About Joel Kleber

From Foster Care to CMO of Australia’s Largest Franchise, Jim’s Group

I was named #1 in the Franchise Executives Annual Top 30 Report in 2024 due to my innovative franchise marketing and recruitment approach.

I have been credited by Jim’s Group CEO, Jim Penman himself, in his latest book as being “the single biggest reason for the group’s growth over the last 5 years”

I also host three podcasts, two for Jim’s Group and Jim’s Mowing. 

I currently reside in Melbourne, Australia. 

No,w with that out of the way……….

How did a kid who grew up in foster care with a mother in and out of psychiatric hospitals go on to be the CMO for Australia’s largest franchise the Jim’s Group?

Well, it happened because of a couple of different reasons but I will keep it down to two.

Jim’s Group – 2012 – 2024

The first reason is Jim’s Group CEO, Jim Penman, believed in me and gave me a lot of opportunities over the years to prove myself with different initiatives.

I started in what he would call ‘the mailroom’ with our documents team doing basic ‘admin’ work, which, in fact, was paralegal work; however, that doesn’t make the story sound as good.

Since my 12 years with the business, he has allowed me to use initiative and rewarded me with numerous promotions to where I am today.

Currently I am the CMO for the Jim’s Group and responsible for managing the marketing efforts for more than 1,000 franchisees under our National office control.

Joel Kleber speaking at Jim’s Group training

The second reason is results and initiative. Especially since April 2019, when I really decided to take ownership of the brand and marketing to push us forward.

Before 2019, Jim’s Group had nothing by way of social media and video content especially. It wasn’t my area at the time as I was the documents/legal department manager, however, it really bugged me that all the great content I was hearing from Jim internally was only for us.

I decided that this was not good enough and removed the social media company running our account and took it over myself.

I dived head first and built the Jim’s Group brand from scratch online, and since April 2019, the business impact has been huge. Before April 2019, our franchisee numbers were always around the 3,600 number and this was for around 10 years.

Since I took over the marketing for Jim’s Group, we have grown to 5,200 franchisees in less than 4 years time.

The key to our success has been our video content and relentless social media strategy.

I know this because I ask everyone in our new franchisee training about what brings them to training ,and allof  them say it was watching the videos, listening to podcasts, seeing this pop up on my TikTok feed etc…….as being what got them interested, into the Jim’s Group and the thought of being a Jim’s franchisee.

This makes me extremely proud as before 2019, our brand, to be honest, was very obscure, and people only really knew about Jim’s Mowing and no person else.

There is a lot more detail I am leaving out, however, I share these stories in my newsletter.

However, there has also been a lot of hard work involved and some very tough times in order to get to the position I am in.

As you can imagine, every marketing company under the sun emails Jim daily saying we can do better with social media, digital marketing, video etc…..however, to his credit, he always say, ‘We are right for marketing, my team is great’

Moving forward into 2025, our plan is to really move the brand forward in NZ and hopefully have 500 franchisees thereby employing the same marketing efforts, which have already started seeing an upturn in our franchisee numbers.

We are also trying some TV show placements and some different creative ideas, which I am very excited to share online soon, which I think will go viral for the brand.

We are also looking at trying to get into the products market and start getting our own branded ‘Jim’s’ products out there and into various retailers.

There is so much to do with the brand, and my next goal is for us to get to 6,000 franchisees hopefully by the end of 2025.

I share franchise marketing advice in my newsletter here.

Surprisingly, I was number 1 in the annual Top 30 Franchise Executives report for my work with Jim’s Group.

Lived Experience Advocacy and Personal

Joel Kleber interviewing Lotti O’Dea

As this is my personal website, I want to share some personal items about me which I think are important.

In the open paragraph, I put ‘How did a kid who grew up in foster care with a mother in and out of psychiatric hospitals go on to be the CMO for Australia’s largest franchise, the Jim’s Group?

It’s a very strong line, but one that is true and something I want to expand upon.

My mother had Bipolar disorder 1, which she couldn’t manage very well, which meant she spent time in psychiatric hospitals, and due to this, we had to be placed in state care.

Whilst this is very tough on a young person, as I look back now, it gave me the ability to be very resilient, which has certainly helped me with my career.

It also led me to start sharing my story around this and interviewing other people about their ‘lived experiences’, particularly in this young carer area, which receives no real attention in the media.

I have a saying that ‘mental health is far more than just depression and anxiety’ as I know for a fact that in this new wave of mental health awareness, you hardly ever hear about young carers, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and other complex mental health conditions.

Due to this, I decided to create The Lived Experience.

The Lived Experience is my podcast, which aims to document stories about mental illness that go beyond just depression and anxiety.

Growing up, there was literally no content or people who supported my single-parent family around this topic.

The podcast allows me to share my story, interview others about this and hopefully help other people out there, knowing they are not alone, especially when supporting a family member with a serious mental health condition.

To me, these are the people who are on the front line when it comes to prevention in the community, but how often do you hear them mentioned in the mental health awareness movement?

Currently, I have been throwing myself into building digital assets from the ground up.

I am doing this for multiple reasons, but first and foremost, it’s to obtain hands-on skills in many valuable areas that I see many businesses needing help with, and that is things like SEO, Content Products, Digital Foundations, etc….

There is also so much opportunity online to build a great side income in your spare time, I share what I am doing on my blog and newsletter.

Connect with me

If you want to work with me or get in contact, please drop me an email to joelkleber (a) gmail.com