This Firefighter Built A $60 Million Secret Door Company With Customers Like Post Malone

0:00Jeremy Barker: Today on Forbes, this firefighter built a$60 million secret door company with customers like Post Malone. At the end of June 2016, Jeremy Barker had just finished working shifts at two different fire stations in the Salt Lake City metro area. When he got home, his wife greeted him with an ultimatum. She had carefully tracked his work hours that month. Between firefighting, his growing side business, and other odd jobs, he'd worked 500 hours that month. By her calculations, that left just 220 hours to sleep and spend time with their three youngest still-at-home children, then aged 14, 9, and 6, and with her.

0:44Jeremy Barker: Barker recalls, quote, She goes, I didn't sign up for this. You either change, or I'm going to find somebody that wants to be a husband, and you do you. The next day, Barker, now 52 years old, put in his two-week notice at the fire stations. He had decided to throw himself into his four-year-old side hustle, Murphy Door, a niche construction business specializing in hidden doors, rooms, and beds, that by then was doing$5 million in sales a year. Today, Barker says that Murphy Door books$60 million in annual sales, about three quarters from custom design projects. Its doors hide everything from secret panic rooms with bullet-resistant walls to gun collections to speakeasies to a room full of rare Star Wars memorabilia, which is now featured on MurphyDoor's YouTube channel.

1:37Jeremy Barker: In one whimsical installation, a concealed door opens to a firefighter pole, which allows someone to slide down a tunnel, which opens to a golf course near the house. Among MurphyDoor's celebrity customers? gun-loving musician Post Malone, and Adam Carolla, the comedian and podcaster. For privacy reasons, Barker won't say what type of installation each bought. But speaking about the hidden doors, Barker says, quote, It's really like a magic show in itself. It's kind of the hook and the product at the same time. The business now has 140 employees at three manufacturing plants. Last year, Barker says, he turned down an$80 million buyout offer from a private equity firm.

2:23Jeremy Barker: He adds that he aims to get sales above$100 million before he seriously considers buyout offers. Anyway, he's having too much fun doing projects for customers like investor Damon John of Shark Tank fame. Barker insists he didn't know him from Adam when he first met him. He says, quote, I met him at a trade show and the next thing you know, he's spending a half a million dollars with Murphy Door. Even though Murphy Door was already doing millions in sales, Barker explains why he had been hanging on to his firefighting jobs. Two prior construction businesses had landed him in both personal and business bankruptcy.

3:01Jeremy Barker: At various low points, he ended up sleeping in his truck and trying to commit suicide. Seeking stability, Barker turned to firefighting, even earning an associate's degree as a paramedic. Murphy Doerr was born in 2012 after Barker built a hideaway home theater room for his kids. He says, quote, I needed to make something that was kind of exciting for my kids, so I did a ticket booth into our teeny little theater room so our girls could pass their tickets through the ticket booth. Unable to find hinges that worked for the novel home theater entrance he'd built, he made his own. He started selling custom hinges for doors and other hardware, largely as a wholesaler to another company.

3:43Jeremy Barker: He then expanded his side gig offerings to include more custom furnishings, including hidden doors, which became his bestseller. No surprise, given his past bankruptcies, Barker couldn't get a loan to expand. But a friend and neighbor became an angel investor and eventually acquired 10 % of his business for$250 ,000. Barker still owns 87.5 % of Murphy Door, while three other investors hold the remaining 2.5%. Then in 2013, Barker nabbed a spot at the International Builders Show and displayed one of his Murphy Doors, hoping to land a deal with Home Depot or another big box retailer. Instead, a TV executive spotted the door and it ended up featured on an episode of home improvement show on the DIY network called I Want That.

4:34The publicity boost came just in time. Barker recalls, quote, I did$9 ,000 in sales that night and I owed$8 ,000 to American Express. More free media followed. Originally, Barker called his business the amazing bookcase closet door system. But an early customer suggested he rename the business Murphy Door as a play on the original Murphy beds, the hidden pull-down beds created more than a century ago by William Lawrence Murphy, who was living in a too-small San Francisco apartment. For full coverage, check out John Schroyer's piece on Forbes.com. This is Kieran Meadows from Forbes. Thanks for tuning in.

5:30Thank you.