349 | Winning Customer Trust by Owning Early Ecomm Mistakes | with Jeremy Barker

Jeremy Barker is the founder and CEO of Murphy Door, best known for transforming hidden doors and space-saving furniture into a thriving direct-to-consumer brand. From humble beginnings to Fortune’s Most Innovative Companies 2025, Jeremy has built Murphy Door into the industry leader in functional design and custom craftsmanship.

With Murphy Door, Jeremy is redefining what it means to blend utility, aesthetics, and engineering. What started as a bold idea, turning bookcases into fully functional hidden doors has scaled into a multi-million-dollar business recognized nationwide. By combining product innovation with viral social media, Murphy Door has grown from scrappy startup to household name.

Jeremy’s story blends grit with vision. From serving as a firefighter and paramedic, to living out of his car while learning how to face failure head-on, to now running one of America’s most innovative companies, he’s proof that persistence and transparency can turn customers into lifelong advocates.

Whether you’re scaling a DTC brand, looking to harness social media for growth, or exploring how AI and software can reshape customer experience, Jeremy offers an unfiltered look at what it takes to build with purpose and why owning mistakes early is the fastest path to building trust.

In This Conversation We Discuss:

• [00:43] Intro
• [01:16] Turning bold ideas into real products
• [02:04] Growing sales with early Facebook ads
• [07:05] Securing patents to gain attention
• [09:32] Stay updated with new episodes
• [09:42] Turning mistakes into loyal fans
• [14:56] Managing expectations with transparency
• [17:08] Simplifying processes to prevent confusion
• [19:00] Owning mistakes to improve clients’ trust
• [20:11] Episode Sponsors: Electric Eye & Heatmap
• [22:52] Leveraging partnerships to fuel growth
• [24:01] Empowering customers to tell stories
• [26:42] Rewarding referrals with revenue share
• [31:12] Learning to test before scaling spend
• [34:53] Preventing conflicts with partner clarity

Resources:

• Subscribe to Honest Ecommerce on Youtube
• Custom-built, multi-purpose hideaway doors murphydoor.com/ 
• Follow Jeremy Barker linkedin.com/in/jeremy-barker-02007648 
• Schedule an intro call with one of our experts electriceye.io/connect
• Clear, real-time data built for ecommerce optimization heatmap.com/honest 

If you’re enjoying the show, we’d love it if you left Honest Ecommerce a review on Apple Podcasts. It makes a huge impact on the success of the podcast, and we love reading every one of your reviews!

Transcript

Jeremy Barker

That whole $4 million, $5 million that we spent in that channel was the wrong market. We built the commercial around them. We built the advertising and ad spend around them. And as the product ages, the people that were actually buying the product were not those people at all. 

Chase Clymer

The first year going from zero to something, $30,000 in sales, and this is just the hinges. So sounds like you're selling a lot of hinges to hit that $30,000 mark. How did you find those customers? 

Jeremy Barker

So $150 a piece. So you can do the math. It was roughly 2000 hardware sets that we sold that year. Those customers were all on Facebook, Pinterest, Facebook, social media marketing was really the drive. It is a lot. But  there was nothing like it.  

Chase Clymer

Honest Ecommerce is a weekly podcast where we interview direct-to-consumer brand founders and leaders to find out what it takes to start, grow, and scale an online business today.

Hey, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of Honest Ecommerce. Today, I'm welcoming the show Jeremy Barker. He is the visionary behind Murphy Door, driving its growth from humble beginnings to becoming an industry leader, even earning the award for one of America's most innovative companies in 2025 in Fortune magazine. Jeremy, welcome to the show. 

Jeremy Barker

Hey, thank you so much for having me, Chase. I appreciate you. 

Chase Clymer

Absolutely. Now, for those that are unaware, what are the actual types of products that you're selling over there at Murphy Door?

Jeremy Barker

So Murphy Door is known mostly for our hidden doors, secret rooms, kind of panic room thing, that big craze of bookcase door systems, wall moving systems. But we also do the infamous  Murphy bed. We build a ton of custom Murphy beds for people, as well as fully functional hidden accessories in the house, like your fold down shelving systems and your wall vaults that just look like pictures that slide over. 

So anything that has multifunction, even arm wars or dressers. Anything that has more than one function or that you need more than one function we’ll create. Our deal is we'll create whatever it is that you can think about that you're trying to be a little more sneaky with or that you want multifunction and we create your dream and your vision. 

Chase Clymer

That's amazing. Now take me back in time. Where did the idea for this business come from? 

Jeremy Barker

So I was a full-time firefighter paramedic in Weaver County at Royce Fire  for my career. And it's a really tight business to try to make a living at, although it's probably the best job you could ever ask for. It's just not getting rich quick in any means. So I was on a firefighter wage trying to build a kit for kids, a theater room in our little house. 

And when I say theater room, I want you to know it's like a four chair fold out theater room. It's not anything great. So I wanted to make it, we're in a neighborhood that has some money. So I wanted to make it somewhat cool. And the kids are kind of sacrificing a little bit on the coolness of the theater.

So I could make a really cool ticket booth style door to go into the booth or to go into the door system. I thought that would be great. I'd seen another gentleman that was selling bookcase door systems. And I thought, “Hey, there's something I could do there.” So that was kind of the idea from him. He had some bookcase doors that he was selling on one off. Like, man, I want to build a theater room door with that same type of concept. But it was 2012 and there wasn't really anything like it. 

So I spent a lot of time on Pinterest and was trying to figure out ways to make the hardware work or make these doors pivot because they're not normal doors. That door that I built, the first door was like 16 inches deep. And so to allow that to pivot through the doorway and give you room to still pass through was always a challenge. Like right out the gate, starting with standard hinges like the three hinges you'll mount on the side. And that door was so heavy, it just peeled the side of the bookcase off. And then I thought, well, I'll go with the piano hinge. And of course, it does the same thing because you're still only the fasteners into the bookshelves themselves. That's what's holding it together.

So I decided we needed to come up with some way to make these books pivot without having all the weight bearing on the side and letting it sag. So initially Murphy Door started around the idea of building a hardware set. It wasn't to build the cabinets. I thought, well, if I created cool hardware, and by the way, there is some pivot hardware out there, it was called Rixen and it was like $300, but you needed some equipment to mortise the hinge. And I didn't have any of that type of equipment. So I wanted to create a surface mounted hinge. 

And I did it and I, of course, spent $5,000 to create a hinge when I was trying to save money. Really dumb move, but we got a cool hardware out of the deal and initially launched into the hardware world. And my first year in business, we incorporated in December 2012. And our first year at 13, we made $30,000 in hinges. And it was a great side jump to fire, be honest with you. And I thought, well, that's a great lift and it's going to be awesome. And then we signed a company called Rockler and they ended up bringing us from 30,000 to 105,000 the second year.

All the while from the beginning, we did build a website. That's where we created that $30,000. I'd never built a website. It was really rough. It was a sketch. A bunch of pictures off Pinterest. I'm like, we could probably pivot that and we can probably pivot that. 

Chase Clymer

But the first product, just one product, was just this new way to do a hinge. 

Jeremy Barker

Correct. To try to make a bookcase door system work. And that was the baseline of the business. Well, the second year when we started selling more hinges, people were asking us if we could build the bookcase. They were interested in the bookcase store, not necessarily the hinges. 

And again, I'm not a cabinet maker by trade, which ended up being a huge benefit, by the way, because you were able to surround yourselves with professionals and learn how to do things the right way. So I found a local cabinet guy up in Rigby, Idaho, a company called Merrillat Cabinets. 

And Chris Merrill was kind enough to help me design the first iterations of Murphy Door and he would build a bookcase, I would put the hinges on it and we'd ship it to the customer. So the second year we did a hundred grand, the third year we did 1,050,000, I believe. So that was a huge spike for us. And we really were going back and forth to rig Idaho quite a bit to get those bookcase carcasses. Our doors were significantly more expensive. 

And you know, when you're building a website, especially when you don't have a showroom, you don't have reviews and you don't have customers and your website's janky, it's really hard to convince customers to spend $3,000 on a company they've never heard of with a product that's really hard to find. So there was so much learning. How do you do your marketing? I had no money. You know what I mean? I really was living paycheck to paycheck per se. 

So thank goodness Facebook wasn't as strict back then. You could really start getting some traction fairly early. And we got to a quarter million followers pretty fast. And that was kind of where we generated our leads and would get ourselves and we do one door one week and then it went to two and then four, the standard story. But we ended up getting lucky enough to be put on a DIY I want that episode from Discovery Networks. 

And it helped us a ton. It literally saved my bacon. It launched the night before my Amex payment was due. And I owed like $9,000 to Amex that next morning. And we had a couple of web sales that just was enough to pay my Amex payment. Otherwise, it was that deadline like, we're shutting you off tomorrow and it's no more. I'm like, “Oh crap.” Yeah, it was that scary type of messaging. So it's been a ride, man. 

Chase Clymer

No, I got a million questions. First and foremost, the first year, going from zero to something. $30,000 in sales. And this is just the hinges. 

Jeremy Barker

Yeah. 

Chase Clymer

So sounds like you're selling a lot of hinges to hit that $30,000 mark. How do you find those customers? 

Jeremy Barker

So $150 a piece. So you can do the math. It was roughly 2000 hardware sets that we sold that year. Those customers were all on Facebook. Pinterest, Facebook, social media marketing was really the drive. It is a lot. But there was nothing like it. Were you getting into paid ads and doing it that way or more organic? No, I had no money to really do the paid ads. So I played with it.  And remember the old Facebook marketing schema kind of deal that they used. It was like, boost your ads, get followers. 

Chase Clymer

Yeah. 

Jeremy Barker

Like you really didn't know how that was supposed to work. So I would get followers and then I'd pivot over. I'm like, “Crap, I don't really know.” And my budgets were low because I was really truly paycheck to paycheck.You'd sell a hinge. And our hinges back then, I have good margins on the hinges to be fully transparent. I mean, our cost to make them here in the United States is around 28 bucks. 

And we were selling for 149. And a lot of the reason was I was paying back, payment for the patent attorney and the design and so forth. And I had to make myself back in place. But anyway, that was  how we got the first 2000 customers. Really, it was social media and a little bit of Facebook ads, but not Google. 

Chase Clymer

And so you said the patent attorney. Did you guys end up with a patent on that product? 

Jeremy Barker

Oh, yeah. It's patented and it took a few years to get all that done. As you know how that process works. We got a DIN, it got patents issued. It was fully standalone.

Chase Clymer

Yeah. Patents are. My favorite thing about them, it just reminds me of Shark Tank. Whenever someone drops that, everyone starts to pay attention. Normally, before that, they're just like, “Yeah, this is a thing, whatever.” But once you say that this is a patented technology, that's when people really start to pay attention. 

Jeremy Barker

They do. And I don't know how to feel about patents. I have a lot. I think I probably have 25 patents now. They really just make you feel good. Truly, people, really hard to chase and you're spending a bunch of money to chase. And we do it. It's not in vain. But at the same time, I feel like we waste a lot of time in the rearview mirror chasing people down. So trying to mimic us when we can just improve our business, improve our customer experience and really just have that footprint. 

Chase Clymer

Increase your moat. 

Jeremy Barker

Yeah, exactly.

Chase Clymer 

Hey everybody, just a quick reminder. Please like this video and subscribe if you haven't. We're releasing interviews like this every week, so don't miss out. Now back to the interview.

Alright, so you guys start to sell the actual doors. Now, you're going from hinges that fit in a padded envelope. Maybe not. 

Jeremy Barker

Little box. 

Chase Clymer

To this door-sized behemoth. How much was the learning curve like shipping and fulfillment and where like just that part of it? 

Jeremy Barker

You know I love that question because it was so freaking hard. It was so hard. Here's the deal. So we're building bookcase stores. It's not a door. So imagine bringing in these freight brokers and you're like, “Hey, man, I need to do this door. How do we ship it? Well, is it a bookcase?” Because the bookcase has a different freight code. And I didn't know what a freight code was.  That's how they price it. If you imagine if you're shipping lead, it's like a freight code 50 because it's a lot of weight in a small space.

But if you're shipping, say, empty water bottles, you're going to be a freight code 500 because it's a lot of space, no weight. And they need to make money in one channel or the other. Bookcases had a lower freight code than a door. So you got a better rate on bookcases. Well, so we were going through and our average price to ship in 2013, 2014 was a couple hundred, 250 a door, let's say. 

Well, they came out to us and UPS was bidding on our product to ship our stuff, UPS logistics or freight line because you can't put them in your brown UPS trucks or semi trucks. And now they say, “We can move every door you have for one hundred and sixty five dollars around the country.” And like, “Wow, that's a better deal. Let's go that way.” 

Well, we ended up shipping under this agreement that was about sixty thousand dollars in freight that we agreed to ship through. Well, after we got our first invoicing, it was 60 grand. Well, they ended up coming back and saying, “Hey, sorry, this isn't a freight code 85. This is a freight code 250.” So you can imagine that's triple.

Right. Because it's 85 is one price and then it's three X greater than that. And I'm like, “Dude, I can't afford $200,000 in freight. Like how you bid me out at 160.” Well, the freight inspector for UPS looked at it and said, “Hey, you said it's a bookcase. Even your brand said it's a door. It says Murphy door.” I'm like, “Well, it's really not a door until it's hanging on a hinge, right?” Until it's hanging in your doorway. Otherwise, it's just a bookcase. So it's disputable on what it is. 

We spent a lot of time getting the legal FHTSA freight code that we needed. There was no real way to price it. It took forever. How do you insure it? Because is it furniture? Is it a door?  It was such a battle. Freight was absolutely the thing that drove me nearly to bankruptcy while we were in the startup mode. And as you're learning how to freight, so learning how to ship these products, man, we broke one out of two at first as they go in. How do you package it? How do you ship it? How do you frame it?

It was tough, man. I'll tell you what I'm getting through, I feel bad for my first thousand customers. Let's just put it that way, whether it be quality issues with the door, engineering issues that I mean, these look like a bookcase, they swing like a door, they are not built like a cabinet at all. Even though aesthetically, they are a cabinet, they are not engineered at all the same. And those first thousand customers paid a consequence of having to have a lot of warranty work. 

And thank goodness they were patient and we covered their warranties and fixed all the problems we caused literally on payment plans. I'd be like, “Hey Chase, bro. Yeah, that door's a bad deal. And I'm really, really sorry, but  I'm broke and I'm a firefighter, but I will never leave you in the dark. Can we work it out that I'll make some money as I sell some more doors and I'm going to build your door as soon as I can afford it. Also begging you for us a little bit of patience as we learn these and we get you the right thing.” But I'd had some of those early onset customers that tried to replace the door more than three times. 

Chase Clymer

You stood behind your product and you also made customers for life out of that.  

Jeremy Barker

100%. But I can say that, thank goodness they were the right customers and they understood that we were new and we were transparent and we were honest. And I think in my first business, I think we talked about this initially, but I'd done a shed business in my early age that I went bankrupt in. And what was hard for me was to do the hard phone calls. So I'd stick my head in the sand. People would call me angry. Bill collectors would call me.

And I made a lot of money early, but I didn't know how to get the bad news. I knew how to tell everybody about the good news and all my wins. Like, “Hey, look, I'm doing so great.” But then when people were angry, I didn't know what to do with that. And so I avoided it. And one of my missions after that, I drove my car for a year and learned how to do hard things. 

That was part of my learning curve in my car was like, dude, you can do something hard for a long time and avoid bad, hard phone calls. Because that was what led to my ultimate demise of that business was something that I really took home. So when shit starts, pardon me, but when shit hit the fan, truly it was like, I got to call these customers. I'm going to call it now. I'm going to rip the band-aid off. I'm going to own up to it that we're learning. 

And this was the first time we built that style door. Like it was a challenge and it's not what you think it is, but I'll tell you what the blessing is. Those customers to your point, they were my biggest cheerleaders. did not give me bad reviews. Imagine your first, you know, dozen customers giving you a one star dead in the water. You're not pulling yourself out of it. So to avoid that, I just stayed ahead of it, man. I had to. 

Chase Clymer

Absolutely. And I think that this is almost even outside of business logic. This goes into just how you live your life. When you let those hard conversations linger, you get.The anxiety about it is worse than the outcome of the conversation 9 times out of 10. 

Jeremy Barker

100%, Chase. Doesn't it feel good when you finally get out the phone? And as soon as you learn how to be like,”Okay, I've to do it now. I'm going to just do it now.” And I'm hit and sent.  We've all put that phone number in the phone and be like, I don't want this to be like, I can't tell this person the bad news. 

And now it's just easy. Unfortunately, and fortunately, I did fire for a long time. And there's some time you're having to say some really, really bad news to people when they like, “How's my dad? And you're having to tell them that they're no longer with us.” It was like you in the MS, it's their dad. You can't give them like they've gone to a better place. 

So that kind of conditioning of being able to tell people really bad news helped. And then the experience of living in my car and committing to myself to do hard things was kind of the stack that has made this piece easier. I mean, we're in business. This is a trial and error thing every single day. Fortunately, we've had 200,000 experiences with customers now on doors alone. We're pretty good at it, but we still make mistakes and we still have problems and doors still have a tendency to fail.

These are unique one-off pieces that we've never done and we run them through a ton of engineering before. Man, and some of these clients, you all know who they are. You've seen them on all the social media. They're the biggest names on the planet and you cannot make them mad. And as long as you're just acting proactively saying, “Man, here's the deal. It's our first one, with a 99.9% success rate, but there's a chance that it's going to be bad. But we got you. We will be back here as many times as it takes. It’s gonna be a pain in your butt if I have to come back.” 

I call it the inoculation theory with my guys. Just tell them all the things that could go wrong upfront and then remind them that we talked about it if that is to occur. And they'll believe that you're 100% of the time things going wrong, even though it's point one, because it's their experience. So you have to walk it so delicately and make sure that you're there for them. Even if they're unrealistic or, you know, being unrealistic or being jerks, just be there and be calm and help them.

Chase Clymer

Yeah. I especially think those are some of the unique nuances of your particular industry because it also needs to be installed correctly, which is a different level of sophistication for the product. And the price point leans more to luxury than commodity. With that, they expect perfection almost. 

Jeremy Barker

Yeah. I mean, we have doors that are 30 grand, 50 grand, depending on what you want to do.  Not just the door, but when you're talking about a full wall system. They expect it to be like a new car. It needs to work. It needs to operate the delivery experience and so on. We don't do the install. 

And fortunately, we've made them as easily or as easy as we possibly can. But you still need a qualified guy that understands plumb level, depths. They have to get it in order to make these things operate. 

Chase Clymer

I could see some of these customer service complaints being the fault of someone that didn't know what they were doing installing it and you guys having to navigate that.

Jeremy Barker

We do. We've had them installed upside down. We've had them installed, you know, everything wrong. But here's the thing. It's easy to blame that installer. But ultimately, it is our fault. It is our fault that they did it wrong. And here's why. 

We weren't clear enough on how they did it, what way was up, which way was down, how they were, what they were expecting. Any mistakes, even if, I mean, unreasonable or unrealistic mistakes by these customers, if there's a point of confusion, we need to take some form of equity for that so we can ensure the customer understands from its easiest lane, like a kindergartner, that there's no room for that. 

Now, there is time. We've done a pretty good job now to indicate, and there's still mistakes. Sometimes people are just in a hurry, right? But we need to weigh it out. And were they in a hurry or is it us who have done something wrong. And you have to take every one of those into consideration. 

Chase Clymer

Yeah. What you just said there reminded me of Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink. Have you read that? 

Jeremy Barker

I love that book. 

Chase Clymer

Yeah. I was like, I'm pretty sure you've read that book.  

Jeremy Barker

Yep. 100%. But ultimately, it comes from failing. Because it's easy when you first lose to point the blame at everybody else. Because we don't want to say we're the failure. We're all pride. We all feel like we're the best at what we do.

And you should feel that way. It's the right way to feel because you shouldn't be doing something if you're not quite the best. You could learn it, but if you're going to charge for it, you need to at least try to be the very best. And it's easy to say, “Hey, it's Chase's fault, it's Ben's fault, it's everybody else's fault that didn't happen.” But if you're sitting as the chair, you're the chief executive or the president of the company, ultimately it's you. 

And if you can understand how to lose and fail well, and I know that that's kind of mundane now. Everybody uses generic. But there's something to it if you dig into it.  It's like, man, what can I learn here? And how do I make sure that never happens again? I mean, it's not saying you'll never make another mistake, but you better not make that same mistake more than once or twice. Otherwise, you're not being the best you and you're not giving the best to your clients.

Chase Clymer

“I have been in business for nearly 20 years, and very few companies I have hired in that time have performed as well as Electric Eye. They have knowledgeable staff, and our project was delivered on time and on budget. Electric Eye has exceeded my expectations, and I look forward to working with them again.”

That is a direct quote from one of our clients at Electric Eye. 

Electric Eye is a Shopify Plus partner that has helped over 100 brands migrate, redesign, and optimize their stores since 2016.

If you'd like to increase your conversion rate, average order value, and revenue per session, we are the true Shopify experts you've been looking for. 

Right now, we're offering a free diagnostic to qualified brands that reach out and mention the podcast. Visit electriceye.io today to schedule a call and send us a message. Find out why we have over 50 5-star reviews in the Shopify Partner Directory. Again, that's electriceye.io.  E-L-E-C-T-R-I-C-E-Y-E.io 

You’re investing in paid traffic, email, influencers, you’re doing everything. But your store’s still not converting like it should.That’s the hidden cost nobody talks about.

If you don’t know why people aren’t buying, you’re constantly losing money.

“Whenever conversion rate optimization comes up with brands, the first thing I ask is what they’re using for analytics and behavior tracking. Heatmap.com is my go-to recommendation because it’s the only platform I’ve seen that connects user behavior directly to sales. That kind of visibility is critical for ecommerce brands trying to grow.”

That’s why we tell every client at Electric Eye to install Heatmap.

It shows you what’s working and what isn’t, using real behavior data tied directly to revenue. You get live heatmaps. Session recordings. Funnels. And attribution down to the specific product page.

This isn’t just another analytics dashboard. It’s a revenue optimizer.

And right now, Honest Ecommerce listeners get the hookup, 14-day free trial, The Ultimate 150-Point CRO Checklist, and free setup by us. Electric Eye will drop the code and configure it for you.

So don’t waste another dollar guessing. Visit heatmap.com/honest and start seeing what your customers see. Because clarity truly equals revenue.

Chase Clymer

Now let's hop back to the growth of Murphy Door. 

Jeremy Barker

Sure. 

Chase Clymer

You guys went from 30 to 100 and some changed up to just past a million. 

Jeremy Barker

Yep.

Chase Clymer

What was the gas and what fire were you pouring it on in year two? 

Jeremy Barker

So 100 grand was Rockler. So we went from 30 and that was just social media ads. The 100,000 was Rockler. It's a hardware company that sells a little special woodworking hardware for DIYers. And then after that was the DIY pickup that they put us on some TV stuff. And then that really started to launch. They gave us some awareness. They gave us some credibility.

We ended up getting a couple of good-sized clients that people knew. And so that trend. One thing that I've known with hidden doors, by the way, and Murphy Door, is if somebody in the neighborhood gets it, then the next thing you're delivering 10 to that zip code within the next 30 days. just  nobody can keep secret doors a secret. It's just a secret. Like, “Hey, look, they're gonna have to show it off.” It's what they want to do. 

Chase Clymer

Yeah. I guess I need to ask a direct question that I'm starting to realize about the business model: while you are selling these directly to consumers, you are also collaborating with almost third-party sellers or contractors to also be advocates for the brand. So how do you delineate those marketing or growth avenues? 

Jeremy Barker

So we don't actually do that. It's inherent. So in the very beginning, let's clarify this. In the very beginning, they did that on their own. It was the product that gave it the unique opportunity to kind of brag for itself and customers want to share that story. We don't have a direct to contractor type market, but we do sell like Home Depot and we have hardware on Amazon and so forth. That came later. So in 2012, we incorporated 2013, we did 30. In 2014, we did 100. In 2015, we did 1.1. In 2016, we got to 2.2.

That's where we got to Home Depot. And that's our second marketplace that paid. So what we realized at that point is  Home Depot's were great because they were, you know, bought online and that gave us a marketplace and honestly like a trust badge. So where we were hoping for in the big box game was showrooming and associates that could share the product story a little bit.

And what I did also find out is they turn customers or turn employees quite a bit. So it's hard to train an employee there. And then the next thing you know, you have a new guy the next day. So there were pros and cons to the big box game. We're still with them. But what I did want to figure or what I was trying to figure out is how do I build showrooms? Because you think you're going to buy 3,000, 4,000, 5,000, $10,000 doors. Our lowest one's about $1,400 right now or $1,200. So if you're going to spend that kind of money, most people want to see it. But we didn't have that luxury and we still don't. We have one showroom in Kentucky and one in Utah.

That is it. So we decided, we started in about 2018 or 19 with this software brand that we started developing internally that empowered our customers to share their story with future customers via Zoom link, which is called purebrand.io. And it's directly now connected to Shopify as an app, but it does some awesome work. gives that 100%, I call it 360 review. They can ask the good, bad and the uglies about your product.

And get a two-sided answer rather than, it's a 1-star or a 5-star. You get to hear the whole experience from a client standing in front of one of your products. And hopefully, it's your neighbor. And that's really helped us grow. We got to $1,000,000, $2.2, almost $5. And then it went to $7.50. We went from $7.50 to $14, $14 to $23. And then on up to $36 and so on. Or excuse me, $31. 

Chase Clymer

Now with that brand advocacy software that you guys launched, Purebrand. 

Jeremy Barker

Yep. Yep. 

Chase Clymer

How does that benefit me? And if I'm another brand listening to it, give me a use case, a better example. Walk me through it. 

Jeremy Barker

You're sure because you're gonna want it. So here's what is awesome for you. So number one, let's say you're just you and you make epoxy coffee tables in your garage. And they're a $10,000 beautiful hardwood epoxy coffee table. Those cool ones like the river that runs through it.

And you're saying, “Hey, I need showrooms because I want somebody to see my beautiful craftsmanship.” Well, you got a ten thousand dollar coffee table. You're not going to Ashley Furniture, R.C. Willie, our house and picking you up as a one off, you know, custom coffee maker guy. And they're not going to pay you, you know, if your wholesale price is seven thousand  to just go put them in displays to see how they do. It's just not real. But if you can say, “Hey, look, I sold one and I can convince you.” So, Chase, you're selling me a coffee table and you say, “Hey, Jeremy, I appreciate you trusting me.

I know you paid $10,000. It would be awesome if you're willing to share your story with future customers that come to my website.” We'd offer them a $100 gift card to talk to you  rather than me for their purchase. And I'll give you $50 if you take the call or $20. You decide whatever you want to pay them or pay me to take the call and share my story. We've empowered that client to immediately say, schedule with the customer now. It's like an Uber ride. Put in your name, your phone number and email address.

And it'll text message anybody around your area with the product you're looking at. So for example, for you, I'd give you a shot on your website. I'd say, “Want to talk to a Royal customer?” I'll say, “I want to talk to him now. It sends a text message to your only client.”

And I'm able to say, “Hey, I can do it right now, but let's schedule a call tomorrow at noon.” We do our little Zoom conversation and I can say how great that experience was. Now for you, you'll end up getting a back dashboard that you log into and you're able to watch that video.

You'll hear my experiences, the pros, the goods, the bads, the uglies. You'll hear the questions that that customer has that maybe you couldn't find on your website about what to expect. And he's like, hey, you can hear those questions. then transcribe it. And we also will forward the pros and cons of the conversation to you. And then your action plan to make that happen, either help close that client or help fix your website or shopping experience in the future.

Now, one thing that I did for Murphy Door, and this is just full transparency, we're not public, but you can see it with pure Murphy door gets just about 10 million visitors a year to our website. And we convert points to four percent. So it's still a lot of numbers. However, a lot of our traffic is young kids, the Barbie door, the Batcave, that kind of game. So they're just dreaming, which I love because in five years they'll be buying a door. 

But the people that use sheer brands that say, want to save $100, get a $100 gift card for talking to a customer. That conversion rate is 47%. 47%. Because now they're talking to an actual customer, not a salesman. They're not being sold, they're being educated. So that's the first layer. Second layer, those videos can be used for advertising and user generated content. When you say, yes, I'll do the call, you've released us to say, “Hey, we can use it for advertising and educational purposes.”

If you don't agree, we fog out your face, right? So that you can't see it. But the host doesn't have the choice because you're paying them a little money. And at that point, you can put it up on Instagram, TikTok, those little conversations about you and your brand on one-on-ones. The next cool thing is when the host, which would be the last customer, uploads our app to their phone so they can keep track of their earnings. We also pay them a 2% conversion. If the customer ends up buying, we give them 2% of that sale price. 

Now when they bring it to their phone, it takes all their contacts, drops it into your store. And then when any of their friends potentially come to your website and they can say, “Hey, by the way, Jeremy has a coffee table. Why don't you just call him? He's a buddy of yours and talk to him or talk to him about his experience with Chase.” Right. So that's the other cool piece about it is it minds that and then it keeps track of friends and reintroduces them to one another.  So that makes it really kind of unique.

There's a lot more horsepower behind this software that gives you a lot of keys. And by the way, Purebrand only charges for up and to the right. So anytime somebody converts, we charge a 3-5 % rate of things that we can prove. The meeting was scheduled, the meeting was held, the customer converted. And so we charge a rate on that. 

Chase Clymer

Absolutely. No, that's amazing. And the intent behind it is so much  more powerful. If I'm going to take time out of my day to talk to someone about a product. I basically am trying to find a reason to not buy it or to buy it. You know what I mean? Because the intent is definitely there. We've talked about so much today, Jeremy. Is there anything I didn't ask you about that you think would resonate with our audience?

Jeremy Barker

We've done a few different products that have done really well like our Murphy Ladder piece. You know what I mean? That was also a website hit. I think something that we learned from Murphy Ladder. So that went from 0 15 million in the first year of business. It's a fold-up ladder. We used a very reputable

I'm not going to say their name because they're great. And I love the advertising campaign. They've built some of the most viral commercials in history. So you probably know who I'm talking about. And we paid about a million three for the advertising campaign behind it. And then we boosted that ad spend with another two and a half million dollars in ad spend that year to get that message out there. At the end of the day, I think the learning curve is  that you can do just as good by building your own company brand.

As you can on doing these huge viral  launches. And I believe a lot of people think they need to go out and spend this ginormous amount of money to get the right marketing campaign and  saturate markets. Now don't get me wrong, we got a Webby and a Telly out of that. I mean, we got a ton of views on this commercial. However, it didn't resonate necessarily in the spend or to the money. So the cost per conversion was through the roof. And I get a lot of phone calls on, man, was that X commercial worth it? It's called the Lateral Luchador.

It wasn't worth the money. I'm thinking about doing it. You know it's several million dollars. And I'm thinking about doing a private equity round and getting the money so I can launch that way. I would say no. I would say I would do it the harder way, get some learnings early. And I'm not saying nail it and then scale it. 

I'm saying there's a balance and there's certain things that you can do when you're really in touch with your client. When you put all your money into that basket, you pretty much brand yourself for quite a while. When you spend that kind of money, that is who you're going to be.

And what I learned is it's not necessarily who we wanted to be. It wasn't quite the message that I felt like the culture of Murphy Ladder should be. Not saying they were wrong, but you dedicate yourself to such a big huge ad spend that may not be in alignment with who you really will be when you grow up. So I would say if you're going to do those types of ad campaigns, give yourself a little bit more education on what your product really is, who your consumer really is. That was the learning curve for us the most is

Our consumer, we were thinking, was the homeowner, the town homeowner, the condo, because this ladder is like a normal ladder, but it folds into itself. If you haven't seen it, it's pretty awesome. And we thought this is great for apartment people. This is great for condos, townhomes, people with little space that don't have pickup trucks. 

It didn't turn out to be that at all. It was truly the professionals, the firefighters, the home inspectors, the realtors, the things like that. That was that whole $4 million, $5 million that we spent on that channel was the wrong market. 

We built the commercial around them. We built the advertising and ad spend around them. And as the product ages, the people that were actually buying the product were not those people at all. 

So that would, I would give a little bit of advice saying that way, like you spend a little time on your launch, make sure you understand who you are, what you're selling and who your client is  before you go dump your whole equity into something like that. You're giving equity away to someone and ownership in your business to take that gamble.That may not be the business you want it to be or who you want to be. 

Chase Clymer

That's amazing advice  and very honest. And I do appreciate it, Jeremy. Before we  started recording, you had also mentioned  to me that you just released a book. 

Jeremy Barker

Oh, yeah. Hey, so this is one of my three books I've got going right now. I've got Founder Fallout, which is the 100 Must Ask Questions Before You Share the Equity. And these are questions if you're deciding to go into a partnership or looking into private equity, or even if your spouse is in support of what you're doing, there's questions that you want to ask before you really sign that dotted line and decide that, we're going to be partners and we're going to be married together for that. 

I mean, it's like marriage, but probably worse at times because you  have some, you're talking money here. And I'll give you one example question. Like,  let's say that you want a legacy company Chase and I'm looking for an exit in five years.Have you read QBQ? The question before the question.  

Chase Clymer

I have not, but I'll put it on the list. 

Jeremy Barker

It's a great book. Most questions are layered. I'm going to ask you something but you're really trying to get to a different kind of question. But you're seeing how they feel in the first soft question to get to the harder question. 

Chase Clymer

Socratic questioning. Just keep asking why. 

Jeremy Barker

Yeah. It's just that. Just ask the why. It's layered kind of like that. And there's lessons behind each one of these like, hey, man, there is a way to make this relationship work. Even if I want to exit in five years and you want a legacy company, we need to understand how it's going to be valued, what to expect and how do we get to realistic valuations. 

 And if you get that out first, rather than walking out five years later and say, “Hey, Chase, man, I think I need to sell.” And you're sitting here like, “Hold on a second, man.” Like I was wanting to turn this over to our family members and how do I pay you because we're only five years old and I don't.

Where am I supposed to get the money? Like these are the little things that you should really discuss with one another. Like what about the guy that gets sick and then you're carrying the  workload for a year? Does that diminish his equity or does it stay the same? 

Like these are questions that you really should ask  so you don't harbor some anger in your heart. And it's going to be really hard not to be at all these different levels. So I felt like that was a book that would be really important to release. I also have one called Built From Scratch coming out, which is done. I just need to get it finished through editorial.

And it's 100 questions to ask yourself before you start a business. You know, and then my next one is ashes to empires, which is like an autobiography that just talks about going from rich to broke to rich to broke to rich again, I guess. So but that one's a fun one. And I put a lot of time and passion into that thing, trying to say, “Hey, I haven't had very many partners per se in many. And the little frustrations we have always want partnerships to be good.” And I think any time you make sure your partner is always winning.

People will be willing to partner with you, but don't forget you need to win too. And it's not wrong to both have an upside, but being clear on expectations from one another is extremely important. Business is hard enough. This isn't for the weak. It isn't for the weary. But  if there's no reason to lose, well, how about this? Lose less sleep, ask the right hard questions with one another. It's worth a day to sit down and ask each other these questions. 

There's a workbook. There's about 100 questions that are just a layout of the question. Then there's a workbook where you work out with each other. And then you see how they answer. And then there's a question note for yourself. Like, how did you feel? Are you in a moral alignment? And it doesn't matter what moral compass doesn't matter. What I'm saying is, are you in alignment? You can be good or a bad person. Are you both bad people or are you both good people?  It doesn't really matter. It's just, are you on the same page? Because that's the most important thing. 

Chase Clymer

That's amazing. If I want to learn more about Murphy Door, Murphy Ladder, any of your other companies, just you yourself. I know you have a podcast as well. Yeah. Where are you on the internet? Where can people find you? 

Jeremy Barker

Yep. I'm at jbarker482 on Instagram, Jeremy Barker on LinkedIn, and then YouTube. I think it's Jeremy Barker 482. Don't ask me about the 482 business. It has no meaning. It was just whatever assigned me from Google and now it's just riding with me.

You can find me on Facebook. Again, my book is Founder Fallout. It's available on Amazon. So there are paperbacks currently. And then there's the Kindle eRead.  

Chase Clymer

Awesome. Jeremy, thank you so much for coming on the show today.  

Jeremy Barker

Chase, you're awesome. Thank you so much for having me. It was fun.