A tough start in life, but Cork woman has made it big in Cyprus

Trish Browne comes from the seaside town of Youghal in Co. Cork. She is the youngest of a family of fourteen, ten boys and four girls, and her early life wasn’t easy. Her father died when she was only two years old, and she lost her mother to cancer twelve years later when she was only fourteen.

That didn’t hold her back though and for the last twenty-three years Trish has made her home in Cyprus where she runs her own company, Blue Surf Property.  An estate agency which is located in the heart of Protaras on the east coast of the island. It’s a thriving business.

Some credit for this must go to her mother. Mrs. Browne appreciated the value of a good education so when Trish left the Presentation Convent in Youghal, her mother sent her to Scoil na Nog, an all-Irish boarding school in Glanmire. That move traumatised the youngster who hadn’t a word of Irish and hated the place from the word go. It quickly grew on her though and she absolutely loved it in the end.

Following the death of her mother, Trish lived with various family members when she wasn’t in boarding school, so she never really had a place to call home. The siblings looked after her well, but it wasn’t the same.

After finishing primary school, she spent the next six years in Colaiste an Phiarsaig and following her leaving certificate, headed to DCU to begin communication studies. She soon became disillusioned with that though and began to have doubts about her choice of course.

She decided to take some time out and go travelling. She had been doing a little part-time bar work while attending DCU and her boss told her about a friend of his who had a bar in Cyprus. He said if she was going to travel then she would have to experience Cyprus. She took his advice and accompanied by a friend of hers, headed for the airport.

On the 28th of January 1999, she got a one-way ticket to Cyprus. Her plan was to spend some time there to begin with and then travel further afield but as soon as she arrived, she began to wonder if she had made a terrible mistake.

January was not a good time to visit the island for the first time. Everything was closed for the winter and the only thing she could see moving on the streets back then was tumbleweed. It wasn’t quite the image Trish had in her head, but she had made her bed and turning back wasn’t an option.

She had no work initially and rationed her savings as best she could. Fortunately, in those days you could live very cheaply so she survived until the tourist season started when she got a job in a local bar. By the end of the season, she had fallen in love with the country.

She enjoyed the bar work and gave it her all and at that stage she thought she would probably end up running her own pub but by the end of the following season, she had changed her mind. She knew from the time she was a teenager that she wanted to have her own business. She was ambitious and she had lots of ideas on how to make money. Many of them were daft, but she consoled herself in the fact that she was at least thinking.

She changed tack after that and went working for a travel agency for a year selling cruises to Egypt and Israel but soon got bored with it and the following season, she got a job with First Choice who owned JWT and Falcon Holidays. They had just lost a couple of holiday reps, so she was thrown in at the deep end without any training, but says it was the best learning experience she ever had.

She soon got used to problem solving and dealing with dissatisfied customers and while she was a shy person by nature, the experience gave her lots of confidence. By then, Cyprus was preparing to join the EU and the regulations around buying and selling property were easing. Property was changing hands quickly.

Giovani property developers approached Trish with an offer to join their team as a salesperson and after just a few weeks working for them, she knew this was what she wanted to do with her life. It wasn’t just about selling property. She was also selling a lifestyle and she got a buzz from it. She did that for the next seven years.

By now she was married to a Cypriot and after her maternity leave following the birth of her first son, she got the opportunity to work under the licence of another property agency, Island Homes. She worked there for another seven years until she got itchy feet and decided to open her own agency.

She rented a small office and took on three other girls and Blue Surf Property was born. Her advanced knowledge of Greek allowed her to take the real estate exam and she became the only non-Cypriot person on the island of Cyprus to hold this licence.

The business has gone from strength to strength, and she now employs a staff of eleven. After twenty-three years here, she still feels blessed to be doing what she’s doing and is grateful for the freedom it gives her to be able to spend time with the people she cares most about and having the time to enjoy life.

In her spare time, she does triathlons, organises an annual run for Autism with two thousand participants, swims regularly and loves to paddle board. The only problem she has with Cyprus is that there aren’t enough Irish people here and Barry’s Tea is hard to come by.