Michelle Walshe: The Summer That Nearly Broke Our €50M Business

Michelle Walsh joins Business Builders for a grounded, honest conversation about scaling a family business, navigating relentless growth, and learning the hard lessons that only come from being in the arena. From unexpectedly stepping into a food manufacturing business straight off a flight home, to helping grow RibWorld from €7 million to nearly €50 million in turnover, Michelle shares what it really takes to lead through expansion, crisis, and eventual exit. Over nine intense years, she helped build a 250-person operation supplying major supermarkets across Ireland, the UK, and Germany — all while learning first-hand how easy it is to lose control when growth outpaces structure. Rather than glamorising scale, Michelle reflects on the summer that nearly broke the business — when booming demand exposed weak controls, poor management information, and the cost of avoiding the “hard stuff.” That experience reshaped how she thinks about leadership, information, delegation, and strategic planning. The conversation moves through succession in family businesses, the emotional complexity of selling a company built over generations, the stress of private equity due diligence during Covid, and the personal toll of running a high-pressure operation in a volatile industry. Now working with founder-led and family businesses, Michelle brings that lived experience into advisory — helping business owners step out of operational firefighting, build real management teams, and regain control of the numbers that actually drive profit. This episode is a practical and deeply human look at what scaling really demands — and why facing the hard decisions early can save you years of pain later. 🎧 In this episode, you’ll learn: – Why rapid growth can quietly destroy profitability – The hidden risk of not having real management information – How founders become the bottleneck in their own business – Why building a management team is harder than scaling revenue – The emotional and financial realities of selling a family business – What private equity due diligence actually looks like – Why gross margin by customer matters more than revenue – The danger of overconfidence in leadership – How to step out of day-to-day firefighting and think strategically – The importance of facing the “hard stuff” before it becomes a crisis ⏱️ Timestamps 00:00 – The summer that changed everything 02:10 – Michelle’s advisory work with family businesses 09:30 – Growing RibWorld from €7m to €50m 13:15 – Moving factories and scaling under pressure 29:00 – Losing control during peak demand 31:00 – Installing systems that track profit daily 32:20 – Why founders default to operational firefighting 38:50 – What do you actually want from your business? 46:06 – Why the family decided to sell 49:30 – The emotional aftermath of the sale 52:17 – Private equity, Covid, and extreme due diligence 56:34 – Why meat is a brutally competitive industry 1:14:05 – The two biggest problems in SMEs 1:19:21 – Michelle’s biggest personal leadership lesson 🎧 Listen now on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube. 👇 Full episode link in the comments.

You can listen to Michelle Walshe: The Summer That Nearly Broke Our €50M Business online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

Michelle Walshe: The Summer That Nearly Broke Our €50M Business is an episode from Irish Business Builders by Conor Kearney.

This episode is 84:15 long.

This episode was published on Feb 16, 2026.

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