Joel Kleber, CMO of Jim’s Group, admits that he’s not a classically trained marketer. And thankfully is glad that he’s not. Otherwise he may never have achieved the commercial heights that he has if he was bogged down by process, frameworks and risk-averse thinking.
Joel shares how he helped spearhead the explosive growth of Jim’s Group with their digital presence and franchise recruitment strategy. Which now achieves over a $1b annual turnover from over 5,700 franchisees across more than 50 divisions in Australia, NZ, Canada, and the UK.
From AI tools, failing, and harnessing real authenticity, to letting go and trusting the network to inspire people, Joel shares Jim’s Group’s unique recipe for success.
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Do you have brand guidelines? Do you have limitations in what you can and can’t do for the quality of the content or the type of content?
No, I’ve got none.
Transcription (Edited):
Anton Buchner:
Hi, I’m Anton Buchner, Business Director at Trinity P3 Marketing Management Consultancy. Welcome again to Managing Marketing, a weekly podcast where we discuss the issues and opportunities facing marketing, media and advertising with industry thought leaders. Today, I’m talking with one of Australia’s top franchise executives, the CMO of Jim’s Group, Joel Kleber. Joel is an innovator who has spearheaded the explosive growth of Jim’s Group with their digital presence and franchise recruitment strategy, especially around utilising advanced AI systems and tools. I didn’t realise the group has over a billion dollars in annual turnover, with 5,700 franchises and 50 divisions. It has seen great success in New Zealand, Canada, Australia and the UK since Jim Penman started it in 1982. So, it is with great pleasure that I welcome Joel Kleber to the podcast.
Joel Kleber:
Thank you, Anton, for having me on; I appreciate it.
Anton Buchner:
I’m looking forward to delving into your marketing mind and lifting the hood a bit on the Jim’s Group. I didn’t realise you joined the group back in 2011.
Joel Kleber:
Yes, 2011. It was my first job when I moved up to Melbourne to start my law commerce degree. I had a mate working out here who moved back to Warrnambool and mentioned they were always looking for people. I applied, despite having a two-day-a-week law clerk job, and I’ve been here ever since.
Anton Buchner:
Nice, you liked it so much you stayed.
Joel Kleber:
Some people say it’s like a cult sometimes; you come in, get “Jimified”, and stay for a long time.
Taking the Reins and Early Strategy
Anton Buchner:
Classic. You took the CMO reins in 2019. For people who might know the Group but not you personally, what did you see from a marketing perspective when you took over? What was the Group doing?
Joel Kleber:
Back in 2019, we were doing nothing on social media or with video. People used to hear great business advice and lessons internally from Jim all the time, and I wondered why we weren’t putting that stuff online. At that time, video was a bit more expensive and prohibitive regarding pre-production costs. I started offering my opinions on the Jim’s Group as a brand. It didn’t really have a unified brand; everyone knew divisions like Jim’s Mowing or Jim’s Cleaning in isolation, but no one really knew the story of the Jim’s Group and Jim himself beyond a book given out in training.
I was getting into Gary Vaynerchuk at the time and thought we should take that model:
hire a couple of full-time videographers, film everything, and put it online. I started that in 2019 without much of an idea of what I was doing; looking back, I’m actually pretty embarrassed by some of it. However, it started bringing new franchisees and prospects into training. Since 2019, we’ve grown from 3,600 franchisees to 5,700. We had been stagnant for ten years, and the only thing we did differently was relentless video content on multiple channels alongside the Jim Penman brand separately. We haven’t changed much in the system or how we operate internally; it was just a heavy video content approach that was transparent about what we do. It was an accidental strategy, but it was what the business needed.
Counteracting Negativity with Transparency
Anton Buchner:
It’s fascinating. As an outsider, I’ve followed the Group since the 80s, seeing Jim’s face on the side of vans. It seems obvious now, but as digital channels arrived, you started putting as many videos up as you could. What was the specific thread or type of content that you were looking to produce?
Joel Kleber:
It was all based on transparency. In 2019, I was inspired because there were many bad stories around franchising. Other brands were getting bad press, and we were being lumped in with them, with people assuming Jim takes 30 or 40 percent, which we obviously don’t. Franchising is generally a low-trust industry. Whenever there’s a bad franchisee story, it’s all over “A Current Affair,” but you never see the good stories where someone changed their life.
I thought we needed to counteract that negativity by being transparent. Everything about our fees, how our territories operate, and our contracts is now online. I wanted to be as transparent as possible with nothing to hide. We started a Facebook live stream called “Ask Jim” with my webcam. It answers questions like “Is Jim real?” or “Why doesn’t he have a beard?”. Every week, prospects could ask anything and the actual CEO would answer in a live video format.
Humanising the Brand: The “Ask Jim” Initiative
Joel Kleber:
When we started “Ask Jim,” franchisees remarked that they had never seen him like that before; it made him look human. Franchisees were sending prospects to watch it as part of their research. People would come into training months later and tell Jim they decided to become a franchisee after watching four or five episodes. Jim realised that answering questions cost him nothing but time while bringing in more franchisees.
We still do “Ask Jim” every three weeks at our new franchisee training. Jim sits on a stage with 60 to 100 new franchisees and answers their questions, which we then repurpose. During the lockdowns, it became a vital communication tool. We would get 400 to 500 live viewers because people had no idea what was going on. Even today, franchisees who have been around for ten years jump in to ask questions or make suggestions. In a low-trust industry, we decided to front-load our trust and put everything out there.
Anton Buchner:
That’s great to hear. In a franchise model, you are trusting the person who turns up. If that trust flows from Jim through to the franchisee, it’s awesome. Some businesses just put “transparency” as a value on the wall while covering things up. I love that you actually do it.
Joel Kleber:
I agree 100%. People talk about being transparent or “authentic,” but then they want to cut franchisee interviews because “legal has to approve it”. I don’t have that problem here. Jim says things online that you probably wouldn’t usually put out, but we do it. People love the honesty. Even if they don’t agree with Jim on everything, they know everything about the business, whereas other brands are ultra-controlled and chopped up 50 different ways by legal.
Embracing AI and Digital Tools
Anton Buchner:
I admire the stories. It brings me to how you’ve done it. I’ve done a lot of interviews regarding the development of AI and tech platforms over the last couple of years. How are you creating your video content? Are you using AI tools? What have you learned?
Joel Kleber:
I have an internal videographer, Charles, who does all the editing. We also have an offshore editor team in the Philippines who handles short-form content, producing eight to ten reels a day. I use AI tools like repurpose.io and OpusClip to repurpose content for Jim’s personal brand. OpusClip is great because I can take a long-form podcast and get 20 reels in ten minutes, five or six of which are usually really usable.
We have a really lean team for our output. I have this lean team because I have a lot of trust from the franchisees and Jim himself. I don’t need approvals or storyboards; I just document what I want and put it out there. Other businesses have so many approvals and people needing to tick things off, but I’m lucky that Jim and the franchisees trust me because of the results.
For ideation, we use Claude and ChatGPT. Occasionally we use Gemini. We can upload videos directly into Gemini to get feedback on why a video might have flopped. I follow many AI people on X and LinkedIn to stay updated. You just have to give it a try, experiment, and see what happens. Jim teaches me that just because we’ve always done something one way doesn’t mean we should continue that way. You have to be willing to try something new.
Jim and the Digital Avatar
Anton Buchner:
Does Jim get involved in the AI side of things?
Joel Kleber:
Yes, our AI avatar, which we made with Delphi, actually went viral on news.com.au. I’ve made a digital Jim using Delphi AI. I even had him talking to his own digital clone on YouTube, which was quite funny. We also use ElevenLabs to clone his voice. We can put a script in and get a voice clone that sounds exactly like him to use for marketing assets without him needing to be physically involved.
Even though he’s 73, he’s very forward-thinking and tech-savvy. Back in the late 80s, he developed a franchise management system called “Franchise” that was quite advanced. He listens to two audiobooks a week, and lately, he’s been listening to books about AI. It’s actually a bit annoying for me because he’ll come to me with a list of 20 things his own chatbot should do based on those books, and I have to try my best to implement them.
A Culture of Innovation and Calculated Risk
Anton Buchner:
It’s good to keep pushing.
Joel Kleber:
You’ve got to be willing to fail. I think many marketers are afraid to fail, but you learn so much more from it. Jim encourages this; if we fail, we ask what we learned and move on. Many marketers don’t have that leeway. If I make a mistake, I don’t get in trouble; I’m probably encouraged to keep going.
We see a lot of conservatism across the board, from corporate to mid-market. We aren’t seeing many big risk-takers. It might be old-school thinking where people feel they have to invest millions in a big ad, which is risky. My approach is to create content, tell stories, and if something fails, just cut the video and produce something else.
I still get in trouble with franchisees sometimes. If Jim says something openly—like that you can pay a restraint of trade fee and walk away with your clients—some franchisees don’t like it, even though it’s true. When we first started, I had problems with risk-averse franchisees telling me I couldn’t say certain things. However, the results in franchise sales outweighed those concerns. I’ve been at Jim’s for 15 years because I don’t have the restriction of getting 50 approvals. I have a lot of freedom.
Brand Guidelines and Franchisee Empowerment
Anton Buchner:
What about your brand? Do you have guidelines or limitations?
Joel Kleber:
We allow franchisees to use social media quite liberally. Many franchise brands restrict this or want to approve everything, but we are the opposite. We provide guidelines, such as being compliant with WH&S and ensuring work quality is high, but then they can do what they like.
Because of this, we have franchisees with massive followings. One guy has 240,000 followers in pool care; another mowing franchisee has 100,000. Our pool care franchisee alone has generated 1 billion organic views on TikTok. If we had required approvals for everything, we never would have had that. Some of what they create isn’t typical corporate material, but it generates massive reach for nothing, and that should be encouraged.
Our brand guidelines are per division. Franchisees also police each other. If a franchisee sees someone doing the wrong thing on social media, I’ll hear about it within five minutes. I then add that to a Notion page of “good and bad” examples. Every few weeks at training, I do a 90-minute social media and AI session where I show these examples. We also have a franchisee intranet with around 500 videos from franchisee interviews over the years.
We have extremely creative franchisees. One guy goes live on TikTok from his dog wash trailer for every groom and wash, and he gets three to four bookings a day from it. While there are challenges with franchisees creating content we wouldn’t personally put online, the positives far outweigh the negatives.
“Nuggets of Gold”
Anton Buchner:
That freedom encourages people to be themselves. Humanity in business is rare today, and that authenticity only comes from people being themselves. Seeing a franchise owner who clearly loves what they do shines through when they are solving problems for a customer. This leads to advocacy and recommendations.
Joel Kleber:
Absolutely. Prospects often message franchisees directly on social media to ask about the business because they trust the local franchisee more than corporate accounts.
Anton Buchner:
If you could leave people with one “nugget of gold,” what would it be?
Joel Kleber:
Be more transparent about what you do online. People want authenticity, which is often the opposite of the controlled, prim and proper image businesses put out. Transparency has been the biggest factor in our growth. Also, take more risks. I am a “non-marketer” and I’ve managed to grow the group by 2,100 franchisees. I don’t think someone from a traditional marketing background could have done what I did because I didn’t know any better and was allowed to try ideas and fail. One idea, like “Ask Jim,” can change an organisation.
Anton Buchner:
Those are three nuggets of gold wrapped in one. Take the risk. Don’t over-research everything; put something in the market and if it sells, it sells. In the digital world, people can get analysis paralysis.
Joel Kleber:
I’ve never gone through the process of business cases and budget allocations. You need the data from actually putting things out there to get feedback and adjust.
Anton Buchner:
Joel, thanks very much for coming in. One more question: what is the next category Jim’s is going to get into?
