The most memorable question from an audience member ever!

Cool.

So welcome to another Ask Jim. Big numbers in training again in the middle of winter.

Yeah, about 120something I think we had this week.

Massive group. Great group of people as well. Great questions today. Presenters have all given.

Very, very lively, fun group too. I'll be told they're going to ask some great questions. Yes, that's good.

So before we get to this gentleman's question over here, just want to mention a few things. So this thing at the front, this Jim's pinata, we are doing an auction at the moment. It closes this Sunday, so you can bid on that. We've got the highest bid at 260 at the moment. A pretty big. I've got 200, 000 followers on TikTok's the Leading bid at the moment called Spoto. So you can bid on that if you want. Charles is going to put the link in the comments and you can come whack Jim with Jim. That's what we can do.

I'll join in too. Whacking Jim.

Absolutely. So that closes this Sunday. All the proceeds will go to the men's shed. So we'll donate money to there, which is Jim's favorite charity. So we'll do that as well. So closes this Sunday. So Son of the Six. And that's been donated by Jumping Castle. So thank you very much.

Cool.

Now let's get into it. So we've run through the housekeeping. First question up there. Go for it.

Just a curious question. What happens to the franchisees if the franchisor decides to sell the territory?

Sell this region? Yeah.

If the franchisor sells the region, the new franchisor comes in and looks after you.

So things stay the same.

Yeah, well, you're getting somebody better. If there's nobody else available, the national office will organise someone to look after you. There's always to be somebody who's there to support you, to ring you, to answer questions. It's going to be somebody. We can always find someone.

Oh, yeah, sounds good.

Yeah, no worries.

Yeah, Good man. What's your name? Sorry. Right, Damian. Damian. Good man. Cool. Guys, you want to come up and ask a question for Jim, please do. So just jump up. You don't have to wait.

Yeah, go for it. From Nigeria, Is that right?

Yeah, yeah, originally. And what's your name? Sorry? My name is Wale. Wale, yeah. So my question to you, Jim, is.

What'S your social media succession plan, which.

Is a retirement plan after, you know, building this?

Well, when I retire, we're going to have a ceremony And I'm going to be the guest of honor and I'm going to be a box on the floor. Okay? Because I'll be dead. I'm having the time of my life. Death, maybe Retirement, never. Succession plan. I've got 10 children. Just to make sure that I've got an heir in there somewhere. So there's a family trust set up so that my children are basically jointly in control of the business. One of the things I really want to avoid is Jim's being bought out by a public company which just acts like a greedy money grubber, which can happen. They're the best brands. Somebody buys them out and they say, how can we make more money? How can we screw our franchisees into the ground? So I'll probably live best guesses another 20, 25 years. Very good health, which is probably more than a lot of people are going to be in the business, but that's the plan.

Thank you.

Good man. Wale.

Good. Cool.

Got Jenny. Where's Jenny? Jump up, Jenny.

Ask.

Ask away. If you're watching online, guys, please put a comment through as well. We can respond to those.

Can I ask two questions?

Yeah, you can ask.

So, first one is, if you wanted to add a franchise division but you just can't do it, which one would it be?

Why can't I do it?

I don't know, I'm just. Have you come across one that you just couldn't get done?

There's certain things we wouldn't do. Somebody asked me about Jim's banking, which is something just now. So we wouldn't do that because we don't know enough about it. So we want to stick to things we understand, which is the service industry. We're good at that kind of stuff. When you want to look at a new division. We looked at things like, can an average ordinary worker make at least 60 bucks an hour? Labour cost, not including materials. I've got to see a decent income from it. I want to know if there's enough demand for it. We don't want to do something that's only got five franchises for the whole of Australia. It's not worth it. A good division at gyms has, you know, 30, 40, 50, at least. But really the key thing is not the division itself. There's 100 divisions we do tomorrow. It's finding the people to drive it. And you never know somebody in this room here one day come up with a new division and it could be huge. Often the franchisees or franchisors or people from the outside, we're talking today for the first time about Jim's flowers. Great business. We asked about hourly rates. How much can you make? What's the overheads? How long does it take? What training do you need? Looks a good one.

Okay, that's just for today. Second question is, I'm about to embark on this new challenge full time with four kids. Do you think you can fund a gyms cleaner to come clean my house?

No, that's it. But you're gonna make so much money that you'll be able to employ a gym's cleaner.

Any gym cleaners. Call me.

Thanks.

Jim, did you have another question about the lager? Was that something? Oh, sorry.

That's for my husband.

Ah, for your husband.

So he wanted to. He wanted to ask when can he try it and can you give him a free case?

A free case? Yes. Which division do you go to with gyms drunkards or what?

Scratch and dent.

Jump up now. Jump up now. You can have one. Grab a can now. But you've got to taste it on here and give us a review right now. Yeah.

Come on.

Is it cold? It's not cold. It's like an English style lager, right? Oh no. Nah, it's not an English style lager. Rip on off.

Here we go. Help you out there. Yeah. Grab it. That's it.

Open it up.

Open it up.

Turn around that way and give us a review. There we go. What do you reckon?

Be honest.

That's nice.

That's good. That's good. That's a genuine response. I can see. That's good.

Nice. Yes.

Well done. They going to take that with you? I will keep the there for price as well, but. Yeah, it's all right.

Good man.

It's a meaty lager via Bondi Brewing. Who did it for us?

So it's a crap beer.

Cooper's tried to shut it down though, didn't they? Jim, you're on TV holding a beer can. You never thought you'd be doing it.

Why they shut us down. Didn't like the round circle thing.

Yeah. They claim they own the round circle in the front quarter. Randall.

Yeah, that's all right.

Did you ever think you'd have your own beer? Because I know you're not a drinker, so.

Not a big alcoholic myself. No.

Next question. Here we have is go for it.

Hey. My question to Jim is about what your secret behind your success that you can share to your franchise that they are joining now.

Every day. Every day. Work out. Ask yourself the question. How can I do it better yes. Better service, more efficiency. That is the one thing.

Nice and simple and short. Jump up, ask a question. Anyone can come up anytime. Guys, this is for you.

Hi, Jim, Jacob here. You've got a long and successful history and still fighting fit and super healthy.

Have you got any great daily habits.

That you do personally that keep you as a great businessman? Well, to start every morning I get up, I do weightlifting for about 10 minutes. Mostly 8 kilo weights, like that. And then I run half an hour treadmill, then I have a cold shower. That's the basic of it. Don't eat breakfast. Sixteen, eight, fasting, lots of walking around during the day. Keep active, listen to a lot of books, talking books, read a lot, keep my mind busy every. Every day. Every day. Yeah. Thank you, that's great.

Good question. Jump up guys, if you want any.

Jacob's not actually a franchisee, he's a, he's a blow in coming from eo.

From the executive thing. Oh yeah, I did that.

Ah, yeah, the talk, which is good business, business entrepreneurs. It's a good group.

Jim, I'm wayne. Back in 2000, I left my cushy government job in the Northern Territory, not so cushy and moved to Bendigo where I was going to start a independent mowing round. And I got down there, it was a bit dry.

Yeah.

And I did it for about three weeks and I was starting to get some work, but then they declared a drought and I decided very quickly that this is probably not a good idea. So I got out and now I'm back again. Maybe we're going to hit some dry weather. I'm going up to Queensland. How did you get through the droughts for your franchisees?

Over the years when I started my full time business, flat broke, $30,000 in debt. About two weeks after I started, we had the worst drought in Melbourne history and every lawn in Melbourne died. Okay, so there's a challenge for you. No money, starting a business from scratch, mowing business. You do everything. But because people can water their garden so the weeds go berserk because it's so hot and sunny, I ran watering services, I pruned stuff, I did everything I could. You just go for extras. You work your basic bread and butter dies down. You extras, extras, extras. That's how you do it, right? That's how I got through that first summer. And I said the same thing to my franchisees. Work goes down. It's wintertime and it's too overcast like in the south or it's too dry as up in Queensland, New South Wales. Then you go for extras. And the best people will actually make more money in the off season than they do in the peak season.

Right.

Which area are you going to be in?

Queensland, Robina. I think I'll be pretty safe.

Yeah, I'm sure you'll be right.

We tend to get a lot of work in Queensland.

Why are you moving up there? How long have you been out there for?

I'm not there yet. After I finish the course, I drive up and I'll probably start in a couple of weeks.

You're not driving up because of the premier of Victoria, are you? No, no, no, no.

I'm actually from Darwin.

Okay, Right.

Yeah.

So I'm making a big move.

Good luck. Cool. Anyone got anything else? Just jump up at any time as well. I've got some questions here. So the next one I've got was from Mandeep, from bookkeeping is Mandeep.

Mandeep.

Hi, Jim. A couple of questions for you. One, what service do you use regularly, which is not part of Jim's group?

Me personally?

Yeah.

I don't know. Cleaning, gardening antennas.

Pest control. You had it.

Pest control. There's not much I haven't used, actually. Really?

So everything is within the gym scrub. That's great.

Well, yeah. I mean, we didn't have a plumber until recently. We did actually have plumbers, but it was Jim's plumbing and they were licensed. Not such a same deal. We can do pretty well. Everything perfect. You can't do it across the country yet. That's. That's the difficulty.

Your. Your response is a nice segue into the next question that I have, that when you use gym service providers, do you try to use different ones and do you actually give feedback to them through the survey?

I'd like to say I was that benevolent, but you know what I do? I go online and check their ratings. If I can find someone with a 4.8 or better star rating, I know that person is good. And if somebody in my family or friends ask me to recommend I do the same thing. I go in, have privileged inside access, look for somebody with a great rating, and then make the introduction to them. That's how I do it.

You're not answering my question, though. Do you give feedback?

Oh, yeah, of course I do. I've got a wonderful antennas guy. He does everything for me. He does all the installations and all the connections and the hanging of TVs on walls and everything.

Aaron Putty. Is that Aaron or Matt?

Matt Cathy. Matt. Cathy. Matt. Cathy.

Okay. I thought oh, Aaron does this stuff.

He's Jim's antennas. Kills life.

Ah, okay.

Looks like they're two good guys and he's fantastic. He's just brilliant. And he fixed my farm up. He did all kinds of things. He's just a great guy. So I just use people that I can find that are great.

Perfect. Thank you.

I got a good question. Got a couple online real quickly. Jim, Nicole's gone. Do you like beer? And how did you come up with the Jim's Beer?

Do I like beer? No, I don't drink beer. I have no idea what it tastes like. Somebody came to me with the idea. I mean it's sort of a gyms type of thing, isn't don't you reckon? I mean this can here is a.

Well, I got in a bit of trouble when you found out we did it.

Yeah, it's kind of very, very Jimmy, don't you think? It's like an Aussie brand. I like the look of it.

It works well.

If I did drink alcohol I would drink Jim's. Jim's Lager.

Born Lager.

Born Lager.

But I don't so I won't then.

Sebastian's gone here as well. When a franchisor is selling, so if they're selling in their region, do franchises that are existing or if he's got a split or something go get offered first he's asking for it depends actually.

Very often if a region franchisor wants to sell, usually the buyer will come from within the region. That's the most common thing to happen. But it depends if there's nobody interested, nobody of that calibre. When you're looking for somebody, you're looking for a franchisee who's making very good money, got great customer service and usually they've been a trainer or something. So in the habit of helping other people, that kind of person is what we look for and we tend to find successful franchisees do usually make pretty good franchisors.

We've got one here from Jacob from Mobile Mechanics. Where's Jacob?

Yep.

How you going Jim? I did ask this question yesterday and two people next to me answered it so it's a bit of a no brainer. But you did say yesterday that you don't charge an hourly rate. Throughout my years of being a mechanic anyway, every place that I've worked for uses an hourly rate.

Yep.

So I just pretty much have my own hourly rate and just it's, it's a work under the table sort of thing.

Work out your hourly rate which is A hell of a lot more than you are making working with somebody else and estimate is the job is best. Yeah. I don't like how the rates, they depress your income. You cannot get the same rate if you, if you give an out because people want cheap hourly rates. But if I say it's going to cost you 150 bucks to do X, Y and Z, no comparison. And if you happen to get it done in 20 minutes, good on you. Yeah.

But the existing franchisees will have all their data anyway, so they've been going for a while now. So you can just ask the existing franchisees what they've been charging for certain things and they'll have it all in there. Yeah. So you have an idea? Yeah, just ask them, they'll tell you straight. That's probably the best thing to do.

But you guys have got very good hourly rates. I know that they do.

I used Jim's mobile mechanics. He makes pretty good money. Kevin. Yeah, yeah, he does. Don't worry about that.

He had some trees taken out from my yard after a storm and I tell you what, they did a great job. It was expensive, I do well, but a great job. Very safe.

That's good to know.

Thanks, Jim. If you've got a question, guys, just come up and ask. Don't have to wait. Got one from Josh from bathrooms. Where's Josh? Josh here.

Josh.

I'll read it out. It's a nice quick one. Can we open a Jim's kebab shop?

The one thing I would not want to do is compete on food. We are a service company. We are good at what we do. Every time I go into something I don't know about, like gyms, banking, gyms, anything food, we tend to become a cropper. So, yes. One of the things I've learned. Stick to your knitting. Stick to what you know. We're good at what we do. We're very good at what we do. Doesn't mean we're good at something else. Bit like Elon Musk. Okay. This is a guy you know, Elon Musk, fantastic technologist. He really is one of the greatest engineering managers in the world. What he's done with SpaceX, what he's done is magnificent. What he's done with Tesla is amazing. What he's done with Twitter is an absolute fiasco.

X, now, Jim, it's changed its name to X.

Changed to X. I mean, what a ridiculous thing. He doesn't know what he's doing. He doesn't understand it. He shouldn't be doing things that he doesn't. And I admire this guy, but that Twitter X is just ridiculous.

Stick to your knitting, you're on X. Jimmy. They can follow your next gym at Jim Pemmin. If you've got a question guys, please feel free to come up and ask. We've got the next one here from Dave from Handyman. Where is Dave? Up the front. Hey, Gun. So my question is, how does it make you feel seeing your face and your brand everywhere?

Well, it's good, but I think the thing that makes me most proud is when I hear somebody doing something who shows the gym's culture. The examples I've given to you in the past, like the story, I don't know if you've heard this one, but what happened? The worst thing that ever happened to gyms group, the worst thing I've ever seen in all the 30, how many 34 years of history was what happened in West Australia a few years back when one of our mowing franchisees, when something happened to him and he killed his three little girls and his wife and his mother in law. And that was so horribly traumatic. It was really, really bad and everybody was really shaken up by it. I went across to Perth. I'm not keen on flying, but this case I needed to. And I spoke to, there was a meeting we held at a golf club in the north end of Perth and most of the franchises in the entire state were there. That was impressive for a beginning. And I said to them, I said people, what do we need to do to try and reduce the chance of this kind of thing, horrifying thing ever happening again? And they came up with all kinds of ideas. One of them was that to give every franchisee a speech Magnus with emergency numbers, especially mental health numbers and all franchisors are now doing mental health training and we've got a psychology, a counselling service paid for all paid for by Jim's group. Free to every franchisee if you need counselling. So all these things were worked out, but also somebody came up with a suggestion. They said, what if we had franchisees who volunteered to give their time to do counselling for other franchisees who might feel the need, who just don't feel able to talk to their franchisor just to give our time. And I said, look, it's a great idea, but that's an awful lot to ask to be an unpaid counsellor and coach for people who need it. I said, would anybody be interested in doing that, willing to do that? And you know what, most of the people in that entire room put up their hand because they just felt that sense of camaraderie. Now, that's, as I said, it's the worst thing that ever happened to us. And yet in some ways, it's the best thing to see that the care, the genuine care that people had for each other, they appeared to sacrifice their time and their efforts to do that. We've got mentors all over the country now set up to do exactly that. And during COVID we had terrible things happen in Victoria. It was really distressing. Not on that level, of course, but very upsetting. And franchisees worked together and franchisors who weren't being paid look after them. That's what makes me proud. Much more than numbers, it's the culture of the company that makes me proud. And I think it's exciting. And I know people are going to go out there and they're going to have this experience. They're going to actually, they're going to come across people who want to help them. And down the track of that, people here will be helping others and advising them and helping others. That sense of brotherhood, that's something like men's sheds. It's all about community. It's about togetherness, being part of a group, caring for each other. That's the thing I'm most proud of.

I had a second question. With all your divisions, all using quotes, is there any particular reason why you don't have a Jim's Quotes division with.

Quantity surveys and because there'd be no money in it. Because we all do it anyway.

Very cool.

60 bucks an hour. Remember that. You come up with a new division, think about it. At least you're going to be able to make 60 bucks. And they have enough people doing it.

Good questions. Appreciate those ones as well. If you've got a question, guys, jump up.

Yep.

Gotta jump up. Yeah, jump up, mate. Just come up anytime.

Hi, guys.

Sorry, Jim. I'm Rajinder Singh from wa. It's the best part of Australia, you know, guys? Yeah, yeah, we're from the best part.

Well, certainly the richest part. You got a lot of money across there with all the lines.

No, no, no, not that Western. Not only Western, we have best.

Okay.

And you know, in Australia, there's only one part. It's called Koinana.

Kwinana.

Yeah.

And I am from that town. And we are the richest people in the world. We have. We have our own freeway. Kwinana Freeway, you know that.

And the Kunana Motorplex.

Yeah, Kunana Freeway. When I come on the Freeway. They give me way. Because I'm from Kunana. I own that.

Is there a question? You got a question? Yeah, we own.

My question is, we have lots of different, you know, dog wash cleaners, people who work hard all day. You washing the dogs, you sweating, you have lots of water on you. And end of the day we need Jim's Tavern. We have own tavern. We can go and drink.

Does it make sense? The best.

You've asked the best question.

What do you think about that?

The delivery is being perfect.

All right. Okay. The thing of it is, it's not a business we understand and that's what we're not going to do.

Well, should be.

You can do a tap it in the park if you want.

End of the day we can say, yeah, we are in our own tavern. Even I'm drunk, they can take me. Oh, he's our member, you know.

The best we can do is Jim's Lawn Lager, but that's it.

Jim's Lawn Lager is the best we can do. Thank you.

Now, well done. Well done. Good question. I didn't know where that was going. That's the most odd question. I love it. It's good. Good personality. Good personality. Not going to go to Kwana, though. Yeah, it's all right. Kunana.

I'm from Marangaroo, so he loves his hometown. Good to see.

Very proud. What were you doing prior to gyms? What were you doing prior to Jim's?

We make Indian food. Aussies.

Very good. There's a great Indian restaurant not far from me. An Indian Nepalese restaurant just in Lido, five minutes away. It's great.

I cook better than that.

This is a man with a swollen head.

Great confidence. We love it.

My mom teach me how to do it.

Okay.

Next time Jim's giving me the wrap up.

Right.

Anyone got any more questions? Tim can top that. No, we'll go to the next one from here. Leigh Holliday. Where's Lee from? Dogwash.

Ah, we've got somebody here.

Lee. Perfect. Come up.

Dogwash told me. I had some good questions. I haven't seen her yet. There's the first one. I have two. Good. Where's the beard? 23 years ago I was single. My beard was going grey. Didn't want it to look too old. Shaved it off. All about women. Isn't that right, guys? What do we do? We aim to impress you ladies. That is our whole aim in life. Go ahead. Do you have a pair of favourite undie pants? Pair of what? Favorite underpants Special. Lucky I Buy everything from Kmart ultra cheap. I'm the biggest screw.

Probably got holes in it, don't you?

As mise the most person around. You know Kmart boot, uniform and trousers. That's it. That's me.

Well, there's a question online real quickly. Jim from Matt Bellman says with all the great new merchandise, are you launching Jim's Budgie Smugglers this year?

Well, we could.

You could. If there's a demand, if someone wants to have their. Yeah, Jim's head on their, you know, whatever. On the backside or on the side, whatever, you know, if they want to. We could. You could always do it. Someone's done socks before.

There's no questions.

Go to the mic. Go to the mic so we can see you.

Can I share a different story with you guys?

Go for it.

There's a guys. Sometimes we say the sales. You know, when you sell something. Please don't. Don't mind. My English is not English. It's a p. English. English means when you add Punjabi in that. So you know what the sales. Sometime people talk about sales. There was a guy, he's new in the sales as a. Like a salesman. And he went in a warehouse and said, please give me the job. I know how to sell the things. And the boss said, okay, we try. He says, that's your counter. You can sit there. If any customer comes, you start selling things. Customer came there from someone like a. The guy. He. He said, okay. He start talking to him. He said, look, this is very nice fishing rod. You can take this rod. You can fish. You can catch fish and enjoy. He said, oh, yes, nice rod. Okay, can you pack? Pack it. And then he said, oh, what do you do with the rod? You need some baits? Then he said, yeah, yeah, we have nice baits. Which one is. Never come up from the, you know, hooks, and you can catch lots of fish. He said, oh, okay, all right. Give me the baits. He sold the baits, then said, what do you do with that? You're sitting there where you sit. You need a chair. He sold him the chair. Then he said, oh, you sit in the sun, you need umbrella. He sold him umbrella. And then he said, what do you do? You're sitting there long hours. You need some drinks. He gave him few drinks. He sold. And his owner came there. He said, stop it. You sold already too much. His pocket is maybe empty. He guy came only to buy a rod and you sold lots of things to him. He said, no, he didn't came to me to buy a rod. He came to buy me a newspaper. Actually, he came to buy a newspaper. He came to me, he said, can I buy a newspaper? He said, what do you do with the newspaper? I want to read. I said, when you read the newspaper, where you sit? I sit on the beach. What do you do? I give you the rod, you can read the newspaper and you can catch the fish.

You need Jim's storytelling division. I reckon Jim's. Go do it. All right, jump up. Thanks, Raj. Thanks, mate.

I'm Michael from Window and Pressure Cleaning, Newcastle. I'm so glad I've taken the opportunity to come down for training. I've met a wonderful group of people and I share the vision with the Jim's group that, you know, everything that's been presented so far that the group to grow from 5,000 to 10 to 15. I have a question, and it's an open ended question, Jim, for you regarding the franchise agreement. I read it five times. I still needed help and a family member, you know, very close to me looked at it and said, this is totally crazy. It's. I've never seen an agreement like this. She sees an agreement every week on her desk and she said it's the fairest agreement that she's ever seen. And, you know, I hope it doesn't change.

Thank you.

I know it needs to. There's always a little tweak. But, you know, you're really giving the franchisees a. A real fair go.

Thank you. Really appreciate it. If it does change, it'll be in a way that helps franchisees and protects them more, I can tell you that.

Yeah, that's fantastic. I'm so glad to be part of the group.

Good on you for reading the agreement. Good on you for reading the franchise agreement.

That is actually quite amazing. Most franchises do not read the agreement. I take my hat off to you, sir. That was very well done.

Can I ask a couple more questions?

Go for it.

Yes, go ahead.

So, Jim, barring what has happened today during the Q and A session, what actually pisses you off? So what can a franchisee or a franchisor do that Jim will say? You know what? I actually. That was terrible.

Well, I probably shouldn't say this, but I had an email this afternoon from a guy who'd actually been given a franchise and he was complaining about having to pay fees. He had about 260 jobs since March. And I said, you can go independent and you can run your own business if you wish to. And he says, no, I want to stay with you. But he grizzled about Paying all the money. So that annoyed me.

Okay, well, that's your threshold. Wow.

Okay. Very hard man to get rid of.

You're very tolerant.

It just happened a little while ago. Okay? That's what's in my mind. But I thought, jeepers creepers, he's got a good deal. He's had hundreds of leads from us and he still reckons we're not doing enough for him. That annoyed me.

Thank you.

Question, We've got Owen from mowing. Where's Owen from mowing? Is Owen still here?

No.

I'll ask him on his behalf. Jim, are you a billionaire?

Oh, no, not even close. They like to. They tried to put me down for the rich BRW rich 500 or whatever like that. And I said, no way. I'm not even close to that. Our system works on very narrow margins. Our average fee is about 6% and the average profit we make from Jim's group as a whole would be probably less than 1% of our turnover. It's not that much, really. It's a great. I mean, look, I'm not poor. I do pretty well and I fund my research, which is what's in this book. But it's a high volume, low margin business. That's the way it's designed. It's designed to be attractive to franchisees, not to make a whole lot of money.

No one's asked you about that yet, have they? So.

No, it doesn't.

It's an exciting thing, so we'll pin it as well. If you've got any more questions, guys, please feel free to jump up and get that out.

Cool.

We've got some more. Here's Tom, Scratch and Dent. Where's Tom?

Hey up, Jim.

All right.

Yeah.

Look, I was reading the first chapter of your book and he said you like computer games. You play computer games? Yeah, I play computer games and I've been playing them since I was, I don't know, probably 14 or something. And I still play them now. My kids play them. They probably shouldn't, but they do. I just wondered, what's your. What's your favorite computer game?

I play stupid games. I like games that don't take very long.

Right.

I word play, which is a sort of version of Scrabble.

Yeah, I know what that is, but.

You can play it in about 10 minutes. There's another game called Concrete, which is like a simple risk game that takes me out 15 minutes. I don't want to do games take hours because it's too distracting.

Right.

So I do my work, take a Bit of a break. Play a quick game, go back to my work. Another one's called sliders. I play sometimes. It's good.

And do you think it's good for the mind? Probably not in small doses. I mean, not in long doors.

Yeah. I'll tell you what, though, if anybody's around tomorrow night, I'll bring a chess set down and a pack of cards when you play 500. So I like those games too. You play 500 player. It's good. It's good. It's fun. All right, I'll be around tomorrow night.

Thank you.

Yeah, thanks for that question. By all means. Guys, just jump up and ask Jim anything you like as well. We've got a lot of time for questions, so we've got one here from online. John Egan. Jim. What about Jim's Crocs for dog wash? Do you wear crocs or do you own crocs? Know what crocs are?

What is a croc?

What is a croc? It's like an odd shoe. Odd shoe? Open toe shoe. Open shoe sort of thing.

Plastic. For dog wash?

Yeah, for dog wash. He must be wearing him.

So I don't know what that means then.

Rossi's gone. Any exciting new divisions online? Opening soon?

Yeah.

What's opening?

The whole stack. We hope to have Jim's flowers today. First time we talked to somebody. Sounds a really interesting one. Looks a good prospect. Jim's vending machines.

Vending machines.

Vending machines. It's just. Actually, we talked about a couple of weeks ago, somebody sent me an email. So that looks a really.

How does that work?

Well, what you do is you actually, you're a franchisee. You basically get assigned certain machines and you can pay a certain amount to get in. And what you got to do is to fill the machines up. But part of the job as a franchisee is you talk to the customers and you find out what they want and you can change the mix in the machines. You can do, sell anything. We're going to have a gym's vending machine where it's got gyms, Monopoly gyms, books, gyms, whatever, hats, clothes, everything. So you can. Vending machines can be anything. So you want to have a mix that suits the people. So it's ideal for franchising. And one of the issues we've got is a lot of our franchisees, they're doing things like fencing and they're mowing, they're making good money. But it's getting a bit. They're getting a bit old for it. So we've got people with great business aptitude who can't be so physically active. So one of the things we're doing eagerly looking for is businesses that you can run, use your business experience, but aren't so physically demanding. So we're very excited about that. Jim's Beauty is about to start. Jim's Home Nursing is about.

Jim's Home Care. Yeah.

Home care, yeah.

There's one that's relaunching. We did a video for it yesterday.

That's right, yeah.

What's that? Plumbing.

Plumbing. Jim's Plumbing. Proper Jim's Plumbing. With franchisees not contracted out, we've got Jim's Hydraulic Repair probably starting in January. Now, we don't know about this yet. We don't know how they're going to go. But these are all new divisions that are just in the pipeline.

And how hard is it for someone here to start a division? Let's say they become a franchisee for three months or six months and they want to do a division. How hard is it if you show.

Us that you've got what it takes? It's not easy, not difficult at all. Starting a new division typically costs no more than buying a franchise. It's quite simple. You just got to put a lot of effort and time into it.

There we go, guys. We got a lot of time for questions, so please feel free to jump up. Jim's book up there is a good one to ask about as well. Mitch. Jacob. Where's Mitch and Jacob? That a joint question for Jim? No, I'll read it out. It's gone. David, why do you call yourself Jim?

When I went home, I went to work at a farm and there was a young kid called David there, about my age, and I said, call me Jim. I just like. It's got a very sort of Aussie, sort of macho kind of sound to it, don't you reckon? I mean. I mean, how would David's mowing work, really?

Dave's mowing. Dave's mowing.

Dave.

Maybe Davo's mowing.

Really? He's David James.

Yeah, my name's David James.

Yeah. So is he.

Same David James.

Okay.

I use my middle name, but it's just. I just got. It seems to got a ring to it. It's very Aussie. It's very. It's very tough and masculine and, you know, I just like it. Don't know.

You ask a question. Yep. Go for it.

I didn't like James's mind very much, though. It sounds like a butler, doesn't it?

A son's called James.

My dad's called James. I got a son called James too. I got 10 children, so I've got six sons. They call them all sorts of things. Yeah. Richard, Andrew, David, James, Thomas, Aaron. You've got eight more to go.

Hello. I'm little nervous. Okay, I have a question. Basically, gyms, group, whatever we are doing, it's like a service that we provide to the everyday. Like a households. Have you ever thought of taking all the gym group and start into a construction business?

We do have Jim's Construction.

Oh, you do?

There is a division called Jim's Construction. Yes. It's only got two people in it, so it's quite little. But we do have a business called Jim's Construction. Yeah.

So you. It's like you purchase the land and.

Then build it like a builder.

Oh, like a proper building.

Okay, it is.

And where is it?

There's one in Melbourne.

In Melbourne.

It's a building inspection franchisee as well. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah.

Is it named under gyms?

Yeah, it's called Jim's Construction. If you look on the website, you'll see it.

They've done some houses and stuff. Yeah, they've done some townhouses and so all that big signage at the front. Gyms construction.

Is it like from scratch or is it like from scratch?

Yeah, from scratch. Okay. The actual builders. Yeah.

Okay, I'm gonna buy.

There we go. Got some more here as well, Jim. So if you want to ask a question, guys, just jump up as well. There's an interesting black book there which you might not know about, but that's a good question as well. Hi, Jim, nice to meet you. Thanks for having us down here for training. I got a bit of a funny question. We live in a techno technological age and I was just kind of wondering what your favorite piece of technology might be at this. At this point. Because there's a lot of things going around and coming out. Electric cars and robots coming out. I thought I'd just. What interests you?

My favourite technology is Jim's. Is FMS and Jim's Jobs. It's our own internal software. What we do could not be possible without computer software. Like we've got a client who rings in. There might be 30 franchisees in the area, but we know exactly who wants work, what kind of job, what time of day, everything, and it sends out to them automatically. It's a super efficient system to try and do this thing manually. What we do with computers, it'll cost more than the entire franchise. Fees that we charge, including advertising, just would not be possible. So that is my absolute best technology. And I think we spend several million dollars a year on software development. Probably imagine about $5 million a year on software development on computers and stuff. And it's the best spending, it's the best investment. One of the main reasons that our business has gone so well in recent years is because of surveys and complaint systems, which has driven the level of complaints down to a fraction of the level now. You couldn't buy that with millions of dollars worth of extra advertising because we just give better service to customers. So that's the best technology around. Doesn't require chatgpt, just good systems. And they're getting better. Yep.

Good question.

Thanks for that question.

Good question. Jump up, Ask one. Go for it. Ask anything you like.

Hey, Jim.

David, Sally. Jim. Smelling up at Burnie in Tassie. I notice you've got a new book.

Good man. Would you like to tell us something about it?

This is my research project that I did in my 20s, developing a theory of society, of social change. And the reason I started gyms in the first place was to fund this, which I'm now doing to the tune of several million dollars a year. I've got a research project in the animal House, basically at La Trobe University, working with rats and looking at the exposure to mild food restriction and so forth. So that is my life's work. Wonderful.

Look forward to reading it.

Yeah, sure.

Well, we do get free copies, so if you want one, ask us at the end. Jim can sign it. If he pulls it off, you can put it on ebay. Might be 500 bucks or something. I love first edition.

Thanks.

It is. How many editions is this? Banks, is this. It's changed a bit over the years.

It has changed, but this version is the first edition of this one.

But you discovered something pretty exciting. You have to go into too much. But you were very pumped about this when you were telling me today.

Yeah, yeah. I made a very clear development, the biggest development in decades. There's a thing called a lemming cycle and you've probably heard of lemmings, how they cycle populations. The thing is, humans do it too. We have cycles which take roughly about 300 years. And they're demographic cycles of birth rate and death rate and so forth. And we just figured out what causes them and how they work and why they change with time. Very difficult to explain if you don't understand biohistory, but it's actually. Anybody interested? It's biohistory.org you can see some videos on there and Some books, but it's very exciting stuff. It could change the world dramatically. If I can show that this is correct.

Light rating on the plane home. So if you come and ask at the end, we'll get him to sign it and if he pulls it off, could be worth a lot of money. Here we go. Next one here, if you want. Yeah, jump up, come up, ask one.

Hey, Jim, again, just curious, would you be at all interested in creating a Jim's online app for each division?

Jim's Online app for each division.

We actually have a system called Jim's Jobs, which is a system for franchisees to run their business. It's still got a bit of work to do, so we don't push it very hard, but we've got a few hundred franchises using it. Eventually it will do all kinds of things like it will book Jobs automatically into your diary if you want. It'll allow you to buy and sell regular clients and do a whole like a really fun, fascinating things which will. Which will help your business. The other thing we are hoping to develop is a gyms app which goes on people's mobile phones and it's also going to have a matching service in it. So you can actually find your true love as well through Jim. That's the plan.

Sounds good and easy to me.

Yes, thank you.

Thanks for the question. Got one here online real quick, Jim, which is a good one for everyone here. Wayne Grundy's gone. Have you ever thought of having Christmas merchandise that we can purchase for our clients for Christmas?

It's good.

Good idea.

It's a good idea.

Yeah. Let's have some. Yeah.

What would you like to see? Jumpers or what? Because we have all this stuff which we do for cost price. If you're a franchisee, you can actually get these for cost price. We do a. People who order like six at a time, give it to real estate agents and stuff like that. So that's a good thing to do. Or shirts and bucket hats and stuff. So we always do that for franchisees if they want.

Yeah.

Christmas sweater, if we think there's something.

To sell for sure.

Absolutely.

The big problem is vending it. That's why a Jim's vending machine would be good. Hope to find some sort of a shopping centre somewhere we can put a Jim's Vending machine in. They can have Monopoly and they can.

Have all kinds of things. Well, if you're dealing with real estate agents, it's far better, I think, giving them something like that.

Yes.

As opposed to other.

If you get in. Well, with a property manager who's usually a woman, go in and give her a copy of that for her kids. I think you've got a tremendous chance of being in and getting a few jobs out of it.

Yeah. So we have a lot of people who might buy six at a time. It's not overly expensive. If you get one or two of them across the line.

26 bucks.

No, it's a bit more of that cost is around $40. So we sell it for $40 for franchisees, for the public it's like 60, 65. Cool. Got some more questions here online, guys. By all means, please come up and ask Jim. Darren's gone here. Hi guys. I'd like to ask Jim if he had an idea of what the annual turnover of a franchisee might have been over the years. What's the highest earner? You have to say the name, but the person, no.

All I know is multiple billions. I heard of one, one particular franchisee who was clearing. He reckons he cleared $2 million a year profit. That was too much I've ever heard of.

2 million a year profit. What division was he in? Don't change your division. If you've heard of a cheap.

I think it was actually paving. Paving, yeah. Back in the old days. Yeah.

Okay.

That was the most I've ever heard of. But I don't know whether he's exaggerating or not, but I do know that quite a few franchisees turnover well over a million dollars a year. That's not that unusual these days.

But what was Dan's peak? So they had Dan today in their training. I can't remember what Dan would have.

Said but no, his best year wasn't that good. It was just to have been a remedial, I think about one hundred and something thousand. But he only did it for just a few years before it became a franchisor. People are surprised at this but actual fact, you think the top earning people in gyms are mostly franchisors, but actually most of them are franchisees. Most of the actual richest, best earners, franchisees who build up staff and employ a lot of people. Very major businesses.

Got another one online here, Jim, real quickly. Andrew's Yard services on Independent says. Hi Jim, as an entrepreneur and researcher you have a diverse range of interests from gardening to technology and even gaming. How do you find a balance between running your successful gardening and lawn maintenance businesses whilst indulging in your passion for technology and gaming? Any productivity tips you can share with us? Thanks.

I have a great Secret of business that I am particularly pathetic at doing just about everything. Seriously, I am. I am not good at social media, I am not good at finance, I am not good at hr. I am not good at management in general. There are so many things I don't do, or I do only a very few things. One of my chief things is keeping in touch with franchisees so that anybody can contact me if they need to. And honestly, I probably don't work more than about 40 hours a week. I'm not a real hard worker. I just try and make sure I work very efficiently when I do an email, for example, start at the top. See? Read it, deal with it, do something with it, Go to the next one, deal with it. What's the most efficient way to do it? The fastest way. Deal, deal, deal, deal, deal. Like that. So I can deal with a lot of people. I have an open email so that anybody can email me about any new idea. Most new ideas come from somebody emails me. I pick up the email. People don't respond to their emails fast, so I'm very, very easy to contact. I get a phone number I don't recognise. I know it's one of my franchisees because nobody else has it. Well, it shouldn't have it, so I can call them back. So I actually don't do an awful lot. I spend a lot of time walking around talking to staff, but I. Generally speaking, let's get on with it. That's my secret. And I think, actually I have a benefit. If you're really, really good at doing lots of things, you tend to do it all themselves. If you're not very good at doing them, you have to get somebody else to do them and you have to trust them to be able to do it well. That's my secret.

We do have a YouTube video with you. Day in the Life of Jim. It goes for 40 minutes, where we rock up when you're in the dressing gown and we follow you the whole day around so people can see how you work. Exactly. It's a good one to watch. Got another one online here from Warden saying, how do you think the plumbing division will go with the relaunch?

Well, it's good. It's got three coming in already. It's only just launched. I think it's great. It's hard to get a division going where you've got to have an existing qualification. It's much easier when you can train from scratch. But they've got good leadership and they've made a great start.

So I'm Excited money from Colin Harper online says who attends the Jim's Group board meetings, what's discussed and what does Jim have the final say?

We have a group called the Advisory Committee, which represents franchisors and divisionals and we meet every two months now, isn't it? Yep, I think it's every two months. And they bring up. Anybody can bring anything to that committee, any change the system they want. In a sense, they have the final say, but I would say 99% of the time, we just do whatever they suggest. I mean, they're not going to do something stupid like saying, hey, Jim, how about halving your fees? Or something like that. So. But if there's a decision to be made, and I can't see any particular reason for one choice or another, I just asked the committee, what do you think? You get their wisdom, you get their feelings, you get their feedback. We're actually a pretty democratic sort of company. Everybody has access to me. If you've got ideas. Things get changed very fast. You just have to get some consensus if a division wants to get together and change their logo or their name. For example, we had a division called Jim's. What is it called? Windscreens and Blinds.

Fly Screens and Blinds.

Fly screens and Blinds. The division as a whole thought that that was the wrong ground, so they've just now changed it around to human blinds.

Well, Test and Tag used to be Anti Shock and now it's Test and Tag was Fire safety, sir.

They can change their colour. So actual fact, there's an awful lot of discussion goes on, even though the core. There's the core of Jim's group, which is two things, which is service to franchisees, number one and service to clients, which is number two and very close related. So those things do not change. But in every other way, we're very, very changeable. If you can work out a better way to do one or both of those things, then we're really interested. And we change all the time. We innovate constantly. We're always trying new ideas, new things. We've got this new system for Accor vouchers. We bought 500 Accor vouchers paid for by mostly by Jim, which is to do with selling our surplus clients for outsiders. They're worth about 600 bucks each. Any franchisee with a story of any kind, good news, whatever, community service, anything at all, does a brief interview, we give them a $600 voucher. That's just a new idea and it's been brilliant. We've got like, how many interviews.

80. I've done 120, actually.

120 so far, yeah. So all this great stuff, we're recognising great people, recognising achievements. It's just a new idea we just came up with.

Absolutely. And online we got one from FAB which says, when's the next batch of beers getting done? So they're all in the office that can, for legal reasons, won't be getting done again, but we're doing another run, I think, with a different can design they want to do. So they want to do another can design with one of the. There's a bit in the office. So we do sell. If you do want to have a slab of Jim's lager, you can buy it for pretty much cost price. Just come to the office and our finance team will bill you. So just don't drink during this training sessions, but you can drink it after and you can come up and take one if you would like one. We do have them for sale as well. Cool. Anyone got any more questions for Jim? Jump up.

Sorry, last one for tonight, I promise. What is the biggest reason franchisees leave the Jim's group?

The main reason people fail has got to do with poor customer service. People who give poor customer service are far more likely to fail. Now, having said that, a lot of people, some people go independent. That's one reason that does happen. We don't make it too difficult. You just pay a few thousand people. Sometimes we don't even charge that. Just go and run your own business if you don't feel there's value to it. Sometimes people get a bit old physically. It's too hard for them, which is why we're very interested in divisions that they can do with. Sometimes people just want to change, but lots of reasons. But sometimes people fail and it's very sad. And if I could do anything at all, if I had one wish, it would be able to shine a light on somebody, be able to tell me whether that person's like this. Because most people do succeed. I wish I could pick out who isn't going to and make sure they don't join, because it's not a good thing.

Thank you.

Thanks for that question. So if anyone's got any more questions for Jim, if not, will you do?

Yep.

It's a very important one. We're a small business now, this guy and I. We're organizing our Christmas party. Do you want to join us? It's only the two of us. Just come up to Sydney and join us for our Christmas party.

I'm always happy to zoom in. Party poop. I dislike travel intensely. My idea of a long trip is to drive half an hour up to my farm. That's it. I don't want to go any further than that.

I feel your pain because I get motion sickness, but I do things like.

Like the EO talk idea. I like doing that kind of stuff. It's. It's fun and it's really worthwhile.

You'll zoom into conferences.

I can talk to a whole stack of wonderful entrepreneurs of two of which we have here tonight and, you know, get their question and share my ideas. I enjoy that. That's like an hour on zoom. That's easy. But if you have to try to go somewhere to do it, not good.

If you start a podcast, you'll do your podcast.

I'll send you the invitation just in case.

I'm very happy to zoom in. If you want to organize it, I'll zoom in and wish you a happy birthday.

Christmas. Christmas.

I do that all the time.

Christmas. We've got one here online as well. Jim quickly says, how do you think about the future of the energy division? He's saying he's just joined the future of Jim's Energy. So we have Jim Solar. If people don't know Jim's energy, it's going very well.

Yeah, it is. You need a certain kind of personality, more of a sales orientation rather than a tradie type of thing. But they. Because they actually go out and sell the system. So it's very different. A lot of people of Indian descent there, which are doing extremely well.

And another guy in line, apparently a.

Very good earner, but you just got to have the right kind of temperament to do it.

You do go real business because you're organising contractors and subbies, you're responsible for them.

It's a great division, actually. We've had some solar panels here done. I had some at my house. We've got a whole lot of. If you have a look at the Jim's office, there's a whole lot of Tesla batteries. No, not test batteries. I didn't put them in, but the. The charges, the fast charges energy did that. So what. What's happened? We've got solar panels on loose place here, which produces surplus power during the day. So what I said, anybody who has electric car like Joel's just bought one, come in, charge your car off our solar panels during the day for free. So it's a little bit of a start perk, but doesn't cost us anything because the solar Panels produce so much power. I love energy, I really believe in that kind of stuff. I've actually the first new car I ever bought was electric Volvo late last year. I've always had really cheap cars in the past but I wanted electric cars if I believe in electric.

We've got one here from Andrew. Hi Jim. I've heard you mention a few times about giving franchises to independent businesses to, to bring them into the gyms portfolio. What do you look for in an independent in this scenario?

I have enormous respect for anybody who runs an independent business successfully because between 90 and 95% fail in their first year. So anybody who runs an independent business from scratch and actually does reasonably well has got to be pretty special because it's so hard. What we typically find is that those people, if they come across, they make very good franchisees, they typically double their income very fast because they get lots more leads and they get better quality leads and they get told how to quote them properly.

We're seeing a trend now Steph from pest control's telling me a couple of people, five year independent pest control businesses just finding it that hard to market themselves and generate work. So they're coming in board and trying to make things a bit easier for themselves.

Yeah, we've had a few actually lately and I think with times are tough, people are struggling. It's very hard to understand. Sometimes you talk to independents and they say business is hard, business is difficult. It's so hard, not enough work around, can't charge. We have such a different experience, we really do. We have so much surplus work, it's almost like you're in a different country.

Says most of the divisions do not require experience and qualifications. So how are we going to compete with our experienced and knowledgeable competitors? So saying coming in with no experience in training up against an independent who might be doing it for a long time.

I don't think apart from knowing how to do the job, experience has an awful lot to do with success. You have somebody who just starts off and they're fantastic. Most of the problems in business are not to do with lack of technical expertise. If you don't know how to do a technical thing, you ask your franchisor, you ask a trainer, ask somebody you know. It's easy to find people succeed or fail by their ability to run a business, by their passion for customer service, by their business sense ability to charge correctly, to collect bills, to deal with clients, to communicate. These are the skills that matter. Years of experience will not give you that and I would particularly find let's put it this way. If you were going to run. If I was going to look at somebody who wanted to run a mowing business and you had somebody who'd been a Lawns groundskeeper for 20 years or somebody who was, say, a salesman, I would pick the salesman to be more. Be successful. It's a funny thing, you know, you know, when they. And talking about a different subject, you know, the. The Navy Seals type thing where they go to the hell week and they really, really do it in a dreadfully ruthless fashion. You know, the people that succeed tend to be the best at that. It's not actually the muscle men and the fitness fanatics, it's people like insurance salesmen because they got the determination. They don't give up. So character is everything. Character is absolutely everything. It's first and foremost. This is what this book's about, actually. Far more than intelligence, far more than experience, far more than education. Character comes number one. If you've got a person with a great character and you look at the people that are successful in gym as the heroes, people like Sharon, Dan, Carl, people you've been hearing from, and.

There'S.

So many, I'd like to mention them. Haydar Hussain and Ali. Great people, great leaders, great Bill Cobanoglu. I'm leafing people out. There's so many great people in gyms. What's got in common is character. They got great. They're great people with great character, great passion for their people, their franchisees.

Cool. We'll leave it on that. So what we're going to do, guys now is Jim will pick three of his favourite questions for the first chick of the prizes. And anyone who asks a question up there, come and see me after. And I've got some prizes and stuff to give away as well. Besides the pinata. You can't take that one. That's the auction one.

I love that guy who read the contract five times. That. That's phenomenal.

Contract five times. Come up, mate. You get first pick of anything up here.

I've never. I've never come across anybody who's actually done that well. I. Congratulations. I really appreciate the comment too. Oh, thank you.

There you go. Awesome. Cool. Next one, Jim, what was the other one that stood out to you?

I think the question about succession is a good one.

Succession. Who asked the succession question? Was it Wale?

Yep.

Yeah, take anything you like. The book. You can take the book for sure. Take the book. And was there anything else, Jim? I'll get Jim to science at the end. Yep. And was there anything else? What was the other one?

I don't know what struck out to you.

I've got to give it to the entertaining guy, this guy here. Because I've never had that. We've done 160 of these. I've never had anyone experience ask a question like that or whatever you're doing.

Never. Never. I've never had it too. He stands out.

Yeah.

Come on. Come on.

Is it Raju?

Raj?

Raj, You? I don't. I never experienced anything like that before. You threw me. I don't know what you're doing. You can take anything you like. Which one do you want? Which one do you want?

If we ever do Jim's comedians, they're going to call on you.

Well, maybe. Maybe not call. Maybe not calling him. You might be getting a breach notice. That's all.

Oh no.

You've started him again.

No, no, no. Come on, wrap it up. You can do it after this kick the right thing you like.

That's not a problem. What's the best?

Maybe I should have.

If you have any stress. Sorry. You are very experienced than me. Means if you are stressed in your life. You have no you. Have you seen.

Guys.

The old style monograph. You know the record plays.

Can I just choose the monopoly?

Yeah.

Come and pick the Monopoly. Chug this guy up.

Yeah. Come on down.

Inside up.

We're gonna wrap it up. Well, can I come and tell a minute?

You know, you see that record player's old style. There was a needle on the car stuck in the same room.

Listen, my friend, if you don't keep quiet, we'll take your prize back.

I'll take the Monopoly.

You'll take the Monopoly.

Which one would you like? Which one would you like? Give to her. But which one would you like?

I love the T shirt.

Take the T shirt.

Cool.

Okay. All right.

Anyone who asked a question, come and see me as well. Sign a T shirt. You can sign a T shirt. We had a pen. But if you ask the question guys, please feel free to come up and get a book as well. We'll give you something as well. Thank you very much. Good man. Thank you very much.

Guys. From scratch. But they've got good leadership and they've made a great start. I'm excited.

Money from Colin Harper online says who attends the Gyms group board meetings. What's the discussed and what does Jim have the final say?

We have a group called the advisory committee which represents franchisors and divisionals and we meet every two months now. Isn't it?

Yep.

I Think it's every two months and they bring up. Anybody can bring anything to that committee, any change the system they want. In a sense, I have the final say, but I would say 99% of the time we just do whatever they suggest. I mean, they're not going to do something stupid like saying, hey, Jim, how about halving your fees? Or something like that. But if there's a decision to be made and I can't see any particular reason for one choice rather than another, I just ask the committee, what do you think? You get their wisdom, you get their feelings, you get their feedback. We're actually a pretty democratic sort of company. Everybody has access to me. If you've got ideas, things get changed very fast. You just have to get some consensus if a division wants to get together and change their logo or their name. For example, we had a division called Jim's. What is it called? Windscreens and Blinds.

Fly Screens and Blinds.

Fly Screens and Blinds. The division as a whole thought that that was the wrong way out, so they've just now changed it around to Jim's Blinds.

Well, Test and Tag used to be Anti Shock and now it's Test and Tag was Fire safety.

So they can change their colour. So actual fact in a. There's an awful lot of discussion goes on, even though the core. There's the core of Jim's group, which is two things, which is service to franchisees, number one, and service to clients, which is number two and very close related. So those things do not change. But in every other way, we're very, very changeable. If you can work out a better way to do one or both of those things, then we're really interested and we change all the time. We innovate constantly. We're always trying new ideas, new things. We've got this new system for Accor vouchers. We bought 500 Accor vouchers paid for by, mostly by Jim's plus, which is to do with selling our surplus clients for outsiders. They're worth about 600 bucks each. Any franchisee with a story of any kind, good news, whatever, community service, anything at all, does a brief interview, we give them a $600 voucher. That kind of. That's just a new idea and it's been brilliant. We've got like, how many interviews?

80. I've done 120, actually.

120 so far? Yeah. So all this great stuff, we're recognizing great people, recognizing achievements. It's just a new idea we just come up with.

Absolutely. And online, we've got one from FAB which says when's the next batch of beers getting done? So they're all in the office that can, for legal reasons won't be getting done again. But we're doing another run, I think with a different can design they want to do. So they want to do another can design with one of the. There's a feat in the office, so we do sell. If you do want to have a slab of Jim's lager, you can buy it for pretty much cost price. Just come to the office and our finance team will bill you. So just don't drink during this training sessions, but you can drink it after and you can come up and take one if you would like one. We do have them for sale as well. Cool. Anyone got any more questions for Jim? Jump up.

Last one for tonight, I promise. What is the biggest reason franchisees leave the Jim's group?

The main reasons people fail has got to do with poor customer service. People who give poor customer service are far more likely to fail. Now, having said that, a lot of people, some people become independent. That's one reason that does happen. We don't make it too difficult. You just pay a few thousand bucks or sometimes we don't even charge that. Just go and run your own business if you don't feel there's value to it. Sometimes people get a bit older that physically it's too hard for them, which is why we're very interested in divisions that they can do with. Sometimes people just want to change, but lots of reasons. But sometimes people fail and it's very sad. And if I could do anything at all, if I had one wish, it would be able to shine a light on somebody, be able to tell me whether that person's like to succeed or not. Because most people do succeed. I wish I could pick out who isn't going to and make sure they don't join because it's not a good thing.

Thank you.

Thanks for that question. So if anyone's got any more questions for Jim. If not, we do. Yep.

It's a very important one. We're a small business now. This guy and I, we're organizing our Christmas party. Do you want to join us? It's only the two of us. Just come up to Sydney and join us for our Christmas party.

Bye.

Zoom. I'm always happy to zoom in. Party poop. I dislike travel intensely. My idea of a long trip is to drive half an hour to my farm. That's it. I don't want to go any further.

Than that I feel your pain because I get motion sickness, but I do.

Things like the talk I did. I like doing that kind of stuff. It's fun. It's really worthwhile.

He'll zoom into conferences.

I can talk to a whole stack of wonderful entrepreneurs of two of which we have here tonight, and get their questions and share my ideas. I enjoy that. That's like an hour. That's an hour on zoom. That's easy. But if you had to try to go somewhere to do it, not good.

If you start a podcast, you'll do your podcast.

I'll send you the invitation just in case.

I'm very happy to zoom in if you want to organize it. I'll zoom in.