Meridith Baer Home: Meridith Baer. She Started Over at 50 and Put Home Staging on the Map.

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Sign up for a free 30-day Audible trial and your first audiobook is free. Visit audible.com slash built. I've stayed in awesome homes on Airbnb in places like Athens and Berlin and Rome, and each time these places have given our family a chance to feel like locals. It's the best way to travel. Picture this. You're spending a cozy evening out of town in a home you booked on Airbnb. The space is thoughtfully designed, and you think, I bet I could host my own home on Airbnb. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at airbnb.com slash host. If you're waiting for your AI to turn into ROI, maybe you need to do more than wait. Any business can use AI. IBM helps you use AI to change how you do business. Let's create smarter business, IBM. I find that white sofas only exist in staged humps. I mean, yes, some people have them, but people who have white sofas, A, have no small children, or their children are so well-behaved, or they always wear latex gloves, or they have no pets, or they don't care about red wine. Have you ever heard of slipcovers? Welcome to How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built. I'm Guy Raz and on the show today, how a frustrated screenwriter brought her storytelling to real estate and built Meredith Bear Home, one of the biggest staging companies in the industry. In the late 1990s, something subtle but seismic started to shift in American real estate. For decades, buying a home meant spending your weekends driving from open house to open house, picking up paper flyers, and trying to remember which layout belonged to which address. But suddenly, homes were being listed on the internet. And that changed everything. Because for the first time, buyers could tour dozens of homes in a single sitting, scrolling through bedrooms and backyards long before they ever stepped inside. And with that shift came a new challenge. An empty room in an empty house simply didn't sell the dream. And it didn't photograph well. So a new idea, fairly a concept at the time, began to emerge. It was called staging, the art of giving a home just enough life to spark imagination. Trendy or artful furniture that could show what it would be like to live in that house. And that staged furniture also helped in another way. It tended to increase the sale price, sometimes by hundreds of thousands of dollars over asking. And one of the people who helped transform staging from a clever trick into an entire industry was Meredith Baer. Meredith discovered the idea almost by accident in 1998. She was 50 years old, frustrated with her career as a screenwriter in Hollywood, and pouring her energy into a house she was renting. She furnished it with tasteful pieces. She added art and plants to make the space come alive. So alive that when the owner showed the home to a potential buyer, it sold immediately. And almost as quickly, Meredith realized she might be onto something. Today, her company, Meredith Bear Home, is one of the best-known staging firms in real estate. But in this episode, we're also going to learn about Meredith's pre-staging years because her life story is a story in itself, almost like a movie. She was a teenage mom who was forced to give up her child. She acted in Pepsi commercials, appeared in cigarette ads. She wrote for Penthouse. She dated Patrick Stewart. The staging work just happened by chance. it wasn't supposed to be a business. But Meredith eventually turned her brand, Meredith Bear Home, into a major force in real estate. Now, long before she built the business, Meredith lived the early part of her life in one of the most unusual places in America, a notorious maximum security prison. From about six and a half till I was almost 13, I lived on the prison grounds at San Quentin. beautiful piece of real estate. It's incredible, right? Anybody who knows it knows it's right on the water in Marin County. It's beautiful around the bay, but of course, it's a very scary place. Tell me how, why were you living and why were you, why'd you grow up on the grounds of San Quentin? My father was an associate warden there. We lived on the grounds because we could get very close to free rent. And there was a one room schoolhouse there where I went from first through eighth grade. Wow. And we had to walk sort of from my end of the prison across this long path that looked down at inmates exercising in the yard. And then we arrived at the other end of the prison where the schoolhouse was. And we were just a bunch of kids hanging out, playing tetherball, baseball. And I was usually the only person in my grade. So I was clearly the smartest person in my grade. So do you remember, I don't know, just the security measures that had to be taken just to secure your, I mean, your home, for example, right? Because in case there was like a prison break or somebody escaped, was it? You know, it was the safest place to live. Who was going to steal my bicycle? You know, it was pretty much go out and play and come home when it's dark, that kind of a childhood. And I felt very safe. There were guards all over the place. I mean, the one thing I do remember is that when we came home, if we went into the city or went into San Rafael, when we came home, they would check our car to make sure we weren't taking any stowaways. Yeah. And there was one instance where my next door neighbors, he was also an associate warden, were tied up and an inmate got, oh, I don't know, a few blocks before he was caught. Wow. Wow. And I guess you were there until, as you say, until about eighth grade, and then you moved to Iowa because your dad got a bigger job in that state's prison system. Is that right? Yes. He became head of the prison system in Iowa. He was director of corrections for Iowa, and we lived in Des Moines. Yeah. So your dad, he was running the prison, and your mom was kind of – her project was flipping homes? Well, she did. She had a lot. My mother was an interesting woman. When we were living at San Quentin, she was bored out of her mind. So she got a law degree. And then she used to drive around looking for something to buy. My father had inherited some money and he was quickly losing it all in his investments. So my mother took what was left and bought a thousand acre ranch up in Gold Country. And we would go up every weekend and kind of stay in this little cabin up there. This is in California. Yes. Three miles from Coloma where gold was discovered in the 1800s. In the Sierra Nevadas. Yep. That's right. Sierra foothills. And so then when we moved to Des Moines, my mom took the worst acreage. We had like 50 bad acres and traded it for this mansion with 13 bedrooms. So that was she liked real estate. All right. You go to college in the mid 60s because you're going to be like a young woman right at this kind of moment in time. when there's all these huge cultural changes in America. And you went to the University of Colorado. Yes. And what was that like in the mid-60s? Was it, I mean, I think, I'm thinking 65 is the beginning of, like, the free speech movement at Berkeley, and then late 60s it gets crazy, right? Totally, yes. But was the University of Colorado more conservative, or did it feel like things were changing? Oh, things were definitely changing. I mean, certainly by 67 or so, everybody was going to sit-ins. We were all just—and it really changed dramatically. I mean, I pledged a sorority my freshman year, but by my junior year, I was a hippie. And while you're in college, I guess you did a little bit of sort of versions of what your mom was doing, which was not necessarily flipping houses, but I guess you kind of got involved in, like, helping people decorate their homes. Tell me a little bit about what you would do for extra money. Oh, so first of all, I had always had jobs, you know, dress store, a travel agency. And then whatever money I could save, I started flipping houses. And at that time in Boulder, you could buy a little house for $2,000. And I'd flip it and sell it for eight. And all I would do really, is to make it look cuter. I might add shutters, I might paint the door a nice, interesting color, and take my furniture out from wherever I was and put it in there. So I was sort of doing that without giving it much thought when I was in college. Actually, I've skipped a few things because actually what happened is I got pregnant my freshman year in college. And my parents made me give up my son. They were pretty brutal to me. And it was a pretty awful emotionally experience, just the way my parents reacted to the whole thing. Sorry, I'm just to say you gave up your son for adoption or? Yes. Or they, okay. They did. Wow. They did. Yeah, I was not really given a choice. I can't imagine how traumatic that experience was when you were a young woman, you're pregnant, and your parents demand that you give the child up for adoption. Did you ever reconnect with that person? Well, as a matter of fact, I adopted him last year because both of his parents have long passed. And he's now a grown man. He's in his 50s. He's a grown man. He's in his 50s. Yeah. So at one point, I hired a detective and I found him. And I corresponded with his mom. And she asked me to stay away, and I did until he turned 18. And then just sent him a note if he ever had any questions. here's how to reach me. What an incredible story. And so now you have obviously a relationship with him. I do. I do. We're very close now. We had our ups and downs over the years because I think he never really forgave me for quite some time for giving him up. Yeah. I think he thought things would be great with me, but I don't think it would have been necessarily because I was so young. Yeah. You were like 20 years old, 21, maybe 19 or... I was 18 when I got pregnant and 19 when I gave birth. Wow. Right. Okay. So I just want to go back to your time in college for a moment because, as I understand it, I think right before you graduated, you met a guy named Jerry Bruckheimer who would go on to become obviously like a legendary movie producer. American Gigolo, Top Gun, and Pirates of the Caribbean and tons of other movies. But when you met him, I think he was just starting out. Like I think he was making TV ads, right? Yes, he's an ad guy and came up to me and asked me to be in a Pepsi commercial. And I went, yeah, right. Was Jerry Brookheimer, what was he doing in Boulder, Colorado? They were scouting for talent. All right. He was an ad guy and he was a young guy. And he finds you and he says, hey, you look pretty good. I mean, were you like a, he thought you were cute. I was cute. Yeah. And I had really long hair, you know, down to my waist practically, like a cute hippie. You know, with mascara, a mascara kind of hippie. And so I did, I think, three or four different commercials for them over a couple of weeks. Wow. Okay. So you do these Pepsi commercials and they were filmed in Boulder, like on campus or in town? Oh, yeah. All over in the mountains. I mean, they had me riding a horse, you know, drinking water out of a stream, being twirled around by a guy with children in front of a campfire. It was all kinds of very Coloradan situations. Right. Okay. So you do those ads. And I guess you decide to relocate to New York City, not to pursue acting necessarily. You just go to live there, right? Yeah. I ended up packing up a U-Haul and driving to New York and living there. But I needed a job. So I looked in the Village Voice and it said, British Periodical needs editorial assistant. So I went for an interview and it was Penthouse Magazine. Okay. And there was this six foot four man with a booming voice. He said, I'll let you know. And I got the job. OK, so this is the early 70s, 70, 71. You get to New York and you get a job as an editorial assistant with Penthouse magazine. First of all, I mean, it wasn't even Playboy. It was Penthouse, which was way more explicit. I mean, first of all, what did your parents think? You're like, hey, I got a job. It's called Penthouse magazine. Like, I can't imagine calling my parents when I'm 22 and saying, hey, I'm working at this place called Penthouse Magazine. I mean, because it's a pornographic magazine. How did people respond? Okay. Well, first I should tell you that Jim Good used to be with Playboy. And Jim Good was the editor who hired you. Yes. And he created the Playboy interview. So he was an intellectual. So, I mean, my dad thought it was fabulous. Because, you know, he wouldn't. Your dad was happy that you were working at Penthouse? He thought it was cool. And my baby, my younger brother, who was 12 years my junior, was in boarding school. And I would send him, you know, a subscription. And he loved it. But your job was not to, like, vet photographs. You focused on the writing. But was the writing racy? Was it sexual or was it just like, you know, regular? What kind of articles were in there? You know, articles that guys who wanted to look at the pictures would read and justify looking at the pictures. This was the old saying back in the day where people say, oh, I subscribe to Playboy for the articles. That's right. And Penthouse was sort of, I would say, probably a poor man's version of that. Right. And I was really working on trying to find writers and articles that were interesting on all kinds of subjects, whether it was cars or whatever would be interesting to the men who'd want to read that magazine. And that would justify their being able to have it at home and look at the pictures. And then Guccione wanted to put me in the magazine. He wanted me to be naked in the magazine. This is Bob Guccione Jr. who founded the magazine, right? And I said, are you kidding me? I would never do that. Nobody I know would speak to me again. You know, I mean, I was a feminist. Yeah, probably a good move. Yeah. On your part. My father would have had a heart attack. All right. But you decide, of course, this is not the right place for me. You're not going to pose in the magazine. I think when I said no, I experienced a little bit of being just treated. I could see I was headed down a road I didn't want to go down. Right. Today, it probably would not pass muster. There'd probably be a lot of lawsuits, sexual harassment lawsuits. But back then, I guess there was it was a different time. Okay, so you decide to leave, and Jim Good, who's your mentor editor there, he helps you get an appointment with Eileen Ford. This is the Ford Modeling Agency. Right. Right? Right. So you wanted to be a model, but not a nude model, but you thought, maybe I'll do some modeling to make money? More for commercials. I mean, Jim was saying, gee, you did these commercials. You should be doing more of them. And with commercials, the key was to learn to smile while you're talking about the item that you're selling. So I kind of got that down. And so in the course of time, I did about 100 television commercials. And also I read ads like for Winston and Kent's and Benson and Hedges. Oh, yes. Like you do like cigarette ads. Yeah, so they started to also send me out on print. So I was like the Winston girl, the Kent girl. I went down a rabbit hole looking at cigarette ads from the 70s last night. looking to see if I could find you. And you must have some of them But it kind of amazing The ads are totally nuts You can even imagine a magazine printing them today They literally beautiful glamorous healthy people with a cigarette hanging out of their mouths And the caption would read like, if it weren't for Winston, I wouldn't smoke. Or, you know, like just ridiculous, you know, just the most ridiculous things. Just these healthy, vibrant, flourishing people smoking cigarettes in these ads. That's what they wanted. In fact, with my Winston ads, the government made them tape my ads down because I always looked young for my age. They thought I looked 16 and that it was just wrong for my image to encourage children to smoke. That's so wild. All right. So you're in New York. And I guess in the mid-70s, you decide to move out to L.A. And I have to imagine you go out there thinking, hey, I'm getting some work in commercials. Maybe I can break into TV. Yes. In fact, well, actually, the agents sort of push you there. I mean, once they see you doing something, they start sending you on auditions. And so I then would get parts in movie. I got some parts in movies. You did Chips, I think. You did Happy Days. Yeah. Yeah. I was on the very last episode of Happy Days. With a speaking part? Oh, yeah. I can't remember. The girl on it. Joanie. Joanie. Joanie. Yeah. So they made me look just like Joanie. And then they break up, Chachi and Joanie. And they walk into a restaurant and they're both with someone who looks like the other one. Yes. And so, all right, you were having a little bit of success, but it doesn't sound like you were really breaking through as an actor. You know, I never liked it. I never was particularly talented. But when I started reading the scripts for television and for movies, I started thinking, you know, I could write this stuff. This isn't like brain surgery or anything. So I decided I wanted to write my first script. And this was based on this idea that what you were saying was just not that great. And you had experience as a writer and you thought, hey, I could do this. I could be a screenwriter. I didn't take a class or anything. But I, well, everybody found it so interesting that I grew up at San Quentin Prison. It is. Yeah. So I thought, hmm, OK. And I wrote a movie called Prisoners about this girl who grew up, her father was the warden, and about her friendship that she formed with this inmate that worked at their house as a gardener. And what happened to the script? Well, I sold it for a quarter of a million dollars in 1980. That's about a million dollars in today's money. That's a lot of money. That's correct. It was a lot of money. And initially, Adrian Lyon was going to direct it. And we had people like Richard Gere who wanted to play the inmate. And Diane Lane was going to play the girl. And then what happens in Hollywood is then that executive leaves. And then the project gets dumped. And it ended up being purchased and made in New Zealand, but they completely rewrote my script and it wasn't what I wrote. And when they finally let me see it, I went to the bathroom and threw up. Wow. That being said, just as an aside, I mean, you're like 33, 34 years old. You've made a million bucks on a script. That's pretty awesome. I mean, equivalent to today's money. No, no. It was unbelievable. Yes. I bought a house. I bet. And you probably thought, OK, I'm well on my way. And you did. I mean, this begins a long period of time where you become a screenwriter and you had some success. You were able to sell screenplays. Yeah, I pretty much was paid for everything I ever wrote. Right. And I think, I mean, you even made a film that starred George Clooney, Unbecoming Age. It's a very obscure George Clooney movie, but early George Clooney. When I met him, I called every friend I had and I said, you've got to go sign up this guy. He was just the most charming, funny guy you'd ever meet. You could just see that he was going to be a movie star. All right. So you are, again, you've got this burgeoning career as a writer. And this is what you're doing in life. I mean, you're in your 30s and you probably, I would imagine, you're thinking, great, this is, you know, maybe one day I'll win an Academy Award and I'll get recognized for my work, right? That's the aspiration. Of course. Of course. I think that's everybody's aspiration where, in truth, you know, there are few people that make it in Hollywood and most people are just working writers like I was. All right. This is just another interesting, crazy part of your life because you were writing screenplays. You're interacting with all these celebrities, right? I mean, George Clooney or Tatum O'Neill, Sally Field. I think you even dated Michael Crichton, the author, for some time. Yes, yes. In the early 90s, you are set up on a blind date with Captain Jean-Luc Picard, Patrick Stewart. That's right. You know, I open the door and here's this bald guy. And by the way, I had never watched Star Trek. And then, you know, I sat down and started talking to him and I went, he's actually very handsome and very charming. And we fell in love. I mean, this is there's I looked it up and there's paparazzi pictures, the two of you together and, you know, red carpet photos. And this was at the height of his fame. I mean, well, he continued to be famous. But I mean, Star Trek Next Generation was a massive show. He was a highly recognized person. I found it often annoying because like we'd be out to dinner and everyone felt like they could come and just interrupt and say, could I have your autograph or I loved you and this and that and that and that. The other thing for me, it was the only time in my entire life I gave up myself for those few years to be with him because he was making movies all over the world. I traveled with him. And so I really put my career on the back burner. And then we started living together. And then a few weeks after this, he told me to get out, leave. Did it come as a surprise? Were you stunned? I was stunned. You know, Patrick wasn't really successful until his late 40s. And all of a sudden, bam, he was a star. Huge. And so I think he had a lot of women who wanted to sleep with him because he was a movie star. And I think he wanted to kind of have it all. And then I think once he had done a bunch of that, he wanted me back. And I said, not going to happen. So you were part of that ride. You were on that kind of roller coaster with him. I was. And it was, you know, he was wonderful when he was wonderful. Let's just put it that way. But that was when I rented a little house in Brentwood. And I had to figure out how to get back into the writing world. And my heart wasn't in it. Was it hard to break back into it? I mean... It was very hard. You know, Hollywood changes so rapidly, the people, the positions. And, you know, I think that screenwriting was ultimately not gratifying at all for me. Yeah. I just stopped liking being in a room by myself, sitting there, you know, in front of the computer all day in my head. And I was in my later 40s at this point, you know, being a woman and also being that age, just what I wanted to write wasn't what the young guys that were execs at the studios wanted to make. Yeah, makes sense. I mean, that's I don't think that story has changed much. So you are I mean, now at this point, you're on your own again, right? Renting this house in Brentwood. And I guess not sure if you're going to continue trying to do screenwriting. And this is actually the time that you wind up starting your staging business, which I guess at first was just sort of an accident, right? Like it just kind of happened. Yeah. I found myself fixing up this little house I was renting and rearranging the furniture. And then I went out and bought about 150 huge pots and grew trees and plants and flowers. And I just wanted to be in the garden and make things pretty. And the owner of the house I was leasing came to town. It's about three years I'd been there. And he said, oh, my God, I love what you've done. I want to show it to my friend. And then he called me the next day and said, you're going to need to get out. I just sold the house. Wow. Because you had made it so nice. This is, I think, around 97, 98. So you were just turning 50. I had turned 50. Yeah. How was your, I'm just curious, how was your financial situation at that point? Were you okay? I mean, because you had done years of screenwriting, did you have? Yes, I was just okay. You know, I was making a living. Yeah. I wasn't rich by any means. So I rented a room in a friend's house and it was a shock. I was devastated. Devastated by just everything going on in your life? Yeah, I kind of felt nowhere. I'm 50. I'm not going to raise children. I'm sick of relationships. I'm sick of my career. It was just kind of a really low point for me. and I had a friend who was a neighbor of mine back in the 70s and he was a an actor we were all actors living close to each other back in the day and he he now was an interior designer and he built building houses and I had all these potted plants and I said how about I put all my plants in the courtyard and someone who's looking at the house can see how beautiful it could be And then I said, also, I have all this furniture. And he went, you know, I was going to ask you if I could borrow some of your furniture, you know, for the house. So the house sold in a matter of days for half a million over asking to the head of one of the studios. Using your furniture and your potted plants. Yes. So let's just pause for a second. I want to ask you about your sort of taste. I mean, like, how did you pick furniture? Did you just have an eye for really beautiful pieces? Did you buy used pieces, new pieces? Do you know something? Way back when I was in Iowa, when I was 12 or 13. A kid, yeah. Yeah, and my mom would buy these big houses. I would be with her and I'd say, oh, I just saw a picture of a table. That's what we should put in our breakfast room. I don't know how I knew that. And in New York, I had, I don't know, I'd go into a thrift store and buy something. Every place I ever had, everyone loved what I did. Everyone always had said, would you do this for me? Would you help me? I always said yes. And I never took a course, anything like that. And so it's just something that I enjoyed. I never took it very seriously. All right. But this was, I mean, because I'm trying to imagine this is the late 90s. You're still your whole identity. The way you think of yourself is I am a screenwriter. Correct. I was a writer. But because there has to be a transition point. How did you go to doing another house? Did somebody ask you? Yeah, a broker who had come through the house that sold in a few days said, would you do this for me? And I said, sure. And then I started to say, okay, now, if I can live in this house, I'll give you a better deal. Because I was now homeless. Okay, but still at this point, you're not thinking, hey, this could be an interesting career. No, not at all. No. Not at all. You're still thinking, I'm just doing this as kind of a side thing. Yeah. But still working on screenplays. And it gives me a place to live. All right. The first house, this broker said to me, listen, no one's going to buy it. So you can live there and you'll probably be there for ages. Even though it was on the market, this house? Well, no, it was about to go on the market. It was about to go on the market, but you could move your stuff in and make it your own and you could have free rent there. Not only free rent, they'll pay me to bring my furniture there. All right. So it's a pretty good deal. You're going to have about a year of free rent. What happens? It sells the first month. Wow. Now, so another broker says, listen, I have a house you can move right into under the same terms. It's a weird house and they're going to have a lot of trouble finding a buyer. So you'll be able to be there for a long time. Just come and put your furniture there. Right. And they'll pay me to do that and I can live there. And did they call it staging or no? Okay. What happened was the brokers started to call it staging. Had you heard that word before? Never. Never. All right. My understanding is that at this time, you were asked to possibly work on writing an adaptation of a novel. This is Barbra Streisand's production company. Right. A script for this potential movie. What happened? I had to say no. I had to decide that I was going to go in this other direction. How did you do that? I mean, because in Hollywood, and it's in any industry, and I come from the world of journalism, right? Where I remember when I left journalism, you know, people were like, what? You know, now I do podcasts around business. But the people who are in certain worlds, they can't see beyond it. you're leaving screenwriting to do what? To stage houses? Like, did a part of you feel like, God, I'm a failure? Or was part of you worried about that? Well, no. I mean, I had a lot of times in my life where I felt like a failure, certainly after having had a child. And definitely in the film industry, I often felt like a failure, even when I was fired off the script that I wrote and sold for so much money. But, you know, now it was just kind of like, I take this cup and I move it from here to here and they think it's brilliant. This feels good. I think I'm going to do this. When we come back in just a moment, how Meredith gets a van, opens a warehouse, and begins to build an unexpected side hustle into a business. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built This. One of the coolest things I did last summer was take my family to Athens, where we saw the Parthenon and the Agora and all those amazing neighborhoods and ancient historical sites. And one of the things that made it so awesome was the home we booked on Airbnb. We literally had a view of the Parthenon from our bedroom window. There was a hot tub on the top floor. We could sit in it overlooking the entire city. And we had a kitchen and access to markets. and we were in walking distance from all of the things you would want to see. It made the trip so, so amazing. And when you take your own vacation, that's actually a great time to host your home on Airbnb. Your place with your cool art collection and your handy kitchen gadgets, it might just be what someone else needs to feel right at home on their next trip. Plus, your earnings from hosting provide you with another income strain and could even help offset the cost of your next trip. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at airbnb.com slash host. This show is brought to you by American Express. Running a business means making countless choices every day, some small and some that can change everything. The business owners who thrive are the ones who are ready for whatever comes next. And having the right support behind those decisions can make all the difference. 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And that means my team and I spend hundreds of hours digging into companies, what they make, who's behind them, and whether their journey can inspire you. And that's exactly where Claude has become such an incredible thinking partner in my creative process. Claude is the AI for minds that don't stop at good enough, the thinking partner that works with you to explore the things that fascinate you. Whether you're researching late-night curiosity spirals or working through complex creative challenges, Claude extends your thinking to tackle the problems together. For example, imagine I'm about to sit down with a founder of a snack company. I want to know what products they released how they evolved and which competitors they up against In the past it could take hours to track down reliable details We search articles databases reports Now Claude can give me a clear answer in seconds and then I can decide what to dig into further. It doesn't replace my process, but it sharpens it. And that means I can spend more time doing what I love most, focusing on the human stories, the lessons, the decisions, and the struggles behind the businesses you hear on this show. Experience what collaborative thinking feels like at claude.ai.hibt and see why the world's best problem solvers choose Claude as their thinking partner. Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's 1998 and Meredith has left the film industry behind to start a home staging business. And as word spreads, she starts doing more than just one house at a time. And, you know, I needed to now buy a van. And I started driving the van myself. And by the way, I would go to Home Depot and pick up some workers. And I had to buy all kinds of supplies and things. I never thought I'd be a girl who'd own those things. And if you were standing there, I'd ask you if you'd like to work with me. Because, I mean, I needed help. Let's dive into this business for a moment because you did not invent staging. I mean, you really popularized it and you helped turn it into a huge industry, but it had existed. It just wasn't as common. Mostly when you'd go buy a house before staging became a common thing, you'd go and look at an empty house. It was just an empty house, empty walls, empty rooms, and the person would have to imagine what it could look like. now it was, hey, maybe if we make it look like how it could look like as a home, that could make it more appealing, which in fact it does. How did you, like when you started out, right, and you'd walk into an empty house with nothing on the walls, nothing on the floors, just a house. How did you in your mind's eye start to see what to get, where to go? Like, oh, a rug here, a large sofa here, leather, no leather sofa. let's put a print on this wall, let's put a console here. Like, how did you start to picture that in your brain? Well, in the beginning, I just had what I had. And I had to make that work. I learned quickly to ask to get paid up front. And to this day, I'll only do the job if I'm paid up front. Because then I had to run around and buy things. And I would shop the way I always shopped, you know, whether it was estate sales or thrift stores or whatever. I even at times borrowed. I met a rug dealer and I said, listen, I need beautiful rugs. And if you will let me put your rugs in my house. And I said, no one's living there. This is for display. And people are wanting to buy my furniture. I will put them in touch with you and you can make the sale. So basically, my homes will be showrooms for you. And this one gentleman gave me, I mean, probably at one point a million dollars of rugs to use on consignment. And so you would basically get paid up front. And how much would it cost? I guess range, but roughly. I named some big numbers right off the bat. I was doing big houses. So maybe $25,000, $30,000 to install and then a monthly rent if I wasn't living there. So Meredith, how did you know what to charge people? Because essentially you were a consultant, right? You were consulting people on how to stage their homes and you were offering to rent them furniture during that time. But it's hard for people to figure out, like, what do I charge? First of all, I thought, what I'm doing is going to sell their house, and it's going to sell it fast. And so I figure their monthly mortgage has to be X. And every month that it's on the market, they're paying that. So do they want to sell it in one month, or do they want to sell it in one year? So I kind of took that number and played with it. You know, it's a bargain if you pay me $30,000 to do this because otherwise it isn't going to sell right away and you're just going to be paying the monthly nut. Right. And you're going to sell this house at a premium. So you're actually, you're going to make the money back and more. Okay. So in the early days, would you like rent a U-Haul truck and just load up the truck and then unload it into a house and then return the U-Haul truck? Yes. In the very early days, that's what I did. And then I bought my first van and then I bought my first truck. I mean, I now have 36 trucks, but I never thought I'd be a girl who had 36 trucks. Yeah. And where did you store the furniture in the early days? Did you get a warehouse right away? In the beginning, I would store the furniture in the garages of the homes I had staged. My clients did not appreciate that. And then at one point, I actually rented a little store on 4th Street in Santa Monica that I used as my office. And then everything that I didn't have in a house at the time was for sale if anyone wanted to come in and buy it. And so that was my storage. And then I finally got my first, I went to a warehouse and I rented a thousand square feet of space, which quickly turned to 5,000 square feet. Wow. Tell me a little bit about your aesthetic. I mean, you know, there's all kinds of looks, especially in Southern California. You know, there's that sort of that canyon kind of rustic California modern look. There's mid-century modern. There's the farmhouse look. There's, you know, more of an Ikea style. I mean. Well, I should go backwards a little bit. In 1998, my mother passed away and she was a collector of everything. She used to drag us to antique stores and to yard sales, and we hated it. But, you know, when she passed, my brothers and I, like, divided everything up, and then all this stuff in her garage, I just said, could I take it? Because I've just started doing some of this stuff staging. So I had my mother's mid-century furniture, and I had a bunch of her antiques. So I had a little of everything. And then I started manufacturing pieces. I had an upholsterer move into my warehouse and he started making furniture. I just started to buy antiques, this, that, whatever the look was, whatever the house needed, I just started to buy it. So I can do almost any style because I have a little of everything. So it wasn't necessarily a specific style. It depends. The one thing that was specific is the white sofas. I always found that if I had white sofas, they were neutral and I could bring in all kinds of different art and different looks and it would all work. So that was one of the things that I started out doing. And I can see that all the people who have since become stagers do the same thing. I find that white sofas only exist in stage toms. I mean, yes, some people have them, but like people have white sofas, A, have no small children, or their children are so well-behaved, or they always wear latex gloves, or they have no pets, or they don't care about red wine. Have you ever heard of slipcovers? Yeah, but that's weird. You throw them in the washer with a little bleach. Yeah, but when you have people over, you want them to see the sofa. And it's a white sofa. You know, we have a white rug. I don't know why. We have two dogs, two cats, and two teenagers. I mean, it's nuts. But I get it. Like, when you go into a staged home, you look at it like, wow, this is awesome. I want to live here. Because there's no crap. There's no, like, stuff on the refrigerator and just, like, accumulated junk in the kids' rooms from all the, you know, camps they went to and the water bottles. It's an idealized lifestyle. Oh, man. Yeah. So for kids' rooms, even from the day one, we would do that idealized kids' room. Instead of 50,000 toys all over the place, we would have two or three really cute toys. Yeah. The only kids who live like that are like the royal family kids. Right. Right. Yeah. When I first started, I would do all kinds of props. I wanted to make people laugh or just feel good when they walked into a house. So I would like, with the bedroom, I'd throw negligee on the bed and I'd throw high heels across the floor and do little scenarios like that. I think having been a screenwriter, I sort of like making it up and just to give people, give them a chuckle. Yeah, in fact, I had almost my whole wardrobe in different closets in my staged houses initially. I remember getting a phone call from this woman on the freeway saying, I just loved that black dress in such and such a house. and I've got to have it. One of the things that I'm curious about is how you make a house look, you know, you get a house, it's okay inside. How do you make it so that a person coming in to look at the house is like, wow, this is amazing. You make the house what it wants to be. I think we always imagined who was going to buy it, most likely, but we also wanted to open the aperture to make this house appeal to as many people as possible. So we always encourage paint to the homeowner, invest in that, but don't build a new kitchen. The first thing I did when I came into my house is rip out the kitchen they had just put in to help sell it. So it's really what does this house wants to be and how do I give it the love it deserves to show it at its best? part of what you do also like, manipulates not the right word, but you're touching or you're kind of trying to connect with somebody's psychology. For sure. It's sort of like a sales rep when they're selling you something. They understand human psychology so well and they already have a script and they know what you're going to say and then the script points up into the next thing and the next thing and the next thing until you're finally like, okay, all right, fine. I'll take that 85% off deal that you've offered me. But in fact, they knew you were going to get to that point. In your case, you are thinking about who's going to buy this house and what's going to appeal to them. And so there are like, I don't like the word tricks, but there are like kind of tricks. Like you will have dried pasta next to the stove. You'll have like an open cookbook in the kitchen on a beautiful cutting board, right? Exactly. All the things that make a house feel like a home. Obviously, what we want when they open the door, whatever they see is the most important thing. That moment is when you fall in love. Starting with the entry, they want to see, oh, that's exactly where I put my keys. You know, you have the bowl there for their keys. They can say, oh, that is where we would sit. That's where I would sit with friends. When did you first, I mean, you kind of launched this in 1998 as a business, and you probably have a steady stream of jobs. But at what point do you remember it being like, I can't do this alone. I've got to hire some full-time people to join me. I can't just go to Home Depot and get some day laborers every week. Well, I would say probably within a year, I had to have regular people that were working for me. And in the beginning, I had kind of put together a crew. But so it took me a while to figure out. Honestly, managing people and figuring out and hiring people, I think, is the hardest. That's hard. And now also toward the end of 99, I was thinking I can't keep moving every single month. I just can't do it. So I started to try to look for a house to buy. And I figured that I could take my pension that I had as a writer and take an early retirement. So I had some money to put down on a house. So I started making offers and it was just the houses were just flying off the market at that time. You know, bids, bids, bids, bids coming from everywhere. And I finally, in the spring of 2000, I bought a house. And so with my crew, when I wasn't installing, I had them doing work at my house. Yeah. One of the things that I read about was that, you know, and this is very common, right? You're starting a business and it kind of happens. And in your case, really happened unexpectedly. There's a lot of, especially in high regulation states like California, there's a lot of compliance that you have to deal with as a business owner. And I guess like three, four years into running this company, you get contacted by the State Board of Equalization because they're saying you have not been charging tax on the work you're doing, even though you probably were paying tax on your wages. Tell me what happened. Oh, it was devastating. I was supposed to be charging tax on rent. On renting of the furniture that you were staging. Okay. Yep. You know, I had no business background. I mean, I didn't know any of this. So it was really a scary moment. Actually, the very same day I got this news, I found out I had colon cancer. Oh, wow. So it was a big double blow. This is in about 2001. Yes, around there. So it was like coming in every direction. But, you know, I ended up getting this wonderful guy who came in literally to my house where I was living and went through boxes with me of paperwork to help me find everything I needed, negotiated with the state for me to pay over time. And then I went and had a foot of my colon taken out and went back to work a few days later. When we come back in just a moment, Meredith takes her business to reality TV, but then decides to pull the plug. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This. I know how tedious and disjointed a project can feel when you're always having to switch between different tools. And that's why I'm so excited to share that Grammarly has become a part of something bigger that levels up your productivity. Say hello to Superhuman, the AI productivity suite that gives you superpowers everywhere you work. 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Now Vital Proteins has a brand new way to get your collagen, a new collagen and protein shake. It has 30 grams of protein and zero sugar or artificial sweeteners. And it tastes like chocolate. It's honestly delicious. I drink it when I work out. Go to www.vitalproteins.com to learn more and where to buy. Get 20% off your next order by entering promo code BUILT at checkout. Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's the early 2000s, and Meredith Baer has recovered from a bout with colon cancer. And through much of the next decade, her home staging business keeps growing. Oh, it at least doubled every year for the first 10 years. Okay, so that's pretty great. Yeah, I mean, no, it grew and grew and grew and grew. What happened is the L.A. Times Sunday did a story on me. And then the New York Times, all of a sudden, we're getting phone calls from Connecticut, Manhattan. So we open up shop there. And then people want us to come to Florida. So we opened up there. And when you opened up a new location, how would you do that? Because you're in L.A. It's your name on the company's. and I'm sure a lot of these designers want you specifically, how would you open an office? How would you identify the people who could run it and manage it? I think like, for example, with New York, because that was our first secondary location. You know, I went there, I interviewed some people, I found someone I liked I walked and I found a little warehouse I started to fly out there myself and do the installs initially And then I found some designers How did you find people who had a good aesthetic I found people that I thought had, I liked the way they put their own homes together. And it wouldn't be, I wasn't hiring interior designers. No one's going to walk around in high heels and a cute dress and do staging. It's hard work. So I just started to ask people and give them a shot. And if they were good, I kept them. And then I'd ask them, do you know other people like you? You know, a lot of companies we talk to, their sort of defining moments are like the early 2000s, if it's a dot-com company, right? There's a bust. And then the financial crisis of 2008. And for many companies, it was really tough. In your case, it actually forced you to expand your business to actually focus on – because you were doing high-end homes. But I guess during the financial crisis, there was an opportunity to charge less and to do sort of more modest homes because people needed to sell their homes. Yes. Although we did find that the more modest homes weren't as profitable and sometimes the clients would be even more demanding. So we came up with a minimum for a job that we would do. I think it's $10,000, right? Yes. Now, speaking of that financial crisis, up till 2007, we would double almost every year. And then that was the first year that we were flat in 2008. But boy, 2007, we could see it coming. We had a lot of really big developers who weren't making their rental payments and were owing us more and more money. And a lot of them went bankrupt. So you could see it happening already a year before. Yeah. But OK, you get through the recession, right? And then on the other side of it, this whole industry, this whole like home staging industry really starts to take off. I mean, you guys, again, I mean, you aren't the first, right? But you're in L.A. a lot of celebrities are using you to stage their homes. And now this becomes de rigueur. Like if you're going to sell a house, like staging becomes part of the cost of doing business. Definitely. And it also makes the broker's job a lot easier. They make more money and they make it faster. And they're the ones encouraging their clients to stage. Yeah. And by 2012, from what I read, you had about 100 employees. You got 130,000 square foot warehouse in LA. You've got one in Connecticut and Florida, and you're expanding into Manhattan. And that year, you get approached by HGTV to do a reality series, which I know it just ran for one season, but it must have really transformed your business because all of a sudden you're on TV doing this stuff? I don't know if it did or not. It actually was a lot of work and took us away from running business as usual. And to tell you the truth, we're a high-end company and we didn't want to present drama. And so it really was a show. I don't think that could go more than one season because it really was about what we do. And I think you kind of get it after a season. because we have been approached other times and I've just made a decision not to do that. Yeah. Just to be clear, you never raised any money, right? Outside money. You know what? I never did. I have two warehouses in LA now, but I borrowed money from my house, for the down payment on those. I didn't know how to ask for money. I didn't. Yeah. I mean, in some ways, it's the perfect business to do that because it reminds me a little bit of 1-800-GOT-JUNK, which we profiled about seven or eight years ago, which is a junk removal service. He bought a truck for $800. Within a couple of weeks, the truck was paid off from removing people's stuff and dumping it. He buys another truck and that's how the business grows. In your case, you actually didn't need that much upfront cash because you had your furniture, you were using your own furniture, and then you get paid and then you buy some more furniture and then you get paid more and you buy some more for insurance. Eventually, you've got warehouse costs, you've got personnel costs, but it's not like you're manufacturing, you've got a factory in China that's manufacturing products and you need just tons of cash up front. So it is actually a business that doesn't necessarily require outside funding. Right. I was always able to take our profits and grow and build from there. Now, one of my warehouses along the road, the first warehouse I bought, is now solely manufacturing. And we did at a point manufacture in China. Yeah. As you found, I mean, you start to find different revenue streams. For example, you eventually started to make your own furniture for the houses, right? Correct. Not all of it. What percentage of the furniture in the houses that you stage do you make? I would say 60 to 70 percent of our upholstered furnishings we make. Oh, wow. And when I go into a home that is staged by you, by your company, everything is for sale? I can buy anything? Well, everything except we do not sell our mattresses. We call them props. And we generally don't sell sheets and towels and things like that. Right. Although we will if someone wants us to do a household package and do the buying of that for them. Is that a significant part of your business or is the overwhelming majority of your revenue still coming from just staging homes? I would say the majority of our revenue comes from staging, but we do very, very well in sales. Boy, especially when COVID hit and things were just hard to get. Yeah. And now with the tariffs and all of that, we sell a lot of furniture. So you had started this, I think it's called InstaHome service. You had started that earlier? Yes, we started InstaHome because what we realized is that a lot of people were asking us for interior design. And, you know, someone can take two months to figure out what fabric they want on a sofa. And a lot of our clients are just super busy. And they don't really want to go through that process. but they want a house full of furniture. So we have them go through our website and then we charge them an install fee to install a house full of furniture. And then we give them a price list and they buy what they want and anything they don't want, we pick up. And you also lease furniture, right? You can rent furniture from you guys. Right. We have a product called Luxury Lease and that is we provide furniture to people to live with. Well, it makes sense because furniture is one of those things where the depreciation is just dramatic. You can buy a really expensive piece of furniture, and then when you want to resell it, it's not easy. The options are limited. It's like Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist, but then people are coming to your house, or you just sell it to a consignment shop, and they're going to give you pennies in the dollar. Exactly. So leasing actually might make sense for a lot of people. For a lot of people, I think it does. Also, a lot of clients are, it's a second home or a third home, and it does make sense for a number of people. So today, I think you're the biggest home stager in the country. Yes. One of them, maybe the biggest. And how many people do you have working for you total? About 320. Right. At any given time, how many homes are you working on concurrently? Like 200, 150, more than that? Oh, no, more like we usually have about seven to nine hundred homes installed at any given time. And people are paying anywhere from the absolute lowest ten thousand, but all the way up to what, a hundred thousand plus? We're just finishing a home right now as we speak. That was one hundred and eighty five thousand dollar job. Just to stage it. Yeah. And you're concentrated also in high, high value areas. San Francisco, Bay Area, L.A., New York, Hamptons and Miami. Right. Yes. So at what point did it become very difficult for you, Meredith Baer, to be doing the staging and for you to step out of that? I mean, I continued to install up until maybe 10 years ago. I just couldn't do it all. I couldn't be sort of running the business and doing the buying. And as I got older, it's just physically hard. It's hard physical work. Yeah. I mean, when you because you were in L.A., you're in L.A. And so many celebrities have used your services, Bob Dylan, Harrison Ford, Reese Witherspoon. Apparently, Scarlett Johansson used you and liked what you did so much you decided to take her house off the market. I know. I loved that. What happened? What would happen when Harrison Ford or a celebrity was like or Brad Pitt is like, I need Meredith to do my house? You mean me personally? Yeah. They don't get me. They don't get you. Nobody gets you anymore. No. I mean, at this point, I pretty much work from home and I am on email usually 10 hours a day. Yeah. You are still the CEO of Meredith Bear Home, right? Yes. And are you actively looking for somebody to run it or do you like being the operational leader and CEO and do you like doing that? I would say at this point, I'm 78. I'm working longer hours than I'd like to. It's 10 hours a day. And there are some other things I would like to do. I'd like to spend, I'd like to have more time for friends and see my grandson more. So what now? I mean, obviously this gives you a sense of purpose and your name is on the brand, but it sounds like you also want some time to do other things. Are you looking to sell the brand? I've thought about it. I haven't really quite gotten there yet. You know what, if the right situation arrived, I'd probably do it. Again, I didn't have any training as a businesswoman or as an interior designer. And again, I certainly don't have any experiences about selling the company. Yeah, I mean, it is amazing because you had a completely different life before age 50. Right. And really before age sort of 30, too, you were kind of more into acting and bit parts and then you got into writing. So who at age 50 wakes up and says, you know, the next 30 years of my life are going to be completely different than what I was doing the previous 50 or, you know, 30 years of my professional life. So it is kind of remarkable, right? I mean, if you think about like you could not have imagined, I guess, when you were 50 that this would become this thing. No, I never could have imagined it. And I do think we all are capable of reinventing ourselves. We're not stuck doing the same thing we've always done. And, you know, we might love something for a while, but after a while, we don't. Doesn't mean we have to stay on the same path. I think we're all taught that we have to choose a career and then that's who we are. That's what we are. But I think the truth is, I think we're a lot of things, all of us. Meredith, when you think about all that you went through and what you've achieved now, how much of it do you think was because of the work and the grind that you put in? And how much do you think has to do with just luck and fortune? Well, you know, I think there is luck involved in most success. I mean, the fact that I was walking along and Jerry Bruckheimer asked me to be in a Pepsi commercial changed my life big time. And the fact that I had gotten kicked out of a house and I needed a place to put my plants and my furniture, you know, was luck. But I also think one has to seize the opportunity. I think that we probably all trip over luck at times in life. I just learned to say yes. Yes, I can. And then I'd figure out if I really wanted to or if I could. But I'd say yes. And then do it. That's Meredith Baer, founder and CEO of Meredith Baer Home. I need you to come to my studio and stage it because it is really a mess. I've got like protein bars here and I've got like wires everywhere and just crap an old computer on the ground. Can you come stage my – Sure. I don't want to sell. I just want to live in a staged world. Okay. Yeah. We'll do that. Just remember 10,000 is our minimum. Oh, my God. Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. Please make sure to click the follow button on your podcast app so you never miss a new episode of the show. And if you're interested in insights, ideas, and lessons from some of the world's greatest entrepreneurs, please sign up for my newsletter at GuyRoz.com or on Substack. This episode was produced by Alex Chung with music composed by Ramtina Rablui. It was edited by Neva Grant with research help from Noor Gill. Our engineers were Patrick Murray and Kweisi Lee. Our production staff also includes J.C. Howard, Casey Herman, Chris Messini, Sam Paulson, Carrie Thompson, Catherine Seifer, Ramel Wood, Andrea Bruce, and Elaine Coates. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This. And don't stop the podcast just yet, because right now you're about to hear an amazing small business story that you don't want to miss. This segment is presented by American Express. With a business platinum membership, the best just got even better. Back in the early days of COVID, Jess Berger, like many of us, started spending a lot more quality time with her dog. Our great Dane Winston was really the center of our home during the pandemic. And with all that extra time with Winston, Jess started noticing something. He kept having a lot of skin and digestive issues. Jess had spent years working in the pet industry as a buyer and a marketing executive, and she knew some dogs could develop allergies and sensitivities to certain ingredients in their food. I personally have my own gut and allergy issues, and so it's only fitting, right, that my dog would have the same issues. I just started an elimination diet, just like I would do for myself. and chicken was one of the things that we had cut out. And almost instantly, she saw a difference. Winston's skin started looking healthier, he scratched less, and his digestive issues disappeared. But Jess had a problem. The problem is that I couldn't find a lot of products out there without chicken. Which, if you think about it, is kind of wild. Chicken is one of the most common ingredients in pet foods. So with Winston as her guide, Jess decided to launch her own brand called Bundle & Joy. I thought, what if I built a pet brand that was all about gut health and sensitivities and allergies, but also gave back and was so much more than just pet food? Jess had a vision for a brand with a strong sense of community, built around dog moms like herself. So she spent about 18 months on R&D and made plans to launch a big trade show in California, Expo West. But there was a problem. To say that the pandemic caused disruption would be quite a statement for all of us, right? We had all these best laid plans to launch in March of 2022. And then we quickly realized that there were some delays and we had no real product. No real product. But what could she do? Just not show up to the trade show? We had already made the commitment to show up. And I said, all right, guys, we are going to fake it till we make it. No product, no problem. Jess's team rolled up to the trade show with a hand-built display, mock products, and a little something extra to stand out. We found some roller skates that look like our brand and our colors and decided to wear roller skates for the entire trade show. And here's the amazing thing. That bold approach, it paid off. Immediately, grocers like Sprouts and Whole Foods loved the idea of gut-conscious dog food and offered Jess deals on the spot. Eventually, the product delays worked themselves out. And today, Bundle & Joy has expanded to retailers like Walmart, Costco, and soon... We are about to launch into PetSmart, which is where I started my pet career in 2007. By the way, Jess's dog Winston, who inspired the company, has since passed. But a new generation of pets has come along to inspire her. Now with our new Great Danes, brother and sister, Sol and Luna, I want them to live the longest they can possibly live. That's Jess Berger, the founder of Bundle & Joy. Her small business story was presented by American Express. To build a business like no other, you need a card like no other. There's nothing like Business Platinum. If you like How I Built This, you can listen early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery.com slash survey.