5 Leadership Lessons for Tradies from Jim’s Group Founder Jim Penman

Guest: Jim Penman

Episode: Season 1, Episode 18

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Jim Penman built Jim's Group from a one-man mowing round into a network of over 5,500 franchisees across more than 50 divisions and still personally answers calls from franchisees he's never met.

Here’s the leadership lessons from growing one of the largest franchises in the southern hemisphere:

Lesson 1: How to Inspire Your Team

Jim traces his own emotional investment in customer service back to gardening from the age of eight, long before Jim's Group existed in any form. That instinct has never really faded, he still personally engages with unhappy customers today, sitting on emails himself until an issue is genuinely resolved, and gives his personal phone number and email to any of his more than 5,600 franchisees, inviting them to contact him any time, including evenings, weekends and public holidays.

He says leadership is "inspiring people to put their heart and soul into what they're doing, because people, with the right motivation, can do extraordinary things."

Lesson 2: Suicide Prevention in the Trades

Asked what the single biggest danger is for his franchisees, bearing in mind many work with chainsaws, at heights, and drive constantly for work, Jim doesn't point to any physical risk.

"Suicide," he says. "Far more dangerous than chainsaws and heights and anything."

In response, Jim's Group runs franchisee meetings on a roughly six-weekly cycle specifically to maintain regular contact, has put every franchisee through mental health training, provides free psychological counselling on request, and hands out fridge magnets with emergency contact numbers.

Investing in the wellbeing of his team, especially with the stress of business ownership, is how Jim keeps his workforce psychosocially safe.

Lesson 3: Self-Reflection as a Driver of Business Success

Jim divides his franchisees into three rough categories: gold, bronze and what he calls "lead”, based largely on how they respond to a setback.

The ones who build genuinely successful, million-dollar businesses are consistently the ones willing to look at themselves first.

He recalls a milk bar owner near one of his early offices who blamed the shopping centre, the supermarkets, and unfair competition for his struggling business, while visibly ignoring simple, obvious fixes like offering lunch orders to nearby office workers.

"Be endlessly self-critical, look at yourself and say, what can I do different, what can I do better," Jim says. It's the single biggest factor, in his view, in whether someone succeeds.

Lesson 4: Building Genuine Customer Relationships in a Trade Business

For Jim, treating customers well can't just be a stated policy, it has to be something a business owner actually feels.

"It can't just be, hey, if I give good service then I'll do well," he says. "It's gotta be emotional."

He credits his daily conversations with franchisees, many of whom he's never met in person, with keeping him genuinely close to what's actually going wrong on the ground: what training is missing, what software isn't working, what needs to change, rather than relying on reports filtered through layers of management.

Being customer-focused is what allows Jim to stand out from the competition and continually refine his business practices.

Lesson 5: Why Giving Back Matters for Business Owners

Despite running the largest franchise network in the Southern Hemisphere, Jim describes himself as notoriously stingy in his personal life: his socks, he says, usually have holes in them, and he has no interest in the trappings of wealth.

What money he has largely funds his research into neuroscience and why civilisations rise and fall, work that predates and has nothing directly to do with the business.

"If you really wanna use your money to make you happy, give it away, to a cause that you're involved with," he says, citing research from social scientists that this is consistently the single most effective way to use money for genuine happiness.

Jim’s Advice on Everyday Leadership

"It's basically caring about what you do. It's seeing your job as a sense of mission and of purpose, we're the lynchpins of society, and we need to understand that what we do matters," whether that's mowing someone's lawn or fixing their car.

Catch the full conversation with Jim Penman on Tradies Who Lead for more leadership lessons for tradies, out now wherever you listen to podcasts.