At All Garage Door Repair, Monty’s cards still hang beside the doors he fixed
After her brother Monty died, Dionne Stein kept his Aurora garage door company going with one technician and the business cards he left beside every door he serviced.
Aurora, CO
When Monty finished a garage door job, he did one more thing before he left. He put his business card on the wall beside the door. A spring repair got a card. So did a new installation. He did not leave cards on doors he happened to drive past, his sister says. The card went up only after the work was done. “Anything he ever serviced, regardless of repair or install, he would attach his business card to the wall right next to the door,” says Dionne Stein.
Sometimes years pass. Then a spring snaps, the door will not lift, and the homeowner walks out to the garage to see what happened. The card is right there on the wall.
“The first thing they do is go out and find a broken garage door and then they see the card, so we’re the first people they call,” Stein says.
Monty founded All Garage Door Repair in Aurora, and the company dates itself to 2008. A note on its website, written in his voice, recalls his first repair as a new business owner: a family locked out of their home on a cold night because the garage door was jammed. He died in 2024. Stein kept the company going with Chris, the technician who was already taking jobs for her brother. She describes it as her version, and Chris’s, of keeping Monty’s memory alive. “The company is in honor and in memory of Monty,” she says.
All Garage Door Repair is a small outfit. “We’re really small and we have low overhead,” Stein says. It replaces broken springs and cables, repairs openers and damaged panels, puts doors back on their tracks and installs new ones. The company’s website says it carries high-cycle springs and openers from LiftMaster, Genie and Chamberlain, and that it includes a 26-point safety check and balance with its repairs. Jobs run from Aurora south to Castle Rock and north to the Thornton and Broomfield area.
It works on homes and on businesses, and Stein sees the trade-off clearly. “Catch 22,” she says. “I think the residential work is a little easier to come by, but the commercial work pays a lot better.”
Monty liked to see a problem before he drove to it. One customer whose spring broke wrote that Monty texted back, asked for photos of the door and springs, quoted the job over the phone and showed up the next morning with the right parts.
He also knew what he was looking at once he got there. Another customer had a whole new door system put in after someone drove into his garage, and a spring broke not long after. Monty found that the two springs on the door did not match. The smaller one had been carrying uneven tension until it gave out, so he replaced both with correctly sized heavy-duty springs.
Other customers wrote that he talked them through small fixes and maintenance they could handle on their own, which meant no visit at all.
The company still starts with a picture. Its website tells customers that texting a photo of the door is the fastest way to get a quote. A homeowner shopping for a replacement door wrote that Stein quoted the job from photos and knew how long a gray door with windows would take to arrive. Instead of making the customer wait, she offered to have a stock white door painted to match within two days.
Stein does not do the repairs. “I have a technician that does all of the work for me,” she says. “I don’t touch parts.” She books the jobs, and Chris goes out and does them. He is the company’s only technician. Stein calls him fantastic, and one of those rare people who actually loves garage door work.
Customers met him well before the company changed hands. In a 2023 review, one wrote that a spring had broken and the door could not lift. The customer called Monty, and Chris was there the next morning. When another customer’s spring failed on a weekend, Chris came out the following day. Jason W. wrote in a Google review that his door was repaired within an hour and was balanced better than it had ever been. The company makes the same point on its website, where it says a properly balanced and aligned door shows from the street.
Stein also works full time for a nonprofit, so the phone is where she does her share of the work, and she treats it as the share that matters most. “The key to the garage door business is first call,” she says. “If you answer the phone on the first call, you get that job. If you don’t, then the next person they call who picks up, that’s who’s actually going to get the job.” A few people shop around, she says, “but not many.”
She did not take the company on with big plans. “Initially my goal was just to honor my brother and keep his memory going,” she says.
Some of Monty’s cards have been kept a long time. One customer called about a tune-up years after his first job with the company. Robert B. wrote in a Google review that he had used the company about 10 years earlier and had held on to its business card. Monty did not send anyone out. He walked the man through the steps over the phone, and the customer did the tune-up himself.