Dan Cahill Made $3,600 in His First Week as a Jim’s Mowing Franchisee. Now He Runs the Division.

Dan Cahill started Jim’s Mowing with borrowed money, a $1,000-a-week mortgage, a pregnant wife, and a one-and-a-half-year-old daughter. He made $3,600 in his first week, built a team of six employees within three years, and has since become the Divisional Franchisor for Jim’s Mowing Australia, responsible for the largest mowing and garden care franchise network in the world. This is how he got there.

Where Dan Started Before Jim’s Mowing

Dan Cahill was an assistant manager at McDonald’s earning $52,000 a year before tax. That worked out to roughly $750 to $800 a week in his hand. He had worked his way up from crew person to managing one of the worst-performing McDonald’s restaurants in Australia. They turned the store around, hit their KPIs, and got great results. Then the company sold it to a franchise owner.

“I went, what am I doing?” Dan says. “Doing all this extra work and extra hours to make someone else rich. I could be doing this for myself.”

A Jim’s Mowing ad appeared on Facebook. Dan says it felt like a light bulb moment. The logic was simple in his head. Mow a lot of lawns, make a lot of money, and the system finds you the work.

He did not have the money to buy a franchise. His wife bought chocolates and roses. She went and asked her mother. The money was borrowed, and Dan was in.

What Made Dan Choose a Jim’s Mowing Franchise

Dan Cahill chose Jim’s Mowing because the business model removed the biggest barrier to earning. “I don’t need to go look for work,” Dan says. “They’re going to find me the work. They have people that are going to coach me and teach me how to run this business. I’ve just got to get out there and do the jobs.”

At training, what stuck with Dan was Jim Penman himself. “He told us the story about how he started with $24,” Dan says. “And I was just like, if he can do it, why can’t I?”

For Dan, the decision was not a difficult one. He was carrying credit card debt, a $1,000-a-week mortgage, car finance, and a second child on the way. A capped salary was never going to get his family ahead. He needed upside, and Jim’s Mowing gave him that directly tied to his own effort.

If you are considering a Jim’s Mowing franchise, Dan’s story is worth reading in full before you make a decision.

What Were Dan Cahill’s First Two Weeks Like as a Jim’s Mowing Franchisee?

Dan made $3,600 in his first week and $3,650 in his second week, roughly triple his previous weekly take-home pay.

He was up at 6:00 a.m. each day and had his brush cutter running by 7:00 a.m. He finished every job, looked for more from the next day’s schedule, pulled those forward, and kept going until he could no longer see the grass because it was dark. He completed two weeks of scheduled work in that first week alone.

When he told his franchisor he had run out of work, he was told to open up his service radius to 30 kilometres. He went to real estate agents. He told Jenny at EJ in Chelsea that he had borrowed money from his mother-in-law and his wife was pregnant. Jenny passed him work. He then pushed a pram through the streets dropping flyers and business cards into letterboxes every day of his second week.

“I was so used to getting a pretty minimal paycheck,” Dan says, “to then going into this and going, wow, I did this and I earned this.”

The comparison to his McDonald’s salary was stark. He had gone from $800 a week after tax to $3,600 in a single week of self-directed work.

How Much Do Jim’s Mowing Franchisees Earn?

A Jim’s Mowing franchisee running a ride-on mowing round can generate $1,000 to $1,200 per day. Dan Cahill says that is what he expected from each employee running a round for him, and it is what his own round produced.

The cost to run the business is manageable. Franchise fees sit at roughly $200 a week. Fuel costs around $40 a day in a metro area. Add brush cutter line, two-stroke oil, mower blades, general maintenance, and tip fees, and total weekly expenses land around $500 for most franchisees.

Lead fees are $15 to $20 per customer and are a one-time charge. Once a customer is yours, they are yours. You pay nothing extra when they book their next mow.

Dan uses a rough thirds model to explain the finances. One third goes to tax and business expenses. If you have an employee, one third covers their wages. The remaining third is profit. Without an employee, you keep two thirds.

By four months in, Dan was making around $5,000 a week. Within three and a half years, he had six full-time employees, each generating $3,500 a week for the business. His total revenue reached multiple six figures. His flat franchise fee the entire time stayed at less than $800 a month, regardless of how large the business grew.

Find out what a Jim’s Mowing franchise could look like in your area.

How Much Does a Jim’s Mowing Franchise Cost?

A Jim’s Mowing franchise typically costs between $30,000 and $50,000. Dan Cahill, now Divisional Franchisor for Jim’s Mowing Australia, says he cannot find a better return on investment in franchising at that price point.

In Dan’s regions, franchisees receive a paid work guarantee of $2,500 per week. That alone represents four times the return on a $30,000 investment within a single year, and it is the floor, not the ceiling. Dan says most franchisees earn well above the guaranteed amount.

The cost structure is also fixed. Jim’s Mowing charges a flat weekly fee, not a percentage of revenue. Franchisees are not required to do costly fit-outs, buy from a mandated supplier, or pay ongoing royalties that scale with their income. As the business grows, the fee stays the same.

“I was making really, really good money. I had six boys working for me and Jim’s was getting what, $800 a month in franchise fees,” Dan says. “And what was my revenue in the business? Multiple six figures.”

How Dan Built a Six-Employee Jim’s Mowing Business in Three Years

By four months in, Dan had 80 to 90 regular clients and was making $5,000 a week. He delivered price rises to every underpriced client he had inherited with the business. If a customer accepted the rise, they stayed. If not, Dan passed them to another contractor and immediately replaced them with a new regular client from his marketing.

By six months in, he had over 100 regular clients and all price adjustments were done.

The first employee came about by accident. His younger brother Alex helped out after his Macca’s shifts until Dan got sick of working alongside him every day. He gave Alex his own mowing round and expected it to generate $700 per day across an eight-hour shift. It worked. Dan then replicated the model, keeping every new regular client he built and converting them into the next employee’s round.

“I became almost like obsessed with finding new local area marketing strategies,” Dan says.

To keep quality high across six employees, Dan built a team culture around shared goals. He tracked five-star reviews out loud at the start of every week. At milestones, he took the crew go-karting, paintballing, or hired the top floor of a Melbourne skyscraper for the night.

“If you grab a whole bunch of positive people, they all want to go towards a common goal,” Dan says. “If you bring someone in negative, it just spreads like an infection.”

He went through 27 people to find his six permanent employees. When he eventually sold the business, he sold it to his team at a price Dan describes as an absolute steal for them.

What Support Do Jim’s Mowing Franchisees Get?

Dan Cahill says the support from his first franchisor, Jeff Clayton, was one of the most important factors in his growth. Jeff would do spot checks and push Dan constantly. Wrong shirt for a quote? Jeff would point it out. Not enough regular clients this week? Jeff would ask why, by name, on the phone.

“He would drive you to succeed,” Dan says. “Some standard just constantly contacting you. Where are you at? What price per minute are you at? And I was just like, geez, like I needed that.”

Beyond the franchisor relationship, Dan says the wider franchisee network was equally valuable. Neighbouring franchisees would swap work, send him once-off jobs, and receive regulars in return. They contacted each other on WhatsApp, met at each other’s properties, and shared equipment when a mower broke down.

“If one of us has a mower that breaks down, here you go, mate. Here’s a spare mower,” Dan says.

That kind of peer support is not common in independent contracting, where no shared structure exists to encourage it. In Jim’s Mowing, the franchisor actively recruits for it.

Is Jim’s Mowing a Good Franchise to Buy?

Dan Cahill, now Divisional Franchisor of Jim’s Mowing Australia, says Jim’s Mowing is the best return on investment in Australian franchising. He has run a single mowing round, built a six-person team, managed six interstate regions in a 50/50 partnership with Jim Penman, and now leads a network of approximately 2,200 franchisees.

“I cannot find a better return on investment than a Jim’s business,” Dan says. “Most of these Jim’s Mowing businesses are $30,000 to $50,000. You look at a $2,500-a-week work guarantee and that’s four times your investment back in the first year, and that’s just the guarantee.”

For people moving from corporate roles, Dan says the physical adjustment takes about two months. “Push through the two months and then you’ll be adjusting,” he says. “Everyone loses weight. You get stronger. You get a real knack for it.”

The franchisees who succeed, in Dan’s experience, share three traits. They are positive. They have a clear reason to build the business, usually providing for a family. And they ask a lot of questions.

One example Dan cites is Mick from Sunshine Coast South. Mick told Dan at the start that he was going to obliterate Dan’s own records. Within his first year, Mick had three employees and was making hundreds of thousands of dollars in that first year alone.

Dan’s goal as Divisional Franchisor is to double the Jim’s Mowing network from 2,200 to 4,400 franchisees within 10 years.

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