Community Highlights: Meet Steven Humble of Creative Home Engineering and HiddenDoorStore

Today we’d like to introduce you to Steven Humble.

Hi Steven, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today. 
I earned a degree in Mechanical Engineering from BYU and worked for Boeing Honeywell and, most recently, a small medical device company before starting my own business. I was always interested in secret passageways, but as a young engineer in 2003, I was surprised to learn that there was absolutely no company anywhere that specialized in making secret passageways for residential applications.

After a great deal of thought and market research, I eventually made the decision to quit my job, move back in with my parents, and use my meager savings to start a business. I bought a computer that I could use for CAD and soon after started making them for residential clients.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not, what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
It has not been smooth. The housing crisis of 2008 nearly broke my small company and the stress of that had literal effects on my health, but it also taught me some important lessons about cashflow management that enabled the company to grow after the crisis ended.

For example, only as a result of that experience did I start forecasting cash flow meticulously and maintaining a rainy day reserve fund. Years later, that fund made it possible for us to buy our own building, which lowered expenses and also made it possible for us to purchase additional equipment to expand our capabilities.

Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Creative Home Engineering and HiddenDoorStore?
Creative Home Engineering is our flagship brand, which specializes in making extremely high-end, high-security, motorized, and heavily customized secret passageway systems, while HiddenDoorStore specializes in making high-quality, affordable, and predesigned secret doors. Readers should understand that this business was never about making the most money humanly possible. I would have done many things differently if that were my goal.

Instead, my driving motivation has always been to make the best secret doors that money can buy. It’s only fun and satisfying for me (and our team) if the end result blows people away. There is so much extra effort that goes into making a secret door system that extra a little bit better, but figuring that out gets us excited to come to work in the morning.

Is there something surprising that you feel even people who know you might not know about?
When I started this business there was no contractor’s license that existed for secret passageways. So I petitioned the Registrar of Contractors to create a new license called “Residential Passageway Systems”, and to this day we are the only company that has this license.

Pricing:

• Motorized Rotating Fireplace: starting at $35K
• Custom Bookcase Wall Unit: starting at $15K
• Bulletproof Vault Mirror Door: starting at $6K
• Predesigned single bookcase: Starting at $2500
• Self-assemble bookcase: $999

Contact Info:

• Website: Hiddenpassageway.com and Hiddendoorstore.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hidden_passageway
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CreativeHomeEngineering
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@HiddenPassageways 

Image Credits
Creative Home Engineering