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

How I Built This · 1 Dec 2025 · 1h 03m

What this episode covers

Meridith Baer, founder of Meridith Baer Home, explains how she pivoted from a stalled Hollywood screenwriting career to building one of the largest home staging companies in the US after accidentally staging her rental home at age 50. She details her bootstrapped growth strategy, including pricing based on value created for sellers, leveraging consignment rugs, and manufacturing 60-70% of upholstered furniture in-house to maintain margins. Baer also discusses the operational challenges of scaling to a 320-person company, navigating a significant tax compliance issue and a cancer diagnosis simultaneously, and her decision to remain debt-free by reinvesting profits rather than seeking outside venture capital.

Mentioned

Companies
Meridith Baer Home
Also
Jerry Bruckheimer, Penthouse magazine, Patrick Stewart, Home Depot, HGTV, U.S. Bank

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