All that Madeline Galea saw growing up was a family that worked for themselves–her father is a doctor who started his own practice, and her mother, a lawyer, started her own firm. That meant, she says, that she never saw a family member with a boss in the traditional sense, so she never knew anything different than working for herself.
I think having just regular jobs, I quickly realized it wasn’t for me–the structure of it, having to do something a very specific way that I maybe wouldn’t have chosen to do that way,” she says. “And so that’s probably why I think I gravitated more towards entrepreneurship. And I started it very young. I had my first good, legitimate job, and was offered a full time position and declined it right then and there, just because I said, ‘You know what, if I’m going to start something, I need to try it now versus later.’ And it just kind of snowballed from there.”
Galea started Parker & Co originally because she felt like the entrepreneurial journey should be reflective of a person’s passions and values. So Parker & Co was born, originally as a dog walking company, out of her passion for furry friends. “I knew for me to do it well, I had to be somewhat interested in the space and actually enjoy it,” she says. “And I absolutely love dogs. I love all animals. I have two myself. I’ve always had an animal growing up as well, so I really wanted to do something in the pet space. A lot of dog walking companies at the time either were private walks or they would do group walks, but take them to the park. So I saw kind of a gap in the market where we would do structured group walks, so your dogs can still socialize, but they’re on leash altogether. So we were that’s kind of where we got in on the market.”
She’d experienced rapid growth, hired a number of employees and created a viable, successful business, and then the pandemic forced her to rethink her strategy. “I decided to just try out something different. I made my first product, a handmade dog leash,” Galea says. “I just made them at my house and decided to post them, first to my clients to see if they were interested, which they were, and then posted a couple Tiktok videos. And it kind of just snowballed from there and went really well.”
Today, the sense of community that helped her pivot her business with ease remains at the core of Parker & Co’s values. And part of what success means to Galea is the idea that she can serve her community, both by creating fashionable, wearable pet gear and by creating goods that are versatile and fulfill the needs of members of her community that are differently abled. “We usually do one trade show a year, and they’re a lot of work, and I don’t necessarily love them, but I love being able to see people who actually use our items,” she says. “And there was a girl who had, I believe, a seizure disability, and she’s in a wheelchair, and we took the time at the trade show to help her and see what would work for her, what the best type of leash was, and we just took the time to actually listen to her and what her needs were, and she ended up buying a leash.
“The next day, she sent us a DM on Instagram, and it was a really long, very thoughtful message. And she actually brought us to tears. She started crying at the expo as well, because she said it meant so much to her that we took the time to set up a system that would actually work for her needs and work with her service dog and her wheelchair and that really hit home for us.”
To that end, Galea believes there’s no perfect time to follow your dream, to make an impact on people, to decide to make the leap to entrepreneurship. And the advice she has for young people hoping to make an impact in their community or to take the plunge? “Just start. Everything doesn’t necessarily have to be perfectly set up from the very beginning. If you wait for that moment, I don’t think you’ll ever start. Just start.”
