Chris Simmance (00:01.43)
Ladies and gentlemen, grab your headphones and get ready to be inspired because today’s guest is a true titan of business, John Barber. Hello, John.

John Barber (00:08.565)
Hi Chris, how are you?

Chris Simmance (00:10.828)
All right, from FinTech to food delivery and biotech to property investment, he’s done it all, most likely. Over a career spanning literally thousands of decades, he’s turned around companies, he’s raised capital, he’s sealed deals that have been transformative in quite a few different industries. Currently serving as business consultant, John has been at the forefront of numerous high impact products, including an innovative cash netting services company.

and a successful sale of Firezza to Pizza Express. You’ve got a stress, Firezza, sorry. It’s because Pizza Express own it now. I didn’t know what to call it.

John Barber (00:41.877)
Thanks for your answer.

John Barber (00:48.181)
Well, Fire and Pizza, think. Fire and Pizza is where the name came from.

Chris Simmance (00:54.286)
If you have to explain the brand, with a, with a knack for strategic vision and a proven track record of driving business growth, he brings a wealth of experience and insights. But what about the man behind the business? Hey, John, welcome to the podcast.

John Barber (00:56.541)
Exactly.

John Barber (01:10.623)
Very pleased to be here.

Chris Simmance (01:13.454)
You sound it!

John Barber (01:15.605)
I am. I haven’t done one of these things for about 20 years, so you have to forgive me if I’m a little rusty.

Chris Simmance (01:21.454)
This is fine. No, no, this is all part of the thing. So, you’ve done quite a lot in your career, quite a lot of it varied outside of your original beginnings in the finance sector. What are you up to these days? What’s in the John Barber portfolio of work?

John Barber (01:45.349)
Well, most of my focus is on property now. I guess it’s as you travel through time, you inevitably become more risk averse as you get older. And on the basis that if you get something wrong, you might have less time to recover.

Chris Simmance (01:49.954)
Mm -hmm.

Chris Simmance (02:04.718)
Yeah.

John Barber (02:05.715)
You don’t, you really don’t want to be worrying about paying the gas bill when you’re my sort of age. Having said that, I’m not at retirement age yet and I’m not retired, but certainly with property.

It sounds easy you buy property and then you get a rental income from them But it’s never quite that simple. You have to pick the right agent. That’s a bit the right properties You have to factor in all of the costs that inevitably you will be hit with from your insurance any void periods maintenance, etc, etc And then obviously upgrading the property as well It can be I mean I’ve

Chris Simmance (02:39.116)
Yeah. And, and it can be a bit difficult, can’t it? It can be a bit difficult with,

John Barber (02:48.65)
Soon.

Chris Simmance (02:50.584)
So I was going to say with let with letting agents helping sort of essentially source and manage the the the renters and the renters having to work with letting agents, there’s always a mismatch of expectations and communication sometimes that goes beyond the bounds of a contract, doesn’t it?

John Barber (03:09.621)
No, no, exactly. So when I moved from, I guess, pure business consultancy into property, my first objective was to find agents I could work with. So I must have mailed and called 50 or 60 different agents across the country. And I ended up working with the ones I got the best response from and were most businesslike.

Chris Simmance (03:25.187)
Mm.

Chris Simmance (03:30.605)
Yeah.

John Barber (03:36.797)
and I think that’s in good stead. So luckily I’ve had very few problems.

Chris Simmance (03:37.742)
And you’re now in your…

Exactly. And now you’re in this property space, you do some consulting as well. I see that you were a guest lecturer. Where was that? Oxford, was it? I can’t remember now. Off top of my head.

John Barber (03:56.849)
No, no, I’m what’s called a visiting coach at the Royal College of Arts, which has nothing to do with arts. It’s basically a design college which has been largely funded recently by Dyson. So it’s all about technical design. So I basically work with startups and try and mentor them about

Chris Simmance (04:03.946)
There you go.

John Barber (04:21.223)
important issues, not just the design, but obviously how you set up and run a business successfully. Most importantly, the top line, which is the hardest line to achieve. And so that keeps my hand.

Chris Simmance (04:27.842)
Yeah.

Chris Simmance (04:36.256)
And, and you did start a long while ago. And I’m not making an age joke, but a long while ago in the finance sector. And you rose up the ranks quite highly, relatively quickly considering, you know, how these sorts of careers tend to pan out for the most part. And let’s, let’s just talk about, you know, how, how did you get into, into the finance sector in the first place? What was it an accidental job that you hired, got hired for, and you just kind of

John Barber (04:53.108)
Yeah.

John Barber (05:05.458)
Well, pretty much actually. it was a bit of both. Before I got into the finance world or the fintech world, I was actually working for a company doing Elvis Presley memorabilia. So I was there about two, three years. And it’s just a free internet. And we used to create catalogs of Elvis Presley memorabilia and get them distributed by…

Chris Simmance (05:05.74)
rose through the ranks or was it intentional?

John Barber (05:32.765)
chains like Samir’s and John Menz’s at the time. People would come in, buy these catalogs and then order stuff from the catalogs and then we’d obviously have to expedite those orders, pack them up, etc. send them out. And at the same time, we were in the entertainment business so we brought in people who used to live with Elvis, they were called the Memphis Mafia.

They used to live in wastelands with him. This was after he died. I he died in 77, so this was sort of early 80s. And we used to put on shows around the country and literally thousands of people would turn up to places like Trenton Gardens in Stoke, listen to one of his cohorts talking for an hour or so with anecdotes about Elvis. So I then met a girl was about to get…

Chris Simmance (06:20.378)
wow. you’ve got the catalog and the shows. So it’s one for the money, two for the show, I guess, if they were to call you up.

John Barber (06:34.163)
See where you’re going with that. And I’m not wearing blue suede shoes either.

Chris Simmance (06:42.168)
Well, that’s good, because no one can see your feet, So how did that lead you into there?

John Barber (06:44.517)
Exactly, so maybe I am. You don’t know. So anyway, so…

So whilst I was there, prior to there, I’d done a diploma in accountancy at City London Poly, or City London Union as it was then. So I thought of myself as a bookkeeper. Actually, I was a terrible bookkeeper and I had literally no idea what I was doing. Really, I mean, it’s embarrassing. Nevertheless, I had a girlfriend, we were planning to get married, and I felt that working in the office of President Membrabilia is this.

Chris Simmance (07:06.744)
Hahaha

John Barber (07:20.809)
in my early 20s was and probably a great job to have. So I literally walked out one day, again, back in those days that you had recruitment consultants that actually had offices that you could walk into or shop fronts, into, sit down with someone, have a chat, and they find you a job. So I walked into the recruitment company called the county personnel, sat down, had a chat with them, and two or three weeks later I had a job.

Chris Simmance (07:36.546)
Mm.

John Barber (07:49.725)
as a junior accounts clerk. Very luckily, I think, I just had to get on with the guy interviewing me. We were having a chat about VM11 and all things. And I got the job. I got the job.

Chris Simmance (08:03.192)
But I mean, it’s, it’s one of those things though, isn’t it? Like you might, you can pick up skills as you go, but having that personability does often open doors that might not have done if you’d have gone in, you know, with a CV and no handshake.

John Barber (08:19.261)
No, exactly. Well, I guess, you know, without trying to rewrite history, I guess the fact that I had decided that I didn’t want the Elvis job and I proactively went out to seek something else is why it ended in my favour, I guess. So in other words, you have to try and effect some sort of change yourself. Otherwise, nothing will work.

Chris Simmance (08:35.212)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.

Chris Simmance (08:42.326)
Yeah. And you weren’t a junior accounts clerk for a very long time though, were you?

John Barber (08:44.895)
But I literally, when I joined that company…

John Barber (08:49.961)
Well, no, I was incredibly lucky. I have absolutely no idea what this company was. It was operating out of one room off Cameron Street and it was called International Financial Services Limited, Interfinet Limited. I had no idea what it was. In fact, what it was, was the finance arm of a partnership between a company called Telerate, Associated Press and Dow Jones. I guess everyone said the Associated

Associated Press, worldwide news agency. Everyone’s heard of Dow Jones as it was then, the owner of the Wall Street Journal, et cetera, et cetera. And Battelerate, probably people haven’t heard of, is a company founded by guy called Neil Hirsch, he’s sadly died recently, which created the world’s first electronic network. So, you know, client server architecture. And what he did, I haven’t invented this.

Chris Simmance (09:28.183)
Hmm.

John Barber (09:45.301)
had various insurances of it that sort of failed and then he got it to work and he had to find data to put across his network. So he went out to a company called Cancer Fitzgerald, which again people might have heard of from 9 -11, because they occupied the 100 and 400 fifth floors of the World Trade Center. And he sat down with Bernie Cancer and struck a deal and cancers at the time were

Chris Simmance (10:01.548)
Mm -hmm. Yep.

John Barber (10:14.941)
responsible for the US government’s treasury auction. So that is the way the US government raises money through their bond auctions. And at the time it was like an open -out prime market where people literally stand in a room somewhere and they’d be shouting out numbers. And this whole system became screen -based, which meant that every trade, every professional trader in the world had to buy a telluride screen because the bond, the US bond treasury rates

at the time were the most valuable pieces of information that there were. This is all completely unbeknown to me. I was just making tea in the teapot for the three guys around me in the accounts, seriously. Honestly, have absolutely no idea. And the brilliant thing about Telluride was not just that he was a genius, he’s a sort of ego must -time character of his day.

Chris Simmance (10:53.518)
You were making T -Boy for one of the most instrumental organizations in the financial planet at the time.

John Barber (11:12.095)
But the deal to go from a US -based company to a global company was why they formed the partnership with Associated Press, because Associated Press has an office in nearly every country in the world. So to go from a US -based company to a global company, you literally only had to put one or two people into a country, and you’re already up and running in that country, which is a brilliant deal. And then the reason Dow Jones were there is because they wanted

Chris Simmance (11:25.858)
Mm.

John Barber (11:40.953)
exclusive electronic news service which Airtones provided. So you have exclusivity of the news, you have a global network and then you have the exclusive data coming from Countess of Fitzgerald which you know all equaled a phenomenally successful company in the 1980s and 1990s. But as I said I joined as a junior accounts clerk.

Chris Simmance (12:02.2)
So.

John Barber (12:05.811)
knowing nothing else.

Chris Simmance (12:06.158)
And beyond making the tea and doing some bad books, how did that turn into the career it did then, John?

John Barber (12:14.453)
Well, I had some really good people around me in this little accounts department. And an important thing was this little accounts department was doing the accounts for the whole world of tellerate offices except the states. So we were doing all the P &L balance sheets, all the consolidation for something like 60 or 70 offices all out of that one little department. So I guess there was a eureka moment. So one day,

We moved out of the one room when we moved into the Associates Press building in just off Hoban. And I’m trying to get, I don’t know if you’re familiar with accounts, but back then you had something called a trial balance. So you had, when you finished all your accounts, you had all of your profit and loss accounts, all of your balance sheet accounts, and the idea is on a long piece of paper or a spreadsheet, I think it was Lotus Notes back then, before you had the sort of spreadsheets you have today.

Chris Simmance (12:59.757)
Okay.

Chris Simmance (13:12.824)
Yeah, it was.

John Barber (13:14.453)
Yeah, I mean it’s exactly the same as a suspension today but Anyway, so those use you you read come on when I got it’s a balance and it sounds simple But there’s hundreds of hundreds of different accounts and you have to know what is a P &L account? What’s a balance sheet? Big balance sheet account entry bookkeeping and you have to get it to balance and from that moment

Chris Simmance (13:17.44)
I remember hearing of them, but never using them.

John Barber (13:41.641)
that I got it to patterns for the very first time in my life, I felt like a bookkeeper. And from that, I got a tremendous amount of confidence. And from that, I sort of became famous in the accounts department because we were the people that knew what the numbers were before anybody else, so the official numbers that we had to report back up to senior management. So when we did the books, when we did the accounts, when we did Lotus, we had all of the accounts done on Lotus Notes.

Chris Simmance (14:03.1)
yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Barber (14:10.985)
I remember it took five or six hours to run a consolidation of maybe a hundred different spreadsheets. we’re all sitting there, the IBM computers are sitting there churning all the numbers, then the numbers will come out and then people will come to me because they want to know what the number was. So I became sort of well known in sales management and the business management side of things as John Barber, the person who the number first, if that makes sense.

Chris Simmance (14:25.154)
wearing away.

John Barber (14:40.724)
Chris Simmance (14:42.522)
It does. And that’s how you got famous from the from making tea to being the numbers guy.

John Barber (14:44.649)
That’s where I got famous. Yeah, so I did, I sort of went from, I went from junior accounts club to UK financial controller. I couldn’t go any higher. I couldn’t become finance director because I wasn’t a qualified chartered accountant. So that was as far as I could go in finance and admin basically. So that was probably six or seven years after I’d been there. And then I decided to take another risk.

and going to sales when I was about 30. I never sold anything before. So I looked at the company, obviously it’s sales and marketing company, not an accounting and accounting company, and decided that I’d take the risk and go into new business sales in London.

Chris Simmance (15:32.224)
It all sounds very entrepreneurial, John, in the sense of identifying some opportunities, but taking those risks that you needed to do. Exactly. In other conversations we’ve had in the past, I know where that led you to, for the benefit of the audience listening, it is quite an incredible direction that that one kind of

John Barber (15:40.489)
Well I think you have to take this risk.

Chris Simmance (16:00.159)
big risk slash opportunity took you in. What happened next, John? What were you selling? What were you selling? Elvis memorabilia again?

John Barber (16:04.116)
Yeah.

John Barber (16:08.629)
No, no. I said Accelerate Screens which is a basic screen ad, don’t know, 2, 3, 4 ,000 pages of financial information that cover every single financial market from commodities, from exchange capital markets, futures and options, etc., etc. And what I have is a really good training. That’s a brilliant training from internally in the company which explained how you have to prepare for each sales meeting.

Chris Simmance (16:10.736)
Ha

John Barber (16:38.805)
before you attend it because you can’t possibly know that every single market, you can’t know about the 3000 pages of financial information, what each instrument means. So you have to qualify before each meeting to understand exactly what a particular trader does as a job, what they’re looking for, what they currently use, what they’d like to see in the heart, et cetera. So you can tailor every demonstration. You basically have to sit down with the trader.

Chris Simmance (16:49.174)
Mm. Yeah.

John Barber (17:08.021)
and demonstrate the product to them or they come into the office and you do it in demo rooms. So that was a really important part of the learning curve of moving from accounts into sales. And then I had some amazing external training. I went on a three or four day training course, sales training course, which stood me in amazing stead for the rest of my career, to be quite frank. The basic sales skills of

Chris Simmance (17:18.797)
Mm.

John Barber (17:35.167)
how you structure meeting, basic sales and negotiation skills, listening, all of those obvious and common things were equally applicable today. So I learned that. And then you need a bit of luck. I was the top new business salesman for the first of the year. Then I went into account management, then I went to major account management, and then went to various sales management jobs. Then I became the UK sales director. And we’re talking about this.

1990 -ish, something like that, 91, 92, and the UK business is doing about $200 million a year at that time, so quite a big business. And then I went into general management, so from the UK sales management, the fact that I have this finance background or accounting background, I have the accounts and I have the sales side, which made me a perfect candidate to be the overall business manager. And running the UK business,

Then I was running HR, was running support operations, well as sales and support and all of the client services, etc. And then from there, it was like the Red Sea opening up, from there I went on to become Managing Director for the whole of Europe. from in 14 years, I went from T -boy to Managing Director for Europe. And that was in 1995, 96. And that was back then a 500 million dollar a year, probably a couple of billion today, I would guess.

Chris Simmance (18:48.91)
It’s

Chris Simmance (19:01.325)
that it’s an incredible, I say leap, but it is the mixture of identifying the opportunity, taking the risk, having the luck, as you put it. But there’s certain things that are skills which you learn, like the sales things, but there’s innate aspects to that. You learn the basics of sales, but sales people and sales itself is actually

not as simple as just a few sets of skit, a few tick boxes that you have to have to perform. You have to really know.

John Barber (19:32.615)
I think sales is incredibly difficult. If you’re selling complex products, have to understand the sales process. You have to understand who’s got the authority to buy things. All of that stuff, you have to be able to factor correctly when you’re forecasting. So understand the qualified lead and non -qualified lead. Whether your company could actually provide a solution, whether you found a solution.

I guess what we learn and it goes back to the training, in this particular business, you can’t sell things to people that don’t have a need. So they either have a need that you fulfill or you have to create a need that you fulfill. Otherwise you’re never going to sell anything. And the other key thing I was talking about… Sorry, go.

Chris Simmance (20:16.034)
Yeah, that’s it. Well, quite a lot of sales.

No, please.

John Barber (20:24.361)
The other thing I thought, which I believe to be true, is this way back in my first sales training course, the biggest reason that people don’t sell something is because they don’t ask for the order.

John Barber (20:38.133)
if that makes sense.

Chris Simmance (20:39.586)
So hang on, you go through the whole sales process and everything’s great. And then you walk away handshakes and everything, but because you didn’t say, are you ready to buy? What’s the order? Yeah. Yeah. It’s, it’s an interesting thing.

John Barber (20:48.957)
Are you going to buy? Correct. So you think it’s not just about… It’s true though, I think. So whenever I go for a job interview or my kids go for a job interview, I always say at the end of the interview, I know this sounds a bit contrived, but I’ve been trying to ask, have I got the job? Yeah. And I my kids to do the same thing because if you don’t ask for it, how can you sell stuff?

Chris Simmance (21:10.904)
Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Simmance (21:16.268)
Yeah, yeah, quite right. And, the thing, the thing with them with, with selling these days is that there’s an awful lot of, and I hate this term disruptive technologies and disruptive businesses out there that having to invent a need for a product that they’ve created, which kind of makes it, if it’s a product similar to, know, from a business point of view, it’s actually a little bit harder to, to try and sell that because people don’t even know that they even remotely had that issue or that need in the first place. Whereas

John Barber (21:44.777)
See next time.

Chris Simmance (21:45.718)
If you’re going into an organization that’s, in finance needs up to date information, needs up to date data, there is a product in front of them that solves the problem that they need. And then you walk away without asking if they want to fill in the order form. Then you’re literally just leaving money on the table. It’s crazy to think that people don’t do that kind of stuff.

John Barber (22:05.845)
Well, I think there’s a difference between what I would call client support or client liaison and sales. So it’s not just about demonstrating what it is you’re selling. So you can show all the features and the features of what your service or product does, but you’ve then got to show what the benefits are. And then the benefits are closely linked to this fulfilling this need.

Chris Simmance (22:22.424)
Yeah.

John Barber (22:32.083)
But you’re absolutely right. I always thought there’s two types of businesses. There’s a business where what they’re selling is completely new. So therefore you do have to create that need or find that need and then show someone you can fulfill it. Or you’re bringing out a product or service that competes with something that’s already out there and what you’re selling is far the best of Gita.

Yeah, so they’ve already, as you just said, they’ve already bought stuff and you’re going and say, look, you’ve bought this, but you could now buy this. It does exactly what yours does, but it does it faster and better and cheaper, which is probably somewhat easier unless you’re, I don’t know, unless you’re selling a kill for cancer or something, which you wouldn’t have to really create an e -fidget in that sense.

Chris Simmance (23:03.224)
Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Simmance (23:29.142)
No, well, sadly, wouldn’t need to. absolutely. The one thing that I haven’t ever asked you actually is what is it that did the driving for you that got you from, you know, like you say, starting off with the catalog sales, but more into the accountancy piece all the way through to MD at an enormous business. What was the main driving force that kind of pushed you along that way?

John Barber (23:32.253)
Yeah.

Chris Simmance (23:56.908)
It’s an awful lot of people who who get to a certain point and go, that’s it. I’m happy with that. I’m good with that. What what was it that pushed you forward?

John Barber (24:04.181)
I would say ambition, but not in a sort of naked, vicious, calculated way. I just wanted this because I grew up, I didn’t have anything particularly, I didn’t have any money. I remember always like walking around with literally no money in my pocket. I didn’t have a car till I was in my mid -20s, nobody gave me anything.

Chris Simmance (24:09.368)
Mm.

Chris Simmance (24:15.288)
Hmm.

John Barber (24:29.991)
I’d seen from various family members, not my direct family members, but other family members who had been successful in areas like the entertainment industry who had nice things. So they had nice cars where you would sit in them, you could smell the leather. had, when you walked into their house, they had amazing carpets and things like that. So I had, from an early age, an understanding of, I guess, you could do with money.

Chris Simmance (24:43.074)
Yeah. Yeah.

John Barber (24:59.431)
and it was quite nice. But my sole purpose was never just money actually, it was about building the confidence in myself to see what I could do. So to answer your question, yes it’s ambition and…

And I guess an insecurity, fear of failure, which is, I think, important. You have to have something there that makes you keep wanting to do things.

Chris Simmance (25:19.81)
Yeah.

Chris Simmance (25:25.868)
Yeah, I think we’re, we’re similar in that same sense in terms of the fear of failure aspect, but also I’ve always been a little bit like what’s over the next hill when you get to somewhere. I’m never, never kind of ready to sort of rest on, on, on laurels or on a, you’re only as good as your next success kind of thing. And, and, and there’s, there’s the older, the older you get.

John Barber (25:47.111)
That’s correct, yeah.

Chris Simmance (25:51.022)
the more wisdom you’ve got around the things you’ve done. So you can be a bit more calculated in the risks you take, but you can also be a little bit more likely to succeed because you’ve built a bit of a trust fund of luck and opportunity around you. What do you think in the last few years, where are you seeing the sector that you grew your skills in?

John Barber (26:08.787)
That’s true.

Chris Simmance (26:20.258)
What’s happening in there now, now that you’re not feet on the ground in the office, so to speak, has it changed significantly?

John Barber (26:24.571)
it’s become, it’s become Consolidate. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there’s, there’s two main, two main players there now. One is Bloomberg, which is probably Michael Bloomberg went for the presidency last time, which is a, you know, he’s built in an unbelievable company in terms of the power of what his terminals do, the analytics, the data, the news, create his own news service. You know, so he’s, they are the dominant player in that market and they weren’t really there as a

dominant player when I was in the business. And the other one is a Canadian company called Thompson Financial, which bought Reuters. You probably heard of Reuters news agency. So Reuters was a bit like Dow Jones. It had the news agency, but it also had a massive terminal business as well. And so I think Reuters news agency is still a news agency, but their whole electronic terminal business is now owned by Thompson Financial.

Chris Simmance (27:04.694)
Yep. Yep.

Chris Simmance (27:18.07)
It is, yeah. I’ve only ever known it as a news agency.

John Barber (27:23.599)
Right, so they were the original players into the market. Yeah, no, they massive, massive, massive players.

Chris Simmance (27:24.354)
I’ve only ever known it as a news agency.

All right. Okay. And so if you say Bloomberg wasn’t there necessarily when you were in the game, did they just get there now because they’re faster, better, cheaper? Or what happened? Was there a change in technology, do think, that kind of allowed them

John Barber (27:35.518)
Nah.

John Barber (27:42.665)
Michael, if you ever want to see the store, well Michael Bloomberg is, I’ve met Michael a couple of times actually. He’s one of these billionaires, I’ve met a few billionaires in my time. Steve Bauman at Microsoft, met Michael Spencer who I went into work with after I was at Telray and a guy called Lance O ‘Glo who’s also a billionaire from the financial markets and

Chris Simmance (27:59.701)
yeah.

John Barber (28:08.713)
They all have this, I call them special people because they have this incredible drive never to stop, never to stop. So Michael Bloomberg was a bond trader at bank called Merrill Lynch, American Bank, which is now part of the Banwell Bank of America, Merrill Lynch. He was worth hundreds of millions of pounds already. He borrowed three or four hundred million pounds from his employer to set up this

Chris Simmance (28:23.96)
Thank

Chris Simmance (28:27.587)
Mm

John Barber (28:38.805)
terminal business of which Merrill’s themselves own 30%. And he started with what’s called the buy side, which is all the non banks, all of the big corporates, giving them, we’re selling them a window into how the banks operate. Then he started putting this new service. Anyway, to cut a long story short, he built just an incredible terminal. Then he bought Merrill Lynch out. And I believe today, I think he owns 98 % of it. I think it’s still a private company.

and it’s worth hundreds of billions of dollars. Hundreds of billions of dollars. But the point is, he’s driving determination. when he, being the world’s best modern trader, when he created the world’s best technology platform for the financial markets, and he’s in his 70s, he still then had to go, he was, I think was governor, mayor of New York, wasn’t he? He became mayor of New York before or after Giuliani.

Chris Simmance (29:08.942)
Wow, this is crikey.

Chris Simmance (29:34.262)
He was at one point, I think,

John Barber (29:37.863)
And then he ran for president in his early 80s. I mean, these people, they just do not stop. So, you you talk about my driving determination or your own, I mean, we are, you know, a blot on the landscape compared to these people. But I think they a price. We are, yeah, ability to try to sort of the carpet. But no, it’s that they pay a price. They do pay a price in terms of their personal lives and family because nothing is more important to them.

Chris Simmance (29:52.696)
We’re a speck of dust in the distance, yeah.

Chris Simmance (30:00.514)
You

John Barber (30:08.085)
and the focus on themselves and their success. You cannot do what these people have done without working 24 hours a day of every day of your life, to be quite frank. And I don’t mean working as in, know, building bricks. They’re just always in the zone.

Chris Simmance (30:27.564)
Yeah, it’s hard to be able to turn that off once you’ve turned it on.

John Barber (30:28.457)
which makes it difficult for family members. they can’t turn it off. I used to say to people, the behavior that gets you to a certain place, if you just said you can’t turn it off, those behaviors carry on, whether it’s ambition or working hard, et cetera, et

Chris Simmance (30:44.622)
So.

So let’s talk terminals through to pizza. How did we get there, John?

John Barber (30:53.555)
Good line up one, isn’t it? So I thought I’d stay at Dow Jones, AP Dow Jones, teller rate forever. And I loved it. Unfortunately, however powerful or successful you are in a company, there’s always other phases of business. So I sort of developed this mantra, there’s three phases of business. Phase one is you’re basically outward looking at customers.

Chris Simmance (30:56.301)
there.

John Barber (31:23.263)
Phase two is you’re in the middle management just looking for position in those management lines. And then phase three is you’re outward looking, but you’re outward looking to shareholders and owners. so Dow Jones was owned by the Bancroft family back then. I think Ruben Murdoch owns it now. I think they sold to him. So the Bancroft family decided they didn’t want the electronic part of business anymore. So they sold it.

in 1997 and at the time they sold it the business completely imploded because all of the exclusive content that we had because of the way the contracts were negotiated all fell away on the day that this was sold so I we bought it might have lost a billion quid at least it’s too good but so just before it was sold I left

Chris Simmance (32:12.77)
Alright.

Chris Simmance (32:19.192)
Wowzers. Crikey.

John Barber (32:22.237)
It’s like to see what was happening. So I went to work for, well, now I’ve definitely got whipped because you can see the bias, the sort of bias that were lining up and it was ridiculous. So, know, as I mentioned earlier, your key data, your key content is American treasury bills. And if the company is sold, you’re going to lose that content. It’s going to become non -exclusive basically. You’re not going to it. It’s going to become non -exclusive. So other people can sell it like Bloomberg or Reuters or whatever. Then where’s your unique selling points got?

Chris Simmance (32:25.272)
Yeah, you got a whiff.

Chris Simmance (32:51.404)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

John Barber (32:51.849)
I mean, you can have a serious problem. I could see all that coming. So I went to work for a guy called Michael Spencer, who created the world’s largest inter dealer broker. So it’s basically this, it’s like an estate agency providing prices for instruments that are not on exchanges. So if you want, if you want to find out the price of Microsoft or IBM, you just tap in.

into your laptop or phone and you will get the share price, which is the same share price anyone in the world is looking at can see what that share price is, whether you’re big or small. These instruments are called OTC instruments, so over the counter, so the things like interest rate swaps, interest rate options, currency swaps, currency options, et cetera. So he created a business of these types of instrument which weren’t on exchanges and he became the biggest provider there in the world.

Chris Simmance (33:37.307)
yeah.

John Barber (33:47.959)
another billionaire genius who crazed something for nothing. So, it’s worth a him.

Chris Simmance (33:51.534)
Yeah, another opportunity identified another big jump taken there. It’s interesting that like, yeah, and like as an entrepreneur yourself, you know, the next opportunity could just be around the corner from for you or for them. And sometimes it’s just the capital to set that up. You know, I have 100 million really cool ideas a minute.

John Barber (33:59.945)
But very clever people though.

John Barber (34:17.684)
Correct. Yeah.

Chris Simmance (34:19.534)
99 .999 recurring percent of them are after terribly terrible, the worst ideas on the planet. And some of them are really good, but you’ve got you, you don’t happen to be in the same room with the right people at the right time or the right cash to be able to start those things off. you know, if you’re Michael Spencer, for example, you’ve got a really cool idea. You’ve also got the financial opportunity in terms of capital and the opportunity in terms of the market connection to just go, here we go, let’s get on with it.

John Barber (34:25.118)
Yeah.

John Barber (34:42.847)
going to do it to execute something.

Correct. Correct.

Chris Simmance (34:48.522)
And that ability to do that means that someone else who has that clever idea a week, two weeks, three months later is already too late.

John Barber (34:57.85)
Or they have to go to him with their idea and ask him to finance it, at which point he will take a nice chunk of it.

Chris Simmance (35:01.131)
Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Simmance (35:06.828)
Yeah, he can’t lose. So you were there for…

John Barber (35:09.645)
We can lose I think he’s he’s he’s sold out. I was there in two tranches were the first time I went there I ran a company called Dart which is a data analysis companies and similar to what I was doing before very very small tiny in fact a couple of million turnover loss making and he asked me to go in and run it and I said okay I’ll go and run it

And basically on the first day I’m sitting in his office I said, Michael, hi. Come to run one of your group companies. What are the objectives? Blah, blah, blah. And he said, I will swear at this voice, is what he said. He said, fuck off down to the basement where the company is and don’t bother me until you do something. That was it. That was it. That was it. He said something like, the company’s worth a quid and I don’t mean a million quid.

If they sit across the basement, that’s what it’s like. So.

So the funny thing was that I actually 18 months later sold that company, I think it’s one of the only assets he’s ever sold, for 32 million quid, something like that.

Chris Simmance (36:24.449)
wow.

John Barber (36:30.781)
And it was worth nothing when I joined it.

Chris Simmance (36:31.064)
So when you went back into the office and you said, I’ve done something.

John Barber (36:35.253)
Yeah, he didn’t want to sell it. Well, actually, when I went back into his office, he basically said, I want to meet these people that you sold this company to. Bear in mind, he owns 60 % of it, so it’s like 20 million quid to him. It’s a lot of money. and I said, okay, I’ll set up the meeting. So we set up a meeting in the boardroom and he met this guy and he said, I hear John’s done this deal. And he said, well, John’s not doing this deal anymore.

Chris Simmance (36:51.566)
Yeah. Yeah, it’s a lot of money.

John Barber (37:04.981)
I’m doing this deal. So I negotiated this deal and his ego was such that well if John Barber can get 32 million, I can get 40 million. So he basically, he basically shot me in front of the buyer that I’d found and negotiated with. Anyway, cut a story short, six months later, the guy I’d organized a sale to, rang me up and said, I can’t deal with these people. They’re complete animals. They’re brokers. They’re just, the deal’s off.

Chris Simmance (37:09.634)
Yeah.

Chris Simmance (37:16.253)
wow.

John Barber (37:34.229)
There’s no way I can do any business with him. So I said, look, let’s, I said, we should meet and have a chat. So I met him at in the Savoy, we had breakfast in the Savoy in the River restaurant. And I said, look, if I can get a deal and get Michael to agree it, you know, can we get this show back on the road? So he said, fine. So I negotiated the deal. I think the original deal was 32 million in cash. And then I negotiated, so I think it’s 44 million as an all -share deal.

Chris Simmance (37:37.686)
wow.

John Barber (38:03.797)
Yeah. So I went back to Michael and I said, I’ve done a deal with 44 million, all shares and all of the company wants to do the deal. And I had in my hand, I think about 30 resignations letters that all of my team had given to me to use at my discretion. Right. So I walked into his office with all of those in my hand and he pulled one out and he went,

Chris Simmance (38:28.019)
Jesus, that’s a power move, John.

John Barber (38:31.445)
Okay, we’ll do the deal. So we did the deal. So we basically sold it for 44 million. This is in the middle of the… There’s a horrible lesson here by the way. We sold it for 44 million pounds. This is in the height of the tech stock boom. Okay. So the deal was that we couldn’t sell any of our shares for two years. So was a two year lock -in.

Chris Simmance (38:36.238)
Wow. Power waves.

Chris Simmance (38:43.949)
Go on.

John Barber (39:00.053)
You know the sale and purchase agreements. had about 300 page sale and purchase agreement all done with like our lawyer was a McFarlans. He was the partner of McFarlans. I won’t say his name because he might sue me. And he was Michael’s lawyer as well. So we had this huge sale and purchase agreement. And when we did the deal, I think the share price was, I don’t know, something by four pound, 50. And two years later, it was 11p.

Chris Simmance (39:01.378)
Yep. Yep.

John Barber (39:29.269)
So basically worthless. The 44 million they become worth a million. However, a year into the deal of which there is a two year lock in, unbeknownst to us, well, be known to somebody, it said that all shareholders…

Well, any shareholder that the board would like to basically get rid of by buying them out for whatever reason, they could do so. So in other words, there wasn’t a clause that said all shareholders, i .e. the seller’s shareholders, must be treated equally for the two years. So the bottom line was they decided they didn’t want Michael Spencer being a shareholder in their business. So they bought him out.

Chris Simmance (39:49.645)
Yeah.

John Barber (40:14.869)
at something like £3 .50 a share, so he made 25 million quid. And there was nothing we could do about it. We had to wait until the end of the two years.

Chris Simmance (40:21.133)
Yeah.

Chris Simmance (40:25.624)
Wow. I mean, that’s, it’s horrible. It’s a horrible lesson.

John Barber (40:26.884)
There’s a lesson there.

John Barber (40:32.297)
Well, so basically, I think I lost about four million quid, something like that.

Chris Simmance (40:33.998)
So…

Chris Simmance (40:38.808)
Wait, wait, how the hell did that get you into the pizza business? That’s what I wanna know, I wanna know about the pizzas.

John Barber (40:40.191)
But the moral is, you’ve never got it until it’s in your hand.

Yeah. So then I back after that, I joined this company that we sold to, the Left Ex is a bunch of idiots. Then I went back to work for Michael again for another two, three years, running his market data business. But in the end, I had to leave. Then I decided that I did a couple more jobs in this industry. And then I decided that I want to become a sort of investor. I buy my own jobs. So I’d go in, look for companies that are in stress.

Chris Simmance (40:56.739)
Yeah.

Chris Simmance (41:13.668)
Yeah.

John Barber (41:16.362)
Put my money in and basically run So after the finance world I went into of all things the triathlon world So I bought a company called try and run which is basically selling Racing bikes and sports equipment etc. etc. So I did that for a couple years put money in turn the company around so I’ll do it Got out of that then I’ve got into biotech

So these contacts, I found these companies either through my accountant or through people I knew in the city who were close to companies that either needed investment or, yeah, exactly. So business angels basically, or people with the opportunities. So that got me involved in a biotech company that was in the drug discovery business, working with large pharma and had a sale dispensing

Chris Simmance (41:54.894)
Another identification of opportunities there. This is a theme.

John Barber (42:14.044)
So we sold that. Then I went back into the city with a fintech company that had been losing money for about 10 years. And I sold that for 15 million quid to a company called Market. Quite technical, I won’t be bullying you, but basically post -trade processing. So once you do a trade in Soviet FX market, there’s a whole slew of post -trade stuff that has to happen where…

that the orders get confirmed and the money actually changes hands between banks. So we had an electronic platform that did that. So I turned that around. I think that was about 80 grand a month when I joined there. then within a couple of years we sold that for, I think it was 15 million, something like that. So that was a good deal. And then for now, when it’s pizzas, which is really what you want to talk about, isn’t it?

Chris Simmance (43:02.702)
There we go, this is it everyone, this is the bit you’ve been waiting for.

John Barber (43:09.823)
So this is a brilliant meeting. I went to see my cat. This came from my account and John Layden who’s And this is their client. He said, I’ve got this, I’ve got this client. He said they’ve got, they were a couple of Bosnian refugees, came into the UK. One was an architect, one had an engineering degree. They came here to escape the war. really hardworking, clever people. They created this business called Firetza, or Furetza, five, six years ago.

They’ve got an institutional shareholder which basically is closing their fund which shows about 40 % of the business. So what we want to do is replace them as the shareholder. So buy the shares off the institution and keep the business afloat. So I went to meet them and basically said, taste this pizza. I tasted the pizza and I just went home in because it was the best pizza I’ve ever had.

Chris Simmance (44:06.018)
I was that good.

John Barber (44:07.593)
That was it. Well, because it worked, it was brilliant. It was like, I can’t remember what it was. I think it had burrata on it and all this sort of stuff and Induja. So they’ve gone and made pizza. I never heard of Induja. I never heard of burrata. I thought, this is fucking amazing. my second fucking, it was that good. So I said, right, we’re gonna find the money and we’re gonna do this. Exactly. So we did our due diligence, et cetera. Put our money in.

Chris Simmance (44:23.4)
We’ll put a disclaimer on it.

John Barber (44:34.905)
We have some guarantees on the investment that basically guarantees you a certain return after three years. So it looked like a bit of a no brainer. And this is another lesson on due diligence. We did extensive due diligence. After all, it came from our accountant. you know, nothing, know, obviously if anyone would know what’s going on financially, yeah. But what we didn’t know was that the two partners hated each other. They literally hated each other. So one was doing all the work and one did nothing. One did nothing.

Chris Simmance (44:53.848)
Mm -mm.

John Barber (45:04.137)
So as we were trying to expand the business, when I say he didn’t do anything, he basically, he did enough to disrupt everything and he wasn’t close enough to the business. So where ordinarily you would trust somebody with, we’re gonna open it here, this is how we’re gonna open it, this is what it’s gonna cost. These are sales forecasts, this is what we expect, from that you get the cash flow and everything else. It was completely wrong.

Chris Simmance (45:05.527)
Okay.

John Barber (45:33.587)
So after about a year, no maybe nine months a year, my accountant rang me up about three in the morning and said, we got no money. He what do you mean got no money? He we got some serious shit. There’s like hundreds of thousands of pound hole here. So we tore that hole and then at that point I decided we’ve got to it. We’ve got to sell it. So I did the rounds. Actually I did it all myself. Went to Peach Express.

Chris Simmance (45:51.88)
wow.

John Barber (46:02.293)
Met the managing director there, his name is going to be Wentz and Domino’s. David Wild, was the chief exec for Domino’s UK. What a guy he is. He had like 400 or 500 outlets, some of which were directly owned, some of which were franchise. He knew the numbers of the top of his head for every single outlet, every single day. was brilliant. Yeah.

Chris Simmance (46:22.176)
Yeah, that’s that’s a brain.

That’s insane. That’s insane level of awareness.

John Barber (46:29.301)
I David Lane who owns Frankamanka and the Real Greek and stuff like that. at the end we cut a deal with Pizza Express who wanted to move into the gourmet pizza business and yeah, sold it to them. can’t remember, I’m not sure, paid 10 million good or something like that. Yeah, with these deals they’re always, why is it every time you do a deal you’re sitting in the lawyer’s office till two, three or four in the morning?

Chris Simmance (46:36.931)
Mm.

Chris Simmance (46:48.344)
the rest’s history on that one.

No.

John Barber (46:57.971)
waiting to sign.

Chris Simmance (46:59.466)
Because they can charge double.

John Barber (47:01.309)
I don’t know, but when I sold nearly every business it’s been the same. Three, four in the morning. To get it done. That one was in, they used…

Chris Simmance (47:03.672)
hourly rates.

Chris Simmance (47:09.464)
this all cop overly –

John Barber (47:12.671)
They used Osborne Clark, which is a big city lawyer in London Wall. And we were sitting there till four o ‘clock in the morning. And in fact, one of the partner, the weird partner who went rogue on us, we didn’t even know if he was going to turn up and sign. So we had to have a plan B, you know, where you can drag along shareholders and all of that stuff in the shareholders’ room. So we thought we might have to go on the whole legal, etc., etc. But anyway, he turned up at the end and got it done.

Chris Simmance (47:39.214)
God, signed his bits. just.

John Barber (47:41.883)
After that I said, I’m doing prophecy.

Chris Simmance (47:47.221)
That’s it. And that led us back to too much and do you own too much burrata maybe it might well have also been a case.

John Barber (47:48.23)
I had heart palpitations.

John Barber (47:55.615)
Well, no, honestly, I the only time I was talking to my son last night, he goes, dad, I’m stressed, I’m stressed. said, listen, mate, this is my definition of stress. Stress is where you need to achieve something and you can’t achieve it, as opposed to just hard work. So the only real stress I had, you know, when I had to bring in this rogue owner who didn’t want to play ball.

Chris Simmance (48:15.18)
Yeah. Yeah, that’s a distinction.

John Barber (48:24.551)
and was just being completely disruptive for, I don’t know, weird reasons. And that caused me hold public stations because I had to get him on board to sell the company. Otherwise, I was going to lose a lot of money and so were my co -investors and lot of money. So after that, I thought, I’m not doing this again.

Chris Simmance (48:36.098)
Yeah, yeah.

Chris Simmance (48:41.058)
Yeah, which is not well.

So it brings us back around to the beginning that you’re in property. So just to close off the episode then John, what’s the best advice you ever received in your entire varied career?

John Barber (48:50.271)
Yeah.

John Barber (48:57.941)
Well, I think I did quote, when I started talking to you, that my Spencer quote was basically when he was trying to buy other businesses and everyone was saying to him, Michael, you’re paying too much, you’re paying too much. And he went, no, no, no, these are unique businesses. Trust me, in five or 10 years, nobody will say, I paid too much, which I think is, if you’re buying something as a business asset.

You’ve got to due diligence. Maybe do psychometric testing on the founders. I don’t know.

Chris Simmance (49:32.75)
But then conversely, what’s the worst advice you’ve ever received yourself?

John Barber (49:42.165)
I said this to you the other day, I this is obviously bad advice, it’s obviously there is bad advice. When I was told not to do things like don’t put your money into this business because it’s failing. Don’t do this. know, when I went back into this city post -trade company, people said to me, don’t go working there, they’re losers. So it’s always, I’m not sure if it’s advice or really more of an opinion.

Chris Simmance (49:53.795)
Yeah.

Chris Simmance (50:07.372)
Yeah. I still remind myself whenever I start anything new of the advice I got from my manager or the department head or whatever it was at the big digital marketing agency I used to work at. Don’t do it was the advice. Everyone else is doing it. You can’t do it. And I did. But that was the best advice I ever ignored.

John Barber (50:28.293)
No. Good for you. I think the other thing I always tell was, again, this comes back to asking for an order. You’ve got to be brave for nine seconds. You’ve got to be brave. And you might not want to say something, but you’ve got to say it. Coming back to my pizza, I just forgot one of the key elements of this. So the good founder.

Chris Simmance (50:38.915)
Mm.

Chris Simmance (50:52.301)
Yeah.

John Barber (50:55.381)
that was going to make a lot of money, wanted to sell the business I was working with. We were dealing, he was the good fellow, we were in Osborne, we were called into Osborne Clark two days before we were meant to complete the deal. And they said, we’re not happy with some of the VAT numbers in your accounts. We want to drop the price by a million quid. So it was dropping from, I don’t know, 10 million to 9 million.

Chris Simmance (50:58.754)
Maybe you could call him a good fella?

John Barber (51:23.701)
I said, no, we’re not gonna stop the price. So the founder next to me, he said, John, can we just have a time out? So he said, I don’t care if we lose a million quid to all the shareholders, it’s only gonna cost me 152 ,000 grand, but I need to the business and I want my money out. And I said, no, no, no, if we start doing this now, they’re gonna start chip, chip, chipping away and this just will be the start. So I said, what are we gonna do? We’re gonna say to them, if they ask again,

for the million quid to be knocked off, we’re gonna walk out. Because, do mean we’re gonna walk out? I said, we’re gonna walk out of their office. And I promise you, by the time we get to the end of the road, they will run us. Okay, this is coming back to my be brave for nine seconds. So we went back in and said, look, we’re not gonna knock the price off. If you ask us to knock the price again, we’re gonna walk out. So they go, look, I’m really sorry, but we want the million quid knocked off. I said, right, we’re going. So we walked out. And they rang us before we got to the end of the road. They did.

Chris Simmance (52:19.768)
They called? Yeah, there you go. Being brave.

John Barber (52:23.271)
No, I don’t know where that comes from. That’s just crazy, isn’t it?

Chris Simmance (52:27.682)
Well, mean, it could have gone the opposite direction. I’m glad it didn’t for you, John.

John Barber (52:32.457)
Well, yeah, mean, I was relatively small only compared to the founders, yeah, but sometimes, I don’t know where it comes from. It’s just intuition, isn’t it? Experience.

Chris Simmance (52:41.742)
it often, this is it. So it’s the, your experience often balance in balance with your your skills and the things you’ve learned over over years. It gives you that what what you say intuition would be. But it’s based on something that you’ve got a good hunch is correct because of other examples and experiences where that’s that’s already happened. And John, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. It’s been yeah.

John Barber (52:54.259)
Yeah.

John Barber (53:04.827)
super exciting though at the time, super exciting.

Chris Simmance (53:09.72)
Course it is. I mean, to be fair, any business stuff, anything in business is exciting.

John Barber (53:10.512)
Thanks for inviting me.

John Barber (53:15.03)
It was, and thanks for inviting me, I really enjoyed it. And if you can find something tangible enough from this hour to put out there, then it will be good.

Chris Simmance (53:19.212)
Yeah, wonderful.

Chris Simmance (53:25.646)
We’ll do a competition. Once this goes live, anyone who’s got through all 54 minutes and can send me a message saying one tangible thing they’ve learned, they win a prize. I think there will be a few. So thanks very much again, John. Lovely to talk to you.

John Barber (53:26.622)
I’ll see you later.

John Barber (53:35.477)
Perfect. We’ll bomb up here down at 20 seconds. Thanks, mate.

Chris Simmance (53:42.217)
We will. Sweetie in a bit.

John Barber (53:43.519)
See you