.png)
Business Builders
I created Business Builders as a weekly interview series to have honest conversations with business owners, entrepreneurs, and investors about their journeys; their successes, setbacks, and the lessons they’ve learned along the way. As a growing business builder myself, I want to learn directly from my guests and share those insights with you. My goal is to provide listeners with practical takeaways, fresh perspectives, and real inspiration to help you on your own path to building and growing a business.
Business Builders
The business of saving lives – Evelyn Kelly on how Orphan Drugs actually reach patients
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Evelyn Kelly joins Business Builders for a powerful conversation about rare disease medicine, scaling a global consultancy, and what it really means to build a business with purpose.
From starting at her kitchen table in 2017 with no formal plan, to growing Orphan Drug Consulting from €250,000 to €5 million in just four years, Evelyn shares how she built a specialist pharma consultancy that has helped over 70 companies launch medicines in more than 100 countries.
But this isn’t just a growth story.
Evelyn works in the world of orphan drugs — treatments for rare diseases, many of which affect children. With over 7,000 rare diseases globally and fewer than 10% having approved treatments, she explains the regulatory, commercial and supply chain realities behind getting life-saving medicines to patients.
The conversation explores what most people never see: clinical trial constraints, reimbursement battles across Europe, US pricing pressure, post-Brexit complexity, and the volatility currently hitting the biotech investment market.
Alongside the technical depth, Evelyn reflects on leadership — absorbing hard feedback, building processes that allow scale, being responsible for other people’s livelihoods, and why managing risk isn’t about fear, but about stability.
This episode is a grounded, high-level look at the intersection of purpose and process — and what it takes to build a resilient business in one of the most complex industries in the world.
🎧 In this episode, you’ll learn:
– What orphan drugs actually are — and why they matter
– How rare disease medicines get from lab to patient
– Why Europe is becoming less viable for pharma launches
– The real commercial realities behind life-saving drugs
– How to scale from €250k to €5m without losing control
– Why process matters more than headcount
– The leadership lessons from absorbing difficult feedback
– How to manage risk without limiting growth
– Why branding and integrity go hand in hand
– What volatility in the US means for global pharma
⏱️ Timestamps
00:00 – “We got that medicine to a child”
01:07 – What orphan drugs actually are
07:01 – Cystic fibrosis and Ireland’s unique prevalence
18:12 – Starting at the kitchen table in 2017
20:20 – Scaling from €250k to €5m
21:38 – Why process is the key to growth
26:59 – The BBC story that made it real
31:16 – Integrity vs selling what clients ask for
34:36 – Learning leadership the hard way
38:39 – Leadership for Growth and putting a board in place
52:26 – Why pharma investment has slowed
55:07 – Rolling with the curveball
58:07 – Avoiding burnout as an entrepreneur
🎧 Listen now on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube.
👇 Full episode link in the comments.