Presented by the Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at UMKC and Polsinelli Shalton Flanigan Suelthaus PC

Entrepreneur by Choice

Neal Sharma, principal of Digital Evolution Group, opened October’s Entrepreneurs Speakers Series with a dual challenge: to be the best speaker the monthly series has ever heard and to prove to the nearly 40 people in attendance “why you should be an entrepreneur. Period.”

With the series’ recent round of speakers, the program, sponsored by Polsinelli Shalton Flanigan Suelthaus PC and the Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at UMKC, has seemed to host the great debate: are entrepreneurs born or created?

Sharma offered another option.

“If you are choosing the 8 to 5, pencils down, and that’s it, then that is a decision you’re making,” he said. “It’s a clear conscientious choice.”

At the age of 18, Sharma, now 31, chose entrepreneurship. When he was a freshman studying political science at American University in Washington, D.C., he and a dorm mate started a “little Web operation” around Netscape 2.0. They published research from non-governmental organizations online.

“We made enough money to go to Europe, throw plates over our heads in Greece and run with bulls in Pamplona—and blow all the money we had made,” he said.

His partner went off to work for a Web company while Sharma took a hiatus from entrepreneurship to be the youngest salaried member of Bob Dole’s presidential campaign.

After his stint with Dole, Sharma returned to school, with the goal to become an attorney and earn his MBA. Instead, he chatted up a classmate about entrepreneurial opportunities. The professor called them out on their lack of classroom etiquette, and Sharma and his new partner, Dale Hazlett, left their studies to start Digital Evolution Group. Sharma was 22 years old.

Today, Digital Evolution Group is a full service e-consultancy that employs 30 people; serves such landmark Kansas City institutions as Hallmark, American Century Investments, Lockton, and Harvesters; and garners $2.7M in annual revenue. Earlier this year Ingram’s named them the Best Web Developer in Kansas City.

And it’s all because Sharma decided to “drive my own car, party ‘til I dropped, and build my own cathedral.”

Cars, parties, and cathedrals? That was the metaphor Sharma laid as his argument for entrepreneurship.

The car counters the argument that entrepreneurship is just for the danger seekers:  “You should never trust your destiny to the business acumen of someone else,” he cautioned.

The party counters the safety found by climbing the conventional corporate ladder. “If I have to choose between the party that stops at midnight and the party that has no end, I’m picking the latter,” he said. “I’m only limited by my own potential to party. Never be limited by anything else but by your own potential.”

And the cathedral?

“The cathedral is predicated on the idea that everybody lays bricks,” said Sharma. “Every day Bill Gates goes to work, he lays bricks. Every day Cliff Illig goes to work, he lays bricks. It’s part of the work. . . . If you’re going to be laying bricks, you should be building the building that is the embodiment of your beliefs, your convictions, your ambitions, your morals” instead of someone else’s.

So what stops people from starting their own business? According to Sharma, fear and business illiteracy. And those can be overcome.

“It’s a choice to go work for somebody and it’s a choice to start your own company,” he said. “It’s completely a choice, and it’s a choice available to everyone in this country.”

But, as with anything, there are risks to being entrepreneur, Sharma admitted, but they are risks that can be mitigated.

“When we’re lying awake at night we’re thinking about what we can do the next day to change the course of our car,” he said.

For Sharma, entrepreneurship is “not about what’s going to happen to me. It’s about how am I going to happen to the world.

About ESP

The Entrepreneur Speakers Program, held monthly throughout the year, brings the region’s most innovative business leaders to UMKC to discuss ideas and opportunities. The series highlights experiences, lessons learned and unique issues and challenges faced by entrepreneurs in the creation of a new enterprise. 

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