Sting, Madonna, Cher, Bono… and Jim.

As in, Jim’s Mowing, Australia’s mononymous gardening and services pioneer, with teams of tradies in green shirts mowing lawns, fixing roofs, plugging leaks and straightening antennas in suburbs across Australia for more than 30 years.

Since founding the eponymous gardening empire in the 1980s, Jim Penman now runs Jim’s Group, a $500 million franchise empire with more than 4000 franchises offering 54 different services to over 35,000 customers.

The coronavirus crisis has turned Australians into homebodies, which has led to a spike in demand for home services.

“It’s been a terrible crisis for the country and I really feel for people who have been hurt, but for Jim’s Group it’s been absolutely amazing,” Mr Penman explains to Brooke Corte.

“Our leads have gone up dramatically from the same time last year, up 20%, which is extraordinary, we’ve already had more work than we can handle in many areas.”

The booming demand for home services ranging from lawn mowing to carpet cleaning has seen a surge in the number of people seeking to start their own franchise.

“We’re signing up double the number of franchisees that we were at the same time last year because we’ve got so much work and people need jobs,” Mr Penman said.

Click play to hear the full interview: