4000+ Global Locations! Founder of Jims Mowing (Jim Penman)

Hey, everyone. Mike Andes, landscapebusinesscourse.com today, very special guest for this episode of Roundup. I'm very much looking forward to it. We're gonna hop right into it. But I want to say a special thank you for our guest today that is extremely busy and I look up to Admire from afar and it's actually my first time ever getting to meet Jim. But the beautiful thing about online mentorship is that you don't really need to know someone one on one to actually learn from them, grow and, and have them inspire you. So Jim is someone that today we're going to be having on the show. Jim Penman from Jim's Mowing Group. And they have over 4,000 franchisee locations around the whole country. Not just country, the whole world. And multiple industries and services. And so I'm really looking forward to today's episode. If you have questions, make sure you put them in the chat room and we'll try to get to some of those at the end of the show without any further delay. Jim Penman from Jim's Group. Welcome, Jim. Thanks for coming on.

Yeah, good to see you.

So I, you know, I've, I've followed quite a bit of what you've done and I mean, you probably have no idea who I am almost, but we have Augusta Longtail, we have 40 franchisees. We started franchising about a year and a half ago. And so I obviously looked up a lot to you what you've done with the gyms group in so many different industries and not just in just mowing, but, but tell me a little bit in terms of now you have so many different services, but tell me how it kind of all started. I know it started with mowing, but how did it get started with you if someone's never heard of you before?

Well, actually, just to start 40 is pretty good in a year. There's not a lot of franchises to get off the ground that fast. I started off mowing lawns as a student back in the 70s, and when I finished my PhD in history, I found I was uniquely qualified to keep on mowing lawns for a living. So that became my job. And what I gradually found was that it was. I made more money by building up and selling lawn mowing grounds than I ever had mowing lawns myself. So I shifted to that. And then in late 1980s, a company called VIP Mowing, which is a franchise company from Adelaide, came to Melbourne and.

I basically pretty much panicked. I really thought I couldn't compete with these guys. They had 250 franchisees, which is a lot of franchisees, and they were interstate and they had offices and all these uniforms and logos and all this stuff. And I was clueless for anything. I was just trying to remember my little, you know, building up and selling lawn mowing around business until something better came along. So I actually went to the state manager and said to him. I rang him and said to him, look, I'm Jim from Jim's Mowing. He knew me. And I said, look, why don't I just help to build up VIP in the state? And he. And then just, you know, just give my law and grounds to you and help you to grow. And he said, well, no thanks. So I thought, well, I better see if it's possible to compete with these guys. So I went to the an expo that was being run that year in 1990, in 1988, and I sort of raided this stand and I went up to the guy behind it and said, hey, could you tell me about vip? I'm very interested. Fortunately, he didn't ask me why. I'm not very good at lying, so I would have told him. He gave me all this really useful stuff and gave me this brochure and things. And then the state manager came in and said, that's Jim Henman. Don't tell him anything. They kicked me out.

But it was. It was interesting, you see, because I looked at what they did and I thought, well, you know, I can see why a person would be in a franchise. You know, things like security, you break your leg, you got to look after you, and this kind of stuff. I could see reasons for it, but I also reckoned that I could develop a system that would be better for the franchisees.

And.

So I set to work to design something. It took me nine months, arguing with lawyers mainly to get something that I was happy with.

They kept on telling me I was being too nice. I wanted to give my franchisees all these security protections and everything else. And they said, no, you don't want to do that. And I said, no, I want a system that if I was on the other side of the desk, I'd really, really want to join this. So I put everything in the contract I could possibly think of that was attractive. And then I gave it to a few of my best subcontractors. And people who bought lawnmower rounds off me offered them a sort of swap round for a franchise. And they had a look at the contract and they said, oh, there's something we don't like about this So I changed them, just change everything. And.

I got the best contract and all these different things. For example, I put in clause in my contract that says you have automatic renewal after 10 years, which is a big thing in franchising. But we, in our contracts right from the beginning, we can't force you to sell clients, much less give them. If you've got regular clients, they belong to you. Territory rights we're obliged to give you work in your territory. But, you know, you can work wherever you like, you can employ as many people as you like. We don't raise your fees at all. There's no percentage, just a flat fee.

Letter on a small fee for a lead. So I put all these clauses in. The lawyer said, you're crazy. This is just stupid. But the interesting thing about it is, with time, I actually gave my franchisees more rights. I allowed them to change to a different franchisor if they weren't happy with it. I need them to vote out their own franchisor, force them to sell. I gave them veto changes to their manual, Veto powers over changes to their manual. So I. I kept on doing everything I could to make franchisees happy. And at the beginning, when I first launched, which was in 1989.

Somebody said to me, they said, it's from the media. They said to me, you know, if this is really successful, how big do you think it could be? And I said, well, look, I don't know if it will survive or not, but I'm hoping that one day, if it really works well, I might have as many as 100 franchisees. So.

And it kind of surprised me in a way because by the end of the first year, I had. I had 60. And that was poof. That was surprising.

Yeah, that's kind of what, you know, initially, someone had put me on to talking to watching your content was the fact that I went through a similar process. So in 2019, we were going franchising. I didn't take nine months, about six months of, you know, fighting with the lawyers that, hey, we're not going to do royalties, we are going to have set model fees. They're allowed to quit at any time if they feel like they're not getting a piece of what their value is, et cetera. And so that's why they had kind of said, hey, you need to go check this guy out. He went through the same thing. And then I'm like, well, he's at a different level with 4000. When did you decide to go from mowing into all these other services and what was the thought process behind. Behind that?

Well, I'd like to take credit for it, but it's so many things. It's just more or less just happened. I had this mowing system which is working all right. And I thought, well, the contracts and stuff are pretty good, but, you know.

Maybe we should try it for cleaning. But obviously this, this thing here, this, this is a. It's a. It's a mowing guy. That's what I. That's. That's a picture of taking from me with it, with the bead and the hat when I used to mow lawns. And it's not a cleaning image. And what if a woman wanted to do it? Why would you want a guy with a beard and a hat? So I thought, okay, I'll think of a different logo. So I thought of this thing called Sunlight S U N L I T E. And I devised his Lego little sprays like that, you know, very clean and bright and stuff. And then I sold a couple of franchises and I really couldn't find any work. I just find it too difficult. I didn't know the system very well. So eventually I went to these guys, said, give me. Here's your money back. We can't make it work. And then somebody, time later, somebody come to me and said, well, what about we start gyms, cleaning? And I said, no, that won't work.

This is a gardening image. What if it's a woman? It won't work. And they said, I think it'll work. And I said, no, it will not work. So I'm not prepared to do it. And they said, well, look, what if we do it and sort of contract the brand as part of your system? And I said, well, you know, okay, give it a go if you really want to. So they gave it a go and it worked. I can remember them telling me they went into this real estate agent and they said, oh, we're from Jim's Cleaning. And he. And the agent said, oh, yeah, it's okay, Jim's going. And then looks at, oh, I like the mowing. Oh, yeah, okay, we'll give you a go. But like, I did work, so. As in so many things, I didn't know what I was talking about. But fortunately, somebody else was wiser than me.

So. So how many locations were you at with mowing when that was happening? Because you started with the mowing first, right?

Well, that would have been, you know, I don't know, two, three years. I might have had a couple of hundred or something like that. It Was going all right. We started to go into state too. I didn't even thought of that in the beginning. I just thought it was just Melbourne only. But people, people came to me who wanted to do. They heard about this thing so they just, that drove the expansion. Some of my Melbourne guys went into state and others just approached. In fact, most of them were originally from Melbourne.

When did you make the decision to actually franchise the business? Because obviously you started mowing lawns. When did you realize, like, hey, like there's something here that I could actually, you know, give to other people that they couldn't get themselves. And what was special about that system that you were doing for Jim's Mowing?

Well, I've actually been gardening or in the mining industry continuously since 1970. So I was actually gardening and mowing as a student. And then when I finished my studies I went full time. So I was mowing. And then as I said it was, I started building up and selling lawnmower rounds. And then when VIP came on the market, I franchised in self defense. So it was really very gradual. I didn't, I didn't think for a long time this would be anything particularly great. I completely underestimated the potential. I mean it just seems such a humble industry. You know, I understood fast food and so that's big and expensive and stuff. But mowing lawns, how could you make a business out of that one? It was just surprising, that's all.

What was unique though about Jim's mowing versus someone just starting, like why would someone start a franchise in general? Why wouldn't they just go start their, you know, Bob's mowing?

Oh yeah. Well, there's a simple statistic and I don't know what your figures are, but if you look at the Cleaning Janitorial Service association of America looked at their website and their estimation is that 95% of cleaning businesses fail in their first year. Now the thing it's like in mowing is that independent mowing contractors do probably a little bit better. Something like 90% fail. Now our figures over the last year, actually a bit worse in last couple of years. We actually fell about 12% in the first year. Year. Now when I say fail, that includes people who've gone independent, people who've just, just got a better job. But, but Curiously I've about 10% of our franchisees in the survey reports good or satisfactory income. So that's, that gives you a difference, you know, between 90% failure and 12% failure. That's, that's why you Franchise for someone.

That is potentially thinking about it. Why would someone not like who when you look at a good franchisee versus someone who should not join as a franchise, why would someone not want to join a franchise and why would they want to rather do it themselves?

Well.

The smart ones will do it because they know they're more likely to be successful. One of the things we did right from the beginning, which was quite radical.

I used to give a list, I had a list of all my franchisees actually when I was selling lawnmowers the way I used to sell them, I'd sold probably more than 100 eventually is whenever a person bought a lawn mowing round from me, I would put their name and phone number on in black text on a white card. I'd stick it behind me on my wall. And if somebody was interested in buying a lawn mowing round, I would say, look, why don't you just ring one of those guys and ask them what it's like to do business with me? And they would ring up this leave people and say, oh, Jim's great, he does everything. He said he will. He looks after us, always gives us advice. You know, even I used to run free lunches for them. So they were pretty happy bunch. So that made it very easy to sell lawn mowing around. So when I started selling franchises, I had the same concept, but I just used to do a list and people and of all my current franchisees and people would come to me and they say, well, you know, why should we buy business from you when you're running it from your basement and, and there's VIP interstate company with the fancy office and all the stuff I didn't have for a long time. And I just said, well look, there's some difference between us. I didn't knock them, I just said there are some things that way operate, but here's a list of my franchisees. I want you to go Ray, and I want you to ring any of them you like and then I want you to go to vip. This is a bit sneaky. And I said to you, and then you asked for their list, you see, because I knew they, they couldn't give it. They could not list every French give that. They could give their, what they call the area managers, but they could not give every franchisee.

They're top five, they're top five. They can give you top five.

That was the difference. That was what it was. And I actually spoke to one of their managers and about this, what happened, and they said the only people who Buy from us are the people who've. Don't investigate you. He was quite open about it. I actually rang up. I've had a chat with my opposite number of VIP Bill, this very friendly guy, actually. We always get on quite well. Met a couple of times, and I said, why don't you copy us? Why don't you do what we do? And he said, well, my guys wouldn't let me, so I don't quite know what that means. But anyway.

So when you got started with the franchise, Started selling a lot of those for myself. This is a selfless question. So we're at 40 locations, right. We're in that phase where we're growing quickly. We're building the kind of like what we call command center, similar to your call center. We do a lot of the. All the office work and payroll and invoicing. All right. For the franchisees. You know it from a cash perspective, as you're growing the franchise, was there ever a point where it was very difficult from a cash point as you were growing very, very quickly, or was the model that you used unique in the way that you did franchisors over franchisees and you weren't the direct point of contact?

It was very dicey in the beginning.

Really. What actually happened in the way our system works is that we actually asked the franchisees what work they want, what suburbs, what areas, what times of day, everything. We asked them in advance. So when the job comes in, the.

You have to sort of allocate it according to, you know. And then you got to. So there's a whole process originally where the job would come in, we'd write it down on a card, then we slot it in a box. And then the franchisees would ring in the evenings and.

We dictate it to them. And then after that, we'd actually type it into computer. So you had about five people doing one job, which is now done by a computer. So in the beginning, it was. It cost me more to run the. Run the business than I was actually making in fees, substantially more. I actually had to go to my franchisees and say to them, listen, guys, I'm going to fail if I don't double your fees. And they agreed. Basically, they said, yeah, okay, we see the value, we see what you're doing. We don't know how you do what you're doing for the price you're charging us. So they agree. That was the closest run I ever had. So.

It was very dicey in the early days.

Originally. The other thing I found fairly soon too, that.

I found a difference in success according to where the franchisees were. The ones that were around my office in eastern suburbs of Melbourne were pretty happy and well off and did very well. I found the further they moved away from me, like in the western suburbs of Melbourne or even interstate, they tend to do a lot less well. And so I.

Eventually started selling regional franchises for people, local people, to look after them. Not only when I did that did it start to grow all over the place. The irony of it is in recent years we've actually started to buy back these regional franchises because we realized we can do it better ourselves. But I just didn't have the systems in those days to do it properly.

Was it difficult just in terms of like having some sort of pattern or consistency between the franchisors and how they kind of manage the franchisees? Was that the difficult part in having that system?

Yeah, it was very loose in the beginning. I mean, they're basically people who shared my ethos. There were a lot of them ex franchisees and I used to talk to them. We actually, we don't put customers first because we put franchisees first. Our first priority is welfare of franchisees. We're also passionate about customer service. We sign only franchisees and franchisors we are convinced will succeed. Those are the three principles I had right from the beginning. I used to knock people back if I didn't think they were going to be successful. I just wouldn't accept them. We still do that regularly. So it was kind of.

A lot of it was just trial and error and I made so many stupid mistakes. I mean, if I know what I know now, 30 years ago, I reckon it would take me half the time less to get to where I am. I just didn't know what I was doing.

I had a question because you talked about like, you know, the kind of the filings that you used back in the day to get a new job coming in and kind of old methodology. Now I know that Jim's is very, very tech centric, using different software and systems. And one of the systems that I was very keenly aware of when I was watching your content, what you call the 666 complaint system. Can you explain what that is and kind of how you use that from a high level to determine which areas the business might need held on.

Okay, it's more 4, 4, 6. Now we monitor complaints fairly carefully. We monitor, we get complaints out of clients ringing up to say they're unhappy with the service in some way.

We also send surveys out and about a third of them reply. So a bad comment on a survey is also a complaint. So.

When a franchisee, now franchisees can challenge complaints. So for example, if they can show that they, the client says, you never rang. Well, they said, here's the proof I rang, here's the proof I texted. If they say the job was bad and they go back and fix it and then the client's happy in the end. So we can delete complaints. I do it personally, actually, I delete probably at least, I don't know, 15 complaints a day. They can show they've done the right thing or they've made the client happy in the end.

Now, apart from that though, we don't mind the occasion, but anybody can get a complaint. Even the best franchisees occasionally will get them.

But If I have four complaints, which is at least 4% of total leads within a six month period, a letter goes out to the franchisor first and says, is there any reason why we shouldn't send the letter? And quite often the franchisor will say, well look here I'm, I'm working with them. There's companies that, that could come off. They've done pretty well lately. They just had a, you know, few last year, but now they're doing better. They all kinds of reasons. So, so usually I will say, okay, let's, let's pause it a bit. We won't send a letter and we delay the next check for, for the next month or so and, and see if they can do any better. Now if that doesn't work, we actually send a letter out and it's an automatic letter and it just is a warning letter and it says, look, you know, these are the complaints you've had. You're getting too many. If you continue with getting complaints, you're going to be breached.

That's pretty scary. So most of the time when they, when I send the original warning out, I don't actually send a letter at all because they get a bit scared. They get, they just lift their game. The franchisors are coaching them all the time, say, come on, you know, you don't do this, you've got to make sure you ring them back properly and this kind of stuff. So they're pushing them and then the letter comes out and that's pretty scary. That mostly works too and they mostly get better.

If not, if there's another lot of complaints for 4 or 4% within 6 months and again the franchise has the chance to object, then we send a breach notice. And this is really, really serious because what it means is they have to actually do it formally breached. They have to do a retraining course, which is a half day course in customer service or sometimes it's a practical in the field one instead. That's what the problem is.

And after that, every single complaint comes to me personally, directly. And if they continue to get complaints, then we will eventually terminate them or freeze their work or whatever. So it doesn't happen very often actually. You know, you've got.

4,000 plus franchisees and you know, we might do.

I mean, I don't know, 10, 15 breaches a year. There's a lot of people, it's just that very small minority who continually do the wrong thing.

For someone that's either starting a franchise or just starting a lawn care business in general, obviously my audience is primarily lawn care, landscaping. Um, what kind of traits do you see in an owner to get to say from 0 to 500,000 in annual revenue and then beyond that. So like I've always said, you know, if someone is the ability to sell as an owner, that someone can get in front of a customer and sell well, they can get to 500,000. Someone wants to get to a million in revenue and go past half a million marker. A lot of times it has to do with their management skills, their ability to find employees, retain them, train them, et cetera, or what. What are some of the common attributes you see in someone starting out that's going to become successful?

Okay, for a start, Australia and New Zealand are very, very different to the U.S. one of the differences is that workers here get paid a lot more. So from what I understand it, your common pattern is to have a manager with a group of workers. On the whole in Australia that just wouldn't, it doesn't, it's a lot harder to make it work because our wages, you know, our wages are like 20 bucks an hour, so.

And then you've got adult tears and all that. Yeah. Oh yeah, it's, it's brutal. My mom's from Australia, so I know a little bit about it. The whole apprentice programs and all that.

Yeah. So it's, it's, it's very tough to do. Most of our franchisees therefore either work by themselves or they have perhaps one employee. And the typical gyms franchisee probably only makes, you know, two to $3,000 a week. Got it. Now we have franchisees making in the multiple millions, but it's a minority with us. But as you say, the problem is basically finding staff labor is not Plentiful. We don't have Mexicans rushing across our border to looking for jobs for, you know, very cheap wages. We have very strict, which I'm in favor of too actually. We're very strict border control. So we don't have a lot of cheap labor, we don't have much illegal labor.

So I tend to be one or two man band is more typical for gyms.

And how do you find that in terms of just the competition in the industry? I would imagine even more fragmented in terms of there not being as many big players because of that issue. And there's a lot more one man bands. How can someone in that situation being solo or maybe one employee, smaller operation, you know, present themselves in a way to the customer, to their community or branding? What is the thing that allows them to, you know, get ahead or get more jobs or charge a higher price?

Okay.

We have a very different problem here. We have an immense problem with unserviced leads. Something like 1/3, 1 in 3 of our clients we can't service.

It's horrifying. The demand for our services is so much beyond our ability to grow from their franchise network. We're growing, we're doing very well, but customers, they just pour in.

The big advantages we have the public is that we have a very good reputation for service.

Our people are just genuinely really, really, really good on the whole. So when a person uses one gyms division, they tend to use others. You'll see people using six, seven different divisions and they'll use this again and they'll refer people to us. So we've actually one of the issues in recent years is as our lead volume has risen so dramatically, we've actually cut back on advertising. Sometimes we have like a fee, about 140 bucks a month in the franchise contract to advertise. Quite often lately we just say, we just give it back to them. We say, sorry guys, we can't spend it. We're flat out year round. We'd rather you have the money. We've given back, I think close to a million dollars over the last couple of years just to franchisees because we can't spend their advertising because there's too much work. So it's a difficult problem. Different problem to me. Look, doing well with clients isn't really difficult. When you got the Jim's brand on, you just got to give decent service and they get busy very, very, very quick, quickly on the whole. And if they don't in the beginning have quite enough work, what we do is we have a thing called pay for work guarantee where they can go and offer freebies which isn't too hard. You've got friends, neighbors, relatives, people in other divisions, anybody and just do the work for free. And if they do that and get decent service, you know most of their flat out from the word go and with that they almost invariably within a couple of months they're as busy as they want to be.

For those of those of the gyms group that do grow and get friend get employees and really try to scale the business like and that being such a hard thing in that, in that country, do you think it's more of a political thing? Is that a, is there policy issues like why is it that it's so difficult to find, retain and have a service business that can have employees and have the business run without you as the owner having to be there all the time?

Well it's always hard to find good people, there's no question about that. And the personal element like Australians are very.

Very egalitarian comparison with people in Europe or the U.S. we really, we have this thing about the digger, the battler. So it's kind of people like to work for themselves to a large extent here. So it's not, not quite the employment mentality I think that you have. We tried to actually launch in the US and Texas and we just found that our model didn't work.

It's all the teams and everything I read about franchising America is all about teamwork. It just doesn't work. We don't. Yeah, we're different people and New Zealand is very similar actually. That's why it works very well in New Zealand. But we've never got ahead in the U.S. i think our systems might need to modify them quite dramatically.

Interesting in terms of the different industries that you, you know, delved into. Now obviously from a high level view, you seeing all of the different industries, what's the common thread between them? Obviously they're all service based but what is that something that you see across all owners, all industries that makes it successful versus someone who fails regardless of the industry?

Well they're all very similar actually. Whether you're mowing lawns or putting antennas or washing dogs, really they're about the same thing. It's just a matter of looking after customers. Well, it's very simple. You get the call, you get the text, you ring them back promptly. If you can't get through, you text them. You turn up when you say you will give a two hour limit so you don't make a precise deployment because you'll never be on time and do the job well. Obviously, you know, you try and make the customer into a fan. You just do a great, brilliant job and be nice to the customer. It's not really rocket science, honestly speaking. I mean, we talk about a selection policy, but the reality of it is.

90% of our franchisees do pretty well. And they're not, you know, they're not typically, you know, super entrepreneurs. They're just decent men and women who do do a decent job and care about what they do.

From what I've, I've seen, Jim's mowing mostly focuses on recurring maintenance, simple services. They don't have a whole bunch of like dump trucks, excavation building projects, patios, etc. Is that intentional? And do you see that being harder to grow the business in a more sustainable manner if you're focused on construction? Or is it more matter of having the solo operator and that being easier for the mowing in terms of projects versus more recurring maintenance?

Well, it's, it's driven by franchisees more than anything else is what they want to do. And regular clients are very popular. Mowing, cleaning, dog wash, those kind of things which you do. People like that kind of work because it's very, it's very reliable, very consistent. See a lot of it. Yeah, you talk about people becoming millionaires and making a half million dollars a year and stuff. We've had people like that. But one of the things I personally do one of my jobs every week is I ring up my veterans, the people that have been around for 10, 15, 20, 25 years on major anniversaries, and chat to them about their business. And the strongest common theme is that they love the whole thing, but what they love about it is lifestyle. They don't necessarily work incredible hours, but they make very good money and they've seen their kids growing up and this kind of thing. So.

It'S a big thing here. People aren't necessarily quite so ambitious to make a fortune. Some of them are and the opportunities are there. And we've got many gyms, multi millionaires. But mostly it's just it's lifestyle, having a life, you know, Like I was talking to one guy just recently and he's in Queensland, he doesn't like the heat very much, so he knocks off at, at one o' clock every day and he only works Monday to Thursday. And yeah, he has a couple of workers and stuff, but he doesn't make a fortune. But he makes more than he ever did in the past and he has A great life and that, that's the common theory. We would love people to get ambitious. We would love people to say, I want to become a millionaire. We often talk to, especially in business like fencing, where they work like 60 unserviced, come on guys, put a team on. But on the whole, they just like the lifestyle, I think, I think that's different. Maybe, maybe Americans are more ambitious, I don't know.

And then one question that I kind of, I've seen on some of your social media as well as this question come from Matthew Gordon here about COVID 19 affecting your franchises. I know you're pretty vocal about some of the things that, even locally in Australia, the restrictions and things like that. How did it affect the franchises and what did you do to overcome some of those issues in the past few months?

Well, the worst was last year. They shut down mowing for a couple of months. That got me really, really, really angry because what happened originally, the department, this is just in Victoria, in our state, the Department of Health and Human Services put out guidelines that makes. They're quite sensible. They're very well considered about five pages of guidelines. One of the things they said is that the sole option operator working on site can is safe because you know what can. How can a gardener spread covert, you know, you don't even see anybody, you don't touch anything they've touched. It's about the safest job in the world. And then a few days later, after this, the premier, our beloved Premier, Daniel Andrews gets, gets on a news coverage. Oh, you can't, you know, mow lawns and have your house clean. Now, he probably didn't even know what his own guidelines were because he's not at least a very bolshy, lefty, greeny woke kind of politician.

I'll use rude words on him. But he got to this and then, and then he just, he just shut everybody down. And I got really angry and I went on the media, we did a media rampage. And I started blasting this ridiculous. And I wrote him five letters, open letters, just asking him what your reasons are for doing this, where's your health advice, how you change your mind. No response. Nothing at all. So this so and so decided that his political fortunes were best by being the hard man. He didn't give us stuff about tens of thousands of small business thrown out of work.

But I think it's fair to say I caused him a bit of embarrassment because in the latest lockdown, they did it again and they let the outside workers work, even in groups. What we used to infuriate people too, is because the council gardeners were still working in groups doing the same job and that. And that boiled people mad. So in the beginning, I got quite a bit of flack, but the interesting thing about that was that it was actually pretty good PR for us. When the lockdown finished, I don't know what it was, we got a massive increase of, of leads and of franchise inquiries. People always congratulate me, saying, oh, good on you standing up, because I was very consistent. I didn't take the lockdown, I just said this particular aspect. So it was, it was a terrible time, though. It really was, because I had, you know, like 800 franchisees couldn't work for two months, no, most of getting government benefits. But it was very, very distressing. And people were ringing me all the time and saying, you know, when's it going to end? And I said, look, I don't know.

It was. It was brutal.

One of the things that was very heartwarming about it and I really encouraged him was that the.

The support that our franchisees got. Now, obviously, when they couldn't work, we suspended all their fees so they wouldn't pay any fees, and also suspended the fees, obviously our fees to the franchisors. But what I found was that the franchisors, even though they weren't getting paid, were actually ringing their franchisees even more often than they had in normal times. Like, it's supposed to ring at least once a month and preferably once a week, but they were ringing them more often and they were just really caring for each other. You know, one of our franchisees who was on a student visa and couldn't get any government support was threatened with addiction. And, you know, we lent her a bit of money once we gave it to her because you don't pay it back, but people were giving her, you know, meal vouchers and stuff. And we said, if you do get evicted, you can come and stay at our conference center. So, you know, but franchisees, even ones who weren't in the lockdown, were sort of ringing me up and saying, jim, look, I'm okay financially. Can I help anybody else? So there was a. It was, it was really heartwarming. That sense of family, that sense of sticking together in hard times, I think that was, that was the most. And if somebody asked me what I'm most proud of about gyms, it's not really having 4,000 plus franchisees. It's the fact that genuinely, our people tend to care for each other really genuinely. Do the franchisors really want franchisees to succeed and the franchisees look after each other.

It's wonderful, actually. It's one of the main attractions, actually. I even thought about it in the beginning. I thought about franchising in terms of finding work, but we actually find the sense of community, the sense of family is even more important in the long term.

A couple people have mentioned the comments here, and before I go, I want to ask you one more question about whether someone wanting to join gyms, or any franchise for that matter, and obviously the biggest downside many times is either the fees or the fact that they want to keep their own brand. I've heard you say multiple times where if you look at gyms immediately, people from a branding element can tack an extra 10% onto their price because of just the brand. And that, well, takes care of the fees. Can you talk to that a little bit and just explain not so much about the franchise fees, but just the power of brand and to what you can charge to the customer because of that?

Yeah, well, as you say, you can put on at least 10% just by the gym. And this is just what they say. There was a discussion on some forum and stuff. There was a guy who, who, who just new into a regional area where there was no franchisees. And he said, what do I charge? And there was a couple of guys that topped on and said, listen, work out what the opposite is charging. And at 10%, that's the gym's premium. And, and the fact of the matter is even putting the gyms premium on.

They still, they still don't charge as much as they should. One of my bugbears with franchisees, I put a blast in the newsletter just recently. I said, come on guys, put your prizes up, for heaven's sake, stop being so cheap. You're basically all completely flat out. Why don't you go. I have discussion with practicals all the time. Why don't you put an extra 10% on? Just try it with the new jobs. Go. I guarantee you they'll accept it. The brand is so strong.

That's, that's the biggest struggle. They don't want to charge enough. I remember talking to one particular, one of these veteran, it was a cleaning franchisees and they were charging some jobs like 30 bucks an hour. I said, you've got to be insane. You know, you're a great operator. You know, how could you be charging less than 60 bucks an hour? This is on a quote basis. I don't, I don't understand how, you know, I believe in making customers really, really happy. But, my goodness, they. They can properly pay me for my service. Why not? Especially when. When they're queuing up, people get desperate. They want. They want to use us. There's nobody remotely like us here. The brand is so powerful.

So I don't know. But there's something. The interesting thing about is we've got franchisees who haven't taken jobs from the office for years and they still pay fees every month. So it's not just the work.

And last question before I let you go. Obviously you're not young. I'm not going to say you're old, but you're not young right now. 69. Well, and. And so when. Why do you keep going? Why do you keep working at gyms every day? I know on YouTube there's a video of, you know, kind of your day in the life. I watch through that. When do you. Is there. Is there a next phase? Is there not something else you're going to do? Or is gyms, the community that you built, something that you're very passionate about?

Look, first of all, one day I will retire and there's going to be a lovely ceremony. I can just imagine myself. It'll be in a church and there'll be a box on the floor and I'll be in that box. Retirement ceremony.

I. I love what I do. I really, really, really enjoy it so much. It's just an incredible buzz. It's so interesting. It's so exciting. It's so full of changes. You know, in the last five years, I've made more changes than in the previous 15 in terms of how we run the business. We're just working out better ways to do it. Our service levels are improving, our customer service is improving. We're spending millions of dollars on software development. You're going to see this yourself down the tracker. But you'll want this stuff.

Oh, we're already. Already trying to save up for it.

Well, no, yeah, actually, this thing we got busy, we're going to give it away and I don't know how to. How do you explain that to you? But. But we will be. We will be giving it away eventually. We've already started giving it to. See, we've got a system called Gyms plus, which we give us. We sell our surplus leads to independence.

So we're giving it to them and we're trying them and they're really liking it. So by the end of this year, we'll have a. It'll be fantastic. It'll be the best software package in the world and we're going to use that as a feeder in a way. We get a lot of people who start off taking our leads, become just join us in the end. So it's recruitment system, but look, it's just fun. I don't know what you find, Mike, but I just love, love, love business. It's the biggest buzz. I just wake up in the morning and I love what I do. I love the people that I work with. I just love the ideas. I love the creativity, the excitement. You know, I don't spend very much money. I drive a crappy, you know, five thousand dollar car and I buy my clothes from Kmart. But we don't live like rich. But it's just, it's just fun. Don't you reckon? Isn't business fun?

Absolutely, absolutely. I would, I'd rather do that than play golf on the golf course on Saturdays and all the rest of it.

You know, I'm notorious for it. I, I, I cannot have had holidays. My family wants to go on a trip to Europe for a month next year. I love my. But I'm not going with you. I don't want to go.

Your daughter, your daughters are kind of at that age or that, that is the, that is the golden dream is a month away in Europe.

Well, they, they, yeah.

My Fisher son, Lord of B is going over to do his, his masters at Oxford.

So nice.

They're gonna, they're gonna go and visit him, but I just can't stand it. I hate planes.

But see where I am, I don't need to travel very much because every franchisee in that system has a direct phone number and email address and they'll ring me anytime, today or night, weekends, and I'll respond to them. So I, I can, I'm really, really in close contact with my group electronically. I don't need to go to travel anywhere but. Oh jeez.

Been the kind of the biggest thing you think in the past few years has been just the adoption of technology versus you know, obviously way back when you're filing cards for leads. But is that, that been really the biggest, you know, learning curve?

Well, technology, we're spending probably something like two, three million dollars a year on software development right now. So big, big investment.

Probably the biggest changes is improvements in service though. Like every, every we have a system of surveys which we launched a few years ago and that's actually had a dramatic effect on customer service. And actually it's the reason I think that our leagues have gone through the roof because the service is so much better than it used to be by every measure. So it's a text from a survey. About one third of our clients respond. That's had a dramatic effect. And people really, really love these high ratings. I've got so many now, 4.9 and 5 stars. And they just, they're fanatical about doing everything they can to make clients happy. And the other thing that's really changed a lot is that we're working out a lot better ways to look after franchisees. We're just always trying to figure out how to make them happier. And we found that ringing them more often is the best thing. And then. Exactly. You've got to have meetings, we find every six weeks works ideally. And just giving them more powers like vetoing changes. Their own manual, which only came in last year. Just doing everything we can to make franchisees into fans. So those are the really important changes. Technology is the servant. It's really about service. If you give amazingly good service to clients, you will have lots of work. If you give amazingly good service to franchisees, you will have lots of franchisees. That's it. That's the message for Jim's group. And every day, every day of my working life for the past 40 years I have worked on that goal. How can I, how can I make my first for my franchisees and then also my customers into raving fans?

In closing, last question here, you know, I have a similar story in terms of, you know, I was going to medical school before I got my md, I dropped out and started mowing. Right. And so in doing so you have a similar story for someone that is maybe 18, 19, 20, 21, 22 in that area, kind of choosing their care. What would you say to them when they might have that same apprehension or opposition to them joining a service based business like mowing, landscaping, cleaning, what kind of, you know, obviously there's some of a stigma against that in some areas of the world. What would you say to that individual that in their heart loves the business and what they do isn't so important? And that seems like a great entry point in a service based business.

Look, there's less stigma in Australia about manual work than there is in the States from what I've been told. But even here, the problem is people have this idea, you've got to go to university, to college, you've got to get a degree, you've got to. It's just crazy. I think people just cannot comprehend what a wonderful future awaits them in the service industry. And it doesn't matter where you start. I mean we don't hold people. My main force in the franchise, if you want to start with us, you can go into anything. But so many of our franchisees have gone on to great. But if you've got my first franchisees, guy called Andrew McIntosh, who was the first franchise, he became a franchisor, started the fencing division. He's now a multi, multi millionaire. He's got nurseries all over the place. It's big construction business. I, I just reckon it's, it's a great way in if you're young, if you're 18 years old now, if you can afford to buy a franchise, obviously that's better because we'll give you the start, which makes it a lot easier. But I reckon just go into the service industry and I think it's the biggest opportunity. There's a wonderful book called the Millionaire Next Door. Have you read that one?

Yep, absolutely.

Yeah, it's a, it's a great book. And it actually points out that the richest typical American millionaire is not like a tech guru or someone like that. There are people like you and me, they're people who started with service industries and built from there. And that include many of my franchisees and my franchisors too.

I've got franchisees who are making clearing well over a million dollars a year. I mean how could they possibly have achieved that? And the ones that don't, the ones that want just a lifestyle. I had one guy who I just rang on his 10 year anniversary. This guy was 78 and he's just finished off with just legislatures go after 10 years. He said I made more money mowing lawns.

In my 70s than I ever did as a manager.

In younger life. And the funny thing is he's still out there. He's still working with the guy who bought the business. He's not retired yet, so he's 10 years older than me and he's still out there mowing laws every day. But it's great because you see.

I think there's a great thing to working outdoors too. I mean, but even just working physically, I mean everybody knows that exercise is good for you. One reason my mood is so buoyant is because I keep very, very fit. I run at least half an hour a day and you know, watch my diet and stuff. So that helps your frame of mind. But if you actually, in a sense, when you're mowing lawns for a living, you're being paid to work out, aren't you? You've been paid quite well to be outdoors, which is good for you, too. To be. To be kept physically fit, to have a great flexible lifestyle. I mean, it's a wonderful, wonderful business to be in. And, you know, doesn't mean to say you join the franchise, you're always going to stay with the franchise. You might do it by yourself. You might go with somebody else. You might start your own competition business. But it's just. It's just wonderful. I wish more people would realize that. I wish they wouldn't. You know, we offer a job paying like $50,000 a year, which is pretty ordinary salary by Australian standards in our accounts program. And you get 100 applicants, half of them with degrees. You've got a degree. You spent years getting a tertiary degree and you're applying for a job paying 50 grand a year. I mean, I wouldn't get out of bed as a mowing contractor for less than. Less than double that. So. And that requires nothing. You don't know. You just need it, you know, a few days training and you're out there.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, Jim, I really appreciate your time. I don't want to take too much more of your time. I know you're busy and thank you for coming on so early. I appreciate that as well.

Yeah, no, you're welcome, Mike. And all the best with your business. You might have a 4000 one day.

No, I don't want 4000. That'd be a lot of problems.

You have systems to operate them. It's, it's, it's. We should have a chat time. If you're ever in Melbourne, come and have a talk and we'll go through what we're doing. I don't mind. We've got no trade secrets. I'll tell you everything.

I appreciate it. Well, thank you so much, Jim. You have a great rest of your day. I know you're just getting started. It's our evening here. But thank you so much for joining us this early.

Good talk to you, Mike.

Take care, Artie. Bye. Bye.