Jeremy Barker

Category: My Story

  • 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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  • Well Being Walks: Discovery of Your True Self

    Most interviews chase numbers. This one chased nerves. On Well Being Walks with Kip Hollister, we left the factory and talked about identity after bankruptcy, the tension between ambition and presence, and what “calm beats chaos” looks like when you’re not standing on a shop floor. Success didn’t fix anything in me. Clarity did. Crew did. Doing the right things for the right reasons did.

    Kip asked about the year I lived in my car, and I told the part I usually skip: the shame. A lot of people had watched me make real money early. The same crowd watched the crash. That season taught me that the only way out is forward, but not frantic. Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast. Call people first when the news is bad. Tell the truth while the problem is still ugly. You stop fearing failure when you keep your promises inside it.

    Work-life balance came up. I don’t measure it in equal daily blocks. I front-load my life—heavy on work during my strongest years—so the back half can be free and useful. That view rubs some people the wrong way, and that’s okay. Time compounds like money. Stack hours now and you buy decades later: decades for kids, grandkids, and projects that don’t need your pulse to keep beating.

    We talked about raising kids who understand money. When they were little we used a simple envelope system for long-term saving, short-term saving, giving, and spending. It wasn’t about being cheap; it was about being free. One daughter sells painted rocks by the roadside and saves like a CFO. Another wants the CEO chair. Both are learning that money is a tool you can master instead of a force that controls you.

    Culture matters just as much. At Murphy, mistakes are data. If we blow a tolerance, we fix the jig. If we miss a delivery window, we fix the router and the checklist. We keep stand-ups short, keep checklists long, and write down what works so the next crew wins by default. That habit lowers blood pressure in ways yoga never will. Do both, but start by fixing the process.

    If you are looking for a “well-being trick,” I don’t have one. I have a handful of rules that moved the needle: breathe before deciding because panic makes dumb decisions; put hard things on the calendar first and keep the appointment with yourself; choose crews who tell you the truth quickly and thank them when it stings; and spend wins on capability, not vanity, because capability makes tomorrow calmer.

    Walking with Kip reminded me why I’m building what I’m building. It’s not just about revenue; it is about room—space in people’s lives to do work they’re proud of and still have energy left for the rest. Calm beats chaos. Earn your momentum, and then keep earning it.


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    Source: https://hollistergroup.com/cultures/cultures-resources/jeremy-barker-discovery-of-your-true-self/

  • Lost $20M. Slept in a Truck. Built a Brand Anyway. (UtahPreneur)

    I don’t hide the losses. I lost $20 million before 22. Went bankrupt. Lived in my truck for a year. Went back to the firehouse and started over. On UtahPreneur, we got past the hero narrative and into the operator math that actually travels. Dreams are cheap. Discipline compounds. Define the end state. Attack one constraint at a time—machine, skill, supplier, cash. If it doesn’t move lead time or first-pass yield, it’s noise.

    We talked doors, sure. But mostly we talked utility. People don’t want to feel like they’re walking into a movie set. They want a bookcase door that carries real weight and doesn’t sag. They want a pantry door that stays quiet and square. That’s why Murphy Door works: utility first, then the magic. The best “design” disappears and earns its keep every day. When we forget that and ship cute instead of useful, the market corrects us. Quickly.

    The “first break” story matters because it shows the cost of learning. DIY Network put us on TV off a tiny builders-show booth. Orders hit a site that barely deserved customers. We shipped, learned, and rebuilt a bunch of early doors on our dime. Expensive tuition, priceless data. You don’t hide misses. You fix the jig, fix the checklist, and make it right. That habit is boring. Good. Boring wins.

    We also hit numbers because the internet loves numbers. The show page frames Murphy Door north of $50–60 million, and the trajectory tracks when you stack years of small process gains. I’m not a valuation guy. I’m a backlog / margin / returns / lead-time guy. When those four hold while I take a paycheck, the system is working. If they wobble, I go back on shift. Calm beats chaos. Process carries the load.

    Work-life came up. I don’t do 8/8/8. I front-load life. Seventeen hours a day for a decade so the back half is free and useful. People call that extreme. I call it arithmetic. Time compounds like money. Stack the hours while you’re strong and you buy decades later—decades with grandkids, not chasing benefits. That’s not moralizing. It’s a choice. It’s also not for everyone, and that’s fine.

    Hiring? I screen for a 10-year picture and a willingness to match effort to outcome. In interviews I ask for personal, professional, and financial goals. We draw them. We cost them. If you want 20 acres and a Ferrari on 20 hours a week, we’re misaligned. If you want to outwork everyone and be measured on output, welcome—let’s talk SLAs, not slogans.

    If you’re underwater, here’s the play we ended on: stop chasing ten ideas. Pick one constraint and fix it this week. Call people first when the news is bad. Spend wins on capability, not vanity. And when you blow a tolerance, don’t “make it work.” Find the root. Change the cut list, change the CAM, change the training—whatever actually removes the cause. Then write it down so the next crew doesn’t have to learn it twice.

    You don’t have to be special. You have to be consistent. I’m living proof.

    CTAs: Listen to the episode • Join the newsletter • Shop Murphy Door
    Sources: UtahPreneur (Buzzsprout) episode page; companion YouTube clip.