From 400 Square Feet to a National Footprint: The Switchplace Story

Our founder reflects on 28 years of building a company on grit, good people, and the placements no one else wanted to take.

Gabby Gillespie, our Marketing and Sales Operations Strategist, has a rare view of the Switchplace story. She was three months old when it began.

Twenty-eight years later, Gabby sat down with her mother, our Founder and CEO Tammy Gillespie, to hear the full account in Tammy's own words. Tammy opened with a joke: "I just love talking about myself." Then she spent the next half hour giving credit to nearly everyone but herself.

What follows is a story about risk and resilience, and about the people who made it possible.

The road to Dallas

Tammy began her career in corporate housing as an account executive with a national provider. That's where, as our COO Ben likes to say, she "cut her teeth." Her work caught the attention of another housing firm, which recruited her and soon asked her to move from Houston to Dallas to open a new market.

The timing lined up. Her then-husband, Joe Gillespie, had an opportunity in Dallas as well, and the young family made the move with three-month-old Gabby in tow.

An unplanned beginning

When asked whether she had ever pictured herself starting a business, Tammy answered immediately.

"No."

Tammy and Joe had just bought their first home. They were living paycheck to paycheck and wanted something more stable for their family. When her role came to an unexpected end, Joe encouraged her to strike out on her own.

"I really didn't have the confidence level to do that," she admitted. "But he was very encouraging. He said, 'You can do this.'"

She took him at his word. She called the clients she had served and told them she was making a change. At that point she had no line of credit and no company name, and the business entity had not yet been established.

The rest came together at the family's Dallas home. A friend of theirs, attorney David Buckner, drafted the articles of incorporation, and Tammy, Joe, and David brainstormed a name together. In 1998, the company that would become Switchplace opened its doors as Executive Accommodations.

Joe was instrumental in those early days. He worked side by side with Tammy on the strategy and development of the company, and he helped lay the groundwork for what Switchplace would become.

Three desks and a shared receptionist

The first office was a 400-square-foot suite on a shared floor, where a single receptionist answered phones for every small business in the building. It held three desks, three computers, and a team learning as it went.

One of those desks belonged to Jose Vargas. He has been with Switchplace since the very first day and is still part of the team today.

A few months in, Tammy learned she was expecting her son, JoJo. "That was definitely an extra kick in the butt to make this successful," she said.

When JoJo arrived, the company was still just Tammy and Jose. Her parents drove up from Houston to help with the newborn. The day after giving birth, Tammy was back at her desk.

There was no remote work in 1999.

The placements no one else could fill

Tammy's first client was a relocation company she had worked with before. They followed her to the new venture, but they didn't bring their easiest business. They sent her the remote, complicated placements that were difficult to fill.

Tammy made those placements her calling card. She told clients to send her the requests others couldn't solve. To make the point, she offered a playfully exaggerated example: a transferee headed to the far reaches of rural Arkansas with six dogs, needing a one-bedroom in one particular school district. The details were tongue-in-cheek, but the promise behind them was real.

"I'll make it happen," she said, and she did.

That instinct is still the foundation of how we work. We source housing around each client's needs instead of working from a fixed inventory. The more complex the request, the more it plays to our strengths.

The lean years

The early years were lean in ways that are hard to picture today. Clients paid by mailed check, and the team checked the mailbox every day, hoping enough had arrived to cover rent, vendors, and payroll.

The company got its first bank line of credit only because Joe's mother put up a CD as collateral. It was a meaningful act of faith, though it was hardly enough to fund a growing corporate housing company.

Then there's the story that has become company lore. By this point the team had grown, and receivables were not coming in on time. Payroll was in jeopardy. Joe happened to be on a trip to Las Vegas, where he won $20,000 at the blackjack table, and payroll went out on schedule.

Gabby's response, on the record: "Sounds about right."

Deep Ellum, and a dog named Gus

As the client roster grew, the team outgrew its small suite and moved into an open-concept office in Deep Ellum. Meetings happened around a large square table in the kitchen, where the team shared meals, traded ideas, and planned what came next.

It's one of Gabby's earliest memories, thanks in large part to Gus, a giant office dog she rode around like a horse.

Later, after the family moved back to Houston, Tammy flew to Dallas regularly to be with the team. Jose usually drove her back to Love Field, and the two made a tradition of stopping at Uncle Julio's for a margarita and some company strategy before her flight.

Built by people

Looking back, Tammy is candid about how much she didn't know at the start.

"I came into it very naive," she said. "If you told me, 'I want to start a corporate housing company, and I don't have any money, I don't have a line of credit, I don't have one client,' I'd say, 'Are you crazy?'"

She believes two things made the difference.

The first is discipline. "We run a conservative model," she explained. Switchplace takes on inventory only when clients need it and matches lease terms to their projects, so growth follows demand instead of getting ahead of it.

The second is people. She credited every corner of the company: customer service, sales, reservations, accounting, and the operations crew that prepares each unit before a guest arrives. She singled out our CFO, Ann, as a savant with numbers and said Ben "knows how to run the show."

"I couldn't have done this without the people that I have in place," she said. "I know what my weaknesses are, and I know what other people's strengths are. Getting the right people in the right seats matters tremendously. That's how you build a successful company."

Leading in a male-dominated industry

When Gabby asked about the challenges of being a woman founder, Tammy laughed. "Where would you like me to start?"

Corporate housing has long been a male-dominated industry, and men run many of its largest companies. In the early years, even basic resources were harder to come by. Getting a bank to extend her a line of credit was, in her words, "extremely difficult."

That history is why Tammy is so appreciative of the banking relationships she has built over the years, and of the partners who gave her the opportunity to do business.

It has also given her a deep appreciation for the organizations working to open doors for women in business. Switchplace is a certified woman-owned business through the Women's Business Enterprise National Council (WBENC). Tammy values the platform that groups like WBENC give women founders: visibility, connection, and access to opportunities that were far harder to reach when she started out.

Quiet leadership

Asked what she is most proud of, Tammy didn't hesitate.

"Sustaining this company, this wonderful company, for 28 years and supporting my family and the Switchplace family."

She's also proud of the reputation and brand the team has built together, and of the kind of leader she has chosen to be.

"I'm a very under-the-radar type of owner, and I prefer it that way," she said. "I'd rather put all of my energy into our people and our business."

Advice worth keeping

Tammy offered two lessons from nearly three decades in business.

Getting the right people in the right seats. She came back to this more than once during the conversation. It's clearly the principle she built the company on.

Culture takes work. "Creating the right culture within an organization is a lot harder than most people think it is," she said. "It's taken a lot of years and a lot of trial and error to create something I'm proud of. And I'm proud of our culture today."

What makes it family

Before they wrapped up, Gabby shared an observation of her own. Every person hired since she joined Switchplace has said the same thing early on: this place feels like a family. The team pulls together in good moments and hard ones, steps in wherever it's needed, and looks out for one another. Having people like Jose, who has been here since that 400-square-foot suite, is a big part of that.

"I think that's a direct result of your empathy and your leadership," Gabby told her. "That is who you are, Mama."

Tammy's reply: "Thank you, darling."

Then, true to form, they both got back to work.

Life's better when you stay on top.

Switchplace is a WBENC-certified woman-owned business, woman-owned and self-funded since 1998, providing furnished extended-stay housing for Fortune 500 and international teams across manufacturing, legal, consulting, hospitality, and corporate mobility. We hold the leases, we're SOC 2 and GDPR compliant, and we can report spend in whatever format your program requires.

If housing is a category you haven't examined through a supplier lens, we'll walk you through the questions above — including the uncomfortable one.

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