ENTREPRENEUR // Sharon Auck LOCATION // Lenexa FOUNDED // 1988 EMPLOYEES // 10 FreshApproach.Solutions Sharon Auck grew up in an environment in which the aspirations of women weren’t much of a consideration. Women, she said, were defined by the men in their lives. That turned out to be true for Auck — but probably not in the way people expected. Auck said she was working dead-end jobs in her 20s before she…

ENTREPRENEUR // Tony Sheets LOCATION //  Overland Park FOUNDED // 2008 EMPLOYEES // 4 Umzuzu.com On the day Tony Sheets quit his job as IT director at a large, local firm, his wife was pregnant with the couple’s third child, they were remodeling their house and the country was mired in recession. No matter. Sheets was confident about his startup, Umzuzu, which helps customers transition to cloud services. “It was a scary time,” he…

ENTREPRENEUR // Nancy McCullough LOCATION // Kansas City, Mo. FOUNDED // 2013 EMPLOYEES // 13.5 e2EKC.com Nancy McCullough considers it a success when clients don’t need her anymore. After all, helping small businesses grow is her goal. “What’s common among 95 percent of our clients is that they have some plan for growth,” said McCullough, owner of e2E LLC. “We feel like there’s not another business doing what we do. Our goal is…

ENTREPRENEURS // Andrew and Terri Otto LOCATION // Kansas City, Mo. FOUNDED // 1977 EMPLOYEES // 6 OttoServiceKC.com For 40 years, Otto Service of Kansas City Inc. carved out a niche by servicing Hondas and, later, the import’s luxury Acura line. It didn’t take long for Andrew and Terri Otto to put their own mark on the family business when they bought the shop from Andrew’s father, Alan, in January 2017. One of…

ENTREPRENEUR // Kyle Ginavan LOCATION // Leawood FOUNDED // 2011 EMPLOYEES // 14 OneHQ.com There was a time when many of the technology products used in the insurance industry had at least one major flaw. They were outdated, inefficient, had limited functionality or weren’t industry-specific. At the suggestion of an acquaintance, Kyle Ginavan stepped into that void with something completely different. In 2012, Ginavan’s startup, OneHQ, launched AgenciesHQ as an agency management system, customer…