We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Whitney Tevis a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Whitney, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Do you manage your own social media?

We have done a little bit of both during our twelve years in business! We originally had our social media coordinator in-house, but as we experienced more growth, we decided to hire someone to help us. That worked for about a year, but in our business, we are in so many spaces that we felt like it was better to go back to in-house. That said, we are learning as we go, and certainly aren’t experts in that realm yet. But we have recently made it to 10k followers, which has been a long-time goal!

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

My business partner, Debbie Horton, got into the business of organizing in 2011 after she helped friends and family organize their spaces for fun. After a girls weekend, she decided to start doing it professionally. At the time, there were only 2 other organizers in our area. Now, there are dozens! I came on as an organizer in 2014, and as a partner in the company in 2020.

While we focus primarily on organizing, our services have evolved over the years. We offer full relocation services, including overseeing moves, downsizing, staging, working with estate sale companies, moving companies, etc. We also work with builders and contractors on new homes and remodels where we design closets, pantries, garages and storage rooms! This is what really sets us apart. We have the experience and staff to support a complete turn-key service.

We know that investing in organization for your home or office is an investment, but once our customers see the value in making the initial investment, they become true believers of the process! We set up a system that makes it easy for family members or employees to follow. We make it a priority to set you up for success.

We are proud of our team and their efforts to give 100 percent every day on the job. Debbie and I don’t get to be in the field as much any more, and our team is the best of the best. We have so many repeat customers, which really speaks to the quality of work we do. Not only that, I believe our customer service is exceptional.

How’d you meet your business partner?

I started working with Debbie in 2014 as an organizer for The Organized Nest. After a year or two, I really started thinking about how the company could grow. I have a background in Marketing and Advertising, and just knew we needed to start being consistent with social media and branding. Debbie is more of the functional brain, while I veer more toward the creative side. We are a great balance, and together we started to play with rebranding the company a bit, and invest in both website and social media marketing.

The business started to pick up speed in 2017, and by 2019 Debbie felt like she couldn’t do it on her own any longer. I was approached to come along as a business partner, so I bought in and haven’t looked back.

We have had successes and failures, but we continue to be innovative in our field, and we stay very busy. Our customers are the BEST!

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

When i joined as a business partner in 2020, we were in discussions about how to take The Organized Nest outside of Fort Worth. We already had a successful branch in Midland, Texas, and after getting the kinks out, we felt like we were ready to venture out even further. We spent months with a franchise attorney, writing and re-writing our franchise manual. We approached a few people who had expressed an interest in being a franchise owner, and set up all of the necessary steps to move forward. We signed the dotted line on March 6, 2020. JOKE WAS ON US!! Covid-19 hit exactly one week later, and we had to shut our organizing business down for the next 8 weeks. And let me tell you, no one was interested in being a franchise owner in 2020. Cash was king, and there were just too many unknowns. We pivoted a bit, and decided to focus all of our energy on The Organized Nest in Fort Worth. Midland had to shut down, due to lack of child care for our team out there, as well as simply not being able to staff the jobs we did have. As a small business, we were very fortunate to have survived the effect Covid had on our community. Not only did we survive, we thrived and came back busier than ever before. Suddenly, everyone was working and schooling from home, and really wanted our services to help them become successful in those areas. Our tenacity and experience and willingness to keep pivoting really kept our heads above water.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.organizednest.com
• Instagram: @organized_nest
• Facebook: @TheOrganizedNest

Image Credits
image credit: @cannonsawyerphotography