YouSaid · the spoken record

Meridith Baer

lines on the record: 81
first: 2025-12-01
most recent: 2025-12-01
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“It's Jess Burger, 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.”
2025-12-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Meridith Baer Home: Meridith Baer. She Started Over at 50 and Put Home Staging on the Map. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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.”
2025-12-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Meridith Baer Home: Meridith Baer. She Started Over at 50 and Put Home Staging on the Map. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 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.”
2025-12-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Meridith Baer Home: Meridith Baer. She Started Over at 50 and Put Home Staging on the Map. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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.”
2025-12-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Meridith Baer Home: Meridith Baer. She Started Over at 50 and Put Home Staging on the Map. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Had a vision for a brand with a strong sense of community built around dog moms like herself. So she spent about eighteen months on R&D and made plans to launch a big trade show in California, Expo West. But there was a problem.”
2025-12-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Meridith Baer Home: Meridith Baer. She Started Over at 50 and Put Home Staging on the Map. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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”
2025-12-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Meridith Baer Home: Meridith Baer. She Started Over at 50 and Put Home Staging on the Map. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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.”
2025-12-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Meridith Baer Home: Meridith Baer. She Started Over at 50 and Put Home Staging on the Map. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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.”
2025-12-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Meridith Baer Home: Meridith Baer. She Started Over at 50 and Put Home Staging on the Map. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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.”
2025-12-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Meridith Baer Home: Meridith Baer. She Started Over at 50 and Put Home Staging on the Map. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 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 guyroz.com or on substack. This episode was produced by Alex Chung with music composed by Rumtina Ra Bluey. It was edited by Neva Grant with research help from Nor Gill. Our engineers were Patrick Murray and Kwaise Lee. Our production staff also includes JC Howard, Casey Herman, Chris Massini, Sam Paulson, Carrie Thompson, Catherine Ceypher, Ramelle Wood, Andrea Bruce, and Elaine Coates. I'm Guy Ros, 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.”
2025-12-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Meridith Baer Home: Meridith Baer. She Started Over at 50 and Put Home Staging on the Map. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Meredith Baer, 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 an old computer on the ground.”
2025-12-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Meridith Baer Home: Meridith Baer. She Started Over at 50 and Put Home Staging on the Map. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 in the grind that you put in and how much do you think has to do with just luck and fortune?”
2025-12-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Meridith Baer Home: Meridith Baer. She Started Over at 50 and Put Home Staging on the Map. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What I was doing the previous 50 years of my professional life. It is kind of remarkable, right? I mean, if you think about you could not have imagined, I guess, when you were 50, that this would become this thing.”
2025-12-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Meridith Baer Home: Meridith Baer. She Started Over at 50 and Put Home Staging on the Map. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, it is amazing because you had a completely different life before age 50. 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 become completely different.”
2025-12-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Meridith Baer Home: Meridith Baer. She Started Over at 50 and Put Home Staging on the Map. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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?”
2025-12-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Meridith Baer Home: Meridith Baer. She Started Over at 50 and Put Home Staging on the Map. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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?”
2025-12-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Meridith Baer Home: Meridith Baer. She Started Over at 50 and Put Home Staging on the Map. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What happened, what would happen when Harrison Ford or a celebrity was like, or Brad Pitt, it's like, I need Meredith to do my house.”
2025-12-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Meridith Baer Home: Meridith Baer. She Started Over at 50 and Put Home Staging on the Map. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, because you were in LA, you're in LA, and so many celebrities have used your services, Bob Dilla and 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.”
2025-12-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Meridith Baer Home: Meridith Baer. She Started Over at 50 and Put Home Staging on the Map. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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?”
2025-12-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Meridith Baer Home: Meridith Baer. She Started Over at 50 and Put Home Staging on the Map. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Just to stage And you're concentrated also in high value areas, San Francisco Bay Area, LA, New York, Hamptons, and Miami, right?”
2025-12-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Meridith Baer Home: Meridith Baer. She Started Over at 50 and Put Home Staging on the Map. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, it makes sense because furniture is one of those things where the depreciation is just dramatic. Like you 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. Scylla to consignment shop, and they're going to give you pennies on the dollar.”
2025-12-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Meridith Baer Home: Meridith Baer. She Started Over at 50 and Put Home Staging on the Map. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Is that a significant part of your business, or is the overwhelming majority of your revenue still coming from just staging homes?”
2025-12-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Meridith Baer Home: Meridith Baer. She Started Over at 50 and Put Home Staging on the Map. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, as you found, I mean, you Make your own furniture for the houses, right? Correct. Not all of it. What percentage of the furniture in the houses that you staged do you make?”
2025-12-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Meridith Baer Home: Meridith Baer. She Started Over at 50 and Put Home Staging on the Map. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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.”
2025-12-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Meridith Baer Home: Meridith Baer. She Started Over at 50 and Put Home Staging on the Map. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 it's a junk removal service. He bought a truck for $800 within a couple weeks. The truck was paid off from removing people's stuff in 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...”
2025-12-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Meridith Baer Home: Meridith Baer. She Started Over at 50 and Put Home Staging on the Map. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And by 2012, from what I read, you had about 100 employees, you got 130,000 square foot warehouse in L.A. 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.”
2025-12-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Meridith Baer Home: Meridith Baer. She Started Over at 50 and Put Home Staging on the Map. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So you can see it happening already a year before But okay, you get through the recession, right? And then on the other side of it, this whole industry, this whole 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 LA, a lot of celebrities are using you to stage their homes. And now this becomes de rigur. Like if you're going to sell a house, like staging becomes part of the cost of doing business.”
2025-12-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Meridith Baer Home: Meridith Baer. She Started Over at 50 and Put Home Staging on the Map. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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. 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, you know, sort of more modest homes because people needed to sell their homes.”
2025-12-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Meridith Baer Home: Meridith Baer. She Started Over at 50 and Put Home Staging on the Map. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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?”
2025-12-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Meridith Baer Home: Meridith Baer. She Started Over at 50 and Put Home Staging on the Map. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 Raws and you're listening to how I built this. 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.”
2025-12-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Meridith Baer Home: Meridith Baer. She Started Over at 50 and Put Home Staging on the Map. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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.”
2025-12-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Meridith Baer Home: Meridith Baer. She Started Over at 50 and Put Home Staging on the Map. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 daylabores every week.”
2025-12-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Meridith Baer Home: Meridith Baer. She Started Over at 50 and Put Home Staging on the Map. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 them 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% 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?”
2025-12-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Meridith Baer Home: Meridith Baer. She Started Over at 50 and Put Home Staging on the Map. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Part of what you do also manipulates not the right word, but you're touching or you're kind of trying to connect with somebody's psychology.”
2025-12-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Meridith Baer Home: Meridith Baer. She Started Over at 50 and Put Home Staging on the Map. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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.”
2025-12-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Meridith Baer Home: Meridith Baer. She Started Over at 50 and Put Home Staging on the Map. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But I get it. Like, when you go into a stage home, you look at it like, wow, this is awesome. I want to live here because there's no crap. There's no stuff on the refrigerator and just like accumulated. Junk in the kids' rooms from all the camps they went to and the water bottles and”
2025-12-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Meridith Baer Home: Meridith Baer. She Started Over at 50 and Put Home Staging on the Map. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 get two dogs, two cats, and two teenagers. I mean, it's nuts.”
2025-12-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Meridith Baer Home: Meridith Baer. She Started Over at 50 and Put Home Staging on the Map. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I find that white sofas only exist in stage homes. 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.”
2025-12-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Meridith Baer Home: Meridith Baer. She Started Over at 50 and Put Home Staging on the Map. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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,”
2025-12-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Meridith Baer Home: Meridith Baer. She Started Over at 50 and Put Home Staging on the Map. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And you're going to sell this house at a premium, so you're actually going to make the money back and more. Okay, so 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?”
2025-12-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Meridith Baer Home: Meridith Baer. She Started Over at 50 and Put Home Staging on the Map. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 what do I charge?”
2025-12-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Meridith Baer Home: Meridith Baer. She Started Over at 50 and Put Home Staging on the Map. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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?”
2025-12-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Meridith Baer Home: Meridith Baer. She Started Over at 50 and Put Home Staging on the Map. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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. 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.”
2025-12-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Meridith Baer Home: Meridith Baer. She Started Over at 50 and Put Home Staging on the Map. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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. 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.”
2025-12-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Meridith Baer Home: Meridith Baer. She Started Over at 50 and Put Home Staging on the Map. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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? 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?”
2025-12-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Meridith Baer Home: Meridith Baer. She Started Over at 50 and Put Home Staging on the Map. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“All right, my understanding is that at this time you were asked to possibly work on writing an adaptation of a novel. This is Barbara Streisand's production company.”
2025-12-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Meridith Baer Home: Meridith Baer. She Started Over at 50 and Put Home Staging on the Map. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“All right, but this was, I mean, because I'm trying to imagine this is the late 90s. Your whole identity, the way you think of yourself is I am a screenwriter.”
2025-12-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Meridith Baer Home: Meridith Baer. She Started Over at 50 and Put Home Staging on the Map. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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?”
2025-12-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Meridith Baer Home: Meridith Baer. She Started Over at 50 and Put Home Staging on the Map. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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, had you have?”
2025-12-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Meridith Baer Home: Meridith Baer. She Started Over at 50 and Put Home Staging on the Map. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, makes sense. I mean, 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.”
2025-12-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Meridith Baer Home: Meridith Baer. She Started Over at 50 and Put Home Staging on the Map. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT