Growing up, Tiffany Bowtell’s big ideas were often misconstrued as poor behaviour. Never one to give up, she’s gone on to forge a successful and innovative career in the property management industry, as she explains…
I’ve always been a little ahead of the times with my big ideas and dreams.
At school, this would mean I was often in trouble.
But when I entered the workforce, I discovered the behaviours my teachers mistook as troublesome had a name – innovation.
I started in the real estate industry as a property manager in 1995 and after 15 years decided to back myself and sidestep into a career as an industry trainer.
I worked for leading property management CRM software company, Console as a head trainer before establishing my training and consultancy firm.
I discovered that, just like me, many property managers were fed up with the late nights, stress and heavy workload the job entails.
So I made it my mission to solve their problems and help real estate business owners succeed.
After consulting with more than 8000 agencies across Australia, and providing training and keynote speaking, I was finally where I belonged and had found my purpose.
After six years, I had built great momentum in my business but experienced a terrible loss when one of my dearly loved staff members passed away from cancer.
For a while I lost my direction and almost quit the industry.
In early 2016 I found a new direction.
I had been getting requests from clients who were seeking an alternative way to grow their rent roll and wanted to give outsourcing a try.
Being the innovator I was, it was something I had already been doing but hadn’t made public.
I hooked my clients up with a contact in the Philippines, but after two months my clients started to report negative feedback.
They were frustrated with the process, cultural differences and complications in getting the outsourcing flowing.
While the contact I knew meant well, he had limited knowledge of the industry, and the client didn’t have the skill to work with a remote person.
That left a big gap in the results.
Then, almost by accident, a client suggested I take over since I was their consultant anyway and I knew exactly what was needed.
Almost five years after starting my business, I pivoted and added outsourcing service options to the company.
In the beginning the biggest challenges were training the outsourced staff and having human resources control.
Using a local provider just didn’t work.
So I decided to incorporate my own foreign company and pour every last cent into the business and some of my unsuspecting loving partners’ too. (I’ll save that epic drama for another story.)
Long story short – it worked!
There was a lot of hard work, late nights and start-up nonsense that goes hand-in-hand with starting your own company, but it really did work.
What I think made it a success was being the conduit to the result.
Think of it like this; you’re on one side of a deep ravine that you want to cross but you need someone to show you the way.
That’s what I did.
I developed 1600 process workflows and created a system that made outsourcing simple and got results fast.
I guess you can say it took 15 years of research to create an overnight success.
My plans for the future are bigger than I could ever have imagined as a young ‘troublemaker’, but I love to go out on a limb.
I love nothing more than forging a path for my clients to achieve success and in return it creates my success.
