In Good Company with Cathy Martin

In 1996, Peter Lavery's life changed overnight. At the time, he was earning £300 a week driving buses when he became one of Northern Ireland's biggest ever lottery winners, scooping up a £10.2 million. Nearly 30 years later, he's one of Belfast's best-known businessmen. Today, he's at the heart of one of Belfast's most ambitious tourism ventures as founder of Titanic Distillers, bringing whiskey p...

From a beauty counter in Debenhams to a global beauty brand. Elanna McGowan is the owner of Pearl Beauty – a functional makeup brand which is making waves in the UK, Ireland and beyond. Originally from Canada, Elanna moved from Ontario to Ballymoney after meeting her now husband. Having built up a following on YouTube of almost 300,000, she decided to start a beauty brand that anyone could use – a...

Marc Mckee was once told by his doctor that he wouldn’t see 40. At his heaviest, he was over 23 stone, and was heavily struggling with anxiety, food noise, and physical health issues. Now, after losing 9 stone through GLP-1 jabs, he’s started a skincare business, Elastik, to help others who have had a similar journey. He joined Cathy to talk all things GLP-1, the lessons he’s learnt in his journey...

Alastair Cameron is the founder of TechTides – a growing programme of regional tech conferences across the island of Ireland. His mission is simple – to bring everyone in the tech ecosystem on the island of Ireland together. In 2023, his life was turned upside down, when he was diagnosed with bowel cancer, which eventually advanced to stage 4 and metastasised to his liver. While recovering, he spe...

Clare McGee is the co-founder of AwakenHub and Awaken Angels — organisations focused on supporting female founders and helping more women get involved in investing and entrepreneurship. Awaken Angels is the first all female investment syndicate. Only 2% of global investment goes into female-founded startups, and Clare and her team want to close the gap. She joined Cathy to talk about the journey o...

Serial entrepreneur Mark Dowds has built million-dollar companies, worked across Belfast, Toronto and Silicon Valley, and backed startups that went on to become global giants. But when he reflects on the moments that have really shaped him, it’s not the successes he points to — it’s the failures and personal challenges, from building a product years before the market was ready, to being diagnosed...

Brendan McDowell is the founder and CEO of BPerfect Cosmetics - one of Northern Ireland’s biggest beauty success stories. He started BPerfect in 2012 with just £500 and a small eyebrow stall in the Kennedy Centre in Belfast. In 2017, Brendan turned down a Dragons’ Den investment of €80,000 at the same time he was trying to get his brand in the shops. He joined Cathy to talk about about how he grew...

Jordan Graham is a Belfast-based entrepreneur who ‘accidentally’ built one of Ireland’s most recognisable food marketing agencies. He launched Sugar Snap in February 2023 after the startup he was working in collapsed - since then, the agency has attracted clients like Belfast favourites Juice Jar and Orto Pizzabars. Graham suffered from shingles due to extreme burnout as he was working as a full-t...

Jenny McGreevy is the founder of Refresh Debt, a business to help people at their most financially vulnerable. In 2007, while many were riding the wave of the housing boom, Jenny believed a crash was coming. What followed was the launch of refresh debt in the midst of the recession. Jenny joined Cathy Martin to talk all things debt, including ‘financial infidelity’ and what it means, what debts sh...

Conor Ferguson is an Olympic swimmer who’s faced heartbreak by the narrowest of margins – missing out on the 2016 Rio Olympics by five hundredths of a second, and Tokyo in 2020 by four tenths. Despite setbacks, he qualified for the Olympics 2024 in Paris and competed in the 4x100m Medley Relay. He’s turned what some might perceive as adversity into innovation, now co-founding Athlete Hub – a tech...

Laura Murphy is the Northern Ireland entrepreneur who turned a lockdown side project into one of the fastest-growing snack brands in the country. Now the founder of Oatco Superfuel, Laura’s oat-based energy balls went from selling out in a small rural shop to landing on shelves in Tesco and Spar stores across Northern Ireland and the UK. Most recently, she stepped into the Den on Dragons’ Den — wa...

Linda Stinson is the co. Tyrone entrepeneur and brain behind Bellamianta Tan and Iconic Bronze. Following a wedding day nightmare with a patchy spray tan, Linda started to look into creating tan products that looked great, but were also kind to sensitive skin. Now, Bellamianta Tan is stocked in over 5,000 outlets across the world, and is now sold in the brand’s first ever bricks and mortar store....

This is In Good Company, the Belfast Telegraph’s new business and lifestyle podcast, hosted by Cathy Martin. Each week, Cathy will go behind the scenes with the people building our biggest businesses — the founders, the risk-takers, the ones making it happen. We’re talking wins, risks, near-misses… the moments that nearly broke them, and the ones that made them. See omnystudio.com/listener for pri...