Jim Penman set up Jim’s Mowing in 1979 as a part-time gardening business while he completed a history PhD.

Today the franchise he launched in 1983 has become a mega-group, a business with Jim heavily involved as a hands-on CEO.

And it is the most diverse collection of businesses you could expect to find under one banner.

The Jim’s Group is an a-z of industries: from antennas to cleaning, from finance to glass, from mobile mechanics to pool care, from removals to traffic control.

There are 50 different divisions, or industries, under the Jim’s banner, and a continual search to bring more into the fold.

Upcoming ventures include a nail salon, a massage business, and tutoring.

Jim’s Group success across divisions

The breadth of the business is exceeded only by the number of franchisees in the Jim’s Group. There are more than 5150 franchises, many of them operated by husband and wife teams.

The diversity and lifespan of the various divisions make the standard benchmark of a franchise group’s success – franchisee renewals – irrelevant.

Instead Jim Penman points to the high performance he sees across the network; top franchisees are bringing in millions of dollars in revenue, he says.

Despite competition from other franchises and independent businesses, he says the work is unlimited. The group overall knocks back thousands of potential jobs each year.

A centralised system makes for efficient lead generation. To help franchisees maximise their potential, the Jim’s Jobs scheduling and billing tool is constantly getting updates and new features.

“We spend several millions of dollars a year on IT,” says Jim.

Even if new franchisees find it tough in the early days, the franchisor is there to support them.

Jim’s provides franchisee support

Franchisees in divisions like fencing and mowing can more easily generate work from the start than those in specialist industries like bookkeeping and IT, for instance.

So Jim’s encourages franchisees needing more leads to approach friends, family, and franchisees in other divisions in their area, to offer a complimentary service.

“We then pay the franchisees the standard price for the service,” Jim says.

“The chance to succeed is so much stronger in a Jim’s franchise than in an independent business. Franchisees can make good money and have flexibility in their lives.”

Since 2019 the number of franchisees joining the network has been phenomenal

“The growth started in Covid, and it’s continued. I think it’s got a lot to do with social media and pr,” he says. “We’ve had a big boost to our public profile and social media has been very effective.”

One initiative is particularly wide-reaching.

“I do a Facebook Live session, #Ask Jim, for, an hour on a Tuesday night during the franchisee training week and people can ask me anything they like. We encourage far-out questions – it’s more fun,” he admits.

Snippets of the sessions, jokes, franchisee stories, are shared on social media as part of a wider campaign to get people talking about the brand.

“We expected to slow down after the pandemic but if anything business is accelerating. Public awareness definitely has an effect on our business.”

Jim’s public interaction is matched by a hands-on approach to his leadership role.

“I still run two courses during training, and I give every new franchisee my phone number and email,” he says.

Strong leadership is key

Customer service is a personal issue for Jim.

“I’m the only person who can delete a customer complaint. I personally ring and deal with difficult customers. The advantage is that I can fix problems that arise. I can see what’s going wrong in the system.”

On more than one occasion his laser focus on problems has solved franchisee concerns. Jim has even adjusted a guaranteed income which wasn’t delivering the revenue in one division.

And he’s not averse to pulling back from an unsatisfactory situation, which happened with a plumbing licence. After bad publicity around the business he pulled the deal.

Now the business has been set up independently as a fully-fledged Jim’s division, ripe for swift growth.

“The leadership of each division is crucial,” says Jim. “When you get the right leadership, it’s brilliant.”

He points to the Jim’s Laundry business as typical of a high performing, fast-growing division. It now has 80 franchisees after just a couple of years in business.

Another example is the well-established dog washing business which recently quadrupled its franchise footprint from 60 to 240.

“One reason for our extraordinary success at Jim’s Group is customer service,” he says. “Our feedback from automated systems shows a dramatic effect in improving service.

“We aren’t the cheapest; we get great franchisees, charge more, and deliver a top quality service.”