📈John Barnes

Pendleton Street Advisors is a financial advisory firm to business owners. Founded in 2013, the firm’s areas of expertise are valuation consulting, succession planning, personal financial planning, mergers and acquisitions advice, and investment management. We specialize in helping our clients work through make-or-break financial issues in their company that have spillover effects into their personal finances.

President & CEO

John Barnes

It’s a long way, but I wouldn’t miss seeing these friends for anything. 

Leaving today for South Sudan 🇸🇸 with Empower One. 

We go to teach, learn, and have fun bringing the good news of the Gospel to a place that is starving for peace, and hopeful for transformation that starts on the inside and works its way outward.

Also thankful for the blessing of a GREAT team at home that allows me to pursue these missions.

Helping business owners get more from their largest investment | CEO at Pendleton Street Business Advisors

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This is why no one will want to watch robots play sports

This was more than a win.

Best use of AI so far for my firm?

Not in writing.

Not in search.

Not in research.

It's in illustration. A complete and total gamechanger. 

Imagine taking a complex Estate planning document provided by a client, and after anonymizing it--uploading it to ask AI to "illustrate" the provisions, and flow of assets in some type of diagram. Mind-blowing, and super helpful to the client.

Imagine taking anonymized financial statements and asking it to illustrate money flow in a blowout diagram that shows the magnitude of certain revenues and expenses.

We're loving the illustrative uses of AI to make more impactful *visuals* that help out clients have a deeper understanding of their own "stuff".

I can't wait to see what else we can come up with.

Made a cold call today. Fr

Disaster rating: 11/10—but I learned two things:

1. Have fun. (I had fun 😉)

2. If you’re a business using an offshored VA for call reception, don’t cheap out and use a service where they sound like they’re talking inside the Holland Tunnel. 😊 
 (maybe they were 🤷🏼‍♂️)

Owners of asset-intensive and capital-intensive businesses need to fall madly in love with reading and understanding and tracking the Balance Sheet of their company.

The Balance Sheet tells the true story of the financial health in your business. Those big revenue numbers on your Income Statement? They are fun to read, but dangerously deceptive.

“I just reinvest everything back into the company.”

I think this is one of the most irresponsible things I hear business owners say:

Cool.
For how long?
And to what end?

Reinvestment without a personal financial framework isn’t discipline.
It’s avoidance dressed up as modesty.

Here’s what actually happens:
The business grows.
The owner’s lifestyle stays frozen in 2014.
Every future reward becomes “next year”.

At some point, reinvestment may not be accretive, and it's probably causing some other stuff to break:
You’re creating wealth… but probably not much of a life.

I think this is just as true for single person as it is for business owners with a spouse and children. 👨‍👩‍👦‍👦 

A real financial strategy draws a line:

This is what the business needs to grow. 📈 
This is what the owner needs to stay motivated, solvent, and sane. 🤩 

If your only win condition is "I'll get around to it,”
you may feel like you're building a company — you’re deferring your life.

The best operators I know don’t starve themselves for optional upside.

They fight for parallel progress.
They work parallel plans for the progress on both sides of the line.

Business wins. 😘 
Owner wins. 🤑 

Both stay in the game. 🤠

I’m a technologist with 25 years of experience across software architecture, engineering, and applied AI/ML. I’ve built and scaled production systems for organizations ranging from startups to major enterprises, including Booz Allen Hamilton and a Fortune 100 company.

Alongside technology, I’ve devoted sustained time to finance — especially public equities — through dedicated study and applied research. I’m currently building a fintech project in stealth; I keep details private for now, but I’m happy to discuss the problem space with the right people in a confidential setting.

Collaborated with two Johns Hopkins University professors to build an FX paper-trading learning platform several years ago.

My root was international trade, so, watch this space as well if you will...

𝐒𝐞𝐥𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐀𝐈/𝐌𝐋 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤

Built an end-to-end pipeline that turned messy, unstructured data into decision-ready insights for executive teams.

Delivered an AI assistant for a real-estate firm to streamline rent, maintenance, and renewals — replacing complex workflows with simple Q&A.

𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐭𝐬 / 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐣𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐬

LayerP — guardrail layer to protect private data during AI interactions.

KnoMe — RAG-based tool to improve employee productivity through contextual retrieval.

𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐈 𝐛𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠

GenAI & ML: on-prem LLMs, secure integrations, RAG pipelines, fine-tuning (LoRA)

Technical leadership: Python + full-stack architectures for scalable, reliable systems

Domain range: technology + capital markets + international trade

𝐂𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐯𝐚𝐥𝐮𝐞𝐬
Honesty, integrity, respect, and fairness. I enjoy working with decisive people who push boundaries and ship.

𝐁𝐚𝐜𝐤𝐠𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝
Originally from China; studied international trade in college. I’ve lived in the U.S. for over three decades and became a U.S. citizen in 2002 — my multicultural perspective shapes how I think about markets and problem-solving.

If you’re exploring practical, secure AI — or you work in/around capital markets, logistics/global trade and want to compare notes — feel free to connect.

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The Battle

John Barnes

(Don) Chunshen Li

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taplio

The Battle

John Barnes

(Don) Chunshen Li

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Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}John Barnes's LinkedIn Performance

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