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Ciara McEnteggart and Yvonne Barnes-Holmes, co-founders of the PBBT Institute.<\/p>\n
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Two things caused Ciara McEnteggart to tear up the business model of her mental health therapy start-up. The first was the Covid-19 pandemic. The second was the brutal honesty of a seasoned business leader, Frank Madden, at the annual Entrepreneur Experience in Cork. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
McEnteggart returned from her weekend in Ballymaloe House Hotel last October \u201call fired up\u201d, she says. On the Monday morning, she sat down with her business partner, Yvonne Barnes-Holmes: \u201cWe had a very long chat. We blocked out the day and we sat down together and just started reworking everything.\u201d<\/p>\n
McEnteggart is a prime example of how the Ballymaloe experience benefits emerging entrepreneurs, but she had already learned a lot of business lessons by the time she found herself sitting down with Madden and others \u2013 sometimes the hard way. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Before the pandemic forced the first big rethink, McEnteggart and Barnes-Holmes had started out with a clear idea of how their venture would develop. \u00a0<\/p>\n
They had already made one giant leap of faith by leaving good jobs in academia, a world they were both comfortable in, to start a business which became the Dundalk-based PBBT Institute. PBBT stands for process-based behaviour therapy \u2013 a model based on a deep understanding of human suffering. It\u2019s a science-based approach that focuses on lasting behavioural change.<\/p>\n
In the academic field, their idea for a new way of advancing the science of human behaviour, so that it could explain all mental health problems, was regarded as groundbreaking. So much so that they won a grant of \u20ac2.1 million to develop it at Ghent University and their eight-strong research team moved to Belgium for more than five years.<\/p>\n
Ciara McEnteggart and Yvonne Barnes-Holmes, co-founders of the PBBT Institute.<\/p>\n
\u201cYvonne and I are both clinicians as well as as researchers \u2013 and in our field, that\u2019s kind of unusual,\u201d McEnteggart says. \u201cTypically, you\u2019re one or the other but we always wore the two hats. We\u2019d feed our clinical observations into our research understanding, and vice versa.\u201d<\/p>\n
The progress the team made in Ghent excited them. There was, they thought, tangible evidence that their work could add to the sum of human knowledge and understanding by helping therapists to get to the crux of complex traumas.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn terms of recovery rate, the industry standard is 50 per cent for all therapies worldwide. For our therapies we were seeing 70 per cent and upwards,\u201d says McEnteggart. \u201cWhen we started seeing that data come in, it really proved we\u2019re doing something that can make an impact globally on the mental health crisis, which is growing exponentially.\u201d<\/p>\n
When it came to putting what they had learned during the years in Belgium to good use, there were two routes open.<\/p>\n
They could stay in the academic world and publish papers about their ongoing research findings. Or they could go into business for themselves and spread the word in a different way.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe came to a crossroads because we knew we had something very special and very different,\u201d says McEnteggart. \u201cThis really is the next generation of therapies \u2013 and a new therapy is hard to come by. So we had to make a decision about how we were going to disseminate it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Option one \u2013 staying in the traditional world of academia \u2013 was the safer choice but it also came with caveats. <\/p>\n
One of the key metrics that universities are judged on \u2013 something that significantly affects their global rankings \u2013 is research citations. \u201cIn certain universities,\u201d says McEnteggart, \u201cyou have hit certain impacts, including where to publish and how to publish. So you\u2019re always under that kind of control.\u201d<\/p>\n
The jackpot is getting your work into a high-impact journal, where it can be cited by other academics in a rarefied world, thus giving your university more kudos. Barnes-Holmes is Ireland\u2019s most highly cited female psychologist, having published more than 160 scientific articles and book chapters.<\/p>\n
She and McEnteggart had first met when the latter was an undergraduate student of Barnes-Holmes at Maynooth University. These days, both women have PhDs from that university and they have invested huge time and energy in their work together. After much soul-searching, they came around to the conclusion that they didn\u2019t want its potential to be limited by academic strictures.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe felt what we were doing deserved to have a place in the world, but if we\u2019d stayed [in academia] it would have meant continuing to chase grants and move to wherever the money led us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another reason for making the move was the feeling that they needed to train people directly in their new therapy, rather than write it all down and watch the power of it stagnate over time, something they\u2019d witnessed with other therapies. \u201cWe felt that when we trained people directly on the ground we saw the biggest impact for them,\u201d says McEnteggart.<\/p>\n
They wanted \u201cthe freedom to do whatever we wanted with what we had developed\u201d. So they decided to go home and start a business \u2013 something neither of them had any experience of.<\/p>\n
Burnout is a major problem among therapists, with 90 per cent reporting some level of work-related stress. McEnteggart and Barnes-Holmes were emboldened by the feedback from those who embraced PBBT. \u00a0\u201cThey were saying to us, \u2018I used to turn down complex clients all the time. I would never see someone with a particular type of suffering, but now I feel like I can take on any client.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Face-to-face interaction was what they were used to \u2013 and they didn\u2019t see distance as a barrier to learning.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe saw it as a training company,\u201d says McEnteggart. \u201cWe envisaged hopping on planes and going into rooms and workshops all over the world, teaching therapists how to do this.\u201d<\/p>\n
They returned to Ireland in 2020. But by then the country in lockdown and nobody was flying anywhere. McEnteggart had never heard of Zoom, but the pandemic soon forced a reimagining of their business and propelled it into the digital space.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had to start being creative very quickly and start doing our workshops online, so the pandemic made us a digital company, which we never really thought we would be. We have to thank it for that, because it allowed us to be much more accessible to people globally who have full-time jobs. They can do the training when it suits them.\u201d<\/p>\n
The challenges came at them fast.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had to learn how the world of business works \u2013 it was a steep learning curve. We had to ask ourselves, \u2018Are we cut out for being entrepreneurs?\u2019 There was a big jump to go from a training company to an institute with formalised qualifications and all of that.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was a confident academic, but I wasn\u2019t a confident businesswoman. At the start, we did things very conservatively, in the way academics do. We were probably too conservative, but over time I think we found the courage to take the steps we needed to. We became more bold \u2013 and our growth went from being very small to quite big in a short space of time.\u201d<\/p>\n
The PBBT Institute has a board of experts and strategic advisers and offers a professional diploma with seven modules. Most of the psychologists and psychotherapists who have signed up are from outside the country, but McEnteggart says they\u2019re getting \u201cmore and more\u201d interest in the diploma from within Ireland.<\/p>\n
With the growth came funding worries. Between them, they still own 100 per cent of the business, but how to fund their expansion?<\/p>\n
They decided not to give themselves job titles, but McEnteggart takes the lead in business development. Before she took part in The Entrepreneur Experience, she had spent a year \u201cbeing really focused on investment and fundraising\u201d.<\/p>\n
That meant less time for the business itself and uncertainty about the way forward. It all came to a head in Ballymaloe.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/2025-Entrepreneur-Experience-02-700x466.jpg\")
Participants in The Entrepreneur Experience 2025 in one of the breakout sessions at Ballymaloe House, Co Cork. The session was led by Cork businessman Frank Madden. Photo: John Allen<\/p>\n
The idea behind the weekend is that 24 emerging entrepreneurs at different stages of their journey are paired with 24 seasoned business leaders. They also break off into a number of small groups, depending on how far advanced they are. Some are at the point where they just need to be funded, others are still figuring out their business models.<\/p>\n
McEnteggart was mentored by Julian Costley, an investor in technology and media companies. \u201cOne of the most valuable parts of the Entrepreneur Experience for me was the depth of the mentoring,\u201d she says. \u201cJulian really got under the bonnet of the company. Because the one-to-one sessions followed each group session, every conversation built on the last and we were able to go progressively deeper into the business.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Ciara-McEnteggart-3-scaled-e1786015581962-700x761.jpg\")
Ciara McEnteggart with her mentor at the 2025 Entrepreneur Experience, Julian Costley.<\/p>\n
With Costley alongside her, McEnteggart was part of the small group sessions chaired by Frank Madden, founder of the Cork-based automation and\u00a0services\u00a0provider Crest Solutions. Crest later became CXV Global and the business now trades under the Catalyx brand name. Madden\u2019s own remarkable story <\/a>was told in The Currency a few years back.<\/p>\n \u201cFrank was putting a big, big emphasis on services \u2013 \u2018Don\u2019t forget about services, if you have them to offer.\u2019 It came up again and again in the small group and it really stuck with me. I knew we had the opportunity and the means to offer services to new clients, beyond what we were already doing.\u201d<\/p>\n The result was that all-day meeting with Barnes-Holmes and a decision to spend less time chasing investment money and more on bringing in new revenues to grow the business in a self-sustaining way.<\/p>\n \u201cWe immediately launched two new products off the back of things that had been said in Cork. We then felt we could recruit and deliver therapy in-house \u2013 and in September, we\u2019re launching a PBBT clinic, delivering the therapy ourselves on an online platform through people we have directly trained. So the revenue from the clinic can fund other elements of growth.\u201d<\/p>\n The business is now close to being profitable and McEnteggart expects the launch of the new clinic to push it into the black. She has some advice for those who make it through to the 2026 Entrepreneur Experience, applications for which are now open<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you come away from these things you\u2019re all fired up. But if you let it slide, and don\u2019t do anything straight after it, that feeling of excitement will go. You\u2019ll lose some of the enthusiasm and the motivation. So do something while it\u2019s fresh in your head, you know? The notes were sitting in front of me and I was still excited after the weekend \u2013 so straight away was the best time for us to start making changes.\u201d<\/p>\n She also feels more confident as a businesswoman, after the hesitant start. \u201cWe are definitely more courageous now. We\u2019ve realised over the last couple of years that even if you make a wrong move, it\u2019s not a disaster. You just go back and try something else.\u201d<\/p>\n Behind everything is the core mission of helping therapists to alleviate people\u2019s suffering, something that is always front of mind for McEnteggart.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a really humbling, warm piece that comes with the work,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s not just the growth of the business, but the impact of it, too.\u201d<\/p>\n Applications for the 2026 Entrepreneur Experience \u2013\u00a0organised by Axis BIC in partnership with Cork City Council, Cork County Council, Broadlake, Quintas Capital and\u00a0The Currency\u00a0\u2013\u00a0can be made here<\/a>.<\/p>\n
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Frank Madden, a veteran of The Entrepreneur Experience.<\/p>\n