John Shearer
Clea Shearer’s name is synonymous with a multitude of successes.
Alongside her dear friend and business partner, Joanna Teplin, the iconic duo founded The Home Edit in 2015 after both women had just moved to Nashville, sight unseen, and were unexpectedly connected through a mutual friend. Together, they have transformed homes across the country (both on and off screen), proving that organization can be as functional as it is design-savvy. Celebrating its 10-year anniversary this summer, The Home Edit has grown into a global home and lifestyle company beyond their wildest dreams, with a plethora of books including three New York Times bestsellers, a line of organizational products sold in stores in over 31 countries, and an Emmy-nominated Netflix show. The duo has captured hearts worldwide, including plenty of famous faces. One of those celebrity admirers being Reese Witherspoon, whose production company, Hello Sunshine, acquired The Home Edit in 2022. And 2025 is shaping up to be yet another hugely successful year, as Shearer and Teplin grace TV screens again as the hosts of ABC’s heartwarming new iteration of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.
Beyond her many achievements, perhaps the biggest thing to associate with Shearer’s name is inspiration. It’s the way she built a business through unwavering friendship and fierce determination to never give up. It’s the way she fought breast cancer amid milestone career highs, and made a promise to use her diagnosis to help others advocate for their own health. It’s the way she lives her life, both personally and professionally, that makes Shearer’s story one of true inspiration.
Trust the Process: I think with The Home Edit we were building the plane as we were flying it, so I never really had the realization that it was definitely going to work; I just knew I was ready to try. There’s just no place for fear in something like that. I have always been someone who tries not to fly in the face of rejection. I really want to put my best foot forward, always, and not come from a place of being afraid to do something. I was brand new in Nashville, I had just met Joanna, and I just decided, why not do this? Why not give it a shot? And, hopefully, it will work. I felt confident that we could pull this off. Not to this level, but we were confident that we could pull off having a business. I wasn’t positive it was going to happen; I was just positive that we were going to try really hard.
Keys to Success: I don’t think it’s the type of growth or success that anyone would ever set out to dream about. It’s too big to dream about. All I ever wanted was to have a really successful company, and I do, but it’s definitely on a scale that is much bigger than I could have imagined. I think the secret to our success has been a few things. We come from a place of yes; we always did. We are yes people; we are let’s-give-it- a-shot type of people. We didn’t shut down ideas, we didn’t say no to opportunities, we always said yes. Even the things that maybe weren’t as big of a hit as some of the other things we did, it all leads up to the bigger picture, and learning, and all sorts of things. If a retailer wanted us to fly out to their corporate office and meet with them, we were on the next plane. If a celebrity wanted us to come out and organize their house and move them in somewhere, we were on the next plane. I also think Joanna and my friendship was, and is, the secret sauce in everything we ever did. I think that if we weren’t prepared to spend an inordinate amount of time together then this never would have worked. We’re yes people, but we also had to be together all the time, like 24 hours a day, in very sticky (literally), tight (literally) circumstances, and we powered through together. Every single challenge, every single day to this day, we power through together. I think that our friendship is the cornerstone of our entire business. I think our tenacity and our work ethic have also gotten us this far. We’re not lazy people. We’re on the next plane, but we’re also out there ourselves with our own hands building, pushing, doing everything that we can. We’ve been incredibly involved since day one, and we’ve never lost that. That, to me, is really important for the overall success.
Move That Bus: Hosting Extreme Makeover: Home Edition is the single most incredible, most impactful, most meaningful thing I have ever done in my life. When we were filming the pilot [episode 1] in Austin, midway through the episode, there’s a place we take the families called the Edit Zone, which is basically all the contents of their home laid out in a giant space, room by room, so we can go through all their things. There’s a real breakthrough moment that happens during the Edit Zone with the family, and it absolutely shook me to my core because I’ve never seen someone’s life change and transform before my very eyes. As human beings, we don’t normally get to witness something like that. It hit me so deeply that I left, and I called John, my husband, and I was like, “I need you to take the kids and fly out here tomorrow because I need you to witness what is happening to me. I need you to witness the life-changing situation that I’m a part of. I can’t have that experience if you guys aren’t part of this too.” And he did. I needed him to meet the family; I needed them to see what this show means to me and the incredible life-changing that we are so privileged to get to do on this show. It has honestly changed me in profound ways. The families say that we changed their lives, but I so strongly believe that they’ve changed ours. It’s really the opportunity of a lifetime. It’s been everything.
John Shearer
Beyond the Home: My favorite thing about the show, hands down, is the connections we make with the families. I think the difference in this reboot versus the original is the concept of the Edit Zone and the fact that we don’t send the families off on vacation, we work with them. Because of that, not only do we have such a deeper connection with the families, I think the audience does as well. We get so much more invested and understand their personalities so much better, the things they need, their emotional triggers, and the family’s joy together. That is absolutely the best feeling — getting to have this experience with the families and really connect with them, get to know them, and keep in touch with them. They’ll always be forever stitched into my heart. I hope that we don’t just give them a home; I hope we really change their lifestyle. I hope we can ingrain in them a sense of connection to all their things, the home they get to live in, the family they get to be surrounded by. I hope they live healthier lives with better habits. I hope this opportunity feels fulfilling and rewarding and fills them with a real sense of worth and purpose. A lot of these families are really struggling and are kind of in survival mode, so I’m really hoping this gives their life a reset, a refresh, and just more intentional living. We organize every single space, and it’s beautifully cared for when they move in, and I really think we’re setting them up for success.
Hit the Books: We started with a slew of adult-format books, and those were a real necessary jumping-off point for anyone looking to get organized and stay organized. But we know our work really begins right at the beginning, right from birth. One of the things we get asked so much is, “There’s no way that I’m going to be able to stay organized, what do I do if I have kids?” We’ve been saying for so long, 10 years now, kids have the ability to do it. It’s absolutely a fact that in preschool, teachers do not clean up for the kids. The kids are taught when they’re playing with a toy, they have to put it away before they get a new one. Parents just automatically do it, so the stuff is cleaned up. [With our kids’ books] we really want to instill good habits from the very beginning; make organizing into a game. It’s a color sorting game, it’s who can put the crayons away the fastest, let’s get the puzzle pieces back the fastest, throw the dolls into the basket. It’s simple, as long as you keep the systems really simple. I remember when my first child, Stella, was very little, we got her a little play kitchen that had cubbies for the food, and I started organizing it like I was stocking a bodega. I was like, “Stella doesn’t know the difference between legumes and grains, what am I doing?” So, I started stocking it by color instead, and not only was it really pretty to look at, but I realized she’s not putting together a meal with actual ingredients, she just wants to play in the kitchen, play with the food, and she can totally put things away by herself because it’s fun for her to mix and match the colors. That was a learning moment for me very early on where I was like, this needs to be an intuitive system for kids. Systems for adults need to be simple, too. They need to be intuitive, easy to understand, and that’s kind of what started my focus with organizing — really thinking about measurable ways that people can not only be organized but stay organized. We joke that these kids’ books are great for kids, but also husbands, because the systems are actually the same. We just present them in a way kids understand and that they can have fun with. Kids organizing, starting them young is really important. That’s why we also put out a teen book. We want to hit them at all the moments in their life where they can really take ownership of their own space, their own room, their own things, and hopefully, all those habits will lead into an organized, healthy adulthood.
Greatest Accomplishment: Of course, the legacy of The Home Edit is always going to be one of my biggest accomplishments. But to be honest, I feel like my biggest accomplishment is being able to connect with so many people who have been or were recently diagnosed with breast cancer and other cancers. To be able to be there for someone even in just a digital space, even in just DMs back and forth, or encouragement, or sharing my story. When I was diagnosed, I was absolutely set on the fact that I wanted to make my cancer purposeful, and I wanted to be able to help even one person advocate for themselves, get themselves screened, get themselves checked. Not having cancer is different than not knowing you have cancer. I really was pushing people left and right to make sure they get mammograms and so forth, and I know of several people who have said that they did find something because of me. I don’t wish cancer upon anyone, but I certainly wish for people to find it early and potentially avoid some of the treatments and all the things that can come with cancer once it’s in later stages. The connection I’ve made with breast cancer and cancer patients alike is truly an achievement I would put on my tombstone.
Be Your Biggest Advocate: No one is going to care about our health like we do. You have to prioritize your health over your busy schedule. When I was told that I couldn’t get a mammogram because there was nothing open, it was in February [2022], and they told me even the May books weren’t open yet, so I would just have to keep trying back. I had stage 2 breast cancer that had already spread to my lymph nodes, and that was aggressive and fast-moving. If I had waited until May, I think I would be in a much worse situation. The more I can tell people, you have to advocate for yourself, you cannot take no for an answer, you have to care about your health more than anyone else because no one is going to fiercely stick up for health practices like yourself. There are zero people in the world who are going to advocate better than you. That’s really critical and really important. Stay on top of your health. Know your body. I found my own lump, so if I had been better about understanding my body previously, I could have avoided so much, I could have caught it so much earlier. That’s the absolute most important thing.
Fail Forward: We’ve had millions [of experiences that felt like failures but turned out to be a turning point for the better]! We pitched so many different things and were so upset when the idea was rejected, but that turned into other, bigger things. We were pitched TV shows at one point, and we ended up going with a mini little episode show for Hello Sunshine’s TV network called Master the Mess, and it was a much smaller format than other shows that we were pitched, but we really wanted to be with Hello Sunshine and Reese [Witherspoon]. That little mini-show got packaged up and sent to Netflix, and that’s how we got our bigger show. Everything can be, in my mind, laddered up to something so much bigger. When something in the immediate feels like it didn’t work, I stopped feeling like that was the end result and that there’s something better or something bigger that’s going to happen from this nugget of things. Every experience, whether it’s a learning experience or a huge success, both are really valuable. Joanna and I know you don’t go into business for 10 years and work 24 hours a day nonstop without making a ton of missteps along the way, but that’s what strong work ethic and fierce determination will bring you. It’s like, ‘OK, well, onto the next day.’ We don’t sit back and take anything for granted. We push, push, push, and are constantly in motion. I’ve always believed that work begets work and forward motion — I mean it’s the law of physics — that’s how you keep moving. We’ve never let a single thing stop us.
Advice to Her Younger Self: Stop caring so much what people think! Stop being afraid of failure. Some of my biggest accomplishments have come from initially failing at something. I was always afraid to start my own business. I never had my own business before The Home Edit, and I was terrified to start something. I finally had to stop worrying about failure and just dig in, and it certainly got me where I am today. You’ve got to sometimes push yourself out of your comfort zone, it’s the only way to grow.
Meet Clea Shearer at our annual Inspiring Women event. Get your ticket here.