{"id":679,"date":"2026-05-25T06:35:13","date_gmt":"2026-05-25T06:35:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/americanmovershub.com\/?p=679"},"modified":"2026-05-25T06:35:13","modified_gmt":"2026-05-25T06:35:13","slug":"meet-the-resilient-utah-ceo-of-the-year-behind-the-hidden-door","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/americanmovershub.com\/?p=679","title":{"rendered":"Meet the resilient Utah \u2018CEO of the Year\u2019 behind the hidden door"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Of all the successful executives named a 2026 CEO of the Year by Utah Business Magazine, Jeremy Barker stands alone as the only one who once spent a year living in his truck and who took out bankruptcy. Twice. <\/p>\n

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\u201cI have to learn the hard way. Instead of listening to someone warn me it\u2019s going to hurt, I\u2019m the guy that has to fall off the cliff and go, oh!, that hurt!,\u201d says the founder of Murphy Door, the \u201chidden door\u201d company that is projected to generate nearly $60 million in revenue this year \u2014 and that\u2019s before adding in revenue from the 11 other companies, ranging from warehouses, to developments, to hotels, to ladders, Jeremy also owns and supervises.<\/p>\n

Innovation and making money have never been difficult for Jeremy. That\u2019s the easy part.<\/p>\n

Learning how to manage and be responsible with success? That took some time.<\/p>\n

Which sends us back 32 years ago, when he was 19 years old and he made $60,000. In 10 days.<\/p>\n

As a forerunner to his patents on the Murphy Door hinges that make his doors unique, in 1994, fresh out of high school, Jeremy invented a metal frame brace that revolutionized construction on portable garden sheds.<\/p>\n

He opened a booth selling his sheds \u2014 he called his business Frontier Sheds \u2014 at that year\u2019s Utah State Fair. Ten days later, he walked away with $60,000 jammed in his pocket <\/p>\n

He had just started his freshman year at the University of Utah. \u201cWait, I\u2019m going to school to make $60,000,\u201d he remembers thinking, \u201cI already did that.\u201d <\/p>\n

So he dropped out of school. <\/p>\n

Things got even better when Home Depot contracted to buy his sheds. At 20 years old, Jeremy was sitting on top of the wave.<\/p>\n

Then he watched it all unravel. Or more exactly he didn\u2019t<\/i> watch it all unravel.<\/p>\n

\u201cFirst thing you know, you buy a truck, because you\u2019ve got all this money,\u201d says Jeremy. \u201cThen you party too hard, you don\u2019t pay your debts on time, you play the rob Peter to pay Paul game. I just had too much money that I didn\u2019t know how to manage.\u201d<\/p>\n

By 23 he was bankrupt and living in his truck \u2014 and not the new top of the line Dodge Ram he\u2019d bought when things were good, but in a used dually he paid $7,000 for so he could haul RVs around the country, making \u201cjust enough to stay broke.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI did six months of extreme depression,\u201d says Jeremy, \u201cand then six months of becoming your own best friend, forgiving yourself, and rehashing all of what happened. Not to abuse yourself, but to do an inventory on all the bad decisions that you made and where you should have gone left instead of right.\u201d<\/p>\n

Picking up the pieces, he established a successful house-building business, only to have the market crash of 2008 wipe him out again. Banks stopped lending, construction came to a standstill, \u201cso I didn\u2019t feel the remorse I did with the first bankruptcy,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

But he was still broke and back to square one.<\/p>\n

He retreated to something he knew well, along with the added benefit of a steady paycheck: firefighting and EMS work. He\u2019d passed his paramedic tests in high school. For $762 every two weeks, he went to work for the Roy City fire department.<\/p>\n

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Still, the innovator and entrepreneur lurked within. Motivated by a desire to build something cool for his children, he constructed a hidden door for a theater room in his house. The door\u2019s revolutionary hinge system paved the way to starting up his own business.<\/p>\n

In 2011 he patented the Murphy Door hinge; in 2012 he started selling doors. At first the company made a door a week, then two doors a week, then four doors. The trajectory was trending steadily in the right direction.<\/p>\n

But this time, when the money started coming in, Jeremy didn\u2019t touch it. He plowed it all back into the business.<\/p>\n

He resolved he wouldn\u2019t quit his firefighting\/EMS job until Murphy Door cleared $5 million in annual revenue.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m a firm believer, you should never steal milk out of your baby\u2019s bottle,\u201d he says, \u201cIf you want the baby to survive and thrive, you can\u2019t take any of the milk. It\u2019s a pretty basic thought process. If the baby\u2019s got a full bottle of milk, and it\u2019s going to grow from that, and then you say, hey, I need half to pay my house payment, or half for my car, and by the way, I might need 75% next week, then the baby is going to just either die or have stunted growth, which means you can\u2019t scale.\u201d<\/p>\n

Murphy Door made about $39,000 in revenue its first year, then $150,000, then $1.2 million, then $2.5 million, then $5 million. Jeremy stayed true to his word. It took five years before he left Roy Fire and went to work for Murphy Door full time.<\/p>\n

Today, the company makes a door every six minutes. They ship hundreds of doors every week throughout the country and the world.<\/p>\n

In addition to Jeremy\u2019s recent Utah Business CEO of the Year honor, he was named a finalist for the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year award, while Murphy Door has been on Fortune\u2019s list of Fastest Growing Companies four years in a row and has been named one of Fortune\u2019s Most Innovative Companies.<\/p>\n

All kinds of people are coming to Jeremy for advice these days, including the Trump administration, who last spring invited him to Florida to discuss tariffs with other U.S. CEOs. Daymond John, of \u201cShark Tank\u201d renown, is among Jeremy\u2019s collaborators on Murphy Door.<\/p>\n

\u201cI freakin\u2019 love my job,\u201d says Jeremy, who employs 135 people in his various businesses.<\/p>\n

Looking back, if he could return in a time machine to his 19-year-old self who was about to make $60,000 selling storage sheds, only to then watch it all disintegrate into bankruptcy, what would he tell him?<\/p>\n

\u201cYou know what, I wouldn\u2019t tell him anything,\u201d he says. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t want him to miss out on the lessons he needed to learn.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more America\u2019s most popular \u2018third place\u2019 for social gathering<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Despite setbacks, Jeremy Barker of Murphy Door has learned to persevere.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":678,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"yoast_head":"\nMeet the resilient Utah \u2018CEO of the Year\u2019 behind the hidden door - American Movers Hub<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/americanmovershub.com\/?p=679\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Meet the resilient Utah \u2018CEO of the Year\u2019 behind the hidden door - American Movers Hub\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Despite setbacks, Jeremy Barker of Murphy Door has learned to persevere.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/americanmovershub.com\/?p=679\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"American Movers Hub\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-05-25T06:35:13+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/americanmovershub.com\\\/?p=679#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/americanmovershub.com\\\/?p=679\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"admin\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/americanmovershub.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/b68c8483906c0d2987f271455f0177af\"},\"headline\":\"Meet the resilient Utah \u2018CEO of the Year\u2019 behind the hidden door\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-05-25T06:35:13+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/americanmovershub.com\\\/?p=679\"},\"wordCount\":1063,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/americanmovershub.com\\\/?p=679#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/americanmovershub.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/05\\\/8976657f4873a7877ab3dc83ef54d83b.avif\",\"articleSection\":[\"Interesting\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/americanmovershub.com\\\/?p=679#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/americanmovershub.com\\\/?p=679\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/americanmovershub.com\\\/?p=679\",\"name\":\"Meet the resilient Utah \u2018CEO of the Year\u2019 behind the hidden door - 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