From a background that ranges from the very beginning straight out of the Business School at Waikato Polytechnic, I ventured into Aluminium Joinery with Ryan Aluminium in Hamilton, taking on the role of general assembler, within the year I was promoted to the office role of production & quotes, soon moving into sales.
Deciding on more of a challenge, I headed to London in search of adventure with my first job being a bar manager in an upmarket restaurant. After 2 months of that I headed into the IT market doing night classes in London to get up to speed.
By the time I left London 5 years later I was an IT Process and Communications engineer travelling around the world advising major banks how to run their internal systems. As exciting as that was, I decided to head back to NZ for the lifestyle and ‘Kiwi’ sense of humour with a stop over in Sydney for 9 months. I found myself working for Compaq Australia as a consultant Business Development Manager which was great, but not NZ.
When I arrived back in NZ I took my CV to several employment agencies. Most laughed and told me my skill-set wasn't a lot of use here in NZ and that they felt I would be suitable for basic admin roles at best. I laughed at that, then decided to buy a restaurant/bar seating 200 in the suburb of Devonport. That was fun and in the peak season I employed 40 odd staff, but ultimately I wanted to try something different so I purchased a Fast Food franchise in West Auckland.
This was another great challenge and I did extremely well out of this when my father Neil, my mother Lynn & I decided to start our own Business Brokerage firm as the service being delivered out there was generally very sloppy and we felt we could do a lot better by always ‘doing what we say we will’, ‘always communicating’ and always looking at things from the other persons point of view. This to date has worked wonders and we are a very successful firm growing slowly and steadily.
The aim is not to get too big and to always ensure ourselves and any brokers representing Barker Business fully understand the business ethos of ‘Business Sales with Integrity’. This is extremely important to us. We are honest at all times even when you don’t want to hear the truth. We feel we will be respected for this in the long run.
