Dad-of-four earns $50,000 a month after dropping out of high school: 'Pretty simple'
Dan Cahill was working as a manager at McDonald's and found his $50,000-a-year salary wasn't enough to support his family and give them the lifestyle they needed. The 31-year-old told Yahoo Finance he was struggling to keep up with his mortgage repayments and decided he needed to change careers.
'I went and bought a house that me and my wife really couldn't afford at the time and I needed a way to be able to cover the mortgage and still be able to give my kids a really good upbringing,' Cahill said.
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'The mortgage was about $1,000 a week that I was paying and my Macca's wage wasn't going to cover that, or it was, but we would be living pretty tight with two-minute noodles.'
Cahill said he initially considered becoming a tradie but couldn't afford the low wages that are paid to apprentices when they start out.
The Victorian man said he saw a Facebook ad for Jim's Mowing and was drawn to the seemingly simple business model.
'I'm definitely not the sharpest tool in the shed, I'll be honest, I dropped out of school in Year 11 and I was expelled from my previous high school before that,' he said.
'But I went, 'well a mowing business seems pretty simple, actually'. I assumed that the way you would make it successful is you mow a lot of lawns, you make a lot of money. Which is exactly what it is.'
Cahill ended up purchasing a Jim's Mowing franchise based in Frankston for $36,000 in 2017, with money partially borrowed from his family.
For the first 18 months, he said he was working seven days a week straight with only Christmas and Easter off.
'I just kept on going at it seven days a week, just trying to earn as much as I possibly could because my wife and I were in a pretty tight financial position,' he told Yahoo Finance.
Cahill said he initially did a mix of one-off jobs and regular clients like real estate agents, NDIS and insurance jobs.
Eventually, he created 'mowing rounds' which were made up of about 80 customers who get their lawns mowed on a fortnightly basis.
'I built up the first mowing round and had it at $700 per day and I'd be able to do that in eight hours. From a five-day week that mowing business should make $3,500 per week,' he said.
Cahill said he was able to hire his first employee six months in, his younger brother, who he got to do a mowing round.
From there, he said he was able to build up a new mowing round every six months or so and hire more staff.
'I would hire an employee and give them a mowing round and pay them $1,500 per week,' he said.
'I had six employees working for me, all doing full-time hours, all making me $3,500 a week each.
"Then, obviously, you would have weeks where I would go out and be on the tools as well and do jobs myself.'
Cahill said he was turning over up to $24,000 a week with the business and six staff, with under half of that being profit after fees, wages, petrol and other expenses were taken into account.
Jim's Group recently posted a video about Cahill's earnings as a Jim's Mowing franchisee and Aussies were blown away, with many simply not believing him.
Jim Penman, owner of Jim's Group, responded to the 'blowup' and clarified that Cahill had six employees working with him at the time. However, he claimed other Aussies could make higher than average wages with the job.
'Our franchisees, we've done surveys, we know that on average they make well over the average Australian income and this is for somebody who maybe is a high-school dropout,' Penman said.
'If you don't believe me, give us a try and find out. Spend some time with our guys and you will see how much money you can actually make doing the basic jobs around society.'
Cahill said becoming a franchisee wasn't easy when you first started out, but anyone willing to put in the hard yards and able to handle the physical work could do it.
'You got to go out there and you got to work a lot of hours and really put the hard yards in,' he said.
'You don't really need experience or skills when you come in. I think you really just need a can-do, positive attitude and a good work ethic.
'If you want to make a lot of money, you're going to need to mow a lot of lawns. So as long as you understand that, you're going to be alright.'
In 2021, Cahill decided to make the switch from being a Jim's Mowing franchisee to become a franchisor.
'A franchisor is someone that coaches the franchisees on how to run their businesses and then sells businesses in that area,' he explained.
'As a franchisor my role is to recruit and retain franchisees… Part of the work is trying to bring in enough work for all your franchisees to keep them happy and see the value in the Jim's Mowing franchise.'
Cahill said he had saved up about $500,000 from his mowing business and decided to make the leap so he could spend more time with his kids.
Cahill partnered with Penman to purchase the Brisbane region of Jim's Mowing as a franchisor. When it worked out well, they ended up buying more and more parts of Jim's Mowing together.
'Jim has never partnered up with anyone before but he did with me, very luckily. I'm now at a point where my profit is about $50,000 a month,' Cahill said.
'I still do need to pay income tax on that but I look at that and I go, 'Jesus, that's fantastic'. Obviously my profit from my mowing business wasn't anywhere near that high.
'I've bought quite a big chunk of Australia. I've bought nearly 80 to 85 per cent of Queensland, I've got Northern Territory that I own and about 30 per cent of New South Wales.'
Cahill shared that he and Penman had spent about $1 million each and looked after more than 200 franchisees.
'You've got some like me that want to bring on employees and some that don't," he said.
"So you find a way for them to earn at least $3,500 from a mowing round and that's from my own experience that I'm teaching them."
Cahill said he and Penman are now looking at starting up a Jim's Mowing in Florida, America.Sign in to access your portfolio
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