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

26:39Yeah. 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.

27:25I 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. 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.

28:15And 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'd 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 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.

28:54Yes. 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 I, 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.

29:34Everyone 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?

30:15And 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. You know, the first house, you know, 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.

30:54Well, 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 that'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.

31:28Right. 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?

32:14Where 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.

32:59This 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.

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36:40Hey, 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. 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. You know, I just, 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.

37:22Because you did not invent staging. I mean, you really popularized it. You turned it into, helped turn it into a huge industry. But it had existed. It just wasn't as common. Like, 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.

38:03how 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.

38:47I 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.

39:28So maybe$25 ,000, $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?

40:13So I kind of took that number and played with it. But 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. In the very early days, that's what I did. And then I bought my first van, and then I bought my first truck.

40:50I 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 1 ,000 square feet of space, which quickly turned to 5 ,000 square feet.

41:41Wow. 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?

42:26Because 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.

43:16So 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.

43:54You 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.

44:32Yeah. 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.

45:14and 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.

45:57So 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, manipulate's 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 them 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.

46:31But 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. You're starting with the entry.

47:08They 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.

47:44And 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.

48:39Yeah 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.

49:18Oh, it was devastating. I was supposed to be charging tax on rent. On renting of the furniture that you were staging. OK, 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.

50:05And 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.

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52:24Hey, 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. OK, 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 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. Latin. So we open up shop there. And then, you know, people want us to come to Florida.

53:05So 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.

53:41How 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.

54:20And 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.

55:06And 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.

55:45And 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.

56:32I 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.

57:19I 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 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 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.

58:10So 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 manufacture 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. 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.

58:55Oh, 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.

59:38Yeah. 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.

1:00:17And 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. Like you buy it, 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.

1:00:55Exactly. 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 700 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?

1:01:41We'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 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.

1:02:32and 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 me. 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?

1:03:12Yes. 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.

1:03:58You know what? If the right situation arrived, I'd probably do it. Again, you know, 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 30 years of my professional life.

1:04:38So 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.

1:05:15Meredith, 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.

1:05:57I 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.

1:06:43Hey, 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.

1:07:20I'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.

1:08:02Jess 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.

1:08:41The 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.

1:09:22But 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.

1:10:02We 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 just 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.

1:10:43But 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.

1:11:12If 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.