The face behind Jim’s Mowing is a man of surprises

You’ll recognise Jim Penman, of course. As the boss of Jim’s Group his face adorns many a franchise. But for somebody you think you know, he is full of surprises.

How it all started: Jim Penman. Picture: Aaron Francis

A logo of your bearded, smiling face topped with a bucket hat adorns thousands of vans owned by Jim’s Group franchisees across Australia. Do you ever pinch yourself? Yes, it surprises me, it truly does: I started all this with a $24 investment for leaflets for my lawn mowing round in 1982 – and Jim’s Group now has over 5,200 franchisees across 40 divisions, with an annual turnover of around a billion dollars. I don’t understand how it happened, sometimes. I’m not a particularly good manager, or particularly good at marketing. But I am very, very relentless about trying to do things better, and very critical. Every day of the year, I ask myself, “How can I improve?”

What happened to the beard? In around 2000 I found myself single again after divorcing for the third time. My beard looked pretty grey, and I didn’t want to appear too old, so I shaved it off. I met Li a year later, and we were engaged within a fortnight. Not very wise when you’ve already been divorced three times, is it? The amazing thing is, we’ve been married for 23 years and I’m still absolutely head-over-heels crazy about her.

Jim’s Group is branching out with two new divisions, Jim’s Beauty and Jim’s Remedial Massage. Among the services offered will be “corporate chair massages”. Have you ever had one? No, I’ve never had any kind of massage. I don’t really like people touching me, apart from my wife. But health and wellness sector is a substantial and growing part of the service industry.

Two years ago you announced you were launching a cryptocurrency, JimCoin. How’s that going? Oh, that was an April Fool’s joke. We do it every year. Last year we announced we had seceded from Victoria and set up a micronation, JimLand. Another year we announced we were launching an airline, and before that we said we were buying King Island and renaming it Jim Island. They were all jokes. It’s just the kind of thing we do.

What other divisions are you hoping to launch this year? I’m hoping to get Jim’s Life Coaching off the ground. That would be a brilliant one, actually. I’d love to do Jim’s Personal Training, and also very keen on Jim’s Driving School. The hard part isn’t the idea; it’s about finding the right person to drive the division.

For all your business success, you’re really a frustrated academic aren’t you? Yes, the mowing round started as a way to fund my PhD at La Trobe University. In the late 70s and early 80s I developed a theory of society, of history, based on the concept of “biohistory” – I thought it had the ability to change the world, but it was far too radical to get me any sort of academic post. So I decided the only way to develop my ideas was to make a lot of money and then use that to fund research projects.

What is biohistory, in a nutshell? It’s the idea that civilisation – the collection of large, wealthy nation states - depends on a kind of human physiology that has evolved as a way of coping with mild food restriction. These biological traits manifest long-term in history; civilisation is really an expression of the population’s character and temperament. I fund a lab at La Trobe, which researches these ideas; this year alone I’m putting about $4 million into it.

You became a Christian at 28. Was it a lightning-bolt conversion? Yeah. I was quite a militant agnostic before, often arguing with Christians, but at La Trobe I got to know some people in the Christian Union and I liked them. I went on a retreat with them and yes, God spoke to me. It was an amazing experience: very joyful, very exciting – and very sudden. So I changed sides. I now attend a mainstream Baptist church but over the years I’ve been a Mormon, I’ve been a Seventh Day Adventist, I’ve been in the Fundamentalist church…

You have 10 children, aged from 14 to 39. How about grandkids? Only three so far. My older children are a bit slower to breed than I was, that’s for sure!

You’ve been open about your anger issues over the years. Have you mellowed with age? Not as much as you’d think. I’m a pretty feisty 71-year-old! I still fly off the handle; I don’t yell a lot, but I will argue quite ferociously, and I get very intense and heated. And I’m still very impatient – I get annoyed with people standing on escalators, and doors not opening fast enough. I just get very frustrated with things not happening quickly.

What is your happy place? [Long pause] Lots, actually. I love spending time with my wife. We go on at least one date every week. Just being in bed at night with her is really fun. Also, my farm, where I stay a couple of days a week. It’s a 100-acre former cattle property in the Yarra Ranges that we’re turning into an organic food forest. We’re planting lots of food-bearing trees - mainly nut trees but also fruit trees – and we’ve got chickens and llamas. I just love being outside, working and gardening.

Pardon the rude question, but how rich are you? It depends on what someone would pay for my business. But I can tell you it’s a fraction of what would be needed to get me into a magazine Rich List. And I’m pretty frugal: the first new car I’ve ever bought was an EV, a couple of years ago. So, yeah: I’m a lot more famous than I am rich.