I started Murphy Door in 2012 while pulling 24-hour fire shifts. Nights and weekends. Sawdust and spreadsheets. The first year was small—thirty grand—but we learned fast. In 2013 I put it online and listened. People didn’t want movie props; they wanted hidden storage that worked every day. Beauty + utility. If it didn’t earn its keep, it didn’t ship.

I kept the day job. No leap-of-faith montage, no victory selfie. I built, shipped, fixed. Repeat. I paid myself last and I paid myself late. In 2016 we crossed $5 million and I finally took a check—that was the line I was waiting for. Not a vibe. Math. Enough backlog to cover payroll and materials. Margins that held without me hovering. A return rate we could stomach. If the system can’t pay me without wobbling, I don’t quit the shift. Calm beats chaos. Let process do the heavy lifting, and momentum shows up when it’s ready, not when you post about it.

Early on we made a lot of “panic room” noise because it was flashy. Cool? Sure. Big market? Not really. Customers kept asking for bookcase doors, pantry doors, utility doors—with real storage and clean lines—so we pivoted. Utility first, then the magic. The door should look like it always belonged there and make the room work harder. If a design reads like a gimmick, it’s dead on arrival.

We build in the U.S.—on purpose. Shorter lines. Faster fixes. Tighter tolerances. I want the feedback loop inside the same time zone as the sawdust. We grew the crew in Ogden, Utah, added Kentucky, and pushed into Texas to keep lead times honest and the quality bar high. Own the dirt when you can. Control beats theory every single time.

Inside the factory we treat mistakes like data. Blow a tolerance? Fix the jig. Miss a delivery window? Update the router and the checklist. We don’t shame people; we tighten the loop. One change at a time so we actually learn something. Material switch? Test it on ten doors, not one. Hinge spec drifts? Cycle it to failure, then decide. No committees. Just commits. We run short stand-ups, kill long meetings, and write down what worked so the next crew wins by default. Fail → fix → scale. That’s the whole game.

Same mindset I had on the engine: slow is smooth, smooth is fast. Panic makes dumb decisions. Measure twice, cut once, then cut a little better next time. If a part doesn’t fit, we don’t “make it work.” We figure out why it didn’t, change the cut list, change the CAM, change the training—whatever removes the root. You protect the crew by protecting the process. Customers are building a home around our door; we don’t get to be casual about that.

The numbers tell their own story. We went into COVID at around $7 million, then demand spiked—$14 million, $22 million, and nearly $28 million in 2024. We crossed 100 teammates and kept reinvesting in equipment, jigs, and flow so we could ship smarter, not just more. Dates matter because momentum is earned, not assumed. The internet loves overnight success; operators know it’s four years of nights and weekends before the first real paycheck clears.

Here’s the play: keep your paycheck until the system proves itself. Build it, ship it, fix it. Earn the leap. Know your constraint—machine, skill, supplier, cash—and attack it first. Buy gear to remove a bottleneck, not to feel big. Hire to shorten lead time and improve quality, not to collect titles. Then scale what works and kill what doesn’t. We’ll keep making rooms work harder, keep building in the U.S., and keep choosing utility over gimmicks. If we do our job right, our doors look inevitable and your space gets smarter without shouting about it. That’s the point. Beauty + utility. Day after day.

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Source
Entrepreneur — “This Former Firefighter’s ‘Hidden’ Side Hustle Turned Full-Time Business Helps Keep Homes Safe — and Saw ‘Explosive Growth’ to Over $27 Million Revenue,” May 30, 2025.

I wrote a Deseret News op-ed saying I’m pro-tariff. People were surprised. I’m not chasing a fight. I’m chasing workable math for teams that build things here. Tariffs aren’t a religion to me; they’re a wrench. Use them right and you buy time to compete on quality, speed, and pride of work. Use them wrong and you just tax your own customer. Both can be true.

Here’s the simple version. For a decade, “cheap” beat “good.” That race to the bottom wrecks local shops because low wages and lax standards abroad don’t show up on a price tag. Tariffs force some of those hidden costs into the open. That tilt helps U.S. plants stand a chance—if we actually execute. That was my point in the piece.

Utah is built to capitalize. Manufacturing jobs here have grown faster than the national average, with the state leading the country in manufacturing job growth from 2019–2023—about a 12% jump. Exports hit $18.2B in 2024 and support tens of thousands of jobs. Translation: the base is here; the wind is at our back if we don’t squander it.

And the world is watching. The EU’s ambassador came through Utah this spring—multiple stops, lots of conversations—because our state sits in the new middle of the map. Tariffs aren’t just D.C. theater; they touch real employers, real crews, real grocery receipts.

Now the trade-offs. Tariffs can raise prices. That’s not controversial; the New York Fed showed the 2018–2019 rounds hit U.S. households—about $831 a year then. That’s the caution label. So if we run this play, we owe customers the return: better product, tighter lead times, stable supply, real jobs. Otherwise it’s just a tax with a flag on it.

So what should Utah actually do—operators, mayors, schools, the whole crew?

Here’s the play:

• Shorten the line. Push production and suppliers within a one-day truck haul of the customer. Freight eats margin; proximity prints speed. It’s why I argued for a network of smaller, automated sites near demand.
• Instrument quality like sales. Track first-pass yield, rework minutes, and warranty rate. If tariffs buy breathing room, spend it on permanent capability, not bloat. No committees. Just commits.
• Skilled pipeline now. Double down on shop classes, dual-credit machining, and paid apprenticeships. Utah’s growth is real; feed it with welders, CNC techs, and industrial electricians.
• Use the help. WTC Utah, the Salt Lake Chamber, and state programs are actively guiding companies through tariff turbulence. Grab the playbooks and the intros.
• Measure net CAC of reshoring. Model total landed cost vs. local make: material, labor, freight, tariff, inventory risk. If your Utah cell can’t beat the all-in import within a year, fix the cell, not the customer.

Reality check: this isn’t zero-sum. Utah sells to the world. EU leaders warned us face-to-face—you escalate tariffs forever, consumers feel it, and some sectors get squeezed. That’s why execution matters more than headlines. Build the local system while D.C. and Brussels argue about the rules. Then, when deals land, you’re already faster and better.

Bottom line? I’m pro-tariff as a tool, not a talisman. We build in the U.S.—on purpose. But pride doesn’t pay the invoice; process does. If tariffs buy Utah time, we turn that time into tighter flow, better tolerances, and careers our kids want. If we don’t, we deserve the price hike we handed to our own neighbors. Calm beats chaos. Earn your momentum. Then keep earning it.

Sources

• Deseret News (Opinion), “Why I love tariffs — and why Utah should, too,” May 1, 2025.
• Salt Lake Tribune, “EU ambassador warns Utah leaders that the state will feel economic impacts of tariffs,” Apr. 13, 2025.
• Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute, Utah International Trade, 2024, May 2025.
• Axios (Salt Lake City), “Utah leads U.S. in manufacturing job growth,” Oct. 17, 2024.
• New York Fed, Liberty Street Economics, “New China Tariffs Increase Costs to U.S. Households,” May 2019.
• Deseret News (Politics), “EU ambassador visits Utah as Trump negotiates trade deal with Europe,” Apr. 20, 2025.
• World Trade Center Utah, “WTC Utah responds to tariffs,” Feb. 3, 2025.

I don’t go on podcasts to relive the origin story. I go to pressure-test the playbook. This one did. Ideas. Execution. Money. Work-life. And why I’m betting the next decade on fast, custom, near-you manufacturing.

We opened with “disruption.” My favorite thing is to birth a new idea. My next favorite is to try and kill it. That’s not bravado. That’s shop discipline. Early Murphy days we tried side hinges, then a piano hinge. Both failed. We chased the failure to the real weak points—top, bottom, fixed shelf—then built a hinge that carries real weight. You hunt the break until it can’t hide, then keep the piece that survives.

What’s Murphy Door? Not a movie prop. Anything you can build into a doorway that makes the room work harder—pantry doors that hold 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.

First break? DIY Network found us off a little builders-show booth. Orders hit a website that barely deserved customers. I owed people better, so I rebuilt a pile of those early doors. Expensive tuition. Worth it. Don’t hide misses—fix the jig, fix the checklist, make it right.

Discipline came up. Everyone has dreams. Very few have the daily reps. I don’t worship vision boards. I set a 10-year end state—personal, professional, financial—then ladder it down to year, quarter, month, week, day. Miss a day and you’ll miss the week. Miss the week and the month is gone. Compounding doesn’t care about your feelings.

Work-life? 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. Time compounds like money. Stack the hours while you’re strong and you buy decades later—decades with grandkids, not punching a clock for health insurance. Not romance. Arithmetic.

We traded real-estate plays because the math is clean. My first big commercial buy was $2.9M. I locked pre-leases before close, refi’d, pulled cash tax-free, and let the building pay me while I worked on doors. People call that risky. I see more risk in overpaying for “stabilized” assets with no room to force value. I like zeros I can turn into millions with a lease and a mop.

Hard chapters? I made almost $20M in my early 20s, fumbled, lived in my car for a year, went bankrupt—twice, years apart. I didn’t die. I learned to call people first when the news is bad. Learned cash discipline. Learned to celebrate misses so my crew isn’t scared to try. Protect people by protecting process.

Hiring. I don’t screen for pedigree. I screen for a 10-year picture and the willingness to match effort to outcome. In interviews we sketch personal, professional, and financial targets. If you want 20 acres and a Ferrari on 20 hours a week, we’re not aligned. If you want to outwork everyone in the room, great—let’s talk SLAs, not slogans.

What separates winners? Reps. Define the end. Pick the constraint—machine, skill, supplier, cash. Attack that first. Buy gear to kill bottlenecks, not to feel big. Hire to shorten lead time and improve first-pass yield, not to collect titles. No committees. Just commits.

We hit Pure Brand—the customer-to-customer sales engine I built because big-box “showrooms” eat 40–50% of margin. I’d rather pay real customers to show real prospects. Warm trust beats cold clicks. Keep it volunteer-only. Give them a clean booking link. Track intros, answers, closes. Pay what you promised. Repeat.

Then the future. Murphy is my lab. We ship a fully custom product every six minutes—width, height, depth, color, hardware—all different, all day. That system scales: beds, nightstands, cabinets, tables. By 2027 I want three-day manufacturing lead time and seven-day delivery, built near you in smaller, automated plants. Not four colors on a shelf. Your color. Your size. Your material. Built in the U.S.—on purpose.

Would I sell? I build to be sellable—clean books, empowered teams, written SOPs—so I’m always ready. I take every meeting to learn what buyers see coming. But if I could keep one thing, I’d keep Murphy Door. The mission’s bigger than a wire. Let people design what they actually want and get it fast, from crews in their own time zone. That matters.

Here’s the play: create, then try to kill it. Keep what survives. Set the end and back into today. Front-load life while you’re strong. Invest where you can force outcomes. Celebrate the miss, fix the root, document the win, teach it until it’s boring. Calm beats chaos. Earn your momentum. Then keep earning it.

Jeremy Barker is the founder and CEO of Murphy Door, the Utah‑based manufacturer known for hidden doors and space‑saving furniture that blend craftsmanship with everyday utility. He started Murphy Door in 2012 while working as a firefighter/paramedic, turning a one‑off hardware idea into a fast‑growing American manufacturing company.

Raised in Utah and rooted in public service, Jeremy spent years in emergency services before pursuing entrepreneurship full‑time. That path wasn’t linear: he weathered early bankruptcies and kept the company a nights‑and‑weekends side hustle until 2016, when Murphy Door crossed the $5M revenue mark and he finally paid himself his first paycheck. The lessons from those years—discipline, readiness, and calm under pressure—continue to shape his leadership style.

Under Jeremy’s leadership, Murphy Door has grown from a garage project into a national brand with U.S. manufacturing at its core. The team builds in Ogden, Utah with additional facilities in Kentucky and expansion into Texas, and the company’s products have earned industry recognition, including the NAHB “Best of IBS” award for Best Indoor Product (2022). In 2024, Murphy Door approached $28M in annual revenue while adding jobs and capacity—momentum Jeremy attributes to relentless product iteration, vertically integrated operations, and a commitment to domestic supply chains.

Beyond manufacturing, Jeremy is an active real‑estate investor who used creative deal structures to scale from his first commercial building to a portfolio of 30+ properties. He also hosts the podcast 90 Proof Wisdom, where he distills what he calls “hard‑earned lessons”—from product-market fit to operational discipline—for founders and operators. In 2024 he was named a finalist for EY’s Entrepreneur Of The Year (Mountain West), and he contributes perspective on American manufacturing and reshoring through public commentary and interviews.

At Murphy Door, Jeremy frames the mission simply: build beautiful, functional products, invest in people, and keep making more room—for families, for privacy, for better use of space, and for American manufacturing. He and the team summarize it as a two‑word directive: Be More.