A view of the Eiffel Tower, something most can only dream of, was the reality of every single one of the apartments I saw as I gave tours to guests at a small real estate company in Paris last summer.
My first day was a little scary as I strolled up to work at 9:00 am in dress pants, a white top, and high heels. I clearly was not briefed on what I was about to do all day (a lot of walking: ~24,000 steps) and let’s just say my feet took a hit.
Madelyn Byrne is the owner and mastermind behind Paris Perfect (the real estate/AirBnB company I worked for this summer). I became interested in this job after my family bought a rational apartment from Madelyn’s company. The company maintains a presence in different locations including Italy, Japan, London, and of course Paris (where it started). This global brand started by Madelyn was the foundation for luxury AirBnBs across Europe.
Though she admits it was a difficult process to get started on a concept no one had ever tried to do in Europe before, she used her college level French skills and French husband to help her get around in a beautiful yet inefficient part of the world. If you have ever tried to get something done in Paris before (even if you speak the language) it takes about ten tries until you can get it right and this was the same issue Madelyn ran into every single day.
Madelyn’s frustration with “needless bureaucracy and mediocre decision-making in big companies” drove her to try her hand at starting a business for herself. Once she got the idea off the ground, her siblings and husband helped her put it into action, and thus Paris Perfect (the first satellite office) was born. The road wasn’t smooth sailing though as she was an American woman starting her own business in France and the rules were a little different abroad. France has “very liberal work rules” meaning that their workers get paid very high salaries and they can take off a lot of days and holidays to be with their families. This caused some issues in the beginning because Americans get a couple sick days and a week of vacation in a year, which is the mindset Madelyn brought with her to France. This cultural difference slowed the whole process down. COVID brought even more challenges as “controlling expenses was a big challenge” but she persevered by thinking “sometimes things go wrong but we have to do our best to remedy the situation” and that is exactly what she did.
Eventually she figured it out through perseverance and finding the parts about running a hospitality business that she loves. Her favorite part of running Paris Perfect is getting to see every apartment’s transformation. She buys old apartments and completely remodels them to turn them into stunning vacation and year-long rentals and fractionals for people all over the world. The amount of thought and effort she puts into not only personalizing each one, but also the small little details through custom pans and bedding, down to the fork, just shows how much she loves her job and it’s evident in each apartment.
Madelyn is a strong, courageous, kind, and fearless business-owner who advocates and supports many young women wanting to pursue their dreams of starting a business. She argues that it’s important to “think about a profession where you are rewarded for the work you do – not just as part of a team where a few loud voices (sorry, often male) know how to speak loudest and push for all the credit.”
Taking her words into account, I felt less nervous throughout the duration of my internship as I knew that she would always support me. The man I shadowed the majority of the time was named Tahir and he was equally as supportive of my learning and fully embraced having me with him by allowing me to give greetings to new guests and speaking to the housekeeping team in French.
My highlights were giving greetings to two best friends and their moms from North Carolina on a girls trip for a month together, and meeting the old editor of Vogue (who lived right above me!) so that we could fix her air-conditioning. Overall, this was one of the best experiences I have ever had at a job and I am so grateful I was able to experience working in Paris for the first (and hopefully not the last) time.
