‘Sister Wives’ Star Meri Brown Explains Why She Opened Her Own Business Without Her Family’s Help

Even after being denied a $40,000 loan by her family, Sister Wives star Meri Brown made her dream of owning a bed and breakfast a reality.

In the season premiere of the TLC reality show, Meri, husband Kody Brown and fellow wives Janelle, Christine and Robyn had a meeting that quickly devolved into tears when Meri pitched her business plan to purchase a home in Parowan, Utah, only to be shot down by her family, which questioned her seeming lack of a plan and unwillingness to make them equity partners.

“I’ve struggled, personally, not to see it as sort of self-indulgent, that it’s never been about the family, it’s just been about Meri needing this house in her family,” Kody explained to the cameras during the episode. “It’s never been about how it could benefit our children.”

In an interview with Us Weekly Sunday, Meri explained how she managed to take her family’s loan rejection and turn it into Lizzie’s Heritage Inn, which opened for business in December 2017.

“I knew that the funds were not there,” Meri explained of the initial loan request. “I just felt like, well, I’m just going to have to go do it then. So that’s why I got up and I left and I started working, because I knew that I needed to figure it out because it was something important to me.”

Moving forward with the business plan apart from her family wasn’t a part of a desire “to be alone and independent in the business world or anything like that. It was just something that I needed to get done,” the LuLaRoe retailer insisted.

And while her family was worried that Meri opening a bed and breakfast hours away from the family’s Arizona home would cause her to pull back from the family, Meri said that wasn’t an issue.

“It’s not the type of thing that needs a whole lot of hands-on,” Meri explained of the business venture. “I’ve got employees that I hired that are there doing the cooking and cleaning and stuff like that, and my mom is there.”

Kody and her fellow wives might not have saw her vision from the start, but Meri said now, “I know they support it, and I think that if I needed help with [the inn] they would be right there.”

Sister Wives airs Sundays at 8 p.m. ET on TLC.

Photo credit: TLC