Entrepreneurs often see opportunities everywhere. Over the course of my career, I have started many companies, always looking for new ways to meet evolving market needs. But in addition to spotting and acting on opportunities, in recent years, I have learned how important it is to know when to focus — and how true growth often requires narrowing your focus.

As I started my career, I was in constant motion. I would perceive an opportunity or a gap in a market (and not just one market!) and I would jump in and build a company. It was exhilarating and I loved it, for a long time. All of the companies lived under the umbrella of The Advanced Group, but what I was building was a collection of companies that did not share much beyond their ownership and the shared services team I created to support them all. Under this model, The Advanced Group was in constant evolution. My companies would sometimes pivot, sometimes expand, or, if they stopped adding value, be sold or shut down. By the early 2000s, I was operating seven companies across different areas, including IT and healthcare consulting, executive search, and drug development.

During a strategic planning session in 2005, I sat down with my board of directors, and they delivered a clear message: it was time to focus. It’s not that my seven companies weren’t performing, but the board recognized that, with a great deal more focus, I could create a lot more value. In their eyes, I was spread across too many ventures, not fully maximizing the potential of any one. They were right, as it turns out.

As I took in their advice and pondered my path forward, I noticed an important shift happening in the clinical research space. Contract Research Organizations (CROs) are the companies that pharmaceutical and biotech firms hire to outsource clinical trials. Private equity firms had entered this space and were rolling up mid-sized CROs into larger, consolidated companies. These new mega-CROs were designed to serve the largest pharmaceutical companies, but they were not well suited to the needs of emerging biotech firms. This seemed like a promising area of focus, since we were already consulting with pharmaceutical, and biotech companies. By building out our offerings and expanding into a full service CRO, we would be able to provide our customers with very customized and comprehensive solutions. From providing interim professionals, to managing an entire clinical trial, and everything in between, we would become truly differentiated in the market. It would dovetail well with our existing expertise and client base across the board. Importantly, it would allow us to zero in and focus, as the board had asked me to do.

As we dug in and explored what it might look like to build out our CRO, we talked with customers and even employees of some of the firms that had been rolled up. Our conversations confirmed what I suspected; smaller companies didn’t want to work with massive CROs. They wanted partners who could offer a more tailored, boutique experience. And employees of the acquired, formerly mid-sized CROs, if they still had a job, were not excited by the prospect of working for a mega giant company. I thought, this is it, and I returned to the board with a clear proposal: Advanced Clinical would expand into full-service CRO, specifically focused on this underserved middle market, and become our principal focus.

To be ready to pursue this opportunity, I had some work to do. I took a couple years to work through my portfolio of companies, and I sold several of them, including the large healthcare solutions business, the executive search firm, and our original IT consulting company. Every ounce of energy and resources was redirected toward building Advanced Clinical’s full-service outsourcing capabilities.

It was a major undertaking; building a full-service CRO requires developing leadership across multiple functional areas, including biostatistics, data management, medical writing, quality systems, and technology. In order to go after clients, we needed to have our team in place and our capabilities honed. It took several iterations of leadership teams before we got it right and the company reached stability. In the process, I invested heavily in this endeavor, all before we had many clients and before the business started generating significant revenue. I knew we were on the right track and that if we built it, the clients would come, but the energy and resources expended in the building phase were extensive. It was frankly harrowing. Challenges aside, I knew I had found my focus; I was committed to the vision I had pitched to the board.

Our third leadership team secured Advanced Clinical’s first large Phase III clinical trial contract — a major milestone that validated the strategy and gave the company a compelling story to tell in the market. We were finally moving in the right direction. From there, we have seen impressive growth and expansion, all of which serve to validate the board’s initial advice: focus, and you will be able to create value at a scale you have not yet seen.

Today, The Advanced Group’s companies focus on two highly regulated industries: food and drug. We currently have three companies under our umbrella, all of which sell into and service these industries. Advanced Clinical is still by far the biggest.

The newest member of our family of companies is Catena Solutions. We learned so much through building Advanced Clinical in the drug space that we decided to replicate it on the food side – another highly regulated industry with many similarities. We launched Catena Solutions three years ago. This new company was a complete startup, but just a few years in, we are projecting we’ll do over $30M in revenue, so it’s adding a ton of value already.

While the previous several decades had been fruitful and fulfilling, it wasn’t until we shifted our strategy that things really took off. With a new mindset, we took the time to do the strategic work to validate the opportunity, build the right capabilities, and, critically, focus deeply, instead of getting distracted by other ventures. It took patience and perseverance.

I am not saying that entrepreneurs should always resist what is a very natural pull toward new opportunities — the “shiny object syndrome.” In some ways, it served me well as I built experience and expertise over the first few decades of my career. But discipline matters and there are riches in niches. True success comes from focusing on a specific market need and building to meet it, better than anyone else.

Last summer, at Tugboat Institute’s Summit in Sun Valley, I listened to Hermann Simon give a talk. Simon is the author of Hidden Champions, and one of the strengths of Hidden Champions, in his view, is that these market-leading companies narrow their focus and become the best at one thing. That idea resonated deeply with me because it reflected my own experience: when I finally focused, enormous growth followed.