Staying Focused on Building a Company, Not a Laboratory

By Michael Farago, CEO, Concord Dental Laboratories, Westford, MA

I knew during college I was interested in doing consulting work and I started working closely with a mentor who had been consulting in the small business sector for over 30 years. He told me the most consistent message he heard from clients was: “The industry we are in is very unique.” While I don’t have 30 years’ experience, I’ve consulted for over 150 organizations across dozens of industries and every single client has told me his industry was unique. It didn’t matter if it was a two-person service company or a multi-million-dollar defense organization; I heard the same thing time and time again.

I never really understood the roots of this message until I decided to make a home for myself in the dental technology world. I remember sitting in my office in my dad’s laboratory (which was also the storage closet) in 2009, going through decades’...