Jeremy Barker

Category: Murphy Door

  • Sales Leadership: From the Engine to the Factory Floor

    I learned leadership in a place where adrenaline is cheap and coordination is priceless. On the engine, speed comes from choreography: everyone knows the first move, the hazards, and the handoff before the rig stops rolling. That rhythm translates directly to how we build doors and how we sell them. We start every morning with an eight-minute stand-up. Three questions, same order, no speeches: What did you finish yesterday? What will you finish today? What’s in your way? If a blocker pops up—CAD waiting on a dimension, a quote waiting on a finish—we assign an owner on the spot and put a timestamp on the fix. People leave with a plan, not motivation.

    “Clarity beats charisma” shows up in our definitions of done. Discovery isn’t “good conversation.” It’s a short list of specifics captured in the CRM before anyone moves the deal: rough opening width/height/depth, wall type, floor slope notes, intended load (books, dry goods, tools), hinge handing, swing direction, and a phone photo of the opening with a tape in frame. If one of those is missing, the stage doesn’t advance. The same discipline applies to the next steps. A fit-check call is complete when the customer confirms those numbers back to us and sends the photo set. Design-price is complete when the buyer has a single-page quote with: price band, lead-time window, install duration, what’s included, what’s excluded, and the date/time of the next milestone. No one says “We’ll circle back.” We schedule the next move while we’re on the call.

    We run sales like a crew, so our service-level promises are simple and visible: respond to new inquiries within two business hours, send a written ballpark within 24 hours, send a dimensioned sketch or annotated photo within 48, and—after deposit—lock an install window within 72. If we can’t hit a promise, we call before the clock runs out and reset it with a real reason and a new time. Email is a receipt; the conversation is the commitment.

    The handoff from sales to operations is where most companies leak trust. Our handoff is a “job packet” that ops can build from without phoning a friend: the customer’s verified measurements, the dimensioned sketch, material code and finish, hinge handing and swing, site photos (close and wide), install conditions (baseboard returns, threshold height, nearest power, stair/turn notes), and any HOA or permit requirements. Sales doesn’t “throw it over the wall.” We book a ten-minute live handoff with the project coordinator and close the loop on anything fuzzy. If ops asks a question during the call, sales answers it during the call.

    When something slips, we change the work, not just the wording. A while back, installs were stalling at the door because site photos were pretty but useless. We wrote a “fit-check photo set” instruction we text before the call: one photo straight on with a tape measure across width, one showing height, one floor close-up with the tape on the slope, one wide for the swing path. Compliance jumped immediately, install surprises dropped, and the phone got quieter for the right reasons. Same play in the funnel: demo calls used to drift into show-and-tell. We tightened the path to four beats—goal, constraints, proof, next step—and built a 90-second micro-demo that shows the hinge motion, shelf loading, and reveal close-ups. The call ends with a scheduled fit-check, not a “let us know.”

    Hiring fits the same pattern. I don’t screen for pedigree. I screen for rhythm and follow-through. In interviews I ask candidates to sketch where they want to be in ten years—personal, professional, financial—and we price it. If the math and effort don’t match, we say it now. People deserve that honesty up front. Inside the team, we coach to the moments that actually break: the first question on discovery, the way we ask for the photo set, the sentence that sets a lead-time expectation without hedging. Reps practice those moments like operators practice the cuts that cause most defects. It’s repetitive by design; you don’t improvise at the hinge or in a high-stakes call.

    Recovery is quiet and fast. After a miss, we run a brief after-action: what we expected, what happened, what we’ll change, and who owns it. Then we change a checklist, an asset, or a promise. If a meeting doesn’t result in one of those three, we don’t run that meeting again. The measure of a leader isn’t the pep talk; it’s the friction they removed by Friday.

    None of this is glamorous, but it’s the difference between a business that hopes and a business that ships. Clear promises. Clean handoffs. Small, daily, boring wins that compound. Keep your word on the next cut and the next call, and the big numbers take care of themselves more often than you think. Calm beats chaos—and calm sells.

  • Startups with Stu: How We Built a Category (and What We’re Building Next)

    Dek: I didn’t go on Stu’s show to flex a headline. I went to unpack the recipe—how we went from a bad crash to a durable company, why we chose customer-funded growth over venture money, and how a warm, customer-to-customer sales loop beats cold clicks. We also talked about the next chapter: custom, near-you manufacturing that makes “Prime-fast” feel normal for one-off products.

    Why Stu

    Stu and I have real rapport. He doesn’t tee up softball questions; he goes straight for the operating system. That’s why I like him. He knows the difference between a viral moment and a repeatable motion, so he drags the conversation out of biography and into process. The goal wasn’t to relive a hero arc; it was to pressure-test the plays I actually run.

    Crash, then staircase

    I learned more from losing my first $20M than I ever learned making it. At 21 I had money and none of the muscle to protect it. Lifestyle creep. Loud friends. Dumb purchases. When the music stopped, the friends disappeared and the lessons got loud. I moved into a truck, went back to the firehouse, and rebuilt the staircase one riser at a time. Keep the day job until the system can pay you without wobbling. Build, ship, fix. Repeat. Earn the leap—don’t cosplay it.

    That season set my rules: discipline over dopamine, small daily scoreboards over grand declarations, and a relentless focus on usefulness. Calm beats chaos. When you’re underwater, you don’t need ten ideas. You need one constraint to attack this week.

    Category, not competition

    Murphy Door didn’t start as a brand plan. It started as a problem: hidden doors looked cool and failed in real homes. Sidemount hinges sagged. Piano hinges ripped out. We chased the failure to the real weak points—the top, the bottom, and the fixed shelf—and built a pivoted system that would carry weight for life. Beauty + utility. If it doesn’t earn its keep, it doesn’t ship.

    That’s what people call the “monopoly mindset.” I’m not talking about gouging; I’m talking about being first to define the problem in plain English and solving it so completely that your name becomes shorthand for the thing. Kleenex clarity. We didn’t buy that with ads. We earned it with doors that hang true, installs that stay square and quiet, and crews who answer the phone.

    Early breaks? DIY Network put us on TV off a 10×10 booth. Orders slammed a site that barely deserved customers. We shipped, we learned, and we rebuilt a lot of those first thousand doors at our cost. Expensive tuition. Priceless data. Fail → fix → scale. No committees. Just commits.

    Why we build here—on purpose

    We manufacture in the U.S. because proximity beats theory. If a jig drifts at 10 a.m., I want it fixed by lunch—not “next quarter.” That rhythm forces one-piece flow, smaller batches, tighter tolerances, and a feedback loop that lives in the same time zone as the sawdust. The factory runs like a fire crew: short stand-ups, long checklists, no drama. Blow a tolerance? Fix the jig. Miss a delivery window? Fix the router and the SLA. Document the win so the next crew wins by default.

    Could we have chased cheaper labor? Sure. But we would have traded speed, customization, and control for a few pennies we’d lose back in rework, freight, and returns. We build in the U.S.—on purpose.

    Customer-funded growth (and the math behind it)

    I didn’t raise venture. Not because I hate investors, but because constraints sharpen judgment. We sold first, collected payment, and built exactly what that customer wanted. Cash in, work order out. That model forced us to be allergic to bloat:

    • Direct to consumer to keep margin and truth close.
    • Payment terms that fund production, not the other way around.
    • Small-batch, flexible manufacturing partnerships before we insourced throughput.
    • Reinvestment discipline: buy machines that remove bottlenecks, not machines that look cool.
    • A lean team measured on first-pass yield, lead time, and customer trust—not vanity metrics.

    That’s how you get from a couple line items to a company with real numbers behind it—without selling your cap table or your soul.

    Pure Brand: let customers sell to customers

    Here’s the piece that surprises people. We were getting millions of site sessions and a typical ecommerce conversion rate—~0.24%. That’s not a strategy; it’s a slot machine. So we built Pure Brand, a customer-to-customer sales engine. Real owners show real prospects their actual doors, on their phone, in their home. No MLM nonsense. Opt-in only. A simple booking link. Clean handoff to a closer. We instrument the handoff, pay the promise, and keep the guardrails tight (privacy, compliance, no pressure).

    Warm trust beats cold clicks. On our tests, that path converted around 47%—roughly 200× a cold visit. Why? Because authenticity collapses the doubt curve. People don’t want a brochure; they want to see the pantry door carrying weight without sag, hear the hinge move quietly, and ask, “Would you buy it again?” The only thing creditors want is your recipe, not your ingredients. Pure Brand protects the recipe.

    The numbers and the next hill

    On Stu’s show we talked about crossing $56M and a public projection to $109M by 2027. Great headline. But the headline only matters if the line can carry the weight. That’s why our next hill is a network of smaller, automated sites near demand. Goal: three-day manufacturing lead times and seven-day delivery for fully custom products. Not four colors on a shelf from six months ago. Your width, height, depth, finish, and hardware—built near you, delivered fast, installed clean.

    Own the dirt when you can. Control beats theory. Facilities, equipment, software, and people in the right places give you options you can’t rent from a container ship.

    People and culture (the part that lasts)

    I don’t screen for pedigree. I screen for a ten-year picture and the willingness to match effort to outcome. In interviews we map personal, professional, and financial goals. We put a price tag on them. If someone wants twenty acres and a Ferrari on twenty hours a week, we’re misaligned. If someone wants to outwork everyone and be measured on output, we talk SLAs, not slogans.

    Inside the plant, mistakes are data. We celebrate fast fixes. We write down what worked. We train it until it’s boring. Calm beats chaos because calm ships.

    What founders can steal from this episode

    • Create, then try to kill it. Don’t protect ideas; stress-test them. Keep what survives.
    • Define the end state. Put your 10-year personal/professional/financial target in plain English, then ladder it to year/quarter/month/week/day.
    • Spend wins on capability, not vanity. Machines that remove bottlenecks. Training that raises first-pass yield. Systems that shorten lead time.
    • Use constraints as design inputs. Customer-funded growth forces signal over noise.
    • Let customers sell to customers. Reward the behavior you want repeated. Measure the handoff. Keep it clean.
    • Keep the paycheck until the system proves itself. Earn the leap. Make rooms work harder. Build in the U.S.—on purpose.

    A word on friendship and accountability

    I trust Stu because he holds me to what I say. He’ll bring me back on if we miss the mark, and I’ll show up with the same transparency I expect from my crew. That’s how you keep the work honest. No committees. Just commits.

    We’re not done. We’re earning our momentum—one quiet, square, inevitable door at a time.


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  • Behind the Hidden Door (Business Elevated)

    Utah is built for builders. Short lines. Tight crews. Real accountability. On the Governor’s Office “Business Elevated” podcast, we got into why that matters and why I’m stubborn about manufacturing here—on purpose. If the feedback loop lives in the same time zone as the sawdust, you move faster and you ship better. If a jig drifts at 10 a.m., I want it fixed by lunch, not “next quarter.” That’s not a slogan. That’s how you scale without burning the trust you worked years to earn.

    We opened with roots. I grew up here, learned to work here, and built my first wins and losses here—construction, sheds, the big-box lessons, then back to the firehouse when the economy face-planted. I’m not anti-global anything. I’m pro-proximity. Pro teams who can walk the floor, hear the cut list get called, and make the change while the wood is still warm. That’s hard to beat. It’s why we build in the U.S.—on purpose.

    We talked about doors—but really we talked about space. Murphy Door isn’t a movie trick. It’s anything you can build into a doorway that makes a room work harder. Pantry doors that actually carry weight. Bookcase doors that hang true. Utility doors that stay square and quiet. Beauty + utility. If it doesn’t earn its keep, it doesn’t ship. That line keeps us honest when a shiny idea tries to sneak past the checklist.

    Policy came up. I’m not a politician. I’m an operator. Tariffs, incentives, training grants—those are tools. Use them to buy time and build capability, not to get lazy. Utah’s edge is simple: the base is strong, the workforce is willing, and we still shake hands like it means something. If we add smart automation to that—cells that do repeatable work, data that shows drift before customers feel it—we can be faster and more flexible than any container ship.

    Where it’s going: a network of smaller, automated sites near demand. Three-day manufacturing lead times. Seven-day to your door. Same playbook in multiple regions so we can flex when one site is slammed and still keep lead times honest. You shouldn’t have to pick from four colors sitting on a shelf 6,000 miles away. You should pick your size, your finish, your hardware—built near you, delivered fast, and installed clean.

    Here’s the play we kept circling back to: keep the feedback loop short, and spend your wins on capability, not vanity. If the line gets faster, buy the tool that removes the next bottleneck. If quality drifts, fix the jig and the training, then write it down so the next crew wins by default. No committees. Just commits. That’s Utah for me. Not chest-thumping. Just work.

    I’m grateful the state gave us the mic. But the point isn’t airtime. It’s output. We’ll keep building in Utah, keep hiring in Utah, and keep proving that proximity beats theory. Calm beats chaos. Earn your momentum. Day after day.


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    Source: Utah Governor’s Office “Business Elevated,” “Jeremy Barker — Behind the Hidden Door,” Apr 11, 2025.