EEE453 - Mentor Moment - Nature vs Nurture: Are Entrepreneurs Born or Built? With Sean Blanchfield
In this Mentor Moment, tech founder Sean Blanchfield, best known for building and scaling Demonware (acquired by Activision, now part of Microsoft), PageFair, and now Jentic, shares his take on the age-old question: are entrepreneurs born or made?
From being the “willing geek” in college to helping shape Ireland’s startup ecosystem, Sean reflects on how curiosity, environment, and sheer drive shaped his journey, and why he still looks for that same entrepreneurial spark in every hire.
💡 Hear the full conversation in Episode 404 of The Entrepreneur Experiment Podcast.
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EE452 - The 5-Year, £60m Fragrance Empire with Connor Martin, The Essence Vault
In this episode of The Entrepreneur Experiment, Gary Fox sits down with Connor Martin, founder of The JAQ Group, home to the viral fragrance brand The Essence Vault, as well as Thomson Carter and Liquid London.
From selling wax melts at a Saturday market to building a £60 million e-commerce empire in just five years, Connor’s story is a masterclass in resourcefulness, experimentation, and resilience.
He reveals how he turned a £16,000 credit card experiment into one of the UK’s most successful fragrance groups, scaled during COVID by pure instinct, and rebuilt after nearly losing everything in a logistics nightmare. Connor also shares how he applies ruthless efficiency, “fail fast” culture, and first-principles thinking to stay ahead in the hyper-competitive DTC world.
If you want the real playbook for bootstrapping, scaling, and surviving e-commerce chaos, this episode is unmissable.
Show Notes
In this episode, we cover:
💡 How a bottle of CK One sparked a lifelong obsession with fragrance
🧪 The £16,000 credit card gamble that launched The Essence Vault
🚀 Turning a weekend market stall into £800k/month during COVID
🧱 Building from zero marketing experience to £60 million in revenue
⚙️ How failing fast and “implementing before finishing the module” became his superpower
📉 The moment a shipping disaster nearly destroyed the business overnight
🧭 Why Connor runs his company without forecasts — and how it works
📈 Lessons from scaling, burning out, and rebuilding stronger
🎯 How The JAQ Group keeps innovation alive across multiple brands
🌙 His next move: launching a sleep optimisation brand built around his own daily struggles
🧠 Mindset gems on speed, decision-making, and compounding effort
“Knowledge is nothing without implementation — and vice versa.” – Connor Martin
Links & Resources
The Essence Vault: theessencevault.co.uk
Thomson Carter: thomsoncarter.com
Liquid London: https://liquid.london/
Book Mentioned: Black Box Thinking by Matthew Syed
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EE451 - Mentor Moment - Hiring Only A-Players with Dan Hobbs & Ciaran O’Mara, Protex AI
In this week’s Mentor Moment, Protex AI founders Dan Hobbs and Ciaran O’Mara share how they maintain an incredibly high bar when hiring, and why resilience, not just skill, is the real marker of top talent. They reveal how take-home exercises, structured culture frameworks, and a transparent interview process help them find and grow people who thrive under pressure.
💡 “If you hire A-players, they’ll hire other A-players. If you hire B-players, they’ll hire C’s and D’s.”
👉 Listen to the full episode (#402) for the complete conversation on building world-class teams, scaling culture, and the lessons behind Protex AI’s rapid growth.
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EE450 - From Market Stall to 75 Employees: The Rise of Oishii Sushi
In this episode of The Entrepreneur Experiment, Gary Fox sits down with Ciara Troy, founder of Oishii Sushi, to uncover the 19-year journey of building Ireland’s most recognisable sushi brand.
From her first Saturday market in Greystones to supplying nationwide through Lidl, Aldi, Tesco, and Spar, Ciara shares the grit, resilience, and fearless naivety that kept her going through long days, cashflow struggles, and van deliveries at dawn.
She opens up about the pivotal lessons learned along the way: from cutting sushi rolls by hand on chopping boards to investing in her first machines, from maxing out family credit cards to securing Enterprise Ireland support, and from nearly burning out to carving out “Mummy Mondays” to balance entrepreneurship with family life.
If you’re an aspiring founder or a food entrepreneur wondering how to scale a product from a kitchen table to a nationwide household brand, this episode is packed with raw insights, honest reflections, and the strategies Ciara used to grow Oishii from a tiny market stall to a 75-strong team serving fresh sushi across Ireland.
Show Notes
In this episode, we cover:
🍣 How a semester in Tokyo inspired Ciara to start Oishii Sushi
🛒 Testing at local markets before breaking into Dublin shops with barcoded trays
🚐 The early years of 4am sushi-making, van deliveries, and scraping by on petrol money
📊 The “trays per man hour” Excel sheet that showed her the path to profitability
⚙️ Tiny improvements—like piping wasabi instead of hand-filling—that transformed efficiency
💳 Surviving cashflow crises, credit card debt, and the importance of family support
👩👧👦 Introducing “Mummy Mondays” to balance growing a food brand with raising three children
🏭 Scaling from a small kitchen to a purpose-built Dublin 12 facility with 75+ staff
💡 Why COVID was a turning point, forcing Oishii to shift from van sales to centralised distribution
📈 How Oishii went from 30% retail coverage to nationwide partnerships with Ireland’s biggest chains
🌱 Future of food: functional ingredients, protein-rich meals, and balancing wellness with convenience
💬 “Be patient with the results but aggressive with the action.” – Ciara Troy
Links & Resources
Oishii Sushi Website: https://oishiisushi.ie/
GS1 Ireland – Barcodes for Food Products: https://www.gs1ie.org/
The Spade Enterprise Centre: https://www.spade.ie/
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EE449 - Mentor Moment - Consistency Over Brilliance: Colin Harmon on Building Trust at 3FE
In this Mentor Moment, Colin Harmon, founder of 3FE Coffee, reveals why consistency beats occasional brilliance when it comes to building lasting brands. He shares the lesson that changed how he thought about coffee forever: customers don’t need the “best cup ever” - they just need it never to be bad. By raising the floor instead of the ceiling, Colin built trust, scaled his business, and turned 3FE into one of Ireland’s most iconic coffee names.
Listen to the full conversation on Episode 400 of The Entrepreneur Experiment.
Show Notes
Why Colin shifted focus from chasing perfection to building consistency
The compliment that redefined his business: “It’s never sh*t”
How raising the lowest standard creates long-term trust with customers
Why brands should aim to be like Guinness: reliably good, every time
The challenge (and opportunity) of standing out in a saturated market
Resources & Links
3fe: https://3fe.com/
3fe on instagram: https://www.instagram.com/3fecoffee
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Every week, I sit down with extraordinary founders to explore how they build thriving businesses, maintain peak physical health, and cultivate sharp, resilient minds.
This is your journey to learn from the best—world-class entrepreneurs, elite thinkers, and peak performers who have mastered success in business, body, and brain.
This isn’t just a podcast; it’s a blueprint for a new kind of founder—one who balances ambition with wellness, hard work with mental fitness, and success with purpose.
Together, we’ll discover the habits, systems, and strategies they use to create their unique formulas for success.
Join me as you learn how to build like a founder, train like an athlete, and think like an artist—so we can all find our formula for success.
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