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

I find that white sofas only exist in stage tombs. I mean, yes, some people have them, but like people of 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 slip covers? Welcome to How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built. I'm Guy Raaz, and on the show today, have 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, barely 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 Bear. 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 owners showed the home to a potential buyer, it sold immediately. And almost as quickly, Meredith realized she might be on to 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? Anyway, you know it knows it's right on the water in Marin County. Yes. Beautiful around the bay, but of course it's a very scary place. Tell me how, why were you living and why were you glad you grew 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 to eighth grade. Wow. And we had a 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 tether ball, 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, he were tied up and inmate got, oh, I don't know, a few blocks before he was caught. 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 ahead of the prison system in Iowa. He was director of corrections for Iowa and we lived in Des Moines. Yeah. He was running the prison and your mom was kind of, her, her project was flipping homes. Well, she did. She had a lot. My mother was an interesting woman. She, 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. 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 Nevada. 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. Totally. It's crazy, right? Yes. In Colorado, more conservative or was it, did it feel like things were changing? Oh, things were definitely changing. I mean, certainly by 67 or so, everybody was going to sit in. 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 miss out flipping houses, but I guess you kind of got involved in like helping surf 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, 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 shudder as I might paint the door, a nice, you know, 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. Right. 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 experienced just the way my parents reacted to the whole thing. Sorry. I'm just to say you gave up your son for adoption or they okay. They did. Well, 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, your pregnant and your parents demand that you give the child that production. 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 you have ever had any questions, he has had to reach me. What an incredible story. And so now you have 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. Yes. Maybe 19 or? I was 18 when I got pregnant and 19 when I gave birth. Wow. Right. Okay. So it's want to go back to your time at college for a moment because I understand it. I think right before you graduated, you met a guy named Jerry Brachheimer who would go on to become obviously like a legendary movie producer, American Jiglo, Top Gun. Pirates of the Caribbean and you know, 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 Brachheimer 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 and got-- I was cute. Yeah. And I had a 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 are, 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, I, 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 Colorado and 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." Mm-hmm. 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. Okay. So this is the early 70s, 70s, 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's your parents' thing? 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 this place called Penthouse Magazine." I mean, because it was 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. Okay. He created the Playboy interview. So he was an intellectual. I see. So, I mean, my dad thought it was fabulous. You know, he wouldn't. Your dad was happy that you were working at Penthouse? He thought it was cool. And my baby brought. 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. What was the writing? Racy, was it sexual or was it just like, you know, a regular? Not really, no. But what was it? 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 subscribed 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. He 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 would want to read that magazine. And that would justify their being able to have it at home and look at the pictures. And then Gugioni wanted to put me in the magazine. He wanted me to be naked in the magazine. And I went. This is Bob Gugioni Jr., who founded the magazine, right? Yeah. And I said, "Are you kidding me?" I could. 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 on your parts. 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 oppose in the magazine. Right. I think when I said no, I experienced a little bit of being just treated. Right. I could see I was headed down a road. I didn't want to go down. Right. Not past mustard. There would probably be a lot of lawsuits, sexual harassment. Right. suits. But back then, I guess, there was just 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. And so you wanted to be a model, but not a nude model, but you thought I should maybe I'll do some modeling to make money. More for commercials. I mean, Jim was saying. I see. Okay. So he was 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 Ben's. Oh, yes. 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, you must have some of them. But it's kind of amazing. The ads are totally nuts. You can't even imagine a magazine printing them today. They're literally beautiful, glamorous, healthy looking 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. They, 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 LA. 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. But in fact, well, actually the agent sort of pushed 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 and you did chips. I think you did happy days. Yeah. Yeah. I was on the very last episode of Happy Days as with a speaking part. Oh, yeah. I can't remember the girl on it. Joni, Joni. Joni. Yeah. So they made me look just like Joni. And then they break up, Chachi and Joni, 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. Do you know, I never liked it. I never was particularly talented and, 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 search 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. Okay. 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 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 Line was going to direct it and we had people like Richard Geer who wanted to play the inmate and Diane Lane was going to play the girl. And then, you know, 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. Well, that being said, just as an aside, I mean, you're like 33, 34 years old. You've made a million bucks in 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 was star George Clooney, Unbecoming Age. It's a very obscure George Clooney. Oh, my God. I call it a 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 ever meet. You could just see that he was going to be a movie star. All right. So you are, again, and you've got this burgeoning career as a writer and this is what you're doing in life. You're in your 30s and you probably, I would imagine, you're thinking, great, this is maybe one day I'll want 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, there are a 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 are writing screenplays. You're interacting with all these celebrities, right? I mean. Correct. You know, 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 opened the door and here's this ball 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 of the two of you together and, you know, red carpet photos and this was at the height of his fame. I mean, well, he had 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 we'd be out to dinner and everyone felt like they could come and just interrupt and say, can I have your autograph or I loved you and this 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 or are 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 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? 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. 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 exact at the studios wanted to make. Yeah, it makes sense. I mean, that's how long 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 was, 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 are 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? Because you had done years of screenwriting, had you -- 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. You know, I'm 50, I'm not going to raise children, I'm sick of relationships. I'm, you know, I'm sick of my career. I 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 an actor. We were all actors living close to each other back in the day. And 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? Kid. 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. But 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 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, not at all. You're still thinking, I'm just doing this as kind of a side thing, but still working on screenplays. And it gives me a place to live. All right. You know, the first house, you know, this broker said to me, listen, no one's going to buy it. You can live there and you'll probably be there for ages, even though it was on the market this house. 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 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 this 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 broker started to call it staging. Had you heard that word before? Never. Never. All right. And understanding is, at this time, you were asked to possibly work on a writing and adaptation of a novel. This is Barbara 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. How is this like? Did a part of you feel like, God, I've just, I'm a failure or like I'm, 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, Humberteth gets a van, opens a warehouse, and begins to build an unexpected side hustle into a business. Stay with us. I'm Guy Rose, and you're listening to How I Built This. Welcome back to How I Built This, I'm Guy Rose, 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 don't know those things, you know, and if you were standing there, I'd ask you if you'd like to work with me, because I mean, I needed help. Yeah, let's dive into the business for a moment, because you did not invent staging. I mean, you really popularized it, and you turned it into, helped turn it into a huge industry, but it had existed. It just wasn't as common. Like there, mostly when you'd go buy a house before staging became a common thing, you 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 $1.1 million of rugs to use, on consignment. And so you would basically get paid up front, and how much would it cost? Let's say, I guess, range, but roughly. I named some big numbers right off the bat. I was doing big houses, so maybe $25, $30,000 to install, and then a monthly rent, if I wasn't living there. 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 net. 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. Yes. 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. 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 Forest 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, this 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, can 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 when I started manufacturing pieces, I had an opposed to her 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. But 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 stages do the same thing. 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. Yeah, but that's weird, like you don't put slip covers in the washer with a little blade. Yeah, but when you have people over, you want them to see the sofa, and it's a white sofa. We have a white rug, I don't know why, we get two dogs, two cats, and two teenagers. I mean, it's nuts, but I get it, like when you go and do a stage tom, you look at it like, wow, this is awesome, I want to live here, because there's no crap, but 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 in the water bottles, and 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 a negligee on the bed and I'd throw high heels across the floor and do little scenarios like that, 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 a 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 is 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, all right, fine, I'll take that 85 percent of 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. You will have dried pasta next to the stove. Don't you 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, we want when they open the door, whatever they see is the most important thing. That moment is when you fall in love. You're 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 labors, you know, every week. Well, I would say probably within a year I had to have regular people that were working for me. 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 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 the, 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. I'm renting of the furniture that you were staging, okay, yeah. You know, I had no business background. I mean, I didn't know any of this. So it was really a scary moment, it 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. Yes, so, 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 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. Hey, welcome back to How I Built This, I'm Guy Roz, so it's the early 2000s and Meredith Bear has recovered from about 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, I mean, no, it was it grew and grew and grew and grew. What happened is the LA Times Sunday, you know, 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, you know, 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 LA, it's your name on the companies 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 acute dress and do staging. It's hard work. Yeah. So I just started to, you know, 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 who talk to their sort of defining moments are like the early 2000s, if it's a dot com company, right? There's a bust. The financial crisis of 2008 and for many companies, it just, it was really tough. In your case, you act, 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, you know, 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 do, 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 we're oweing us more and more money and a lot of them went bankrupt. So you could see it happening already a year before. Yeah. But okay, you, 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? You're in LA, a lot of celebrities are using you to stage their homes. And now this becomes, they regor 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 brokers 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 on 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, you know, 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 one eight hundred got junk, which we profiled about seven or eight years ago, which is, it's a junk removal service. He bought a truck, you know, for eight hundred bucks 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 furniture and eventually. Exactly. You've got warehouse costs, you've got, you know, personnel costs, but it's not like you're manufacturing, you know, you've got a factory in China that's manufacturing products and you need just tons of cash upfront. 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 we do one of my warehouses along the road, the first warehouse I bought is now solely manufacturing and we did at a point manufacturer in China. Yeah. As you found, I mean, you start to find different like revenue streams. For example, you eventually started to make your own furniture for the houses, right? Correct. And not all of it. Like, what percentage of the furniture in the houses that you stage do you make? I would say 60 to 70% of our upholstered furnishings we make. Oh, well. 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 like sheets and towels and things like that. 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 Insta Home Service. You had started that earlier? Yes. We started Insta Home 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 household 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 get 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. Right. You can buy it. You can buy it 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, bleasing actually might make sense for a lot of people. For a lot of people, I think it does, you know, it also sent a lot of clients are, it's a second home or 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 may be the biggest and how many people do you have working for a 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 7 to 900 homes installed at any given time. And people are paying anywhere from the absolute lowest 10,000 but all the way up to what? 100,000 plus? We're just finishing a home right now as we speak that was $185,000 job. Just to stage it. Yeah. And you're concentrated also in high value areas, San Francisco Bay Area, LA, New York, Hamptons, and Miami, right? Yes. So at what point did it become very difficult for you, Meredith Bear, to be doing the staging and for you to step out of that? I mean, I continued to install up until maybe, 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, and as I got older, it's physically, it just physically hard, it's hard physical work. Yeah. I mean, when you, because you were in LA, you're in LA and so many celebrities have used the, 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, what happened? What would happen when Harrison Ford or celebrity, it 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. Okay. Nobody gets you anymore. They 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 do you, are you actively looking for a, somebody to run it or do you like being the operational leader in 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 I 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? In a situation arrived, I probably do it. Again, you know, I was didn't have any training as a businesswoman or as an interior designer and again, I don't, 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're kind of more 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 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. 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. Yeah. 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 Brookheimer 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 in 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 Bear, founder and CEO of Meredith Bear 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 and old computer on the ground. Can you come stage my stage it? 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's our minimum. Oh my God. Hey, thanks so much for listening to this show this week. Please make sure to click the follow button on your podcast apps 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 gyros.com or on substack. This episode was produced by Alex Chung with music composed by Rumpteen Everblueie. It was edited by Niva Grant with research help from Nur Gill. Our engineers were Patrick Murray and Quacy Lee. The production staff also includes JC Howard, Casey Herman, Chris Messini, Sam Paulson, Kerry Thompson, Katherine Cipher, Ramell Wood, Andrea Bruce and Elaine Coats. I'm Guy Raaz 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-in 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 a 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. It 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, it's 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 and Joy. I thought what if I built a pet brand that was all about gut health, sensitivities, allergies, 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 you 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 gonna fake it so 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 looked 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 a whole foods love the idea of gut conscious dog food and offer just deals on the spot. Eventually, the product delays worked themselves out and today Bundle and 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 grade Danes, brother and sister, Soul and Luna, I want them to live the longest they can possibly live. That's Jess Berger, the founder of Bundle and 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.