In 2002 after 24 years with Woolworths I decided that there must be more to life than stress, working indoors, seven day a week trading looming up, surrounded by customers, staff & mountains of paperwork & administrative BS. After six months of indecision & research into Jim’s Mowing I finally arrived at a stage where it became a case of just do it or it will be too late (at age 48), so I resigned.

I purchased a run down Jim’s Mowing franchise (30 regular clients) which was pretty tough going for the first six months or so until our client base built up & from then on we never looked back.?” We purchased a Walker mower, put on a part time employee & built up a successful and profitable business over the next four years by using the Jim’s systems, it works really well.

During the last year or so of mowing I built a couple of paling fences at home & for my clients and, got a lot of satisfaction out of it and made pretty good money on them too. I’ve always enjoyed home handyman stuff & building things and messing with tools, and it was nice to be able to walk away from a job and think to yourself “that looks pretty good, I’d be happy to have it at my place” & know that you wouldn’t have to come back in three weeks & mow it!!

About two years ago Gary Chick, at the time one of my fellow mowing franchisees became the Regional Franchisor for Fencing in Tasmania and a phone call on another matter resulted in my receiving an information pack on Jims Fencing. The Jim’s franchising system worked pretty well for us in mowing and I couldn’t see why it should be any different with fencing so here we go again with something completely different. A month of discussion with Gary & fast talking with my wife and the mowing franchise was on the market. We expected the sale to take a while but 3 weeks later it was sold, franchise, trailer, Walker mower all gone & I was for the first time ever out of a job and business.

In January 2007 I went to Melbourne for training with Rodney Gadsden for a week, signed the contracts, met Jim and handed over the cheque. We were now the proud owners of Jim’s Fencing Lindisfarne. On my return I got to indulge in my passion for power tools without “what did you buy that for?”from my wife, organize a trailer etc etc… I did my on the job training with Mark, Gary & Andy for seven weeks and was certainly time well spent learning how to build fences the properly & efficiently, quoting etc .

End of training came and I took my first step into fencing & we were away with 4 weeks of work booked from leads taken during training, referrals from old mowing clients and a couple of jobs from the previous owner of Jim’s Fencing Lindisfarne Geoff.

Eighteen months down the track and we have a flourishing business going , plenty of referrals coming in from previous jobs, a casual employee working for us, and things are looking pretty good. We are very confident in our future in the fencing industry & are in the process of buying a mini skid steer loader with auger & trailer to increase our productivity (I hate digging holes by hand) & it will be the biggest big boys toy in the toolbox

Maintaining the highest standard of workmanship, quality & service is the most important focus of our business & this generates much of the work we do, and allows us to charge a premium price for a top job. I believe attitude is the most important part of running your own business, you need to push yourself to do that little bit extra in particular generating future business & how you conduct yourself with your clients, ensuring you listen to what they want, NOT what you think they want.

Our Private business mottos

“You can have your fence built one of two ways: the cheap way or the proper way , we don’t build them the cheap way! “

“We never walk away from a job we wouldn’t be happy to have at our place”

Andrew Kendall - Gosford

As a State Transit Bus driver, the shift work was starting to take its toll on my family and my health. I was missing out on all my kids’ milestones and I was suffering from high blood pressure. As a result, my wife and I made the decision to go into business for ourselves. Having no idea what that involved we looked to Jims and began as Mowing zees about 5 years ago. We bought a split from another zee and spent the following 3 years building the business up to a point where we could afford to change over to fencing.

We chose Jim’s because of the support and when it came time to change over to Fencing, staying with Jim’s was the obvious (and only) choice. Knowing that there is always someone there to call for back up if needed gives us great peace of mind, while still leaving us the freedom to run the business our way

We have been fencing for just over 2 years now and while the jump into fencing felt like a huge leap into the unknown it has been the best decision we could have made. We are infiltrating an area with a lot of established fencers but over the years many of these have become complacent and this has given us some great opportunities to grow our business. Jim’s Fencing is relatively unknown on the Central Coast and as the only franchisee here we are working hard to change this.

Five years on, my blood pressure is back to normal and I attend all my kids’ special events. I love working outdoors and every job is different. I am learning something new all the time. I love the challenges and meeting so many different people – clients and Jim’s alike. I have made some great friends through Jim’s and look forward to the future success of my business.