haven't. If you're not successful in your home, you really are a failure. And yet I know people who would never be considered successful in the eyes of the world, but they're great fathers or they're great mothers or they're great members of their church or their community. To me, these people are successful in the way that really matters.

Now, what role does music play in your life? You mentioned a little bit.