TIB574 Jim Penman from Jim's Group talks about the perfect lawn, creating raving fans and what he thinks about modern tradies

Hey, was.

Yes, Nick?

What do you call a guy with a rubber toe?

I kind of wish I knew the answer, but I kind of hope I don't.

Roberto.

Welcome to the Tradies in Business podcast with your hosts Warwick Didwell and Nicole Cox. Divert your phone and grab a brew as was and Nick, unpack tips, tales, secrets and stuff ups from guests both inside and outside your trade, helping educate and inspire you to break the cycle of gut busting and money stress and create a true trade business.

Dear, oh dear. Hello listeners. Welcome to another episode and another Nicole joke.

Well, I. That one was sent to me by a listener. So, listeners, I appreciate that you enjoy my jokes that much. You're making suggestions to improve them. Thank you.

I think we did a survey recently, Nicole, on your jokes and the podcast.

It's overwhelmingly positive.

There's some fairly positive feedback about your jokes, but I'm still convinced that it's just, you know, people like to raise you up in order to lower me down a little bit, just take me down a peg.

Which is probably deserved, I think, maybe, perhaps. All right.

Yeah. So listen, like, one of my sons told me his favorite joke. He said, what is brown and sticky stick? The standards of humor in our family aren't that great.

I like that one. I do like that.

So our guest has just chimed in as well. This is, this is how good the joke fest is. I'm just going to jump straight in, listeners, and let you know who we've got here in the virtual Tradies in business studio. Jim Penman. Welcome to the show, mate.

Yeah, good to be here, I should say.

Welcome back to the show. Now, you were on the podcast when it had a different name and a different incarnation quite a few years ago now. So I'm keen to have another chat with you along with Coxy here and I guess just get your perspective. You, for those who don't know who Jim Penman is, maybe, maybe you should tell our listeners, mate, just give them a quick rundown and educate them because I think they should know. But perhaps.

Well, it's Jim's group, Jim's Mowing, Jim's Cleaning gyms, antennas and the rest. Started off as a one man, part time student, law, main business back in 1975 and it's got a bit bigger since then.

Just a tiny bit.

Jim, Just a bit bigger.

Yeah.

So I think a few people just went, ah, ah. So this is Jim from Jim's.

That's right.

Which I'm sure you've never had before, Jim. Just a couple times.

Well.

Jim, are you just. Or is the gyms franchise or the gyms, is it a corporation company? Is it just based in Australia? Are you, have you branched out into other countries now as well?

Well, we've got about just under 400 in New Zealand and there's a few in Canada, so.

Okay, fantastic.

Mostly Australia, New Zealand.

So a bit of a shift in direction from the one man lawn mowing company all the way through to what you're doing now. That's a lot of lessons, a lot of learning to be done along the way around business.

Yeah, but the thing I always say, Nicole, is that it's, it's not really one big thing. People make the mistake, they think, hey, suddenly somebody's buying a lawn thing, what I franchise, and suddenly they're a multi millionaire. It's thousands and thousands of little everyday decisions every day of my life. How do I do this better now, whether it's shaving off a few seconds, half a second, going around a tree, or how to make, make franchisees want to stay with us longer or whatever it is, is always looking at what you do and it's just surprising. If you make tiny, tiny, tiny changes and keep on making them, you end up with something surprisingly more than what you started with.

Absolutely. How's that for a clanger? Straight up in the first five minutes. That's fantastic. It is so true. It's something we often say here, actually. It's those little changes that make incremental big change. And I often feel, and I feel there's a real risk, particularly in Australia, we do this well, the whole overnight success. And I don't think it's often thought about the journey to get to that overnight success. Often it's 10, 15, 20 years in the making to have that, that moment where it seems to all click. Jim, I wonder in those early days, what were the first kinds of changes or improvements you were looking to make that really started you on this journey that you've been on?

Well, I just, I had an aim to do an extremely great job and to do it in the best possible time. So those are the two big focuses. For example, I was one of the first contractors in Australia to have a brush cutter. And it came about because I was very frustrated. I want to make a job perfect. And when you're mowing lawns, the hardest job to get right is the edges. So I could do the edges, you know, along the concrete path with a, with a wheel that was good and I could clean it up with my mower, you know, the left Hand side of the most sucked the grass off. But I couldn't get around the, the trees and the clothesline and stuff. And it used to frustrate me. Nobody ever asked, but it used to frustrate me. And you couldn't do it commercially. It was not possible to do that kind of stuff. So when I went into my mower shop one day and I saw this gadget sitting in the corner of the shop, I asked what it was and he explained what it was and it was just new from Japan. Was shikatani one of the first in the country on the spot. Because I had that, that problem. And I would go out and I would, I would do lawns and people would say things to me like I never knew my lawn could look that good. I just do everything. Everything was perfect. There was a little tiny bit of grass like a marble the other side of the front lawn. I'd pick it up and chuck it into the garden. I had to be perfect. And I always wanted upon times I had this unreasonable obsession with making my customers into raving fans. And it just surprisingly easy to get customers if you do that.

It's been a big focus of our conversations recently. Customer centric businesses that are looking to improve that customer experience do tend to do super well. It's not, not hard to create a raving fan, particularly in the trades I think because so many people aren't making that the focus.

The standard of competition is very poor. In a lot of times it's surprisingly bad. And people get wrong. They think that you've got to focus on marketing. You do need some marketing. But service is far, far more important. Like one of the best things we ever did in gyms as a franchise system is put in a customer survey system. And we started doing that about I think about a decade ago and gradually ramped up the level of service. The level of complaints actually dropped down to a fraction of what they were because we asked clients directly and put all the processes in place and warning letters and counseling and all the rest of it. And a really surprising thing happened when we started doing that is the level of leads started to rise dramatically. You know, in the past I used to have people knocking on doors to find work for my own contractors. These days we get hundreds of thousands of unserviced leads a year. It's. It's an increasing problem. So just amaze customers. And it's quite striking how quickly your business builds. Not only just builds with numbers of customers, with good customers who don't mind paying you. Well.

I can recall as a consumer, it's about 15 years ago now, making a really firm decision that I would shop for service, not for price. And that's in all aspects of my life, right down to where I go for my groceries or my meat. Um, I'm, I'm looking for a particular level of service rather than price. And that was about creating better outcomes for me as the consumer. And it has undoubtedly changed the way I enjoy most of the experiences that I have with the businesses that I do deal with. I think it's a great lesson that trade business owners can take is concentrating on the outcome for the customer will increase then the way they're talking about your business, which naturally increase the lead flow. It's, it's a really quick solution in what is quite a competitive market. And I feel like over the last couple of years with the changes that we've all seen, we've been very fortunate as tradies to mostly continue to work. And now we're seeing a bit of a drop off slowly albeit. But the inquiries aren't coming through like they have. There's a quick way to make a change to that for your business and that's through concentrating on that experience that you provide the customer. So they are then raving about you and your business to all and sundry and suddenly they're making calls. It's a very quick change to Jim, how did you like. I had an experience recently and I was at a car show of all things, and in came a Jim's franchisee and he was a Jim's Jumping Castles, I think it was. Or Jim's.

The Jumping Castles is the new one.

Yes, that what it is.

Yeah.

How on earth what's the process look like to create a business model that can be applied to various business models? So the overarching, I guess franchise model must be similar for all of the businesses that it's enabled to be applied to. From mowing to dog washing to jumping castles, etc. How do you create that kind of model so that it can be reapplied?

Well, it's obvious in a way because most of what we do is actually to do with business rather than the technicalities. Learning how to mow a lawn or clean a bathroom floor or even do a pest is relatively minor. What really counts is business skills. And we have a system of software and stuff. We spend about $5 million a year on software development. So it's a huge thing for us, which actually apportions jobs in a certain way. So when a customer brings up, we might have 20 franchisees in the area, and maybe only one's taking work or taking that particular service. So we know exactly who to give it to. So there's all this. This technology, which is common to. Doesn't matter what you do, customer service, all those principles are the same. So in a way it's fairly obvious. What wasn't obvious in the beginning was that the same brand could cover it. When I first started thinking, well, it applies to mowing. What about cleaning? And I thought, well, hang on a bit. Mowing is this guy with the beard and the hat, which was what I look like. It's taken directly from photos of me. Okay, now, if you were going to do cleaning, nobody would want a guy with a beard and a hat because that's a gardener and it was also a man. So obviously that wouldn't work. So let's try something else. So I started this little brand called Sunlight S U N L I T E with little sprays and stuff. So that's a very friendly, clean, woman friendly sort of thing. Women wouldn't mind wearing that. And we tried it, signed a couple of franchisees, couldn't find them work, gave them their money back. And then somebody came to me later and said, what about Jim's Cleaning? And I said, well, no, not, not Jim's Cleaning, because Jim's is obviously a mowing brand. This is a mowing contractor. That's the hat I used to wear when I was mowing lawns because I, you know, protect my head and. And, you know, if you're going under branches and stuff doesn't get knocked off. So it's a mowing, it's a. It's a man's thing. They said, no, no, we think Jim's Cleaning would work. And I said, no, it won't. Can't possibly work. So they said, we're so convinced it'll work that we'll give it a try. We'll do it under kind of a license to you guys. So I said, all right, well, have a go. And it worked. So that was just surprising. And. And it's a funny thing that a mowing brand actually does extend. But what happens increasingly these days, of course, is people use more than one service. It's very common that you see somebody who's got a service and you look up and they've done. They've looked at four or five other different. Different services in the past, which actually makes a lot of difference too, because if we see somebody who's used us a number of times, they're an A grade customer and we tend to take them really, really seriously. One of the things that my jobs actually is if a customer complains about a problem with the job more than once, they send it directly to me as the CEO of the company, which is people find surprising. But I do that and one of the things I will do is I'll look up what jobs they've given us in the past and if they've been a good client, then we take them, you know, give them a bit of extra care and credibility.

Jim, I want to talk about the customer centric business and you know, we've talked about raving fans and creating an experience for customers that I guess turns them into our sales and marketing team. Really? What about where there's staff involved? Because I see this challenge with our listeners, with, with our own clients that we work with. There's, there's this mantra that, you know, the customers first, the customers is tantamount and we should be always looking after the customer. But then when we get staff in the mix, who do we take care of first? Because sometimes we have to, well, not choose, I guess as business owners. But there's almost like a, well, which one is, is preeminent to the other. So I'd be keen to hear your thoughts on that.

Well, there's a saying we have in gyms and actual fact. When I sent you an email, it was on the bottom of my email. There's a chain, there's a little three part saying. Our first priority is the welfare of our franchisees. We are also passionate about customers. We sign only franchisees and franchisors. We're convinced we'll succeed. So ultimately people come first. And that includes my own stuff. My most important people are my franchisees and the people who work for me directly, they're the ones that it's ultimately for. So, you know, when it comes to things like unserviced leads, for example, now it's not good for customers, but I'm not going to ask a franchisee to do a job that's not in their interest to do because I want to maximize their income first. Even if that particular customer gets let down, we have to say no. Which is we do a lot, far too much, close to a third of the time, which is unfortunate. But my franchisees are more important also when it comes to pricing, for example, okay, customers would want a cheap price, but my franchisees want to make good money. So we hit again and again. Put your prices up, charge more if you're knocking back work, add 10% to your quotes. So that's, that's franchisees first. Absolutely. Now, having said that, of course, the way you keep franchisees busy, or, you know, staff in that sense, is by giving fantastic customer service. So there's a lot of pressure in the gym system and that sometimes leads to a bit of tension because my franchisees are telling that you're giving me so much pressure over complaints that I'm having mental health issues. And I say, yes, well, I appreciate that and I feel for you, but at the same time, if I slackened off and some of my franchisees started lacking work and they couldn't feed their families and couldn't pay their mortgages, that will also cause mental health issues too. So in the end, you really have to understand that to be part of gyms, we want you to be successful. And to do that, you must look after your customers. And what I point out to them too is that if you look after your customers and we do it on an individual basis, you are far, far more likely to report good income and far less likely to report poor income. So one of the things we look at very carefully is attrition rated gyms. What is your chance of being in business in 12 months after you start? And we know for independence it's between. The chance of being in business after 12 months is around about 5 to 10%, which is why I have enormous respect for anybody who achieves success as an independent. Now with US it's about 88%. We lose about 12% in the first year for all kinds of reasons. But what's interesting is when you look at their survey ratings, whereas the average Gyms rating is around 4.7, 4.8 out of a possible 5 people who leave, the average rating is about 4.2. So at every level, whether in getting work in or whether in surviving as an individual, customer service matters. But still, ultimately it's all about the people. And I'd say I put my staff in there too. I got wonderful, wonderful staff at my head office and we would have no hesitation in firing a customer, refusing to do with him if they don't look after my staff or my people properly, because ultimately they're the most important.

It seems to be. Sorry, Coxy. It seems to be a common thread, Jim, amongst quote unquote successful businesses. I think long term businesses who have created sustainable results is they, they have a similar ethos to yourself around. I guess in some sense it's balancing the, the customer obsession with the care and concern for our own People. But ultimately, when we grow a business, and I'm speaking to our listeners who either have staff or are thinking about expanding their trade business to take on staff. Staff aren't just tools in a kit bag. You know, they're. They're a team of people that we need to actually nurture and develop and lead and defend. And I see too many businesses that will almost take the word of a customer over their staff and. And that's really damaging to the team and the results that they're going to get out of their business long term.

Yes. Yeah, you're absolutely right. We have a rating system actually, in gyms, as I mentioned, the survey system, and also complaints and stuff, which can be very serious if you get too many. But one of my jobs, personal jobs, is deleting unfair complaints. So if a franchisee can show, I not only tried to ruin the customer, but I texted them, which is important, within the two hours that we give them, I would take off the complaint. If they go back to a customer and fix the problem and they can show the customers happy, I'll remove the complaint. Or if the franchisor gets involved and rings the customer and really recognize the customer as being unfair, unreasonable, they've done the right thing, then I will delete the complaint. So we have to treat people very, very fairly.

Something else that, that I want to unpack a little bit more is. It's, it's a. Again, it's a thought that comes up a lot in our conversations with trade business owners. And I think there's a. There's an idea perhaps that if I just do a fantastic job of the plumbing or if I just do that, you know, if I, if I create the perfect lawn for people, that's enough, you know, that should lead me to business success. And I think you kind of alluded to this a little bit earlier as well, Jim. Is there more to it than that? And if so, what. What else is there other than just being a fantastic plumber or a fantastic tiler?

Well, there's all kinds of things to do with it. First of all, especially in the beginning, you got to market yourself. Established operators can get in a business, but they don't need. We have franchisees. Most of the franchisees don't take much work, actually, because they're well established in the beginning. So in the beginning especially, you need to market yourself to find work. It's also very important that you look to your own financial situation. You can have a brilliant franchisee in our case, who does a great job but fails because they don't charge enough. And that's a major problem. I actually have a lot. We spend a lot more time trying to argue and convince franchisees to charge more than we do with getting them to put their prices down. Now sometimes when they're very new and they're short of work and then you get a lot of knockbacks and stuff, we look at them, hey, you know, let's moderate your pricing. But more, far more often, I was talking to one franchisee, a 10 year veteran, because I like to ring my veterans on their anniversaries, like 10, 15. Those are special people. And I was speaking to one guy, he's a cleaning franchisee and his average charge was like 50 plus dollars per hour. And he had some clients he was charging like $35 an hour for. Without trying to be. I said, why do you do that? He's an incredibly brilliant operator. Now we would Recommend at least $60 an hour, at least a dollar a minute for any of our people. And this guy's charging below that. And every time he said vacancy, he'd have five people wanting to move in. But he just, I mean, I love the guy. I mean he's just great. He just, he just doesn't care about the money, which is okay because he's well off.

Yeah.

But for people who are not quite so affluent, it doesn't make sense to undercharge. So I actually spend a lot of time hitting people about charge what you're worth and then a minimum a dollar a minute is what we tell our people for extras, you know, more if you're doing, if you're buying a lawn, you know, maybe, maybe charging dollar a minute is fine, but if you actually clean the gutters, you should be looking at a lot more than that. So that, that's, that's another problem. It's also efficiency. It's also things like reducing your travel time. It's a matter of having the right equipment properly maintained, especially things like lawn mowing. It's also a matter of how you address and how you, you speak to clients, whether you make clear what you're going to do. I mean you can do the best job in the world, but if the client doesn't, it's not what the client expects. You haven't really done a good job. Like one of my, One of My Trees franchisees. He's a brilliant, brilliant operator. In one case he was telling me where he was told to given a job to take down his tree and it was just near the house. And the customer described where it was, they went and had a look at it and it was obvious which it was. And he did it and he did an absolutely brilliant job. Absolutely, totally professional. He was taken down the stumps, had everything, but it was the wrong tree. So in the end it wasn't a great success for him.

So, oops, you can't exactly put it.

You give clear written quotes to a customer so they know what you're going to do. If you're doing a vacate clean, you've got to say exactly, precisely what you're going to do.

Yes.

If you, if you're gardening, you know, what am I going to do with the weeds? Am I going to spray them and I dig them out? Am I going to use a catcher? If not, sometimes it does show a difference, then, you know, is that clear to the customer? So you've got. There's an awful lot more to it than just. And it's also not just a matter of doing a great job, it's also when you do it, we have far more problems with people not turning up or not ringing back than we do with poor job. As such, only about probably one in six client complaints might be to do with quality of work. So it's more to do with communication.

It's all that human stuff, isn't it? We joked earlier about social skills and poor jokes as icebreakers as we were going to, to record this. But I, I see a lot of business owners struggle more with the people stuff than with the actual job. You know, it's like they did a perfect job of removing the tree, but they just got it wrong as to which tree it was. You know, and that's a communication breakdown and, and often not setting expectations clearly with people. And I suspect that's probably, you know, part of the issue with our divorce rates in this country as well is going into relationships without clear expectations and then we end up disappointed or one party does anyway.

Yeah.

And so that, that leads to breakdowns.

People are often very deluded on the levels of customer service too. They just don't recognize how bad they are. Which is why our system in a sense is very hard because it does, it reflects it back very, very strongly. But you've got people who are getting warning on even breach notices who just don't think they've done anything wrong. And that's the problem. They just can't see. They said, but my customer service is great, I do a great job. And it's true there's no complaints at the quality of work, but it's Just, you know, I'm just not always completely up on these things about calling customers back and so forth. But yeah, but you've got to change that. Or they blame the customers or they, they make excuses and they just won't, they just can't see it. It's, it's hard. You've got to be, I guess one of the things that I have, tremendously self critical. I'm always looking at what I'm doing and saying, how can I do it better? What mistake did I make? Okay, this went wrong, but no point in blaming somebody else. What could I have done different?

For all of our clients that are listening, that is the perfect demonstration of above and below the line. Please rewind. Listen to that again. It's a perfect demonstration of how important it is to take ownership of your own behavior and how you've contributed to any situation.

We divide our franchisees into three basic groups. You've got gold franchisees who are always looking to say, what can I do better? They have what we call bronze franchisees. And the gold franchise is the kind of person that would succeed even as independent. And they tend to be the leaders and they tend to have workers and become franchisors and stuff. Then you have bronze, which are people that can listen when you actually explain to them and they will follow along but probably wouldn't succeed in business for themselves. And then you have lead franchisees, not lead franchisees. Someone who just won't listen. They always blame somebody else. They say, well, no, it's not me not turning customers. The fact that you should give me more leads, I should get better support. They will not look at what they do at all. And that's why they tend to fail.

How do you deal with them, Jim? I can imagine that must be an issue for the business model. How do you deal with that kind of behavior or that kind of attitude?

Well, you don't give up easily. As soon as the person signs, if we have to, any sign at all of that kind of attitude in person who hasn't signed yet, even if they've done full training, we will just say no, you can't join. Once they join you, you have a very strong obligation to help them. And you just try and you try and you try and in the end they go through the process and breach notices and all the rest of it. And in the end we just have to let them go and they can go and do it independently if they, if they can survive. It's very hard. It's very disappointing. One of the, that's one of the way in that little three part thing I mentioned to you. We sign only franchisees and franchisors. We're convinced we'll succeed because one of the things that you do, you try really hard to try and kick it up from the beginning. There was one case just recently where a prospective franchisee was just very argumentative and not listening to one of my franchisors and they were refused the franchise. He said, you can't have it. And then he appealed to me and I heard the story and I said, I saw it, it's the right decision. If they won't listen to you now, they're not going to listen to you when you start and things go wrong because they'll always want to say I'm right, you're wrong. And that's not a good attitude for business. A good attitude of business is what can I do better?

It's a big risk to something as big as what you've created to one bad franchisee or franchisor could really be the undoing. I guess so I guess the key would be that support that you speak about, but also acting swiftly and it sounds like you've created the procedures and the structure to be able to provide that support and the feedback very quickly so that changes can be made.

Well, actually, I tell you what, by the end of this year we've got some new software coming out for individual franchisees which I would, I'm confident that will drop our complaint rate by at least 50%.

Wow.

Putting in processes and systems and instant feedback if a franchise, he doesn't actually return a call promptly. The ability for clients to book in jobs directly to the franchise, those kinds of things. Just trying to get around looking at all the problems we have with complaints. Now if we can do that, and I'm confident we will, we will see our leads skyrocket because the relatively few cases we have, the small minority cases where things go wrong would happen much less often.

Jim, clearly you're extremely business minded and I'm banking that you've always been this way. How did you learn the business lessons that you're now imparting on your franchisees and franchisors?

Look, a lot of it's temperament, I have a, I suppose I'm a committed Christian and I have that kind of view that I need to be better as a person. We're very conscious of our own failings before God, in our fellow men, so our fellow human beings. So that tendency to look from within and say what could I Do better. Also things like the way we consider franchisees. We consider ourselves to be servants of the franchisees. They're their primary clients. That. That comes back to Jesus washing his disciples feet, that kind of lesson. So there's very. There's very fundamental matters of character and attitude that I have. And people sometimes ask me, am I proud of what I've developed? And I said, well, in a sense, yes, but it's good to have nearly 5,000 franchisees. But the thing I'm most proud of is when I see franchisees and franchisors acting in a similar fashion. Like, our franchisors are actually amazing people. They will often argue with us about trying to get their franchise to his lowest, even though that's their income.

Yeah.

And during. When. When they want to. And sometimes we think they take it. They're overly. They're overly soft sometimes. So. But that. That attitude, the attitude of really wanting to serve franchisees and really caring about them being successful, I'm. I'm blown away by it. I love it. And when my franchisees help each other, like during the lockdown when it was terrible and some franchisees, even those in really difficult situations, were helping others who were in worse off. I was so proud of that when they look after each other. So a lot of it's just temperament and then the things that you're not good at. For example, I am notoriously socially unskilled. I've been divorced three times. That must tell you some sort of reasons about what a difficult person I am. And it was my wife's decision, not mine, basically. But 21 years, really happily married now. So I finally managed to find someone who can put up with me. But I have many serious personal weaknesses that I've got to work on and challenges to meet all the time. How can I improve? How can I do better?

Hey, Tradies in business was here. Sorry to interrupt your listening pleasure. I'm joined by Coxy, of course.

Hello.

You may not know this Tradie or Tradie wife or whoever you are listening to this program, but we're business coaches. Oh, my gosh. That feels weird to say, but we do actually work with people just like you to solve a bunch of problems. And we have this fantastic program called the Tradipreneur program. And that's how we do it. And we do it with a wonderful community of trade, business owners who are all trying to fix or improve or change things, to progress things like getting.

Behind on quoting Coxy, feeling overwhelmed, behind on your invoicing Feeling really stressed or frustrated about the money stuff. Sometimes you can pay the bills, sometimes you can't. What about staff? Oh my goodness, my gosh.

Staff.

Trying to get them to do what you want them to do, if you can even find them in the first place. There's so many struggles and we've seen.

Clients tackle these things in their trade businesses in a quite a short space of time, to be honest, during the program and recruit staff at a time where everybody was saying you can't get good staff, improve their quality from their team, collect their debts much more quickly.

We have tips.

Yes. Getting tips. Yes. So people rounding up customers, rounding up the invoice by hundreds of dollars because they're so happy with the sales process and the experience of dealing with the trade business owner and their team. So some amazing stories from our clients. But you know, as they say in the, in the commercials, don't take it from us. Hear what some of our clients have to say.

Coming into Christmas, we are not worried about money. We've got enough money in the bank to pay everybody's leave. There's work booked in for the new year and for the first time in a long time, we'll be having three weeks off and not worrying about the business. That's probably the biggest win of all.

Using the cash flow forecast, I've been able to look into the future and see where I'm going to be situated financially and it's actually starting to have a huge bearing on whether or not I make purchases.

By far, one of the best things about working with Nick and was are the other businesses that are working alongside them. It is amazing how empowering it is to be working alongside like minded people who have similar goals, similar troubles. We can all relate to each other and everybody helps everybody out by figuring out problems with you that they may have faced previously. Everybody has solutions and constructive feedback and it's an incredibly friendly, warm, welcoming environment, not threatening at all.

From every job I know that I will get a sustainable wage that's industry leading. I can have at least 10 to 20% profit and I can pay taxes. Super, all of that. And I do not have to question whether or not I can because of the way that it's been built and that is thanks to traders in business and what they've taught me and what I've learned.

So there you go. There's some real people. We did not pay them to say those things and I think that sounds a lot better than Coxy and I reading them out. We really would love for you to check out more about how you could take your trade business to where you would like it to be. Surely you have a vision of what things could be like or what you wish they were like on a day to day basis. Whether that is reducing stress or actually making more money. Maybe it's spending more time with the family, taking more holidays, having the choice that you really wanted when you started your business instead of this beast that seems to be there for many of you listening to this program. So if you want to find out more about how we do this through the Tradipreneur program, Coxy's going to tell you all about it.

I'm actually not.

I'm going to be really secretive and keep all of our magic up our sleeves. What I would like you to do though is head on over to tradiesinbusiness.com and you can learn all about us, why we do what we do and how you can work with us, what that actually looks like. There's a whole bunch of free stuff there for you to download. Lots of options. We've always got new stuff going up onto the website and a great place for you to learn a whole bunch more about how you can work with us. You can even book a 15 minute chat for free. Free.

That's how abundant we are. So head over to the website, check it out, book a chat with us and we'd love to find out if you'd be a great fit for the Tradypreneur community and start hanging out with some of those people that you just heard from. How do you enroll the support of those around you in that gym?

Well, I'm very passionate about what I do. I mean, I guess, I guess that tends to rub off on people. People tend to look at you and pick up your attitudes. And if you're in the kind of thing that says, you know, only my money is important, well, that'll come about. But I, I think most people in gyms share that kind of mission, mission attitude. You know, we're there for a purpose. We're there to help other people. That's our primary objective. And you show by your actions, as well as what you say that people matter. Like for example, you know, there was a case recently in talking about franchising with Gardner Homes where the master franchisees got to the end of their term and the franchisor wants to step in and take their business from them and they're fighting a legal case now. That to me seems incredibly insane. I mean, it's just so grossly Unfair. Nobody in Jim's would ever dream of doing a thing like that. You know, if we terminate a franchisor, a franchisee, or particularly a franchise because their business got a lot of money, they always give them a chance to sell. I mean, it's not even in the contract. But though actually I'm writing it in because I think it should be there. But why would you even think of doing something different? So when you act in a certain way, when you always show by your attitude and your, by your passion that something's important, people will tend to catch up on that. And also the people that are drawn to you, other people believe. I have a book called Every Customer a Fan, which we give out quite freely. It's all over the place. We just give away copies to everybody who wants it because it's a statement of my history and what we did and why we did it. And it's interesting. Many years ago, a lady called Sharon was. She was a hospital administrator and she was thinking of buying a cleaning franchise and. But then she thought, well, hang on a bit. I'm an administrator with a white collar job. Why would I be a cleaner? Because that's kind of like going down in a sense. And then somebody gave her a copy of my book and she read it. She said, I like that attitude, that guy's attitude. She never met me at the time. I said, I like the attitude. So she bought a franchise. A few months later, she bought the master franchise. Then she became an incredibly successful franchisor. She's now running the dogwash division. And she's a wonderful, wonderful lady. But the thing about Sharon is she really, really cares. She's got the biggest heart you could imagine, but she was drawn. And I often say if everything, every book we ever got printed just bought a Sharon Connell, it'd be worth it. She was attracted to the culture of the company. And I think to a certain extent you indoctrinate people. We call it gibifying them. They come to training, they become gibified. But it's also because you try to track the kind of people that really believe in what you believe. This is a mission oriented company. We're not in it to make money for Jim. We're in it because we care about our people.

Yeah.

And Jim does all right, I'm not poor, but it's never, never the top priority.

There's a lot of books in that bookcase behind you for our listeners on the podcast. Jim has an impressive library behind him, so books aren't cheap these days, mate.

Well, I would, I would probably read or listen to two to three books a week as well as other things as well. I'm a massive inveterate reader, book listener. It's, it's great. I'm just, just finished reading a book called Boys and Men, talking about the, the problems men have in the, in the modern world and so forth. I just love, I love learning and listening. It's, it's, it's fun. It's great.

Actually something we've been talking about quite a bit also is that curious mind and maintaining a curious mind, Jim, and how beneficial that can be not only to you personally, with your satisfaction levels and your personal growth etc, your business and the business journey, to improving culture within your team, to improving outcomes for clients, etc. Do you think that that's something that you foster within the group? Is that curious mind?

I try to, but sometimes I'll read a book that I love and I'll buy, I'll buy several copies and I'll give them to my key staff to say, you know, read the spread around. So somebody just rolls up his eyes and just says, jim, I haven't even finished the last. I'm notorious for talking about books all the time, but it's good. Look, look, 90 of what I read isn't particularly about business. It's, it's. I read anything in business that I can get my hands on. But I mean, everything. Psychology, about economics, about politics, about science, about all kinds of things. So it's just, but it is helpful, actually. I mean, always. I'm always coming across situations where something that I've read, you know, registers in, in some sort of way, keep on getting better. I mean, I'm. People are supposed to get static as they go. I'm 70 years old and I, I've changed my mind about so many things over the last 10 years. Some of my kids can't believe it. One of my daughters was just. I told her something and she. I had no idea you thought that now happened. In that case, I came to agree with what she, her position was. But, but it was just. She, she just didn't know. But I'd been reading things and I just looked at a different way. My mind is changing a lot.

Yes. Commitment to learning is fantastic.

Yeah. And I think that's key for leaders in any station. You know, whether we're, we're the leader within our family or our business or our team or leading our customers, you know, our social groups. I think great leaders are pliable. You know, they're they're always as you're doing, Jim, you know, looking at other ways to, different opinions, considering all the, the different arguments for, for anything in life and thinking critically and making decisions based on what makes sense at the time. You know, I mean, new information's coming to light all the time.

There's a wonderful study done by the Harvard University in 1930s. It's going for eight decades looking at people and how they, one of the things they were very interested in is what makes people decide for people to be either happy and well or sad and sick in later life. And they found there were seven major characteristics. One of them was not smoking, not drinking to excess, proper weight exercise. There was, and, and the, having an active mind was huge, was really, really important. Continuous learning and so forth. The biggest one of all was relationships. That was the number one. But all those other things matter. But having a curious, active mind makes a difference. And this idea that when you get older you have to be conservative and set in your ways is, is, I don't understand it. I, I, I, I'm always, I'm not pretty loony, I must say. Some of them, some of them actually work out. So you've gotta, you've got to keep on learning and never, you know, I don't believe in retirement, I must say. I mean, I, I, my life expectancy, because I'm in perfect health and everything else is probably another 20, 25 years. And I've got a lot to do in that period of time. So you can't afford to just stay stuck. Gotta move.

What's going to be. My next question actually was about retirement because I can't see a time in my life where I want to retire from what I'm doing. I don't know what I'll be doing in 20, 30 years. I'm not sure if I'll be working with Laurie, but we'll see how we go.

You might have had your feeling.

I might have been.

Nicole, let me tell you something. You don't retire because you get old. You get old because you retire.

I 100% agree with you. And you see it demonstrated time and time again. So my question was about maintaining that curious mind, the, the physical activity, etc. What does the next 10, 15 years look like for you, Jim?

Well, it's exciting. I feel I'm just getting started. Look, it's taken me, taking me a while because I'm a very dense sort of person, but I'm starting to figure out eventually how to run a business proper.

It's, I Think you're doing a good job, Jim?

Well, I can do a lot better. Yeah. I make mistakes. I mean, some of the things that I, that I look back on what, what I did two years ago and I think, wow, what a. What a fool.

Yeah.

How could I been so mistaken about what I did? We made terrible, terrible problems. Terrible mistakes that we hopefully learn not to make now. So, I mean, it's, it's amazing. Look, we are. This, this coming year 2023 is going to be so exciting. We're launching so many different things going on. We've got this new soft coming, which I believe will be absolutely revolutionary. We've got. We've become a registered training organization, which has got. Which is very exciting, actually, because we, we need to try and train and recruit people for our. Not only as franchisees, but also to work for our franchises because they're desperate for trained workers. We're looking at ways of getting people coming from overseas, good people coming from overseas. There's fantastic opportunity places like India and South Africa, people who would make great franchisees. How do we get them in? What courses can we offer? What offers? How can we do that?

That.

There is just so many brilliant things that we, we can do. And I've got a scientific research project going which is starting to produce some really fascinating results. We're looking at ways of, you know, curing people from things like drug addiction and so forth, which I think has fantastic potential. Just hired a new head who's starting the first of February. So that's where my money tends to go, what comes out of the business. So it's just immensely exciting. It's, it's, it's fantastically fun. And I've just had my first couple of grandsons. My, my children, I got 10 children, but they're very slow breeders. My first two grandsons, I spend time with them. And that's really exciting, too. I love that. And as my children start to catch up with their father and start to have a few kids of their own, that's really. There's so many amazing things happening.

I love your enthusiasm. It's. We're really blessed to be here and we're blessed to. There are always positive opportunities in front of all of us. Even in some of our darkest times, there is still always a positive light. And it's lovely to hear from someone who. You exude that positivity, Jim. You're very enthusiastic, very easy to listen to. And it's. I think it's really refreshing, particularly through what's been a few Trying years in business. They haven't been the easiest of years. And I'm sure there's still some to come to hear that, that business leaders are still looking for that positivity, a nice way forward and to continue to develop what's possible.

The opportunities are extraordinary, Nicole. They really are. This is something that frustrates me a lot. People have this kind of fixed idea. You have to go to school and just do well and you have to go to university and you have to get a professional qualification. That's the only way to succeed. And you know one of our top guys, guy called Dan Carl, he was a high school dropout. This guy's a failure. This is the bloke that society wipes off. You say you're rubbish, you're nothing. Went out, got a job, worked in McDonald's, did well there, bought a franchise. He's. He's in it. By this second or third year, he was turning up just under a million dollars a year. Not only that, but with a 5.0 star rating too, which was really wow. Now he's sold that, he's become one of our most successful franchisors. This guy's like 26. Okay, wow. The opportunities for people with raw talent and drive and ability to be brain. You just have to have somebody who cares about what you do and looks at it and says, how can I do it better? The opportunities are extraordinary. And this is why this book of boys and men was so interesting, is that we do have this one way of doing things. It has to be through some formal education. It doesn't suit everybody. Some people are just not suited. I have a friend who's now a very supportful church pastor who dropped out of school at the age of 15 and became an apprentice. And then, and then, you know, he did all kinds of things. He's just an amazing guy. He just wasn't suited to school. There's got to be other avenues, which is why I think you brought your. Your program is fantastic if it can encourage people to look at these kind of avenues. Because. Because seriously, the average Australian income is about 75 grand a year. Now, the great majority of our franchisees make more than that. This is people who mow lawns and clean houses and so forth. Yeah, that turnover, we did a survey recently was just average with about $2,900 per week, which amounts to something over 100 grand income per annum, net terms. Now that's. That's somebody who's doing jobs that society might look down and despise and Say, hey, you're just a cleaner, you're just a gardener, you're just a pest controller. You know, you're not doing something important like, you know, financial, being a lawyer or something like that. And you can argue which is more important for society. And I don't think I'd necessarily say lawyers are.

You won't get any disagreement here, Jim.

We. There's some very, very good people around. There's some great.

Absolutely.

In every boy I have an employee. One, a guy called Andy. He's a fantastic guy. Some real scumbags.

Oh yeah. I have to be honest, my cleaner is probably the most important person in our family. I could not live without her. She does a fantastic job of helping our family function. This stuff is so integral to my quality of life. So I'm certainly not a subscriber of looking down on anyone actually, full stop. However, I understand you're saying, and I believe that that's been a connotation for many years. I do see that changing though, of, of recent times, I see a lot more respect being given for the outcome that these people create.

I.

My quality of life would be very vastly different if I did not have some of the assistance I have from our gardener to the cleaner, to the people that come and do the cars. Without them, I, I can't function well enough to do what I do on a daily basis.

So absolutely, really crucial part. A lot of people can' training themselves. It's very important to have somebody who does the job well, who's professional, who's organized on time, who's honest. Those things matter a lot to society, to family life. It's also good for people themselves too. I think one people don't recognize is that, is that it's not all about money. In fact, I'm very interested in the study of money and what makes people happy. And having a higher income isn't necessarily going to make you any happier. They actually found, for example, that commuting an hour to work, work and back is equivalent to about a 75, 000 drop in income, which is astonishing when you think about it. But when I talk to one of the things I said, I ring my veterans and ask them about what they were doing before. And sometimes they've actually been doing a lot better in terms of income, but often they're making about the same income. But they say the big difference is in the last 10 years I've had time for my, for my family. You know, I take my kids to school, I, I eat meals with them. Those kind of things. And they said there's no, there's no money, there's no income that could have made up for that. For that.

That's right.

100.

It's interesting you mentioned that, Jim. As the year has rolled over into the new year, Nicole and I, I guess have a look at what our clients have been doing over the, the last 12 months in our business program and the sorts of results that they're getting and they're coming back setting goals and everything for 2023 and for. Well, I don't understand all the reasons, but I suspect it's Nicole's. My values perhaps projecting onto our team in inverted commas, which includes all of our clients. And a lot of them are talking about their goals and their successes and their wins, not in terms of the extra profit they've made. And some of them have made spectacular increases in their profit. But what they're actually talking about is the first fact that they took four weeks holiday over Christmas for the first time ever in business. Or you know, they're, they're making a commitment to pick the kids up from school twice a week. And this is the, the dad who's normally out on the tools, you know, busting his backside. And, and they're the things that people are valuing more and more. Is, is the, you know, the stuff of life. It's what life is actually all about. Sure, we need money to, to live in in this modern world, but having all the money in the bank, as many of us, I think we know the theory, but in practice, a lot of us get swept up in the BS on social media and mainstream media around what success actually looks like. So it's fantastic to speak to a business owner such as yourself.

But it's the biggest, the biggest mythology is that to become happy you need to have more stuff. You need to have a big better house, a bigger car, better clothes. They've actually found that there has no relations to success. Now money is good in some ways, for example, but it's much better spent on experiences.

Yes.

Like if you're going out to, with friends, people think this kind of thing or going on a family trip or something. That's actually a lot more positive. The most positive thing you can do with money, strangely enough, is to give it away because there's something you're involved with, they say, that makes, creates more happiness.

Yes.

They actually did a little experiment when this is one of many, where they gave people some money. Money, small amount of money. And they had two instructions. Either spend it on yourself or spend it on somebody else. And then they looked at the results and the people that spend it on somebody else were far happier than those who spent it on themselves. Which is interesting, isn't it?

See, money can buy you happiness. You just got to give it to other people.

You just got to spend it. There is, there was a wonderful saying that goes, no other success can compensate for value in the home. And I love that and I live by it. I take my, my son, my 13 year old son, my youngest son to school every day and pick him up from school and that's time. We just talk during the holidays. We go out for lunch quite often and that. That's more valuable than anything.

Yeah, absolutely.

The wonderful thing about my job is that I've always been able to do that and I'd never. It's not worth nothing. Nothing is worth losing your family. Nothing is worth losing your best relationships to.

No, I agree.

That's right. Well, I don't think I'm, I'm going to bother asking you my usual question, Jim, which is, you know, one piece of advice for our listeners. Because you've given so many pieces of advice, I don't think we could boil it down and again, I'm looking at all those books on your shelf and thinking I reckon you've read every single one of them.

Well, that's true, but that's only. Sorry, it's only a fraction though, mostly on my, my iPad these days, on my phone. You know, this, this thing here is, is, is chock full of books and it's, Yeah, I don't know, but it's, it's good, it's good people actually it's very accessible these days because one of the things as a trader you can do, and I would have loved to do it when I was knowing law, especially if I could. We had the battery miles in those days is listen to stuff all the time. You're driving between jobs, you can listen to something and you can always, always learn more. There's wonderful stuff around. There's, there's, there's podcasts like yours. Podcasts are fantastic. There's so much good stuff around that you can, can, you can listen to and, and, and sometimes it repeats itself, but then, then you hear a thing again and again and suddenly it sort of sinks into this thick head and said, okay, yeah, but I didn't need to do this, you know, even little things. You know, one of the things I started doing recently is talking to strangers. Now that might seem odd, but I was reading about it And I was reading about people given this little experiment, you know, go and talk to strangers and they were, they all thought the beginning that would make them feel worse and they, they thought it was, would feel better. So just in the past few weeks I've been trying this. So I go to the supermarket and I see somebody with a little baby and I say, oh, you know, isn't that beautiful baby or so angelic. So isn't that great? Just think like that. Or I was taking out ice creams and there was lady at the same thing. I was like, it's good stuff, isn't it? But not good for you. We just had a little life together. It's funny thing now that's just something I started in the first month I've read about it. I thought I'd trial it out, out and, and it's good. It's good. And my son who's with me thinks I'm pretty weird. It's just a good feeling. I felt good about it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And that's thousands of little things that you see and you try and lately I try and make more effort to make contact with people proactively instead of just waiting for them to talk to me. So I see my all kinds of things. Things. Always trying new stuff, learning new things, trying new ideas, always looking and saying, how can I do this better?

Well, you've, you've, you're going out to thousands of ear holes, Jim, with this episode. So you'll be having an impact on many more people than just the, the person in the shopping center. So hopefully we can be a part of that mission of yours, mate, to, to spread the knowledge. And I love podcasts.

I think they're, I think they're great. I think it's great what you do and, and tradies are so important. It's such an under stress. We should be proud of what we do. You know, during the lockdown in Victoria, it infuriated me the way that the premier treated independent tradies as if we were just garbage. You know what he said in that, in that. I don't know if you remember in the, in the press. In the, in the press. What do you call it? The event where he actually said. What he said was, was even though the guidelines for Health and Human Services said sol operators can work, he got up and he said, you can't get your lawn smoked or your houses cleaned. Now, what's interesting about that particular statement is not just the fact that he contracted his own department and threw 100,000 plus Victorians out of work for what happened to be no good reason at all because there's no health advice behind it. But the fact that he said you can't get your houses clean, in other words, he wasn't thinking. Thinking about people who did the job because they're beneath contempt. They're just the garbage out there. I was thinking about the important people, the people who actually can afford to get the work done. Now, isn't that an appalling attitude? This is the guy who doesn't even think that the people who do the job are even human beings or worthy of consideration. That really, really caught my goat. And it still makes me angry.

I can tell.

Good company.

I'm going to stay very quiet, Jim, otherwise I'll hop up on the soapbox with you, mate.

But it's good. I appreciate it too. I know a lot of people, trainees actually come up to me and they congratulate me and thank you because I spoke for them as well.

Yes.

I mean, my people, my franchisees are my top priority. They're my tribe, my family. I am passionate about them. But also the industry as a whole, we are important. We matter. What we do is worthy of respect. It's just as important as people who are financial advisors and accountants and lawyers and the rest of it. It really matters to society what we do.

I would argue even more so, Jim. I mean, there's a slogan that was coined years ago and it still floats around. Without trucks, Australia stops. I actually think we should change it to without tradies, Australia stops. Because, you know, accountants aren't going to be able to go to their office and move money around and tell tax stories if the power's not working or there's no water and sanitation services or building services. You know, I mean, the, the trades and the services are essential to the way we all live our lives. And yet there's still this derision of them in the media. And Nick and I get on our soapbox about this quite a lot, the tradie bashing, you know, and, and I would include all of your franchisees as tradies. As tradies. You know, they're all service trades and proud of it.

And I'm a tradie myself. I actually spent 10 years at university getting myself a PhD in history. But I'm a tradie. That's my business. Business.

Yeah, yeah.

It's my livelihood and it's.

Yeah.

And it matters. I, I, yeah, there is something wrong with the way we look at it. It's like there's a prejudice to get people to work with their hands. I actually got calluses on my hands. I'm proud of it because I go out gardening on my farm at the weekend and digging ditches and I love having calloused hands. I think that's a, a great thing. The idea that somehow white, white collar work is superior. I told all my kids, actually I said look, if you want to go out and you know, be a plumber account, I would back you 100. Now they all went to university and st. You can't get through them. But still it's, it's, it's a great, it's a great career, it's a great way forward and I'm, I am incredibly grateful for the fact that I never got a university post. My ideas were too wild and radical to have any chance of that. So I had to turn my part time law business into something great. But what a great life that's given me.

Yeah.

How much opportunities I've had. It's been, it's been absolutely wonderful and it's incredibly tangible.

And I, and I, my, my personal belief is that those things done with our hands are so much more fulfilling from a personal point of view. You know, in terms of what my, my wife as an occupational therapist would refer to as meaningful occupation. They're all things done with our hands. Yes. We're using our minds whether it's playing a musical instrument or weaving a blanket or building a chook house or whatever our chosen means. Meaningful occupation is something done with our hands is tangible and it's very fulfilling to do that. And I, and I think it's a fantastic occupation to be in the trades because we can stand back and admire our work. But my past life in finance there was very little I could stand back and admire other than the fact that there was piles of paperwork on a desk.

It's great work, it's healthy. It gives you an opportunity to have a flexible lifestyle which is great for families. And if you really want to be successful, I tell you what, there's a lot better opportunities in the trades. There's a wonderful book called the Millionaire Next Door which is about Americans and looking at what the typical American millionaire is. And they are not a lawyer or a doctor or a financial advisor. They're especially tradies. They're people like me was fairly based. They were describing one situation where they had a meal set out for these millionaires and it was all this caviar and rich food and everything else. House and this guy didn't Want it? They just wanted beer and the hamburger barbecue. But it was, it was the journalist that ate all the fancy food because that was their kind of thing. But the people who were traders who come up from nothing, who learned and actually often have very simple tastes. Yeah, that's one thing about me, you know. You know, this last three months ago, it's the first time in my life I ever bought a new car because I want the electric one. And it was, wow, safe effort and I really believe in that kind of stuff. But I've always had old cars. I buy my clothes from Kmart and wait until I got holes in them. If I go out, I love going to a local pizza, pizza joint. I mean, it's just, I just like a normal lifestyle and I. And having huge amounts of money in that posh, upper crusty. I don't like it. It's not good. There is, there is the everyday life of an Australian and I think tradies have got that in spades. It's a fantastic way to make a living and making a future. And I wish more of our young people, especially the kids, the boys would look at this and say, hey, there's a real potential in this. I can be something great. I can have a. I can be a great father, I can have time with my kids. I can provide a good life for me and I can succeed and I can do whatever I want to like, like Dan Carl and I can do so much if I want to or I like one of my, one of my favorite franchisees. The guy, he works three days a week. He's a mowing guy in Adelaide. Work three days a week. You know what he does with the rest of his time? He goes out and spends time with the homeless.

Wow.

Just talks to them and finds out what they need and just listens to them and then see what help he can give them. Isn't that a brilliant lifestyle?

Yes.

What a fantastic thing. He couldn't do that if he was working five days a week for some corporate soulless giant, could he? No, he does it because he's got his own business and he can put his resources where he wishes to. And also the other thing too is great, when you're in the trade trades, they can't make you retire at 65.

They cannot.

You've got your own business. Who's going to find me? I mean, some people might like to honestly my business, they can't do it. And I'm going to work until I'm. Until I drop. Probably in my 90s. Okay, because. Because it's my own business. That's the great power of the trades. What can you offer that? My mother was a school teacher and they forced her out at 65. Just because you work for the government. Government. You can't do that to a tradie.

No.

Jim, I could listen to you and your opinions all day, I reckon, but I'm sure you've got plenty to do as well.

It's a pleasure. I love talking about it. It's really fun.

Have you got any final thoughts you'd like to share with our independent trade business owners that listen to these episodes every week?

People, I just take my hat off to you. I really respect what you do. It's not easy to get going. It isn't. But what you're doing is a fantastic thing and if you succeed, you are, you are great. You're great people. You've really done something extraordinary. I have to say, if you ever decide to make it easy and come across to gyms, I'll do everything I can to give you a free franchise.

I love that.

We'd love to have you with us, but God bless you. And they're pre educated. Yes.

Wonderful. I love that. Jim, it's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for your time today.

Okay. You're welcome.

Thank you. Very grateful.

You've been listening to the Tradies in Business podcast with Warwick Bidwell and Nicole Cox. Find out more about today's guest tools for your trade business and other cool stuff at tradies and business dot com.