Why'd You Think You Could Do That?

When you hear the name Jim’s Mowing, you probably think of the trailers, the uniforms, and the empire of small business owners mowing lawns across Australia. But behind the mower is a man whose true mission has always been far bigger than lawns.

In this episode of Why’d You Think You Could Do That?, I sit down with Jim Penman, founder of Jim’s Group - a business that now spans over 5,000 franchisees in 50 industries. While most know him as the face of Australia’s most iconic franchise, few realise that mowing was never the endgame. For Jim, it was just the funding model. His real obsession? Understanding the rise and fall of civilizations, the power of epigenetics, and how character shapes the destiny of societies
.
What You’ll Learn in This Episode
  • From Rock Bottom to an Empire - how Jim went from a rejected PhD candidate in history to creating Australia’s largest franchise network.
  • The Real Why Behind Jim’s Mowing - why mowing lawns wasn’t the mission, but the stepping stone to funding millions of dollars in scientific research.
  • The Science of Biohistory & Epigenetics - Jim’s controversial research into why civilizations collapse, why birth rates are dropping, and how character (not just economics) determines societal outcomes.
  • Business Lessons That Defy Convention - how Jim rewrote the franchise model to protect franchisees, why he screens them like family, and why putting people before profit has been the key to scaling.
  • A Life of Purpose Over Profit - why Jim believes meaning, not money, is the real measure of success, and how he wants his life’s work to change the world long after he’s gone.
Key Quotes from Jim
  • “Character is destiny. Character is everything.”
  • “Mowing lawns wasn’t the mission. It was just the way to fund the mission.”
  • “If I can give people a treatment to be more hardworking, healthier, and happier - that can change the world.”
Why Listen
Whether you’re a business owner, an entrepreneur, or just someone fascinated by big ideas, Jim’s story is a reminder that empires aren’t always built on money alone. They’re built on persistence, purpose, and the willingness to think differently.
This episode will challenge the way you see business, leadership, and even the future of society itself.

Links & Resources

Creators and Guests

Host
Sam Penny
Sam Penny is an adventurer, entrepreneur, and keynote speaker who lives by the mantra “Say YES! to the Impossible.” From swimming the English Channel in winter to building and selling multi-million-dollar companies, Sam thrives on pushing boundaries in both business and life. As host of Why’d You Think You Could Do That?, he sits down with ordinary people who have done extraordinary things, uncovering the mindset, resilience, and bold decisions that made it possible — and showing listeners why their own impossible is closer than they think.
Guest
Jim Penman
Jim Penman is the founder of Jim’s Group, Australia’s largest franchise network with over 5,000 franchisees across more than 50 industries. What began in 1982 with a second-hand mower and $24 in his pocket has grown into one of the country’s most recognised brands. While best known for Jim’s Mowing, Jim’s true passion lies in research — particularly the fields of biohistory and epigenetics, where he has invested millions in exploring the links between character, society, and the rise and fall of civilizations. Author, entrepreneur, and researcher, Jim is as driven by purpose as he is by business success.

What is Why'd You Think You Could Do That??

They’ve swum oceans, scaled mountains, launched empires, and shattered expectations. But before they did any of it, someone, maybe even themselves, thought: “You can’t do that.”

Hosted by Sam Penny, Why’d You Think You Could Do That? dives into the minds of people who said “screw it” and went for it anyway. From adventurers and elite athletes to wildcard entrepreneurs and creative renegades, each episode unpacks the one question they all have in common:

“Why'd you think you could do that?”

If you’re wired for more, haunted by big ideas, or just sick of playing it safe, this is your show.

Sam Penny (00:00)
He started with a dream that academia didn't want and a mower he could barely afford. A young man rejected by his peers broke after a string of failures carrying the weight of a vision no one believed in. He found himself digging through the dirt, not for glory, but for survival. At first, he wasn't trying to build an empire. He was just trying to pay off debt one lawn at a time. But behind that mower was a mind obsessed with civilization, character, order.

and what causes everything to fall apart. Over the next three decades, he built one of the most recognizable brands in the southern hemisphere. His name is on over 5,000 trailers across 50 different industries. But most people have no idea why he really did it or what he's planning next. Because for him, mowing lawns was never the mission. It was just the funding model. Today, he's pouring millions into science, epigenetics,

and the rise and fall of empires, convinced that biology, not ideology, might hold the key to saving the world. This is a story of obsession, of redemption, of a man who's turned his own rock bottom into one of Australia's most iconic business success stories. And now he's risking millions of dollars to return to the work the world once told him was madness. His name is Jim Penman. And today we ask him, why do you think you could do that?

Jim, thank you very much for being here. Fantastic. Now, Jim, obviously, everyone knows you for the Jim's Mowing Empire and what that has become, but it'd be wrong to start there. I want to go right back. Let's go back to the beginning. What kind of kid were you?

Jim (01:27)
Good to be here.

nerdy, obsessed with dinosaurs, reading a lot.

Sam Penny (01:46)
You

Yeah, you moved through some pretty elite schools, you exposed, I would say to privilege, but also pressure. Did you feel at home in that world?

Jim (02:01)
Well, I didn't know anything else, did I? Really. I wasn't a very social kid. I was very, very nerdy, introverted, didn't get on with people. Couldn't even remember the names, didn't even know the names of most of the kids in my class. Always my head in a book. Just massive, massive reader, know, ideas, history, biology, lot of science fiction, just total opposite to it. Not a high flyer.

Sam Penny (02:03)
Hmm?

Not a high flyer. I've read and you have stated this in past interviews that you described yourself as lazy and even arrogant. So what was going on inside the mind of Jim at that time?

Jim (02:44)
⁓ I am naturally very lazy. Some people just work hard all the time and I really admire that. A couple of my kids, just workaholics and they just naturally do it. That's one of my eldest son was dux at his school, this kind of stuff. I just never really was interested in doing something that somebody else set for me. Wasn't a brilliant student. I had my own way of thinking, my own studies. Like we did history at school, I've forgotten virtually all of it, but I was interested in particularly in Greek history and Roman history and I remember a lot of that still.

because it absorbed me, it fascinated me. I had these questions, you what happened, why? Just odd things as a teenager. You know, why did the Roman Empire collapse? But also another thing is like, why do wealthy societies, why does the birth rate go down when it seems so contrary to biology? If you give animals lots and lots of food, populations explode in human societies. And it's obviously been those days, the more wealthy have birth rate going down. That really puzzled me. It just seemed wrong.

Sam Penny (03:17)
Yeah.

Jim (03:41)
Somehow people should relate to biology. Why are we so different?

Sam Penny (03:45)
Hmm. I want to get into all of your research and your methodologies and also the PhD a little bit later, but was there a moment early on, that you realised that you didn't fit into the world that was put around you?

Jim (04:02)
it was so obvious from the beginning. I just didn't fit. I didn't like it. I can remember I went to a dance or something like that in school times. And I remember they'd start taking from Ruth, your people should be my people and your God, my God. And I thought these people are not my people. They're not me. I don't, I don't fit. I don't belong here.

Sam Penny (04:17)
Yeah.

Jim (04:24)
I felt very, very distant from the way people around me thought. And I used to argue with everybody too. mean, everybody in school, I got into trouble at school for being very opinionated and difficult. I fought with my father. I remember when I was 10 years old, I was arguing that we were living for a year in England. I spent a lot time arguing with the minister of the local church there, the rector. So, I was a funny kid.

Sam Penny (04:51)
So let's talk about the academia which you touched on just before because this is a really fascinating part about who Jim Penman is and what a lot of people don't understand or recognize. What first up drew you to history, not as stories, but as systems?

Jim (05:07)
Well, could see, as young as the age of about 14, I had this understanding of civilizations collapsing. I could see it happen so often in the past. And it seemed to me there were extreme parallels with the modern age. There was something going on. I didn't know why or what, but there was some reason why wealthy civilizations collapse. And I saw the signs.

In those days, the birth rate was still quite high, but it already dropping. This was like in the 1960s. So I looked at that and it fascinated me, absorbed me. And I thought this is the prime question of our age. What is going to happen in the future? People assume the technology is going to be going on and rising and rising and rising. But I was immersed in history and I knew it happened before. You had these wonderful people like the Greeks of the Golden Age and just collapsed into weakness and decay.

And the Romans too, not that I really admire them, they're a brutal bunch, but you could see this great solitude just collapsing and you had this chaos arising. I could see it happening. I thought this is the one question that should absorb my life.

Sam Penny (06:14)
So your proposed personality really shaped the fate of empires. At the time, what did your professors say?

Jim (06:22)
Well, even now, that they think of things like political and economic forces and the decisions of leaders. It's quite extraordinary, actually. mean, not just professors, everybody, like The Economist, for example. I mean, it's a magazine I really enjoy. It's a great magazine. It's what time the magazine used to be, but even better. But they talk about policies. They have no idea of character or personalities. why does Israel flourish? Okay, it's got...

certain economic advantages and they've got these policies and that actions and these structures. No, Israel plays because it's chock full of Jews for heaven's sake. I mean they're the most enterprising people in the world. No wonder the country does well. So you look at everything, it's character, character, character. You rise, we go and invade Iraq, which has a brutal dictatorship. We think, we're going to impose democracy, which I thought was a stupid idea I had at the time, a big argument with one of my sons about that.

You don't get democracy because the people are not suited to it. Their character is wrong. Middle East people tend to obey strong authority. So you either get powerful, brutal leaders or you get chaos. You just can't. So this whole idea that my professors had, that people in the modern world have, they ignore character. They ignore attitudes. But attitudes, character are the key to everything.

Sam Penny (07:41)
So when you first proposed your thesis for your PhD, what was that thesis? Because it initially got rejected.

Jim (07:49)
Yes, well it was an earlier stage of what I'm doing now. was not as much into Bollinger, I didn't know as much in those days. don't forget I was in the history department. History is not about wild theories of change, trying to explain, it's about becoming the greatest knowledge of evidence Chiffley in the 1940s or something like that, or the walls to the roses. You've to be the world expert, that's how you become a historian. And I wasn't...

just interested in one minute history. I wanted to know all of history, it fit together, what are the commonalities? What's the same in East Asia, ancient world, pre-Columbian America? What have they got in common? What are the patterns? And not only that, but I was interested in psychology and cross-cultural anthropology and biology. So I was trying to understand the patterns of history in all these broader contexts. This was just wild stuff. One of the comments on my thesis was that, look at this guy, this was the magnum opposite at the end of a...

distinguished career, well, you know, maybe we'll listen to this bloke, but you know, who is he? Why would he, why would he say everything that we're talking about in historical reference is wrong? Absolutely wrong. Just as an example, you look at why the First World War happened, and you can see stacks of things, you know, derived with the great power and, you know, mistaken identities and so forth. Let tell you why the Great War happened, the First World War happened. It's a thing called a Lemming cycle. It's the same pattern exactly as causes Lemmings to

migrate and become bold and migrate at certain stage of the cycle. And you can actually see it in demography because when you see demographics, see a surge of population growth and as it starts to fall off, you get these wars taking place. France at the beginning of 19th century, Napoleonic period, and then England around the Boer War, and the Germans and the Russians first to a war, then the Italians and particularly the Japanese. And as each country reaches this demographic peak, these wars break out.

you can see it through our history too in various ways. So that's a wildly unorthodox idea because you're looking at lemmings and people and saying they're the same but the pattern is there, they really are and we're doing tests right now doing multi-generation studies of mice to actually demonstrate this stuff.

Sam Penny (09:56)
So just touching on that, we see the rise of empires and also the fall of empires, which I argue, seem to be on a pretty regular, maybe a 400 year cycle. We've got the Romans, we've got the British Empire, Japanese. Are we starting to see the start of the demise of the US Empire?

Jim (10:15)
Yes, exactly. But also of Western solidization in general. mean, look, the signs are pretty clear. When I started talking about this back in the 70s, was, I mean, it's to be great forever. know, we're going from stronger and stronger, we're going to be exploding into space. But you see problems now. I mean, one of the most obvious ones is the collapsing birth rate. even in Australia, we're like 1.6. You have to 2.1 babies per woman to...

maintain population. We're about 1.6. Let me tell you it's going to drop further. Some countries like Japan's 1.1, South Korea 0.7, about one third. You see this collapsing birth rate all over and nobody knows how to stop it. They say it's all about money so they give bonuses and stuff and they subsidize child care. None of it has any effect. So you can already see really, really big problems. If you can't replace yourself, what kind of future have you got?

Sam Penny (11:10)
Mm.

Jim (11:11)
And the only way we can actually maintain population is by mass immigration, which is in a lot of cases a good idea. We get a lot of, know, well educated Indians and Chinese for example, but their birth rate's dropping too. So where's the future going to be if we can't even replace ourselves? What's going to happen to the world? It's not looking good.

Sam Penny (11:29)
So your views on bio history and epigenetics has often been considered controversial, but also ⁓ thought leading back in the late seventies when you were doing your PhD going through that. And since, do you feel like academia has in some ways turned its back on you?

Jim (11:47)
Well, it can't turn its back on me because it's never facing me. No, I look, I was naive. I really thought that when I produce all these evidence and your statistics and stuff, people would look at it and say, wow, there's something here. But one of the things you've got to bear in mind is that the way people look at the world is very heavily conditioned by their ideology, by their belief system. So for example, okay, now you look at a case like the situation of Aboriginals.

Sam Penny (11:50)
Hahaha!

Jim (12:16)
As far as mainstream is concerned, particularly on the left, there's one reason we are white people, we are racist. We are really nasty, racist animals, and we are caused to be poor. If not for that, not that it's prejudice and stupid and racism, then they would be just as well off as anybody else and they'd live the same lives and wouldn't have the... from what tell you, all the problems they face, they just wouldn't be there. Okay, that's the ideology. Now I'm saying no, the difference is...

character, there are certain kind of, not genetic, it's epigenetic and that's to do with the way they were brought up and their parents and their grandparents and their great grandparents, they were, they're remnant hunter-gatherers with a character which is very well designed for that kind of society, doesn't work as well in ours. Now the problem with that, if you think it's all about

about prejudice and history and everything. What you do is you give people more and more stuff and you provide houses for them. say, I haven't got a house. They'll all give them a house. The trouble is it doesn't solve the problem. But if you understand the problem is character, then you have a totally different way of looking at it. And you say, okay, let's do something different. Look at the way character is formed and how it can be strengthened and so forth. And then maybe you can actually have a solution.

But people are so blinded by their ideology. The ideology is that if you only give people enough money, they'll all become educated and healthy and all the rest of it. All your problems will go away. It's all our fault because we're racist. We don't give them enough money. So they get more and more money. But guess what? The situation's becoming worse, not better. That's because of the wrong ideology.

Sam Penny (13:56)
I want to,

I want to touch on some of the research that you're being produced a little bit later and create that whole story of where everything's going because you had a PhD in your hand and you found yourself effectively at rock bottom, you described yourself as almost destitute. What happened?

Jim (14:17)
Well, I had this mowing business, gardening mowing business all through my university career. It was a good part-time business. I actually learnt my trade doing that. Just going out at the weekend, I started off gardening, got a type of mower, learned how to do it. Towards the end of my PhD, I was sort of part-time-ish and I made some very stupid decisions. I got a bit lazy, I passed over responsibility to somebody else I shouldn't have, they took the money off me, just left me in debt and stuff.

dumbness, laziness, whatever. So I ended up with basically nothing. I had to own a house at one stage, I got it from my lawn mower. I lost it, I was $30,000 in debt on. So that was my situation in December, 1982. And my PhD at that stage had been rejected. So I was in a pretty bad state. But funny thing is actually was the turning point for me too, because I got married at that stage and we started having children soon after.

even before I paid off my debts, I might say. And that gave me more sense of direction. So it started from that very low point. I just moved ahead. Once again, it shows you the character is important. Previously, when I had more money and more resources and everything else, I'd failed. Now, though my objective situation was far worse, I flourished and I moved ahead. I was just a lot more hardworking, a lot more disciplined, a lot less.

foolish and yeah and it worked.

Sam Penny (15:40)
So what did it feel like going from PhD candidate to manual labor?

Jim (15:46)
Oh, I loved it. I loved it. I think one of the fortunate things about my character is that I enjoy manual work. I'm actually off to, later on today, I'll go off to my farm and I'll be planting fruit trees and digging potatoes. And to me, that's the greatest fun. I just love to be outside, in the cold. And I love green stuff and I love gardening. So it was a very, it was a nice job for me. No, I didn't, I didn't mind that. I find it was, I thought it was great.

Sam Penny (16:13)
So it.

Jim (16:13)
I enjoyed

being in Lord Main Contractor. It's more fun than you can imagine if you like being outside. lot of them say it too. It's very popular. You talk to them and they it's a great lifestyle. How many jobs can you have where you're actually working outside, surrounded by nature, physically active, which is really good for your mood and also it's fresh air. They're all things that are known to help your mood and you get paid for it. How great is that?

And

you get paid quite well too, because actually, you know, even a typical mowing franchise, it turns over just under $3,000 a week. So it's not bad earning. They make more than the Australian average income, but doing something so fun and so healthy.

Sam Penny (16:56)
That's fantastic. So in those early days, before Jim's Mowing started, and it was just you pushing the lawnmower, it sounds like you took a lot of pride in what you were doing. Did you have pride in the work you were doing or the product that you're producing?

Jim (17:12)
Yeah, I always take pride in doing something well. I've been gardening since I was eight years old I just want to see it looking good. I don't want to let a client down. To me, if I see it, one of my franchisees, stop, sometimes I've stopped, I see a franchisee working the food and I'm driving past, I stop and have a look at it. And there's this edge they've done, there's a blade of grass sticking out. That is really offensive to me.

Every blade of grass has got to go from the edge. Every bit of grass has got to be picked up straight lines. You just got to do it well. It's an emotional, irrational attitude, a passion, obsession with me. You just got to the lawn great And then when I do mow it, I have this obsessional attitude. How can I do it faster? How can I do it better? That's the driving force. I don't think of customer service in terms of

making more money as such, think in terms of just doing the job better.

Sam Penny (18:09)
So Jim, you weren't chasing an empire to start off with. You're basically just chasing a paycheck. So how did it all start to grow?

Jim (18:18)
Well, when I finished my PhD, when I failed as an academic, which I think actually in retrospect was very fortunate because academia would not have suited me at all, I wanted to run a research institute and I wanted to do it in the fields of neuroscience basically, which is totally different from what I understood. And that's an expensive operation and I had no training. So I needed to become quite wealthy. Now until that time, I had never, ever, ever considered making money, business, anything, never even thought about it.

I said, okay, I've got to make money. So let's work out how to do it. Now I had a lot of different attempts to do this. I tried, I tried Amway, which is a ridiculous idea for me because I've got no people skills. I was terrible at it too. I had things like a computer shop, a mower shop, tried a holiday resort, which basically sent me bust. I just did a whole lot of different things. And the mowing thing was just there and just puddling along. I never really thought it had the potential.

I just didn't think that that was the thing that would actually work. Because I couldn't understand how mowing lawns could create multi-million dollar annual income, which is what I needed. So I just kept on doing these other things and failing. My little mowing business kept on improving. as I did it, without any clear vision for something great, I just...

kept on trying to improve what I did. So you're mowing a lawn, how do you do it faster? How do you do it better? How do you do it cleaner? And then you've got to take on workers because you get too busy. And how do you find them? How do you control them? And then I figured out could make more money building up and selling lawn mowing grounds. I worked with that. How do you sell them? How do you control it? How do you relate to the person who's buying them? Again, trying to sell lawn mowing grounds was very difficult because I've got zero personal skills. ⁓ Very socially awkward.

I had to learn the hard way how to do these things. It was just this obsessional process of looking at what I was doing and saying, how can I do it better? But even when I launched the franchise in 1989, somebody asked me how many franchisees I might have one day and I said, look, if it goes well, if it goes well, maybe 100. But you've got to put that against the background of so many other things that I've done failing so badly. So it's kind of surprising in a way that it did work so well.

Sam Penny (20:07)
you

So why did you go down the franchising route instead of just hiring people?

Jim (20:39)
Well, mostly fear because what happened was I had this business of building up and selling lawn mowing grounds. I had about a dozen subbies doing this and it was making me money and I'd got out of the debt and I bought myself a house It was all right, but there's no future in this. There's no possible, because kept on selling my goodwill. I did think of franchising, but I thought, okay, I can build somebody's business, which what I was doing, but why would they keep on paying me fees?

I couldn't see the point of it. I couldn't see the value and I couldn't sell something I didn't believe in. And then VIP, a company called VIP, came to Melbourne and they were from South Australia based and they had like at one stage 250 franchisees. And these guys terrified me. I thought they just crushed me like a bug. They honestly did because they had experience, they had money, they were interstate already, they had this fancy office. They knew what they were doing and I had no idea. So basically I...

I tried to join them. I offered to just build up VIP in Victoria, which they said no to. I'm not surprised in retrospect. And so I just raided their show at the expo. I went in and asked the guy at the counter, I'm interested in VIP, tell me about it. Now, if he'd have asked me why I want to know, would have told him, because I'm terrible at lying. But fortunately he didn't ask me until the state manager came in and kicked me off the stand.

Sam Penny (22:02)
you

Jim (22:03)
I looked at it I thought, well, hang on a bit, there is some point to this. I could see value, I could see what they're doing. So if a guy, the mowing contractor, you break your leg, you're on crutches for six weeks, you can't work, you've lost all your business. But a franchise system can help you with that. So I could see benefits. But I thought, hang on a bit, I reckon I could do it better. There's things that people don't like about VIP.

We don't need to do that. Why do you need to make a person, for example, when you put a new franchise in an area, they would make them give up some of their regular clients. They don't like that. So why would you enforce it? That kind of thing. There was a few things they didn't like about it. So I thought, okay, I'll try to franchise in self-defense. I never thought I'd be as successful as them. I honestly didn't. I just thought I'd survive maybe having an edge. so I just...

a whole lot of time arguing with lawyers about the contract. I got a hold of their contract, didn't like it. I thought, that's terrible, I wouldn't sign that. So I got them to write me a totally new contract and put all these protections and clauses and automatic right of renewal and you can't take jobs without you, that's your consent and all kinds of stuff. You can absolutely write the territory but you work where you like, no increase in fees no matter how successful you get, all kinds of things you put into that contract arguing with lawyers because they thought I was being reckless. And then we launched in

June 1989, thinking as I said maybe a hundred and it was surprising.

Sam Penny (23:25)
Wow. ⁓

Very and seems that the Jim's empire is very much built on a set of values, set of core values. How have core values really driven the success through to today?

Jim (23:43)
Well, they're the basis of everything. And nothing relates so much to a vision of empire as a personal reflection of my character and values. For example, one of the things that really upsets me more than anything is having a franchisee fail. I really hate it. It's the worst thing. I get an ice-breaker to the million dollar tax bill from the government and one of my franchisees looks like failing. I can tell you what upsets me the most.

By far, I can cope with the tax bill cannot cope. I hate it when somebody fails. So one of the things I did from the start is I said, I'm not going to take people that I'm not confident of. Because I knew from selling lawn mowing Grounds that if somebody didn't give great customer service, didn't have gratitude, they most didn't last very long. So I thought, OK, I'm not going to take anybody who I think might not fail. So I would actually send people out on the road.

with people I trusted, my trainers, and say, tell me what you think, are they good or not? And if they didn't get a good mark, I would not accept them. I had them marked on an ABCD type of thing. And I had usually two people to look at them. So I was very rigorous. Now, my assumption was that I was knocking back so many people and my opposition was taking them, they would grow faster than me. It had to be, obviously, because, you know, first of all,

If you take a person on, they fail. You've got all the money up front. So you've got some advantage. You've got probably a fee for the short term. And maybe you're wrong. Maybe they'll succeed anyway. So I thought my system would make it harder to grow. Now, it turned out to be somewhat different to that. And what I've found is that if you're more selective, you grow faster. Now, it's not common sense, but there are reasons why. See, one of the great

weapons I had was I used to keep a list of all my franchisees with their phone numbers and I gave it to prospective franchisees and they'd ask me, you you're running business in your basement, okay? You got no money, you only just started out. Here's this highly successful crowd that's interstate, they've got this fancy office. Now why would I buy from you? So I said, okay, there's some differences in the way we operate and I wouldn't bag them, I'd just point them out, but I said, okay, here's a list of my franchisees. I want you to go and ask them.

And then you go and ask for VIPs list and ask them too. Which I knew they wouldn't give. And the point was my list was positive. Most people would say, this is great. This is good. You'd be mad to go anywhere else because Jim's look after you well. The contracts are very fair. He's always there to answer your queries and talk to you And you know, we're doing well because I was screening people. I was taking the good ones. They were highly successful. So people would look at that.

Especially the smart people who do the research, they look at it, they try, they look at both and they make a good decision. Because the smarter you are, the more research you'll do. It's one of the ways you select franchisees. How much research have you done? Who have you talked to? Have you seen these days the videos? So that was that. So I did it basically for ethical reasons. It turned out to be an extremely good business decision.

Sam Penny (26:51)
In, in

everything that I've seen, Jim, you always very protective of your franchisees, almost to the point of considering them family, I would say. And it appears that you value the franchisee more than the customer, but obviously then the customer benefits from, I feel that family environment. What is it about?

Jim (27:03)
yes.

Sam Penny (27:17)
the franchisee and the about five and a half thousand franchisees that you have, where you consider them so family like and you're so protective of them.

Jim (27:28)
Well, they're kind of like my tribe in a way. You identify, like you identify with your family, but this is my world in a way. I don't know other business people. I really hardly talk to anybody else. The people I know are in my own people. I wouldn't have talked to a typical independent business owner once in every few months. I talk to my franchisees multiple times a day. They're always contacting about something.

or ringing me or emailing me, mostly email. So they're kind of my world in a way. So I naturally think in their terms. you have to look after customers really well. There's no question. That's one of the reasons for our success. We have a very draconian system of customer service, which incidentally, a lot of franchisees find over the top. I'm helping get complaints about that kind of thing. But...

By pushing customer service, know that, for example, if you give great customer service as a franchisee, you're going to do better. And not only that, but if you give great customer service, other franchises will do better. Because with 50 odd divisions, people use one and they'll use others, so they've a good experience. So customer service is really, really, really important. And I'm very emotionally engaged. And I personally take care of multiple complaints every week when they're not settled otherwise. And I will sit on them until they're fixed. But.

The purpose for that is to make my franchisees successful. So I always put the interests of the franchisees first. So for example, if a customer rings up and wants the job done, we have a big problem these days with unservice leads because we've got so much work coming in. Now, I could basically try and insist on a franchisee doing the job, but I don't want to if it's not in the franchisee's interest. So I'd rather say no to the customer because in that situation, the franchisees come first.

Sam Penny (29:12)
So, like they say, all ships rise on the tide. Now with five and a half thousand franchisees and, I'd suggest 10, 20,000 people employed by the Jim's network. Knowing that what you have created is responsible for feeding families and supporting families. Does that provide a little level of anxiety of feeling proud?

gratitude. What does that feeling have knowing that you're affecting the families and the lives of tens of thousands of people around the country?

Jim (29:48)
Well, it's a great responsibility. Obviously, I feel it very heavily. why does anybody get up in the morning? To me, living has to have a purpose. My research, my family, but also my franchisees. That's my emotional core of what drives me. Look, I do get negatives at times, and I do deal with them. It's one of the most important things. That's why I say I give my phone number my email address to five and a half thousand franchisees, because I want to know if you've got problems.

And often I can help, very often I can help. I can do things like even somebody's doing very well. I can get change divisions or I can give them advice. I put them in touch with somebody or I can do a whole lot of things to help them. But the fact is that most of the franchisees who approach me are actually doing very well. One of the things I do is we send out an automated letter to franchisees after the first month. And that's really useful. And I particularly ask about a thing called pay for work guarantee where they can do jobs to get, so they can have a

earn a certain minimum income. That's very important to do that if you're not getting enough work. But most of them are actually doing very well. And I hear so many great stories about people who've, put themselves on the map financially, that they were struggling all their lives and now they can afford to buy a house and, people can spend time with their kids growing up and all kinds of, like I hear wonderful stories all the time.

I get a lot of this kind of stuff. Most of the feedback I get is actually very positive and I can see it's changing people's lives. It's immensely rewarding, it really is. Being a franchisor is a funny job. You get people who are franchisees who are quite successful, then they become a franchisor. They often suffer a loss of income. Most of the top earners in Jim's are not franchisors, they're franchisees. But the great thing about being a franchisor is that you become a coach and a mentor and that's a very

emotionally rewarding situation to be able to see people who succeeding because something that you've done and I take great delight in that. It's an enormous joy.

Sam Penny (31:44)
It's interesting Jim to hear talking about how personally involved you are with your franchisees, but also things such as customer complaints. It sounds like you're still very much in touch with that guy who bought a lawnmower for $24.

Jim (31:59)
Yeah, well, I identify with them. I really do. I feel very much in common with, more in common with my own people who are basically independent, small tradesmen. Well, not so small some actually these days, but they're my kind of people. I actually find them very, I get on with them quite well. We have meetings, like I chat to people during training and so forth. I try and talk to as many people as possible when they're training.

they have a problem not come back to me. I just find them very likeable people. don't get on quite so well with lot of other, you know, like your professionals and so forth and I don't identify with them. I don't understand the way they think but I understand the way that an independent contractor like a franchisee thinks.

Sam Penny (32:52)
So would you say then it's fair to say that you built this empire not to create great wealth, but really to return to your real calling?

Jim (33:00)
Well, as I said, the emotional reason, the core reason was always the need to fund my research. But I would say my life is very purpose driven. I don't think about things in terms of, what's going to make me happy I think what means something in life to me? What can I do about it? It's like a God given mission. And I have been given these tasks. It's like the parable of the tablets, you know, from the Bible.

It's one of my favorite stories and it just says basically whatever gifts you've been given, you should use them, make use of them and that's the way I see life. Now the odd thing about it is that if you search for happiness and if you say what makes me feel good and you chase after that, in the end it makes you pretty miserable because you become very selfish and self-absorbed. If you say happiness isn't really important, I'll do what's right.

what has meaning and purpose in the end you actually do become quite happy. And I'm an extraordinarily happy person. I am so wonderfully blessed in so many ways. Amazingness. I've got an incredible wife, great children. I and I've got a great business with a lot of people that are really really terrific people that I get on with. It's a very great life it's a life driven by purpose rather than by I don't know indulgence.

Sam Penny (34:22)
So then Jim, what is your why?

Jim (34:23)
Well, as said, the purpose, my purpose in life is my research, my franchisees, my family. What can I do to help people? Look, it's great to be alive, but you see, you ask yourself the question, if you were offered a choice that you continue as you are and you'd forget about the choice, or you had an opportunity and you would know that everything you want for your family, for your people,

would be achieved in instant, but then as soon as you decide that you'd be dead, okay? Would you accept that? Now, I would, because it's more important to me than my life.

Sam Penny (35:03)
So getting onto your research, you've poured millions into epigenetics and also history. Why?

Jim (35:10)
because society is going in a really, really, really bad direction. People don't understand it yet. They're starting to see the problems with the collapsing birth rate. We're going to see more problems with the economy start to stagnate and go backward over the next, decades. They just don't realize it, but I can see the signs so clearly and everything that I care about, everything, my family, my children, my grandchildren, my franchisees.

my people in my country, anybody in the world, we're to be affected by this in really bad way. There couldn't be any greater source of meaning than to do something about it, to see this disaster coming and to see what can be done. And the fact that virtually nobody agrees with me, I mean, some people do actually, I do have supporters. Biohistory has been taught at several universities in various ways. I do have supporters. And I think this coming book, Birthright Crisis, will hopefully be

successfully in carrying that message.

Sam Penny (36:09)
So do you think Jim Pemman can change the world?

Jim (36:11)
Well, yes, absolutely I can. Because if I'm right, and I think I am, but I mean it's up to people to decide that the key to everything is character. And you look at any issues going on in the world, you're looking at collapsing birthrate, you look at poverty, for example, you can solve it. There is no inherent reason why, for example, Aboriginal Australia shouldn't be as well, as prosperous, and as healthy as anyone else.

There's nothing in them genetically. Genetically speaking, we're almost identical. Humans have almost no variation. People with chimpanzees, for example, we are extremely genetically uniform. So this whole idea of racism is just twaddle. It's character. It's based on epigenetics can be changed. If you can go into somebody's character and you can give them a treatment that says, here's a way to be more hardworking, to be happier, to be healthier. Here it is.

Take it if you want it, you don't have to. And that treatment can actually have this effect. That is a monumental thing. We see a rise. One of the things that's most, should be most disturbing is so-called deaths of despair. people dying from suicide, from drug overdose, from alcohol, liver disease and so forth. That's going up. It's going up so much that it's starting to challenge our increasing lifespan.

Lifespan is actually starting to drop in America, especially amongst working class males. That's a terrible problem. Can you just imagine? We had a young guy in our office, a young, was like 22 years old, he was in IT, and during one of the lockdowns he committed suicide. That to me is one of the worst things that you've been able to do. A death from suicide is just shocking. It's such a, you think of the misery that causes that to happen.

and it does to their family. I suicide is awful. It's the one thing, it's the most dangerous. We worry about no franchisees. We do all kinds of things to try and cope with this and community and help lines and free counseling, all kinds of stuff we do, because it's such a concern to us. So this misery, the cause people are killing themselves or indirectly by taking drugs, nasty drugs that destroy their lives, that is so much worth doing something about.

It's a mission for the ages.

Sam Penny (38:34)
So then what does success in this space look like then?

Jim (38:36)
or developing something or encouraging others to develop something that would actually make people's lives better. That will allow us to have a healthy society, a vibrant society, a caring society, a democratic society, which we shouldn't take for advantage, and one that can afford to look after all its inhabitants properly. And this not only just in Australia, but across the world.

Sam Penny (38:44)
And is this a drug?

Now, Jim, you've been at loggerheads with academia for decades now. If at some point in the future, they said, you know what, Jim, we were wrong, you were right. Would that matter to you?

Jim (39:12)
Well, in a sense it doesn't matter what they think. The point is if we can develop a treatment that can do what we want it to, I'll have to look at it and say, well, you might be an absolute crackpot, but this is useful because, our kids aren't killing themselves these days. But look, whether people accept something that's so bizarrely different from their way of thinking, I don't know. And in a sense, I don't really care.

I what I want is the solution. if people try and fight problems like the collapsing birth rate, if they've got the wrong ideology, the wrong belief system about it, what they do will fail. So we have to be able to work on real solutions that actually work in real life. And if we do that, and then we'll change for the better, I really don't care what people think about me.

Sam Penny (40:06)
So does this, research that you're doing, putting the millions into funding the science behind it, does this feel like redemption for what happened back in the late seventies when you're a PhD student, when academia effectively rejected your thesis back then?

Jim (40:22)
I don't blame them. Look, my thoughts are really wildly different. Historians spend their whole lives and their whole careers looking at things in a certain way. It's not really surprising. I mean, at the time I thought it was odd, but people are not empirically minded. I was having an argument with my research head. He's a wonderful guy, terrific researcher, great background in neuroscience. We have very fundamentally different ideas.

and we're talking about the origins of war. Okay, now he says that the reason that the second world war broke out was because of the effects of the depression, because there was stress on Germans who were therefore became, much more violent and aggressive. That's his explanation and it's sort of thing people talk about, that they're stressed so they fight. Now in fact the trouble with that is historically speaking that's not the way it works at all.

In fact, the most likely time you're going to get a war, historically speaking, I've got many examples, is when you have a very serious war, and then there's a period of peace. And then as the generation that was born at the end of the major war, reach military age, then you get a second war, which is why so often in Chinese history, you get these massive wars taking place about a generation after the unification. And that happened with the Qin and the Han, it happened with the

the Sui and the Tang, it happened with the Song dynasty, happened with the Ming, and happened to a certain extent with the Qing. So you see this pattern again and again, again, First World War, Second World War, again. Now, if you have a look at periods where there's ongoing stress, it doesn't have the same effect at all. It just doesn't. And you can show it, it doesn't affect that way in animals, it doesn't affect that way in human societies. So here's a view that says stress causes people to have wars, ongoing stress.

Well, no, actually, if you look at the evidence, it's not that at all. It's something completely different. But the trouble is, the idea that stress causes people, it makes common sense. It seems plausible. It seems reasonable. You're stressful, therefore you're going to fight a war. But it's just empirically wrong. And that's what science is all about. You've got to work out an empirical. You get a theory that fits as much of the evidence as possible, and you test it.

Sam Penny (42:26)
So then.

So then how have your philosophies and ideologies shaped what is Jim's today?

Jim (42:41)
Well, there's not a lot of correspondence between my academic career and my business career. The only thing they've got in common is that I'm wildly unorthodox in both cases. I completely break the mold. What I've done in franchising is weirdly different to anything you'll find anywhere else in the world. For example, I can tell you confidently, we are the only franchisee in the world that allows franchisees to...

changed to a different franchisor, in a different division. They can vote out their franchisor. They can veto changes to their own manual. There's a clause in the contract that says the majority share of Jim's cannot be sold without the written consent of most franchisees. And with any subsequent controlling entity, franchisees get a vote, put somebody on the board. I mean, there's all kinds of weird stuff that we do that nobody else does. So very, very unorthodox.

That's the only thing they got in common, apart from that it's going to see. But also, if you look at it in other way, character is the key in both cases. Why does a person succeed in business? Now people might say, oh, because they're smart or because they've got good family background, they've got a lot of money behind them. Overwhelmingly in my experience is people succeed because they've got a great character. So you get a guy like Dan Cale, he was a high school dropout. Now high school dropouts basically,

Sam Penny (43:53)
Hmm.

Jim (44:01)
subhuman scum in the eyes of society. they're not, they can't even finish high school, much less have a degree, much less have a graduate degree. So obviously some sub-sub-moronic half-wit, all right? This guy goes to work for McDonald's, which is good experience. Early 20s, he with great trepidation buys a mowing franchise, turns out to be a very successful franchisee, employs several people, ends up turning over close to a million dollars. Then he decides to become a franchisor, he's brilliant at that.

He's multi-millionaire, he's in his early 30s, okay? What has Dan got? Now he's probably got certain amount of brains, but what he's got is character more than anything else. And I know people who are very smart, who are highly intelligent, who are completely clueless about the real world, completely ineffectual and deal with it. I won't give you examples, but I know them. I know people for sure whose IQs fit in the top 2 % of the population who are completely...

Sam Penny (44:48)
Ha

Jim (44:57)
useless in terms of anything to do with making a living or doing a decent job. It's all about character. People think intelligence matters. It does to a very limited extent. Probably accounts for about four percent of what makes a person succeed. The great majority is character.

Sam Penny (45:14)
Jim, you've clearly built something that's going to outlive you. And in fact, prior to our conversation, you told me that you'd never, ever, ever sell Jim's So what do you hope that it's going to stand for?

Jim (45:27)
it's going to stand for helping people to live a better life, at least I hope it will. I'll do everything I can to rule from it on beyond the grave. Actually if you go to Jimpenman.com.au there's a virtual Jim there you can ask questions and he's actually pretty good. He's got more than a million words and this this recording we're going to it too so you can ask all sorts of questions. Mostly it's pretty well one of the aims is least tongue-in-cheek from my staff is that in 20 years time when I've snuffed it

Sam Penny (45:40)
you

Jim (45:52)
virtual Jim will be so so capable he can run the whole thing himself forever. I don't think so.

Sam Penny (45:58)
So on that then, the

world of AI, how do you see the world of AI changing the world?

Jim (46:04)
this is wonderful. It's terrific in terms of efficiency For example, in areas like legal and documents and so forth, it's great. Computer programming, it's amazing. It really helps us to be more effective and efficient. We can actually improve our services and reduce our costs. So we're right into it in a big way. The wonderful thing about it too though, from our point of view, is that there is one kind of job that will be extraordinarily difficult.

to use AI for, and that's what we do. Getting someone to go out and mow somebody's lawn is a very complex matter if you think about it. You've got to arrange it with a client, you've got to communicate with them, you've got to get there, you've got to establish your equipment, you've got to take it. I mean, there's whole kinds of things. Unless you get a fully humanoid robot, it's impossible to think that AI could do it. Now you can have automatic mowers, but you've got to set them in place. You've got to maintain them, you've got to sharpen the blades, you've got to do the edges, you can't...

Sam Penny (46:33)
Mm.

Jim (46:59)
They can't do the gardening. So from our point of view, it's all good. So we're in a wonderful situation where we can enormously benefit from AI and really help our franchisees to make better money. At the same time, there's no threat to us. None at all. We've got a new program, actually Jimbo, that's just been launched. And it's going to really improve efficiency. By the end of the year, we're going to have a system where people can actually book appointments into the franchisees' diaries.

So when a client rings, instead of having to ring them back, we can actually book it in. That kind of thing. If we were to be able to sell and exchange regular clients and all kinds of things to improve customer service and reduce complaints I mean, it's revolutionary stuff. This is all wonderful. This is all marvelous. We're to be able to dramatically improve customer service and improve our franchisees income with technology. But technology is our friend. It doesn't threaten us.

Whereas things like computer programmers example, there's less and less of them these days. There's less people doing it because you don't need as many. And you look at other jobs like bookkeeping, accountancy, the law, all kinds of areas, they're being severely impacted. You know what? They're going to need more and more people like us to do the work around the place. And you can make a very good living. Like I said, our franchisees typically make well over the average Australian income for doing the jobs that cannot be automated. And that's not going to change. The biggest problem we've got.

Sam Penny (48:03)
Legal.

Jim (48:24)
is the demand for our services is so far beyond what we can provide. Over 200,000 unserviced leads in the last year. We just can't cope with the demand.

Sam Penny (48:32)
Wow, that's amazing. Now, Jim, look, you've raised kids, you've lost marriages, you've fired friends. What has been the cost in building all of this?

Jim (48:43)
Well, I have never, ever, ever failed to spend time with my kids. That is one thing. I've never, ever believed in that. no other success can compensate for failing at home. Now, I'm not saying I've been the greatest father in the world, but I've always had time for my kids. In fact, the fundamental reason my second and third marriage had a breakdown is because I was very devoted to my five children. And when they come, I would focus on them so intensely because I didn't see them. So I had that 24 hours.

and my wives found it impossible even my current wife, Lee, who's a most amazingly wonderful lady, she had really big problems with that, especially early on. So I've never ever ever neglected my children or thought it was right to do so.

Sam Penny (49:23)
Hmm.

Jim (49:24)
I don't know what else you'd say about that.

I don't think it's justified. I don't think the pursuit of wealth or money or success is worth neglecting your family for. And I've got 10 children, so there's a lot of work goes into that. But they're the greatest joy, have a greater sense of meaning to me as well.

Sam Penny (49:40)
You mentioned early on that you're wildly happy. Are you at peace now?

Jim (49:47)
Well, Sam, it depends what you mean by at peace? If you say at peace means that I no longer feel the need to strive and to progress, no, absolutely not. I am chronically discontented. I look at my business every day and I think, how can we be so bad? Why can't we improve? Why can't we do this better? I'm never, never at peace. I'm never satisfied when I've got one franchisee who's unhappy.

I can't be at peace with that. I can't accept it. I will not accept it. People ask me my goal, how many, what's your major goal? You want to have 10,000 franchisees, 100,000 what? I said no, I've got one goal. I want every single one of my franchisees to be happy with their situation. Now that's an impossible target. And the same thing, secondly, I want every single client to be happy with the service they get from us. An impossible target, but I'll never stop trying. So in that sense, I'm not at peace at all.

Never will be. The next time I'll be at peace when I'm dead. When I'm lying there at my funeral, which is my retirement ceremony, then I'll be at peace, okay? And whatever comes after that, I know when you talk about, but until then, no, never. But at peace in the sense of being very contented and very happy with my life, yes, absolutely I am.

Sam Penny (50:58)
Ha ⁓

So then what do you hope people will say about Jim Pemmon in say a hundred years time?

Jim (51:12)
don't really care. look, if I could achieve what I want, and people completely forget about me, would certainly fine. Honestly, obviously, if I'm successful, then I'm going to become a fairly big name. Now, that's an if, okay, lot of things can go wrong. But it's not important, really, is it? Is it is achieving? Would you rather be, as you have the case, would you rather be somebody who achieved everything you want in life, but nobody ever knew it was you?

or somebody that was lauded as being famous and great, but achieved nothing in practice. Which would you prefer? See, to me that's an easy... I think most of us too probably would say the same thing. So no, I don't really care what my legacy is in the sense of what people think about me. I care greatly about what I achieve. And every franchisee who goes on to live a better life, that's a success. And every father who sees his children because his job allows him the flexibility, that's a success.

more than money even, by far I would say, his family.

Sam Penny (52:12)
So then if

there was one lesson that you left behind, one line that was carved on your gravestone, what would that be?

Jim (52:18)
live a life of purpose.

find a good purpose and live a life of purpose. Mind you, having said that, Hitler lived life of purpose, I suppose, in his own life, so that didn't work out too well. But I do think we focus too much on the immediately short-term success. Achieving money. mean, one of the greatest myths of the land is that if you have more money, you'll be more successful, you'll happier. It's really a very...

Sam Penny (52:31)
Yeah.

Jim (52:51)
indirect relationship and having more stuff, having a better car, better bigger house, better clothes, better holidays, really hasn't got much to do with happiness. Happiness is actually of anything. If you're to spend money on it, the best thing to do, and this is what scientists say, not, not, not like just me. the best way to spend money is to give it away to a cause that you're involved with, personally involved, like I do with my research project, or it could be your church or your local community or whatever. People who do that tend to be a lot happier.

than those who simply have a lot of money and use it to say, I'm better than you, I'm richer than you, and I'm... I dislike display intensely. I actually, I delight in spending as little money as possible. My shoes are actually from Kmart. They cost me 20 bucks two years ago. That's typical of me. The socks are from Woolworths and they're getting holes in them. it's... I don't care about that kind of stuff.

Sam Penny (53:25)
Hmm.

That's fantastic. Now,

one question, Jim, that I ask everybody on the podcast, and it's obviously the premise of what the podcast is from everything that you've ever done, your academia, your current research, and also the Jim's empire of what it is today. Why do you think you could do that?

Jim (54:03)
Why did I do it? Because I've got a certain kind of character. Character is destiny. Character is everything. I've got a certain attitude. I do a lot of stupid things, a lot of rash things. I make a lot of poorly mistakes, but I have this driven character that drives me to want to do better. And that comes from a lot of things deep in my past, from my adolescence and so forth. Things like the way we behave matters a difference. For example, one of the things I do is, ⁓

exercise regularly, I have cold showers, I fast, I do those kinds of things because I know it affects character as well, mental as well as physical health. So character is the key.

Sam Penny (54:44)
Fantastic. Now, Jim, I always love to finish the episode with the rapid fire five. It's five questions. They can often seem quite random at times. Basically, I'm going to fire these at you. Firstly, what's a daily habit you swear by, but most people would find odd.

Jim (55:02)
cold showers. I'll tell you what, you have a minute on a cold shower in the middle of winter, you know what you're doing.

Sam Penny (55:03)
Ha ha ha ha!

I once converted a chest freezer into a plunge pool into an ice bath that I used to sit in for half an hour each time at one degree. That afterwards makes you know that you're alive.

Jim (55:22)
Absolutely does, I think it has a great effect on me. A lot of studies on that too.

Sam Penny (55:25)
Now, if you weren't Jim from Jim's, what job do you reckon you'd be doing today?

Jim (55:32)
wouldn't mind being a teacher. think teaching is a great, and teaching primary school kids too. I know that sounds an odd choice, but when I was in my church role, I've often been a Sunday school teacher. I just love kids. That's why I had so many myself. I just love kids. I love teaching. I love talking about things. I'm always talking about stuff with my 16 year old son. He's a great, great kid. So our conversation's got all over the place, but a lot of it's about history and about science I think being a teacher is fantastic.

Sam Penny (55:34)
teacher.

Jim (56:02)
occupation. It's actually underestimated. I think it's one of the most important jobs that anybody could possibly do with their lives.

Sam Penny (56:11)
100 % because it's the formation of early childhood all the way through to escaping out into the world.

Jim (56:18)
great teacher can change lives, change many, many lives. had an English teacher in high school for two years and his way it still influences the way I write. And I've written several books and I owe a great debt to him.

Sam Penny (56:32)
So moving on to our third question in the rapid fire five, what's a movie book or an idea that changed the way you think forever?

Jim (56:41)
Well, the Bible is number one, really. Because if you look at the way we run Jim's and the kind of ideas behind the servant leadership, that's very, very strongly Christian influence. I have so many great books, though. I don't even know how to begin to talk about them. There's just wonderful books about seven habits of highly effective people. If you want to talk about book about business, that is amazing. I've just finished listening to that the second time through. And there's just so many

books like Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond about history I recommended my son and I could go on a long time. have a list on my website. There's a list of my favorite books and there's a lot of them with the reasons why I like them. There's so much amazing stuff around. I think one of the greatest things about the IT revolution is to be able to talk in books and be able to download a book from Amazon and just read it, you know, within a minute. That is so fantastically wonderful.

Sam Penny (57:36)
What's one thing you wish more people understood about you?

Jim (57:40)
I don't know what they understood about me. I don't know. I'm actually pretty ordinary. The funny thing about it is people actually meet for first time and they're kind of awed in a way. when people know me better, they're not awed at all. Not in slayst. I'm a very ordinary guy in many ways.

Sam Penny (58:00)
It's interesting, Jim, on this podcast, why do you think you could do that? The people that I've interviewed are people who've gone out and done batshit crazy stuff, built empires or had amazing adventures, created things that have had influence and change. But at the core of them, when you talk to them, when you meet them and understand who they are, they always say, I'm just an ordinary person who said yes.

who thought I'm going to back myself and build this.

Jim (58:30)
Yeah, that's, well, that's good to hear that. I don't know that many people like that. But actually, I'm often astonished that I've done as well as I have. I look at my own weaknesses and failings and underlying laziness and poor people skills and rashness and all these sort of stupid things that I do. I think how in this can such an idiot succeed? But I think that's the lesson for anybody really is that you don't have to be incredibly great. If people looked at me and said, this guy's so...

charismatic and smart and everything else that I could never do that, then I'm pretty much failed. But if they can, I want them to look at me and say, well, look at that idiot can do these things, well, surely I can too, if I put my mind to it.

Sam Penny (59:09)
Now the last question, the rapid fire five, what's scarier to you starting something new or letting go of something old?

Jim (59:17)
Well, I'm not scared about starting new things. I should be. If I was more scared about starting new things, then I might've made less rash decisions in the past. But, look, I don't think I get scared of either of them particularly. what terrifies me something happened to my wife. she's driving out there at night, I can't reach her on the phone. I have all these panicky thoughts about something that could happen to her or...

You know, my daughter's just going to hospital for gallstones and I worry about that. Or having my kids in trouble. Those things scare me. Business doesn't scare me. Business is fun.

Sam Penny (59:52)
Hmm.

Business is fun.

what you've shared today isn't just a business story. It's a masterclass in persistence, vision, and what happens when you refuse to stay small. From pushing a mower to pushing the boundaries of science, your journey, it's a reminder that even from the lowest point, you can build something extraordinary if you back yourself. Before we sign off, Jim, where can people follow your work, dive into your research, or connect with the Jim's world?

Jim (1:00:24)
jimpenman.com.au is my personal website or jims.net is the business website where all the links are there to me or biohistory.org if you want to know a bit more about the research.

Sam Penny (1:00:36)
Perfect. I'll make sure that I link those in the show notes for everyone tuning in. If there's one thing to take from today, it's this. You don't need permission to build something big. You don't need a fancy title or perfect timing or anyone's approval. Sometimes all it takes is a $24 mower and a refusal to give up. If you need that reminder more often, join me every Tuesday for the Bravery Digest and I'll be back next Thursday with another guest who asked

the question that changes everything. Why not me? Until then, I'm Sam Penny. Stay bold, stay brave, and keep chasing your own impossible.