SPEAKER_02 0:13

Welcome to the Curiosity Crisis. We challenge ourselves to explore the world of business, tech, investing, and science. Get curious and be part of our journey as we discuss, challenge, and learn. Today we're joined by Jim Penman. Thanks, Jim, for joining. Good to be here. We've said our favorite opening question and something that aligns with the podcast deeply is what's keeping you curious at the moment? So is there anything in particular?

SPEAKER_03 0:36

Well, I'm an obsessive reader. I subscribe to several different magazines, including The Economist, Atlantic, News Scientist, The Australian. Plus, I read or listen to probably a couple of books a week on the on a wide variety of subjects. At the moment, I'm listening to a talking book about the uh British Empire, which is really interesting because you can see some parallels between what how the British conquered India and what the Romans did in the Eastern Mediterranean. Very interesting. And I'm also rereading a biography of Bob O'Hawke. Oh, really? Wow. Yeah. It's incredible. My interests are extremely wild. I I often just pick up something, I look at it, I see a magazine, I read a book, I listen to a book, and I get interested. And then it's amazing, quite often the stuff that seems so random really comes out to be useful or interesting in some other way.

SPEAKER_02 1:28

For our listeners, Jim has two massive bookshelves behind him right now that are absolutely filled with books. So it doesn't really surprise me that that was the uh the thing that's keeping you curious, Jim.

SPEAKER_03 1:39

Well books are great, and um talking books is one of the greatest things too, because that means all the time that I spend exercising, farming, driving, it's full of in full of wonderful information. I've seen stuff in the past 12 months that have completely turned my world around. Some of the stuff about dopamine receptors and stuff, which I wouldn't even know until months ago. Had to totally go through and rewrite a couple of my books because because there's new ideas. Wow, I didn't know that.

SPEAKER_04 2:06

That's so cool. Yeah, like we we often talk about when we're talking about what's keeping our ourselves curious, is it's is all about books, but it's so refreshing to to hear that someone as as busy as you consumes tons, tons of long-form content, which we absolutely love. That's so cool.

SPEAKER_02 2:21

Just a quick follow-up question. Are you into audiobooks or are you uh yeah, I love audiobooks.

SPEAKER_03 2:26

I used to hate driving because it was boring, and you can only listen to something on the radio and like the news or something, which is very, very superficial. Now I can listen to anything.

SPEAKER_04 2:34

Hmm, timeless content.

SPEAKER_03 2:36

That's good to know. I think you see keeping fit. I run a half-hour day on a treadmill, I do weightlifting and stuff, have a shower, get dry. All that time I'm listening to talking books the whole time. So just every day, extra information going, keeping active in mind and body.

SPEAKER_04 2:53

Well, you are actually the perfect guest for the Curiosity Crisis podcast. This is perfect. You are incredibly curious. We'll jump into it now. So obviously, there's there's been uh lots written about like your own story, you've you've written a book and you've got another book coming out, but we would love to hear, I guess, just some of the I guess if you don't have time to tell the whole story, like what are some of the most pivotal moments and and big challenges from growing your single mowing business into a multi-division international franchise? Like what what stands out to you in terms of your story are the key points that took you from zero to one and then one to I don't know where you are now, millions. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 3:30

I think the striking thing about it is that it wasn't any one big step. It was thousands of little steps. People have this idea that you know somebody's going along mowing lawns, pa-pa-pa, yeah, you're just happy to mow lawns. Then I think, what if I franchise? Bang, you're a multi-billion. It's nothing like that. It's thousands of little decisions. It's when you're mowing a lawn, how you how you cut the grass more efficiently, more quickly, how you do a better job, how you save yourself, you know, five seconds emptying a grass bag or going around a couple of seconds going around a tree or navigating between streets. And then and then when you start employing people, what kind of people? How do you how do you find them? How do you look after them? And then how do you make money? And do you want to start selling lawn mowing rounds? And how do you do that when you don't know how to sell? And and it just gradually, gradually moves, and every stage, it's sort of surprising. I mean, one thing I'll say about this is nothing ever works out the way you expect. Most things work out far worse than you expect, and some things work out far better than you expect. The only thing you can predict is it'll never be what you think's going to happen.

SPEAKER_04 4:31

Wow. So, okay, I'll I'll pitch it another way, but that's that's awesome. So, what I what I took away from that is you are you iterate a lot. You you've just gone from one to the other to the other to the other to keep making little changes. But did you ever have the vision of like, did you know when you maybe had the first idea of creating a franchise that you were you were going to end up where you are now? Like, did was there any vision of that?

SPEAKER_03 4:54

I had no idea. Look, I had in the 80s I had this business that was building up and selling lawmine rounds. So a little business. I had about a dozen subbies and stuff and I build it, so which was okay. Got myself out of debt, bought a house, was doing all right. Then this company called VIP appears. They're from Adelaide, they went to state, but they had 250 franchisees. They terrified me. I thought these guys would absolutely crush me. I even tried to join them. I said to them, Listen, I will I will help to build VIP. And because I I you you guys are too capable for me. You're too got too much money, too much experience. I can't compete with you. They said, no, thanks. So I I rated their show. I went into the expo, picked up a brochure, got the guy behind the desk to tell me some questions, and then the state manager came and kicked me off because he said, Jim Pimman, don't tell them anything else. So I went away. So I thought, okay, all right, I can see some benefits to this system, but you know, maybe I could produce something that would be even better for the franchisee. That was my idea. And so I nine months of arguing with lawyers, which which was very frustrating. I launched the franchise in mid-1989. And somebody asked me at that time how many franchisees do you think you might have one day? And I said, Look, I don't know this will work, but one day, if it really works out well, I'm not saying it will, I might have as many as 100. That's what I said, because I was against this huge competitor that that that seemed to be so intimidating. I just didn't see how I could possibly beat them. That is, we're now, I don't know, 10, 20 times the size, I've got no idea, but but I didn't expect it. And for a long time I was just surprised. I I just kept on doing things. See, I did I did things that I thought would hold me back. Like in the beginning, I was determined to be selective. I wasn't going to put on anybody that I thought might fail. And I thought, well, I'm never going to grow that much because I'm never going to take as many people as that. And I'll never get that much money and I'll never have. So that was kind of like a decision that's made for, I suppose, ethical reasons, but it just weirdly turned out that that was a good strategy. Because when somebody came to see me about a franchise, I had a secret weapon. Because they'd say, basically, why should we buy from you? You're buying it from your basement, you're nowhere, you're no one. This guy's interstate, they're much more successful, they go to fancy offices. Why would I buy from you? I said, Okay, here's a list of my franchisees with their phone numbers. What I want you to do is to go and ring them. And then it got ring their people, which I knew they wouldn't give them a list, you see, because I knew my people were happy.

unknown 7:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 7:24

Because I not only I not only tried to look after them as well as I could, but I also made sure that the ones I had were would suit to the business as far as I could. I would trial them on the road first. If they didn't give good customer service, I wouldn't accept them. So it was things like that. You just don't expect it. It's interesting. Now a lot of the lot of the best decisions I make in business in retrospect were the ones I made for ethical reasons rather than against what I thought was my own business interests.

SPEAKER_02 7:52

That's very interesting, actually. Now, like just talking about that kind of franchising process that you went through, do you think it was kind of that systems mindset that um you eventually had? And then um, because you were talking there about uh kind of going in and then and seeing what was successful and then trying to implement that and and doing what would make a franchisee you know happy and kind of like breeding success out of it. Do you think that kind of mentality of looking at it from a real systems approach was something that yeah really allowed it to compound into what it is today?

SPEAKER_03 8:26

Uh I think it's more got to do with ethics than systems. I don't even know what you mean by systems, actually. But okay, let me put it this way. I'm a Christian. If you looked at a at a story that encapsulates what Jim's is about, it's Jesus washing his disciples' feet. Okay. Now, to understand the context of that, in the Middle East at that time, that was a very degrading, dirty, filthy, unpleasant job. That was like a slate, that was a really demeaning thing. Sometimes a revered rabbi, the disciples might wash the rabbi's feet as a sign of extreme respect, but Jesus washed his disciples' feet, which they found quite shocking. And that whole concept of student of servant leadership, in other words, when you lead, you are trying to help somebody else. It's more than systems, it's an attitude. And when I'm dealing with with customer service or franchises every day, my whole mentality is what can I do to help? How can I help? So we've just come across a really bad situation. I'll give you an example, and this is some of the bad things that happen. We've got a new division, Jim's Healthcare, which has got real problems. You've got nine people signed up, hasn't been well supported, the people behind it have walked away. So I am left with a situation where we've got a division, which I don't understand very well, with people needing support. Now, what do I do about that? How do you cope with it? And the thing you've got to look at is not so much what's my legal responsibility, which is probably limited, but what can I do to help these people out? So I'm doing things like trying to arrange for them to transfer different divisions, seeing if I can get new leaderships, talking with them. It's always looking at from their point of view, they've invested money in this thing. What can I do? How can I solve their problem?

SPEAKER_01 10:14

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SPEAKER_02 10:42

I love that mentality though, that servant mentality that and it's funny that it's it's worked in the services business, but it's out of a belief that you have. That's awesome. Absolutely love that. And I guess like a follow-up to that is yeah, you have this massive customer focus, right? And I'm just wondering how, if that's your mentality, how do you kind of let that trickle down into all your franchises then?

SPEAKER_03 11:06

Well, surprisingly powerful because when you found something, you have this visionary sort of image. It's very strange, people, when they first see me, they're kind of overawed sometimes. It's this legendary figure. I'm really a pretty ordinary person. The more you know me, the less impressed you are by me. You ask anybody in my family. So, but people see him for the first time, and and and I get up and give a talk in in training, and I get the first talk, I spoke for an hour and a half, which we call the Ethos talk about service, sarcastic service to franchisees. And I'm this legendary charismatic figure talking intensively about this, and then make it real. For example, I do give my phone number and my email address to every one of my five and a half thousand franchisees, and not only allow them, but I encourage them and urge them to contact me. And they do multiple times a day. Franchises contact me about something, so I show by example, and that kind of when you talk at the talk and you also act the talk, it does tend to influence people. And people often ask me, Am I proud of having you know five and a half thousand franchisees? And I said that really the thing that's most I'm most proud of is the fact that these attitudes that that I have, which are peculiar, are very widespread in gyms. Like, I mean, like take it during COVID, we had a bad time. You you guys weren't so bad beyond Sydney and and Canberra, but in here we couldn't work for two months, and that was a very bad time. Now, we of course didn't charge our franchisees any fees. You couldn't do that, so they weren't getting any money. So franchise income was completely zero. But what I happen to know is the franchise, people who are looking after franchise, are working harder during those two months than they ever did before or since, even though they weren't getting paid because they cared about their guys and they wanted to help them. And you had situations like a lady who was in dogwash, she was a student, she had no government income. The government says you're not allowed to work, forbid you work, even though she no danger to public health. You can't work, there's no government money for you. Now she's faced with addiction, she's faced, but she can't pay for food. You know what? Other franchisees, even those without income, gathered around, supported it, gave her food vouchers, and we we gave her a bit of help too. So that that that caring, people would ring me up and say, Listen, I know I haven't got any work myself, but I'm in a good situation financially. Is there anybody who needs help? And I was so moved by that. These are wonderful, amazing people. So this attitude, and I know too that if a new franchisee goes into a into a meeting, there'll be they'll be seeing your franchisees, experiences you will mentor them and help them and guide them and befriend them. I've heard this so many times.

SPEAKER_04 13:41

This is so interesting because like my original picture of of franchise franchising is I guess that the the total, you know, a lot of companies talk about culture and and values and stuff like that, and and you think that it's har I think that I thought it was harder in a in a franchise business because everyone sort of goes out and and are their independent selves. It's interesting that you do I've in doing my research, I guess, it's interesting that you make it easy enough for franchisees if they want to to go out on their own to like run their an independent independent business and not have Jim's name attached to it, but obviously lots and lots stay. Is it the culture do you think that is the key of that? Like what is the key to making this business franchisable and people stay within it?

SPEAKER_03 14:24

What you've got to do is to provide ongoing value. It's it's interesting, really. Most franchisees, after the first uh few months, they have enough work. They don't need if you've got regular clients like mowing, cleaning, dog wash, those kind of divisions, they don't usually need a lot of work ongoing. Now they may take some leads just to fill in the gaps and stuff, but in a sense, purely as a work-finding exercise, they they a lot of them don't need us. But then what you do is you have a system of community, you have meetings which are regular, you have a franchise law. We require franchise laws to ring franchisees at least week, at least monthly, but ideally weekly, keep in contact, ask how they're going, find out the things and they can help them. And then that sense of camaraderie and that sense of pride and that sense of mission of being part of something. And people do go independent sometimes, but the great majority don't. It's interesting. We don't make it difficult, we just say you pay us a few is about five thousand dollars typically. Um, and we don't you know is chase it, I must say. Um something like, but it's not not a big thing. Because to my mind, if a person's only staying with you because they're they're of the threat of legal action, it's not really much of a I think like you imagine if you ring up somebody about a franchise and you say, What do you think? Why are you in it? You say, I'm not in it because I'm forced to, because otherwise they'll sue me. It doesn't give a good impression. Not a lot of independent, happily working, saying, Yes, I didn't, I don't need gyms anymore, but it was a great experience and I get a lot from them. Everybody who's there is is happy. I ring my 10-year veterans, one of the things I do, 10, 20, 30 year veterans. I do it once a month, and um it's wonderful because you asked them what they were doing and what they're doing now, and most of them don't take much leads, but they love the system, they love the support, they they really like their franchise or they just they just like being part of this.

SPEAKER_02 16:11

That's so it's so great to hear that yeah, you have that unity of all of these franchisees. I guess, yeah, as Kusha's saying, we did a lot of research for this episode and and we were looking through kind of the training centers that you have for these people as well. And we were looking at how you have kind of this like campus style almost where people come and they stay there and they go and learn, and it's it's this full thing where they eat there. And and I was kind of just wondering, where did you get the idea for that? Was that something that you had in mind when you decided we're gonna start franchises or was that something that came along a bit later?

SPEAKER_03 16:45

I wanted to do it fairly early. Again, it's a matter of culture. You you want to try and indoctrinate people in your culture. And so I thought the best way to do that was have to live with actually live with us for a few days. That was kind of the idea behind it. And it's not just they live with each other, but I also make a point of going around and talking to as many people. I probably have some contact with everybody, at least once you're in the training, personally, directly, say hello to them, bump fists and this kind of thing, and just chat to them a bit. Just you want them to become part of us, believe what we believe. It's like if you you've read um Jim Collins, Good to Great, Built to Last, those kinds of books too. They they talk about the value of culture with an organization, something that's widely shared. And we do have that, and you've got to talk about it a lot.

SPEAKER_04 17:28

You've got to keep on show via examples and yeah, okay, and for you that's just a vehicle and a medium for doing that. Like you're bringing everyone together, it's not like an online one where you can you can speak for a bit and send out an email after you're actually like one-on-one with them and talking about you know Jim's ethos and trying to convey that because my next question is about like, you know, where do you see business going in the future? And and I think after COVID with the whole work from home thing, I've got a pretty strong view that I think there's still so much about business and and being person to person because we're just at the end of the day, we're all humans, but that's sort of like a a bit of the the thesis behind the building and and the culture and everything like that.

SPEAKER_03 18:09

We've spent millions of years evolving to be with each other face to face. Online just does not have the same effect. If you have the more friends you have online, the more lonely and miserable you are. The more and the better friends you have in person, the more happy and positive you are. It's just not the same. Online, we do have staff who spend maybe a day or two a week away, but they've got to come in and spend time with us as well. Otherwise, you'd lose it. It's the odd conversation, the chit chat, the jokes, the sharing, the conversations that drift from topic to topic. Just things come up in person. I don't believe online is a substitute.

SPEAKER_04 18:46

So I wanted to ask then, just changing a little bit, changing to a little bit, I want to ask, what's your philosophy of on business in the age we're in right now? So many traditional on the you've got many traditional on-the-ground businesses, so you know, lawn mowing, you talked about lawn mowing, dog wash, car wash, like all of these sorts of businesses. So in an age of like uh in the age of AI and technology, sort of the I think it's I think it might be the Jeff Bezos question, like what will not change and and where do you see the space that you operate in in the next five, ten, fifteen years?

SPEAKER_03 19:22

We invest very heavily in technology. We spend several million dollars a year developing software systems, and that's crucial to, for example, the the way we've dropped the level of complaints by by by 99% since pre-franchise day, so more. And that's a lot to technology and and and feedback systems and customer surveys and all kinds of things like that that that help to drive it forwards. We make good use of it and make good use of things like AI too and and social media and the rest. But the but the fundamental job is going out there doing work, the mowing, the cleaning, the dog wash, the other things, yeah, which is a very personal area. So we just help people to be more effective, to travel less, to make better alley rates, to have a better lifestyle, to have better work-life balance, those kinds of things.

SPEAKER_02 20:07

I guess on the the flip side of that, is there anything that you see will change in the next 10 years? Is there anything that you're you're kind of yeah, you'll you're looking at you know, changing in the way that you guys operate, or or is there any kind of yeah, I guess if you if you had to guess?

SPEAKER_03 20:24

See if you asked me even a year ago, I'd tell you that nothing's much going to change, but then everything is we will see dramatic changes. We've got a new software system that's just being released, Jimbo, that that we intend to feel outside of gyms as well. And it does a whole stack of different things that we couldn't do in the past. Like, for example, it's engineered to reduce the level of complaints. It does things like if you don't call the client back within two hours, it reminds you. In my voice, actually, I I yell at them, answer the phone. We've got other things too, so that when you can't get through, you press a button, it sends a message to the client. It there's a whole stack of things about this that's designed, engineered to make your life easier. Down the track of it, one of the things we're really looking forward to, hopefully by the end of the year, is when a customer rings in, we actually look into a franchisee's diary, and then we can book them at appointment because we know where they are. That kind of thing will dramatically improve customer service and productivity and the income of our franchisees. So there's there's huge changes taking place. Now that's all gonna happen in the next six months. I could not comprehend where we'll be in years' time, except that we'll continue to drive for better service. Not being fantastic to do better income, you know, working at how long it's take you to do a job. How can you improve it? How can you get your efficiency up? How can we look at your conversion right? Why are you converting jobs better than someone else? There's so much that technology can do, it's unimaginable. Even the things I can think of that we'll do in the next six months is probably dwarfed in the next six years.

SPEAKER_04 21:53

But then the I guess the core thesis is like all of the services that your franchises um and your franchisees offer will. Like the demand for those are not going away at all. They're just integral parts of society, as is, I guess.

SPEAKER_03 22:06

You're completely right. And that's one big, big thing about area. People are very scared of AI, and they truly were should be. It was the biggest job destroyer you could imagine. So many of these prestigious white-collar jobs, like computer programming, for example, that used to be the career of the 21st century. Well, tell you what, there's less of them around than they used to be because AI is so good at these things. Less people going through courses. And you look at banking and you look at all kinds of different areas of technology and bookkeeping and counting. And all these areas are going to be revolutionized. There's going to be mass, mass layoffs of people in these brain jobs. Well, where do they go? But you always need plumbers and electricians and guarders. There's no feasible way that any of these things can be properly automated. Made more efficient, yes, absolutely. Made more profitable, yes. But automated away, no way. Unless you get a complete hundred percent humanoid robot. It's not gonna happen.

SPEAKER_04 23:02

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's crazy. And and and just on the technology, I kind of love that because it's a I mean, it it's just such a it's a space that you've probably got the best data and insight on, you know, uh in the world or in Australia because you've been running these businesses and and these franchises for years and years. So you understand the customer and your franchises and like the services probably better than anyone else. So are all of your services developed in-house uh sorry, all of that technology developed in-house?

SPEAKER_03 23:31

The technology is in-house, yes. The services not the services come because somebody has an idea. Like just today, as an example, somebody contacted me. They they got to me by email this morning about gym's delivery. I I just as an as an example happened today. This is a guy who's actually run a substantial business that delivers things, delivers and puts things in. Now, that's a particularly brilliant idea. We we don't do that. So you like a washing machine, for example, you you pick it up in the retailer, you deliver it, you plug it in, you put it in. That's that's a huge area. We don't do that. This is potentially another division. I don't know what's going to happen or not. I told the guy how it worked, he's gonna come and talk to me, and and we're we're gonna take it from there, but who knows? So the ideas from when the industry has come from outside, but the technology to make the work we develop internally.

SPEAKER_04 24:18

So just on that, like, do those ideas come and then each one like goes through its own ideation process and and like do you come up with it for each division, like its own business model sort of thing? Well, they're very similar.

SPEAKER_03 24:30

The the way all these businesses operate is extremely similar. Basically, a customer rings up for a service, somebody contacts them, arranges the service, gives a quote, goes and does it. That's kind of how it operates. So this particular model probably goes through the retailer to a large extent. So, but yeah, the actual technicality to how you do the job comes from somebody with experience in that area normally. But the technology of how you how you provide service to clients and how you look after franchisees, that's something that's very much in common. See, we aren't doing things like childcare centers or anything that's fixed. We only do service because we're specialists in that area.

SPEAKER_04 25:04

Yeah, I love that. That's just such an awesome, really interesting model. And it's so different to what Luke and I do, but um, it's fascinating.

SPEAKER_02 25:11

It's amazing, though, how many yet types of service businesses there are and how many that Jim's group now operates. Because we we operate about 50, but there could be 500.

SPEAKER_03 25:21

I mean, where's the where's the upper limit? The the limit actually is not so much ideas, it's peep it's people to to drive them. Like late last year, somebody, one of our mowing franchises in South Australia came up with he wanted to do driving school. Now he doesn't have a background in the industry, but he's a very good franchisee. He's been successful, he makes good money, he's a trainer, he gets involved in support, and he's got great customer service. So we've helped him and showed him how to do it. He's come and done all the training courses, he's now taking off and is doing very well.

SPEAKER_02 25:52

There's so many good stories that you have from franchisees that have that worked for you. I swear every question we we throw at you, you have an example of someone who's done something very specific to that.

SPEAKER_03 26:04

Yeah, we love the stories about people, you know, it's kind of like Dan Cale, he's he's he's one of our he's this is a guy who's of high school dropout, okay? This is a a guy who would consider in social scientific terms is a fanny. He hasn't completed high school, worked at McDolls, which is actually pretty good training, disgusting food, but great training. Some years ago, he bought a lawnmowing franchise. And with great trepidation, he became very successful. At his peak, he was turning over close to a million dollars a year. Then he got out of that and he became one of our now one of our top franchise ours, and they take over the whole mowing division. This is a guy in his early 30s, he's already a multi-millionaire, just from a guy who pushes a lawnmower around. No high school education, not much capital, nothing, but he's a great guy.

SPEAKER_04 26:47

Yeah, that's awesome.

SPEAKER_02 26:48

That's such a good story, though. I I love that. I love that for for him. That's really good.

SPEAKER_03 26:53

You know what's even more wonderful is actually because of the success, he's able to have two more children, and they're both boys, and their middle names are David and James, which is my legal first and second name because he thinks that's the first one. I did come across that in your research.

SPEAKER_02 27:05

Yeah, that's amazing. I didn't know that until until we're researching this episode. So I assume Jim's your middle name then.

SPEAKER_03 27:12

Yeah, David James is my is my legal name.

SPEAKER_02 27:15

I use my middle name. So just changing here a little bit, you've done a PhD in epigenetics, right? Um now Cush and I don't know. Oh, it was in history. I was Cush and I don't we don't know a lot about this, but we're wondering if you could explain bihistory and epigenetics to us as if we were seven years old and why it matters.

SPEAKER_03 27:37

I went to university to try and uncover the reason for the rise and for the civilization. If you could imagine a more impractical topic, which I've been interested in since I was like 15. I was always interested in ancient civilizations, why they collapsed, why they arrived, this kind of thing. Went to university, started with sociology, soon it's like that was complete garbage, switched to history, and I started to see patterns of behavior. And then I tried to explain and understand what was going on. And and all the explanations people give about social movements and great men and stuff made no sense. What I came to the conclusion was that there was a biological basis. So I started off with history, I went to cross-cultural anthropology to social to economics to biology, looking at at animals and the way they they cooperate. And I came to the conclusion a lot of it had to do with the way that animals relate to food shortage and abundance. Okay. And no, I didn't understand the mechanism at that time. I knew there was something going on in physiology. At that time, I was dead. I basically I failed my PhD the first time through. I got it eventually, but I had to rewrite some stuff. But I failed that, but I had no way of continuing. And I knew that the research I needed to do was in the area of neuroscience. It wasn't history at all. Now I'm not a neuroscientist, I had no money, I was deeply in debt. So at that stage, for the first time in my life, I decided, okay, there's only one solution. If I want to pursue this, I have got to become rich. Then I can afford to fund the research myself. So in the last 10 years, I've been doing that, gradually putting more and more money into this. And what I've what I didn't understand back in the back in the 70s and early 80s, is that the key to all of these things is actually uh epigenetics. And and what that means is this you if you understand what genes are, what DNA is, basically what it does is spits out proteins. So a gene spits out a protein, the protein does things. But what environment does, and this is from your experience, from your early life, and even from your parents, is it switches certain genes on or off. And these are epigenetic changes, they're not genetic, they're epigenetic. And the key to understanding it is to understanding how things like food restriction and certain methods of upbringing and other things like that, how they affect the way that genes function. So what we're doing is we're using mild food restriction as a model with rats. And this is the sort of thing that makes them healthy, they actually live longer and healthier lives than normal rats, and try and look at changes to their genes, to their epigenes, and then we we measure them. What we're actually doing is developing treatments originally using um human urine cells, but you put thousands of drugs into little cells and you see how they affect the the neurons, and then you look for the kind of epigenetic changes that that that we're after. And then when you've got that, we tested about a a thousand drugs recently. We found about 61 candidates. We now start to test about nine of them. We'll think we'll have this effect. And we're also looking at a system called there's a system called CRISPR, you may have heard of, which is where you go in directly and you make the direct changes in the well, mostly they it's used for genetic purposes, changing the genome, but we're using it for epigenetic purposes. And we've we're about to hire one of the top epigenetic people in CRISPR people in the country to help us to set this trigo and make it run. So we're pretty competent within a year or two we'll have some fairly good findings.

SPEAKER_02 31:01

First off, what a comprehensive answer to that question. Uh, what that uh research that you did on rats, it sounds very similar to David Sinclair, another Australian, his research at Harvard on um, I guess the what determines our lifespan, which I thought was a very interesting parallel.

SPEAKER_03 31:22

Yes, it is too. Well, food restriction actually is very good for longevity and health. I um practice uh 168 fasting, so I don't eat for 16 hours a day. I need I eat in an eight-hour window and then getting exercise and stuff like that. That's all that's all to do with uh maintaining vigor in old age and and keeping your mind active and your body active.

SPEAKER_02 31:42

Anecdotally, how how have you found that uh out of interest?

SPEAKER_03 31:46

Well, it works very well. I I get hungry at times. Okay. Right now, I'm looking forward to dinner, I can tell you, but we're just gonna be mainly vegetables, so it's just like the beautiful cook, but sometimes you otherwise you wouldn't mind a bit more chocolate and stuff, but you just have to try and resist that sort of thing.

SPEAKER_04 32:02

So with epigenetics, like and again, very low base of knowledge um here, but so do those changes happen during one's lifespan, or is that like is are these changes that occur over one's lifespan and then in their offspring sort of thing, they'll like you you'll witness the these changes, or does it is it happening okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 32:23

Epigenetic effects right now, if you don't if you get hungry, that is causing an epigenetic change. Not a very strong one, but it's there, it actually changes your character. The degree of things like if your um, for example, sexual activity has the same effect, or or drugs or alcohol or tobacco, they all have epigenetic changes. Um mostly it's fairly negative, I might say, in terms of health and well-being. Yeah, and some of that you do some of that relates to what you do right now. A lot of it relates to what happened in your early life, and the earlier the more and it also relates to what happened to your parents. So for example, if we did some experiments where we subjected some male rats to food restriction, male food restriction, and then mated them, and the had nothing to do with the the arc the young, they never saw them. But the young, the offspring, actually had many of the characteristics of food restriction. They're they're more exploratory, for example. That's very interesting. I didn't know that existed. Yes. A lot of the stuff I was looking at in my PhD I couldn't understand. And as soon as I understood, because we didn't know about epigenics in those days, as soon as I read about it, I thought, oh, that's what's going on. That's why it's carries from generation to generation, and there's a sort of a cascading effect. One of the things we're doing with mice is one particular experiment, is we're um actually doing this over several generations and seeing if that if there's a if there's a cascading change, if there's a more of a change in the next generation, or whether it reverses itself, this kind of thing.

SPEAKER_04 33:52

So just on this, like this this all started purely from your curiosity from when you were like were a teenager at high school, and then you were sort of going into university, and then like it just kept like evolving from there. Like you started studying um sociology, then history, and then like you sort of you go into more of these and is backed by this idea that like you know, civilizations have changed because of impacts in in our lives that have changed something within us. That is a really, really awesome, like I guess, chase of a passion and interest. I I just love that story.

SPEAKER_03 34:26

Yeah. It's all about character. It it's all about character. People think that it's to do with grand impersonal forces like economics, politics, the great it's not, it's about individual character. Societies reflect the individual, and what's happening to our society right now, why there's so many things going wrong, why you've got plunging birth rates and deaths of despair and rising rates of mental illness and all kinds of really bad issues. You can only understand it in those terms of this biology, and that's the only way you can reverse it, too. I've about to come out with a book called The Baby, the Birth Rate Crisis, which is actually talking about this thing happening all and people are starting to panic. Especially in in Eastern Europe and East Asia, where where birth rates are so far below replacement level, and there's a reason for this, and they think it's to do with money, and it's not, it's to do with character. There's a change in character. People are less interested in children than they used to be.

SPEAKER_02 35:20

So I guess I mean, even from that, it sounds like, yeah, your perspective on some things, for example, yeah, what's happening to us as a society has has your uh opinion on that seems to have been influenced. And I was wondering whether this same kind of biological understanding now has has that affected the way that you kind of make decisions or or deal with your business as well? Like has it bled into other areas?

SPEAKER_03 35:48

Yeah. I don't know about my business, it certainly affected my personal life. Look, I started from a um a very uh what do you call it, left-wing liberal, let it all hang up, do what feels good type of thing. When I was at school, I got into quite a lot of trouble because I would post things on noticeboard advocating stuff and you know, wouldn't be unusual today, but it but going to a conservative Christian school in the 60s was was considered to be uh beyond the pale on. Got into a lot of trouble. As I started to understand the reason for the traditional type of values, I became much more aware of the value of traditional morality and and and traditional faith. And I because you became partly as well, I became a Christian when I was 28, and I kind of become very aware of the of the value of traditional values, including things like chastity, including things like humility and modesty and and group awareness and and community and those kinds of things too. So, in a sense, my research has affected the way I think about life and what I've done with my life. But as far as how's it affected my business? I wouldn't put it, I wouldn't put exact comparison. Look, the only thing that they got in common is that as a thinker about society, I was and I am wildly unorthodox. Like when everybody showed me there's three different reasons for something happening, I'll give you a totally different reason. And I'll disagree with everybody. I was considered to be totally arrogant and beyond that because I just didn't accept people's explanations as being correct. And I said why they were. I used to go tell my lecturers off if they gave me a markdown, like why they were wrong.

SPEAKER_04 37:24

Well, that's phenomenal to have like a like a mind to to challenge. Like one of one of my bosses says, I like arguments and I like people that argue, obviously in a respectful way, but if you've got differing opinions, like that's where the best like collaborative discussion and and arguments, like uh sorry, ideas come from, because you But the same kind of habit applies in business too, is that I'm totally unorthodox.

SPEAKER_03 37:45

I do things in a way that nobody else has ever done. Like we're the only franchising system in the world where you can move to a different franchise ore or even different division, and your own franchise or has no say, you can vote out your own franchisor, you can veto changes to your own manual. There's a clause in the contract that actually says that the majority share of Jim's group cannot be sold without the written consent of majority of franchisees. There's a whole lot of stuff in there which is really wildly unorthodox, and that's the same thing.

SPEAKER_02 38:18

I guess well, following on from that, we've talked about kind of your perspective on society and we've talked about um your belief system and yeah, just kind of like as well. We opened with that that servant mentality of um your franchisees, and and that's something that you really you've pushed for and led to success, obviously, as well. And I was wondering if there's kind of an an impact that you do hope that um your work will have on society.

SPEAKER_00 38:44

We're just taking a quick break. We'd love it if you did us a favor and gave us a five-star review on your podcast streaming player. We'd really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_03 38:52

Well, if I'm correct, and if I can get people to listen, it will change the world. It is completely revolutionized everything. Like, okay, let's look at one particular thing. Why are some countries so poor and other countries so wealthy? You know, why is say Congo or somewhere like that poor and the United States or Australia, relatively speaking, uh wealthy? Now people would say, oh, well, it's the institutions and it's the education system. And they say, no, it's the character. And basically it's an epigenetic change. So implicitly in this, if you could develop the right treatment, you could go to somewhere like the Congo or anywhere else, and you could provide an echo epigenetic adjustment if people wanted it, if they wanted it, but purely voluntary, and within a generation they become prosperous, democratic, wealthy. That's the implications of this, because everything is epigenetic, everything is to do with character, and we believe we know how to start changing character. This will change the world.

SPEAKER_04 39:48

That is a very, very, very bold statement and like thesis, but I think like I mean, I I love that that that you're putting sort of your life's work at the moment into that. Well, again, obviously outside of Jim's group. Incredibly bold. I love it. I absolutely love it.

SPEAKER_03 40:05

But very wild, and nobody agrees with me at the moment. At least only a few people actually see the point. But it it's I mean, we do experiments all the time to test this stuff. We're actually we're actually trying things. See the great thing about science is this, and this is why it's so different from other ways of thinking. You have a hypothesis, you test it. If the testing supports the hypothesis, it strengthened it. If it defeats it, then it makes it weak. Now I apply the same sort of thing. We look at studies of societies and we say this is the reason why this happens. So you look at the the reason for the first world war, for example, why it happened. Now you've seen uh all kinds of reasons why the first world war happened. I'll tell you why I think it's happened. It's happened because it's the same thing that's causing lemmings to migrate at the peak of the lemming cycle. They actually become very aggressive, bold, and they move out in mass migration. That's what happened, and you could actually spot it by changes to the birth rate. When the birth rate peaks, population peaks and starts to fall, that's when you get these big aggressive movements. And you can spot it with different countries too. So it's a wildly, wildly unorthodox thinking, but you can test it and their implications because you can actually do things with rats and mice to actually test whether what I'm saying is correct, because then you look at the you try and develop these things and you look at the epigenetic changes in the animals.

SPEAKER_02 41:22

You have me a bit worried about our birth rates now, Jim.

SPEAKER_03 41:25

You should be worried.

SPEAKER_02 41:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 41:29

Birth rates have gone down really dramatically. But let me tell you something, they are going to continue to fall. We haven't reached 1.6 or whatever we are in Australia, is not terminate. It's going to drop and it's going to drop and it's going to drop. And you can see this very clearly if you look at the attitudes of people. Now, young people today, compared with those, say, 30 years ago, are much less interested in marriage and family than they used to be. And that is the indication. So if you go back to the 50s, very strong interest. Less and less and less and less. So young people now, teenagers, early 20s, are much less interested in their parents. So the birth rate's going to continue to fall. It's not money, it's attitudes, it's the priorities, what's important to you. And that's that determines how many children you have. Not how much money you've had. Because in fact, people will say, I've had more money, I'll have more kids. Well, no, you wouldn't. Because in fact, the wealthier we get, the less children we have. That's really interesting.

SPEAKER_04 42:22

So, okay, where where would we start? So you've absolutely piqued my interest. Where would I start to delve into this a bit more at at sort of a reading pace? So, like, what what would you recommend reading to get into it and and the difficulty with this is you can't really read very much that on this light.

SPEAKER_03 42:41

People don't think they they go by the whole thing, it's all about money. That's why governments tried to puff it up with with baby bonuses and subsidize childcare and all this other useless stuff, which doesn't work. But they don't know what else to do. So how you find out about it, I don't know. If you if you actually want to, you go to jimpen.com.au, which is my website, put yourself in for a my newsletter, and you can get it regularly delivered. It comes out every month and it talks about the different changes that you make. Or also you can go to www.byhistory.org and there's some videos on explain some of this stuff.

SPEAKER_04 43:14

Yeah, okay, wow. Well, uh, you've absolutely picked my interest. This is really interesting. Maybe we'll we'll do another episode at some point just specifically on that. Or we'll we'll pick one of your themes and we'll have to pick your brain about it again, because this is too good. Uh on on the topic of books though, uh, did have to ask, and sorry, we're we're also nearly at time, so we've got two final questions. Your newest book, uh No Other Success, is is coming out soon. What's that going to be all about? And um, yeah, what was the process of writing it?

SPEAKER_03 43:42

Well, it's actually my business story, and it's it's a it's a version of what I've updated steadily over the years. We don't normally publish it though, we just give it internally to um new franchisees as a way of establishing the culture. But in this one, we actually went into more depth and we particularly looked at a lot of franchisee stories. It starts off with an anecdote about a um a guy who was a supermarket manager and used to work very long hours. And one morning when he was about to leave, he saw his kids very little during the day. He's about to leave for work very morning, only one morning, and his little four-year-old son said, Daddy, I wish you could have breakfast with us. Just that one statement. He said he drove to work, tears streaming down his face, quit his job, bought a lawnmowing business. And ever since then, he's seen his kids grow up. I said, Do you ever thank him for that comment? He said every day. Now he's not making, as far as I know, any more money than he was as a manager, probably about the same. But the difference to him and what he's done is something that you cannot replace. No matter how much money you have, you can't re you can't replace that spending time with your kids. And the book is a reference to the saying there's no other success can compensate for value in the home. That is very powerful.

SPEAKER_02 44:52

Now, Jim, as as Kush said, we are almost at time and and thank you so much for coming on the podcast. And we've asked this for uh a few guests, and it's it's kind of around this idea that we're always growing and we're always changing as individuals. And so our question to you is what do you want to be when you grow up?

SPEAKER_03 45:10

I want to be a better person than I am. Our whole life is a struggle against weakness, isn't it? What what matters is is to what extent you do the things that you ought to do compared with what you would immediately feel like doing in the short term. And uh it's a struggle, it really is. I want to be a better person. We're all imperfect. We all fall short.

SPEAKER_04 45:31

I want to try and do better. Wow. Jim, thank you so so much for coming on. That was one of the most fascinating chats I think we've ever had uh on the podcast. I can't even begin to start. Well, I'm gonna have a crack at summing up some of the stuff we've talked about, but I'm not gonna do it justice at all because I'm gonna so I'm gonna be listening back to this. But well, a couple of things I've taken away is one, that you're just an incredibly active and an eager and passionate mind, like looking at how active a role you take in in running Jim's group and and being super connected to all the franchisees, the the principles of values and the culture that you've built there is incredible. And just how much of a curious mind. I think you're probably the I don't know if we can give an award on the show, but the most curious mind we've had on the Curiosity Crisis podcast, I think. Well, we love that. Strange. I mean it'd be boring world if we're all the same. So we absolutely loved also the story um of your research and and how you followed that passion and and what you aimed to do with it. They're really, really wild and bold theses, but I I look forward to following how they play out. So at some point we might have to try and uh get you back on to to pick your brain more deeply about that. But thank you so much for coming on. It's been an absolute pleasure and uh we love your story, so thanks for sharing it. Thanks, Chris.

SPEAKER_02 46:48

Thanks for thanks, Jim. Thanks for listening. Find us at the CuriosityCrisis.com and Curiosity Crisis on Instagram. We're on all major streaming services, so you can listen how you like. We'd like to just ask a quick favor if you could share this with a friend.

SPEAKER_01 47:02

Your recommendation means a lot. Thanks, and we'll catch you in the next episode.