Josh Dutcher (Rise & Shine Garage Doors)

Josh Dutcher is the co-owner of Rise & Shine Garage Doors in New Brighton. 

Originally from Blaine, Josh was in the northwest suburbs before it became cool to be a suburbanite.  

“It used to be a bunch of sod farms,” he says of his hometown.

At fourteen, Josh moved out of Blaine and into New Brighton, which ironically is the same city where I find myself on a Friday afternoon, interviewing the owner of one of the biggest garage door companies in the Twin Cities. 

For Josh, becoming a profitable entrepreneur was many years in the making. 

Before he hit a baker’s dozen years of age, he was already mowing lawns for cash. 

“I always joke that I’ve been a businessman since I was twelve,” he says with a laugh, a kaleidoscope of colors draped across his shirt and hat, a testament to how well he and his business partner have branded Rise & Shine Garage Doors. 

After high school, Josh sold cell phones, in an era when people weren’t streaming podcasts while also navigating the interstates. 

“I got in right around that boom of when everyone needed a cell phone, so sales were easy,” Josh admits. 

“But eventually everyone had a cell phone, and so then I had to learn how to sell on value and provide an excellent customer service experience. That’s actually how I learned that sales came down to the importance of listening, as opposed to talking.”

For three years, Josh helped customers adapt to new technology, but then he stopped and went to work at Comcast.

“That’s how I met Alex, my now business partner, who was actually installing garage doors at that time, and he also needed a break from his industry,” Josh recalls, the origin of a garage door entity slowly coming to fruition. 

At Comcast, Josh thought he was signing up for employment at a major corporation, and indeed he was, but he soon developed a friendship with Alex that would later morph into a business partnership in 2015 when the pair went all in on garage doors. 

“I cashed out my 401(k) early, Alex sold his house, and we did that to get our seed money going, and we turned our pickup trucks into work trucks,” Josh says, and within two months, they were already getting calls for garage door repairs and replacements. 

For the next six years, Josh and Alex grinded, working tirelessly to try to get their garage door business to the next level. 

Then, in late 2021, Josh and Alex, despite seeing an increase in annual revenue every year, felt stuck, mired in a loop of mediocrity and in desperate need of reinvigoration. 

“Things were getting stale, and we had no direction as to where to go next,” Josh remembers.  

Wanting more, they attended a conference put on by Tommy Mello, who is arguably the preeminent guru in the garage door space after turning his $7 million company in Arizona into a $200 million nationwide powerhouse. 

At the conference, Mello quite literally showed attendees the playbook for how to imitate his success.

“He also made it very clear that a lot of people at that conference were not going to do what he had done to get to the next level,” Josh says.

“But he also pointed out that for the few who were willing to put in the work, we would be the leaders in the garage door industry in the next few years.” 

On the plane ride home, Josh’s mind was buzzing, thousands of thoughts permeating inside his head.

“Fortunately, we were in a good spot because we had zero debt and we had built up a lot of cash reserves, so we had the capital to make a major move,” says Josh. 

After investing $150,000, his garage door company became Rise & Shine Garage Doors, freshly outfitted with new vehicle wraps and a CRM that could handle the influx of new business that would come as a result. 

Since making a quantum leap and rebranding an already-profitable garage door company, Josh says things have been “amazing.”

Notes Josh:

“We have tripled in size.”

At the time of this writing, Rise & Shine Garage Doors is projected to reach $7 million in revenue in 2025, following an eerily similar trajectory as the one industry titan Tommy Mello had.

“The rebrand has helped because from a marketing perspective, we are no longer forgettable,” says Josh, and one walk around his company headquarters makes that abundantly clear, because one cannot take a singular step without being blasted with a motivational quote or captivated by cleverly curated company insignia on the walls.

That being said, it’s not just an apropos name and a rooster (company mascot) that has led to the impressive ascension at Rise & Shine Garage Doors. 

Together, Josh and Alex have also fostered a work environment and a culture where employees thrive.   

“For the people who work here, it’s not just a job,” Josh insists.  

“Instead, we’re giving the talented people who walk through our doors a real opportunity to develop a sustainable career.” 

Operationally, Rise & Shine Garage Doors also became more refined, from how they train incoming employees, answer phone calls, set up jobs for the day, and even to how they offer complimentary snacks and hydration to their techs. 

“The customer service element is also super big,” Josh mentions. 

“For example, in the past, we used to try to diagnose some issues over the phone with our clients, but now we are going out to every home, no matter what, because we want to make sure our clients don’t feel neglected. We want them to be comfortable and satisfied with the work that has been done.”

Adds Josh: 

“We’re never just looking to take the easy way out. We actually welcome challenging situations because that’s where the most growth happens.”

In that sense, stagnation doesn’t creep in at one of Minnesota’s largest garage door companies. 

“For many owners, after five or six years, it’s easy for some of them to become complacent and think that they understand how the garage door industry works,” Josh says. 

“But the reality is things are always changing, and you need to be at the forefront of any innovation if you want to stay at the top of your industry. On a personal level, I don’t believe in being content because I know I have to constantly work to improve how we do things at Rise & Shine.” 

Looking ahead, Rise & Shine Garage Doors appears primed to continue capturing more market share in the Twin Cities, not because they know so much more about garage doors than their competitors, but rather because both Josh and Alex are committed to evolving, in all areas of their lives. 

“Plus, and I really want to reiterate this, we have really good systems and processes in place,” Josh says.  

“Really, that’s why we are able to look at other ways of growing the business, because we’re not as time-invested on the day-to-day operations of the company as we once were.” QS

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