Olivia Parks Built Her Business From Scratch
In her early 20s, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, she turned a nanny job into a six-figure organizing company - and has since helped more than 1,000 Louisiana families reclaim their homes, earning over 200 five-star reviews along the way.
There is a version of the young entrepreneur the world trains us to expect: someone who waits for the right moment, the right economy and the right set of circumstances before making a move. Olivia Parks took a different path entirely. She launched her home organizing company in 2021, in her early 20s, in the middle of a global pandemic, as the first business owner in her family - and she booked her first client within one week. What followed was a six-figure first year, a growing team and a company that now serves clients across three Louisiana markets.
The business she built, Professional Organizers Baton Rouge, is a hands-on home organizing company that helps individuals and families declutter, organize and create functional living spaces. Its services range from residential organization and home decluttering to packing, unpacking and organizing support during major life transitions such as moving, downsizing, divorce, the loss of a loved one or preparing for a new baby. Some clients arrive simply overwhelmed by their homes, navigating anxiety or depression, and looking for practical support and an extra set of hands.
Parks started the company after recognizing an unmet need while working as a nanny and household assistant. She was grateful for the work, she has said, but she was burning out and knew it was not the path she wanted for the rest of her life. Working inside people's homes gave her the idea: she saw firsthand how much families valued having help getting organized, and she identified an opportunity to build something of her own. She created a website, listed her services online and went for it. The rest followed from there.
More than 1,000 clients and 200 five-star reviews
Since launching in 2021, Parks and her team have helped more than 1,000 clients declutter and organize their homes. The company has earned over 200 five-star reviews and has grown into one of the highest-ranked home organizing companies in the areas it serves. What began as a single-person operation now spans three locations across Louisiana, with services reaching Baton Rouge, Greater New Orleans and Louisiana's Northshore.
The media has taken notice as well. Parks has been featured in more than 50 publications, including Real Simple, Apartment Therapy, Reader's Digest, Family Handyman and The Washington Post. She has also appeared in local television and media interviews in both New Orleans and Baton Rouge, including segments with What's What BR and NOLA Now.
What she says she is most proud of, though, is not the coverage or the milestones. It is what it took to get there - starting young, becoming the first business owner in her family, doing it during a period of widespread uncertainty and choosing to focus on what she could control rather than on everything that could go wrong.
The turning point: building a team
Parks identifies the decision to hire employees and build a team as the single biggest turning point in her career. It is one thing, she has said, to own a business and do everything yourself. It is something else entirely to start trusting other people to represent the company you created - to give up some control and let others carry part of the work.
That transition taught her more about leadership than any other experience. Hiring, training, communicating expectations and learning to delegate all became essential skills she had to develop on the fly. She has noted that she could not have grown the business to where it is today without taking that step.
The process also surfaced one of her most important entrepreneurial lessons: the value of setting clear policies and processes from the beginning. That means establishing how payments are handled, what cancellation policies look like, what clients can expect and what the company expects in return. As a young woman in her early 20s running a service-based business, she had to learn to stand behind those policies and protect herself, her team and the business she had built - sometimes the hard way.
A leadership philosophy built on listening and continuous improvement
Parks believes that great leaders are always trying to get better. They do not assume that because something is working today, there is not a better way to do it tomorrow. That might mean improving the service itself, building stronger processes and systems, communicating more effectively with the team or simply working on oneself as a leader.
A key part of that philosophy is listening. Once she began building a team, she realized quickly that she did not have all the answers - and that the people working alongside her often saw things she could not. Being willing to hear those perspectives, she has said, can make the entire business better. Her leadership approach centers on continuous learning, open communication, collaboration and a genuine willingness to change course when something is not working.
Her definition of success reflects the same values. She has said that success looks different for everyone and that it comes down to a person's "why" - what they want from their business and what kind of life they are trying to create. For her, success means growing the company, increasing profitability and keeping clients happy, but it also means what that growth allows her to do outside of work: help her family, travel, and have control over how she spends her time.
Watching the horizon: AI and the future of local business discovery
Parks is paying close attention to the rise of artificial intelligence and how it is changing the way people find local businesses. For years, she has said, local marketing centered on Google - and that remains critically important. But people are now also using tools like ChatGPT and other AI-powered platforms to search for services, and she is actively learning how to ensure her organizing businesses are visible in those spaces as well.
Her point is straightforward: being skilled at home organizing is only one part of running an organizing company. You also have to know how to market the business and make sure the people who need your services can actually find you. As the landscape shifts, she intends to shift with it.
Looking ahead, her plans include continued business growth, improved profitability, an expanded client base and a sustained commitment to the service quality that has driven the company's reviews. She is also beginning to share what she has learned with other professional organizers who want to build and grow their own companies - taking the experience she accumulated since 2021 and using it to help others find their footing in the industry.
This profile is reported from publicly available information and materials provided by Olivia Parks. Nothing in this article is presented as a quotation unless it appears in quotation marks with attribution.